Recently there has been an increase in reports that a threat has materialized within Russia’s current borders, that is, a threat inferring the possibility of territorial losses. High-ranking officials are using this thesis as an argument for convincing the so-called ‘healthy forces of society’ to cooperate with the powers that be. This catchy and intimidating metaphor – devised by individuals who must care for the country’s national security and integrity by virtue of their occupational duty – can actually become a reality, as happened fourteen years ago during the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The North Caucasus is often cited as the most problematic region, a statement that includes the possibility of territorial losses. However, although the localization of the threat is quite precise, attempts to comprehensively analyze the situation on the southern flank of European Russia are rather inadequate. In the meantime, it is clear that the sweeping economic depression in the Caucasian territories (all survive by subsidies of the federal government, have skyrocketing unemployment, a crisis-stricken industrial sector and earnings that fall behind the rest of Russia by dozens of percent) has caused a rapid process of latent separation: the population is developing a steady estrangement from the state and the country while simulating superficial loyalty to it.

Thus, the social and political fabric of Russian statehood is degrading while a kind of parallel social, political and legal structure is taking shape. This structure exists within Russia formally but it is de facto independent from the country’s political and social institutions. The governmental system in the Caucasus is inefficient and falls short of current challenges. The regional power elites are going through a crisis of legitimacy, which isolates them from the masses of the population that holds them in total disrepute. The situation rules out efficacious government and frustrates the political, economic and legislative relations between those territories and the federal center.

The informational isolation of the regions from the center – which resulted through no small contribution by the local elites – puts the federal and regional authorities worlds apart in terms of thinking and action. The center and its “field command,” in the form of the Office of President Putin’s Plenipotentiary Representative in the Southern Federal District, based in Rostov-on-Don, do not have full information on the ongoing developments. Quite often their decisions lag many steps behind the dynamically changing situation. On the face of it, pure procrastination aggravates the risks from week to week.

The regional authorities are corrupt, shackled by clan interests and often simply incompetent. As a consequence, Russia is compelled to defend its interests in the Caucasus, while resorting to unacceptable methods and instruments. This situation has led to the rapid emergence of a ‘gray zone’ along Russia’s southern borders where its control is rather nominal. What is happening there is not just a threat to Russia’s sovereignty – it signifies a deep crisis of sovereignty. The inability of the state to ensure the supremacy and efficiency of its laws in that area embodies the loss of control over the Caucasian territory, even though no one (or almost no one) speaks out loud about its secession from Russia. The ‘gray zone’ is very special in that it is a nestling place of powerful groupings interested in aggravating uncertainties. A list of such groupings in the North Caucasus may include: local authorities and groups close to them who retain levers of influence on the situation and access to resources; local alternative leaders who shape up these parallel social and political structures (like the so-called ‘Islamic jamaats’); federal power agencies that try to manipulate the situation in the Caucasus according to departmental interests. They do this by creating ‘controllable conflicts’ in several zones at a time, but they do not have enough potential to control them strategically.

THE WESTERN CAUCASUS

Regions of the Western Caucasus, i.e. Russia’s constituent territories located to the west of North Ossetia (Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachai-Cherkessia and the Adygei Republic) and the unrecognized Republic of Abkhazia make up a special segment of the Caucasian area. Their main feature is the presence of a strong Abkhazian-Adyg element: Kabardinians, Cherkessians, Adygs, Abkhazians and less populous ethnic groups like Abazinians and Shapsugs belong to the same Abkhazian-Adyg language and ethnic group. This is not just a linguistic and cultural relic, but also a plausible factor influencing the current political development of the entire region. These are links in a single chain, as the above-mentioned territories are all connected with Georgia’s secessionist region of Abkhazia.

As is well known, Georgia passed through a pivotal change of elites more than a year ago, and the new government in Tbilisi began the restoration of the country’s territorial integrity as a major priority. It declares that it will solve the ethnic and territorial conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, another breakaway region, within the next few years. There are grounds to believe that the presidential election in Abkhazia in the fall of 2004 and during the winter of 2004-2005, and the victory of political moderate Sergei Bagapsh have set the scene for a smooth rapprochement between Georgian and Abkhazian leaders. Meanwhile, the Georgian-Abkhazian situation exerts a powerful impact on the general social and political climate on the northern side of the Caucasian Mountains. Some observers argue that by incorporating Abkhazia, Tbilisi seeks to weaken the Russian positions in the Caucasus. Yet the obvious fact is that the attitude of the Abkhazian-Adyg population toward Russia is changing as long as Moscow continues to lose influence in Abkhazia. 

