The Economist has published an article about Russian policies in Caucasus. Here are few excerpts.
"I desire that the terror of my name should guard our frontiers more potently than chains or fortresses, that my word should be for the natives a law more inevitable than death," wrote Alexei Yermolov, Russia’s legendary general who waged total war during his conquest of the north Caucasus in the early 19th century. A hero of the Napoleonic wars revered by Russian romantics, Yermolov is still universally hated by "the natives" who think of him as brutal, contemptuous and genocidal.
But the main cause of instability is Russia’s colonial methods in the Caucasus, which have altered little since Yermolov’s time. The difference is that he was conquering new territory, whereas Russia is dealing with people who are, at least on paper, its own citizens.
Although military resistance in Chechnya itself has subsided, violence has spread to neighbouring republics, notably Ingushetia and Dagestan. It is transmitted by state-sponsored repression, corruption and lawlessness that alienates and radicalises the population and drives young men into the hands of Islamist militants.
Ingushetia, a Muslim republic with a population of just 500,000, has turned into the region’s new flashpoint. Reports of killings, explosions and kidnappings have been coming in daily. In the past year the number of attacks on police by Islamist militants, both Chechen and Ingush, has almost doubled. In return, the Russian security and military services have terrorised the local population.
Russia’s war in Georgia and its backing of the South Ossetians inflamed feelings of injustice and anger in Ingushetia. Many Ingush identify with Georgia more than with Russia. And Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has created new precedents for the North Caucasus.
Ruslan Aushev, Ingushetia's first post-Soviet president, feels strongly about the issue: "Russia fought two wars in Chechnya, which cost a lot of lives, blood, sweat and money, defending the principle of its own territorial integrity. Now it has recognised two small republics and added two new hotspots to its existing problems. This does not bode well for Russia." The biggest mistake the Kremlin made in the Caucasus, he says, was to use force.
Unless Russia stops treating this region as enemy territory and begins to observe its own laws here, violence will escalate.
It is the centralisation of power and the colonial methods of suppression of dissent that are the biggest threat to that territorial integrity.
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