Chechnya and Its Neighbors Suffer a Relapse

By ELLEN BARRY
MOSCOW — Just a year ago, Russian authorities were so proud of their success at bringing order to the north Caucasus that they made Chechnya a stop for the Valdai Discussion Club, the handpicked group of Western analysts flown to Russia every year to hobnob with top officials.
Two busloads of writers and academics were shuttled to the gigantic mosque built by President Ramzan A. Kadyrov in memory of his father, granted a wide-ranging interview with Mr. Kadyrov and allowed to stroll down the repaved, repainted and rebuilt streets of Grozny, the Chechen capital. Even the skeptics among them left impressed: calm, it seemed, had returned to Russia’s crucible of violence.

That case is difficult to make after the summer of 2009. Explosions and shootings have been a daily occurrence in the region all summer. Between June and August, 436 people have been killed, compared with 150 during the same months in 2008. And the number of attacks jumped to 452 from 265, according to statistics compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private research group based in Washington.

The numbers do not fully capture what has happened. High-ranking officials have been strafed with machine-gun fire, targeted by snipers as they strolled out of restaurants or rammed with cars packed with explosives. A prominent human rights worker was snatched outside her apartment, killed and left on a roadside.

And suicide bombings, ominously, have returned to Chechnya after a pause of several years. Two militants blew themselves up Friday morning to escape capture, making it a total of three suicide bombings in the region in just the past week.

“The period of stability is quite clearly over in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya,” said Pavel K. Baev, a senior researcher at the Oslo-based International Peace Research Institute. “But it hasn’t spread. This is what allows the Russian leadership more or less to keep their distance, not to pay serious attention.”

For years, the Kremlin’s strategy in the Caucasus has hinged on Mr. Kadyrov, with Moscow giving him free rein to crush signs of rebellion in the region. Mr. Kadyrov, a former separatist himself, transformed his corps of fighters into a brutal internal police force. Human rights organizations documented his government’s use of torture, intimidation and extrajudicial killing, but even liberals had to admit that he had been effective at quelling the violence.

Now, Mr. Kadyrov’s grip on Chechnya looks far weaker, leaving Moscow with a choice about whether to stick with a deeply flawed policy or risk a change of course.

A year ago, and as Mr. Kadyrov pressed for more autonomy from Moscow, it appeared that the Kremlin was testing an alternative style of leadership in neighboring Ingushetia.

One of Dmitri A. Medvedev’s early acts as president of Russia was to remove Ingushetia’s despised president and replace him with Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, a former military intelligence officer. Mr. Yevkurov set about gaining the trust of Ingushetia’s population, firing officials for corruption and reaching out to dissidents and rights activists.

Then, on June 22, a suicide bomber swerved into Mr. Yevkurov’s motorcade, releasing a blast so powerful that the president’s car flew off the road and into a brick wall. Mr. Yevkurov, gravely wounded, was evacuated to Moscow and spent most of the summer recovering.

With him went the hopes that the Kremlin was ready to embrace a softer approach, said Aleksei V. Malashenko, a Caucasus specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

“It is a tragedy, not only for Ingushetia and Yevkurov himself, but generally for the Caucasus,” Mr. Malashenko said. “Everybody who said it’s necessary to kill, to press, to exterminate, and dialogue is useless — they are all justified by the destiny of Yevkurov. So it’s very bad.”

Then on Aug. 17, a truck full of explosives barreled into police headquarters in a heavily populated part of Nazran, the Ingush capital, killing 25 people and wounding 280.

The drumbeat of suicide attacks that have followed are a reminder of the days when rebels made theatergoers and schoolchildren hostages to their rage against Russia, and they are evidence that, despite his assurances, Mr. Kadyrov has not stamped out the insurgency.

Mr. Kadyrov blames Wahhabis and other Islamic extremists for the attacks and has repeatedly charged that they are financed and trained by Western countries. He said on Friday that a collaboration between the police, the Federal Security Service and local clergy could prevent young Caucasian men from turning to religious extremism.

“We are doing very little today to stop this process,” he said. “We must try to find mistakes in what we are doing, and correct them. We must do all we can to win a spiritual victory.”

But in other quarters, scrutiny is falling on Mr. Kadyrov’s government and social problems like poverty, unemployment and corruption.
Igor Y. Yurgens, the director of the Institute of Contemporary Development and a close aide to Mr. Medvedev, said he believed that “Chechenization” — allowing Chechen authorities a primary role in quelling the insurgency — had served an essential purpose but was now fueling violence rather than preventing it. “There is big hatred of Kadyrov, there is big hatred of different clans, and it is transformed into social hatred,” Mr. Yurgens said.

Russia’s leaders, he continued, should “make a counterbalance to Kadyrov gradually, without insulting the guy who restored order to the region, but who is becoming a problem.”

“This way of running the region cannot last forever,” he added.

Though Mr. Medvedev’s early instincts were along the same lines, the series of insurgent attacks have pushed him to embrace tougher tactics, Mr. Yurgens said. This month, Mr. Medvedev encouraged Russian forces to kill terrorists “without sentiment” and called for an end to jury trials in terrorism cases, which often result in acquittals.

It is, Mr. Yurgens said, “ferociously difficult” to expand democracy under violent conditions.

“We are all confused,” he said. “I think he is confused.”

Mr. Kadyrov’s defenders, and even some of his critics, warn that shifting course in Chechnya risks the outbreak of a third war.

Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, an ethnic Chechen who once served as speaker of the Russian Parliament, and who has occasional contact with Mr. Kadyrov, said he noted an obvious increase in criticism of the Chechen leader after Moscow declared an end to its decade-long counterterrorist operation in Chechnya. That move gave Mr. Kadyrov even more autonomy from the federal center.

Intelligence and military officials were frustrated by the decision and then by Mr. Kadyrov’s renewal of ties with Akhmed K. Zakayev, an exiled separatist leader still wanted on Russian terrorism charges, Mr. Khasbulatov said.

Mr. Khasbulatov said he worried that the grumbling signaled waning support for Mr. Kadyrov in Moscow and that the results, though pleasing to critics outside the country, would be disastrous for Russia.

“They began accusing him of all sins, and in the past this preceded something terrible,” he said. “Get rid of Kadyrov, send in some guy from Moscow, and a new war will start. What will the West say then?”
from: http://www.nytimes.com/