Another considerable threat to stability in the Western Caucasus comes from the Islamic factor, even though the degree of religious devotion has traditionally been less strong among the Moslem population there than in the Eastern Caucasus (Ingushetia, Chechnya, Dagestan). Naturally, the Islamic factor is the least significant in Abkhazia where Moslems are few and the people mostly follow indigenous creeds. There are some indications, however, that cells of Islamic fundamentalists have appeared on Abkhazian soil, too. Against this background, Islam is visibly turning into a social and political factor to be reckoned with in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Cherkessia, which are immediate neighbors with the smoldering Chechen conflict. Proceeding hand-in-glove with the idea of so-called ‘pure Islam’ (the followers of which are typically – and not quite correctly – called Wahhabis) is the Pan-Turkic movement, supported by Turkic nationalists throughout the world and, more specifically, by a range of political and public organizations in Turkey proper. Pan-Turkic moods are spread widely enough among the communities of the Turkic peoples – the Kabardinians, Karachai and Nogai Tatars, all scattered across the region.

It would be unreasonable to play down the fundamentalist threat in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Cherkessia, for here exists a powerful destabilization factor accelerating the loss of Russian influence in the region. Radical religious groups in both territories maintain regular contacts with twin groups in Chechnya and establish their own contacts across Russia’s borders, including in the Middle East. The radical Islam they espouse does not differentiate between ethnic groups and does not recognize adat – the traditional local law. It replaced quite aggressive ethnic movements that had been shaking the region before the end of the 1990s. Their influence dropped by the end of the last decade as a stable system of control over resources had formed in each region. But resources thinned quickly while corruption, poverty, unemployment and consequent social protests continued to grow. At the same time, the people increasingly chose religious extremism as a form of protest – or rather, as a form of escape from traditional Islam. Religious radicals have an expansive network in the Western Caucasus. One can say definitively that their cells exist even in the regional authorities.

Add to the above the serious reactivation of ethnic conflicts of the early 1990s, sparked by the adoption of Federal Law 131-FZ on General Principles of Local Self-Government, which demands that regional legislatures fix the administrative borders of municipal entities at the earliest possible date. In Karachai-Cherkessia, litigation was quick to arise from calls to create a specifically Abazinian municipal area around the town of Kubina, as well as Nogai Tatar municipalities in Adyge-Khabl. In Kabardino-Balkaria, the Balkarians are protesting vehemently against a regional law on municipal borders. The Shapsugs living along the Black Sea coast in the Krasnodar Territory are also making demands for an ethnic district of their own. Finally, as the project of a merger of nesting-doll-type areas goes ahead in Adygei, interethnic tensions are rising there, too.

On the other hand, it is exactly in the Western Caucasus that the largest communities of Russians have remained to this day. Their strength varies from 30 percent of the population in Karachai-Cherkessia to 70 percent in Adygei. Despite the continuous decrease of their share in the ethnic makeup, the Russians remain a factor of social and political stability, even though they live in a de facto isolation from the indigenes like in Karachai-Cherkessia or in Abkhazia. By and large, they are the most educated and qualified part of the locals; and they tend to conserve their Russian identity, legal awareness and loyalty to social and political institutions of the Russian Federation.

THE EASTERN CAUCASUS

Territories of the Eastern Caucasus – Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan – also make up a subregion with persisting “specificities.” While the Abkhazian-Adyg ethnic groups constitute the axis along which political life revolves in the Western Caucasus, the Nakh-Dagestani group of peoples does not. It is clear, however, that the numerically larger Chechens have a strong influence on all the three republics, and the common linguistic and cultural roots fasten together the two Vainakh republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia, a part of Dagestan (Novolakskoye and Khasavyurt districts where the Akkin Chechens live) and the Akhmeti district of Georgia, which is home to the Kistin Chechens.

An important factor in the political and cultural spheres in the Eastern Caucasus is the wide spread of Sufi interpretations of Sunni Islam. The local population has a much greater religious devotion as opposed to regions to the west of Ossetia. Furthermore, religious leaders of the Sufi enjoy great public influence, although they have recently ceded some positions to the adepts of so-called ‘pure Islam’ (incidentally, the total number of jamaats in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia currently exceeds 500).

A second crucial factor in the Eastern Caucasus is the virtual absence of an ethnic Russian population, which played a stabilizing role and a “shock-absorbing” factor there until the early 1990s. “Relic” communities of Russians have remained in Dagestan, but their numbers fell by one half during the 1990s. At the start of the last decade, Russians were the fifth largest ethnic community in Dagestan; today, they still retain seats in the republic’s State Council, which includes representatives of the 14 largest ethnic groups. The leadership in all three republics has declared the return of qualified Russian specialists a priority, essential for the post-crisis (or post-war in Chechnya’s case) rehabilitation of the economy and for ensuring social and political “shock-absorption.” As one sign of this new mindset, there are plans to install a monument to a Russian teacher in the Dagestani capital of Makhachkala, but practical achievements in this sphere remain rather modest. The scarcity of jobs, combined with the hostility of the local population, makes many Russians consider resettling elsewhere. The low efficiency of the law-enforcement system in those territories leaves little hope for the ethnic Russians that they will be ensured adequate protection of their life and rights.

The third factor is Russia’s non-interference in the political life of those three restive regions, together with its merely symbolic presence of troops there. The local regimes tend to create heavy information filters that prevent the bulk of information on regional developments from reaching the federal center, while the officials ensuring Russia’s political presence there do not hold their offices long enough or are eventually absorbed into the corrupt system.

Paradoxically, despite the emergence of several theaters of military operations in the Eastern Caucasus in the 1990s and the early 2000s, the federal government’s military presence there has been insignificant. Suffice it to recall that the Defense Ministry placed the first regiment in Ingushetia (in the town of Troitskaya) in 2002. That army unit, however, lacked the courage to resist those militants who intruded into Ingushetian territory on the night of June 21 to June 22, 2004. As for Chechnya, the seemingly unprecedented concentration of Russian forces there (up to 80,000 men and officers) is symbolic as well: given 30,000 armed and conditionally loyal locals among them, the force cannot aspire to full control over the situation.

The picture is rather sad, as the Eastern Caucasus has de facto fallen out of Russia’s sovereignty, unlike the regions of the Western Caucasus where the ‘gray zone’ is still in the initial phase of formation. That impression is getting stronger in view of the fact that the administrative border separating the Stavropol Territory and North Ossetia from the three East-Caucasian territories is guarded as a state border. Incidentally, the local people call any trip northwards as a “trip to Russia,” that is, a trip to a neighboring territory of some kind.

To sum up, the following are the problems that we face in the territories of the North Caucasus:

1. All of these regions without exception are experiencing a deep economic depression, with unemployment soaring above Russia’s average rates. The Gross Regional Product is extremely low or decreasing, vital manufacturing facilities are stricken by crisis or simply ruined, while the ruling interests have privatized the surviving functional remainders of the infrastructure. Federal subsidies, praised as reliable conveyor belts between the center and the regions, are so insignificant that any serious discussion of their effects on the economy is out of place. The ruling circles absorb the subsidies like sponges, and the funds never reach the rank-and-file who survive mostly thanks to a system of financing by their kinsmen diasporas in Russia who disburse cash from their wallets; this money exceeds official investment many times over. The irony is that the corrupt local officials impose arbitrary taxes on those alternative quasi-investments.

2. The regional – as well as federal – authorities are witnessing an unparalleled credibility crisis and are practically void of legitimacy in the eyes of the local population. In some cases, this is due to the obtruding of a definite candidate in the elections, but always because of disgust with a corrupt system of government that hinges on clans and crime. Practically all the regions can expect to face a challenging change of power involving the carving up of the spheres of influence and control over resources.

3. Against this background, a parallel social and political structure of Islamic jamaats is rapidly taking shape. They are not necessarily bent on terrorist methods or radical fundamentalism, but they set up a system where Russian social and legislative norms have no effect and, as a result, Russian sovereignty dissipates.

4. A link between the federal center and the regions – something referred to as the “power vertical” – relies on just two elements in practical terms. First is the Rostov-based Office of the Plenipotentiary Representative in the Southern Federal District and the representative, Dmitry Kozak. Second involves the sacks of cash that the regional rulers prefer taking to the Kremlin personally.

5. The instruments that the government typically resorts to in emergencies are inefficacious, as the local police are perceived in each region as just another mob, albeit dressed in uniforms and having specially colored vehicles. The courts are corrupt and subjected to clan influences. The federal agencies of power are mostly focused on operations of the Unified Operative Staff of the Antiterrorist Operation in the North Caucasus and may score successes at times, but the aftereffects of their activity only drive the crisis deeper. It is tempting to guess that military clashes occur sporadically in Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria as a consequence of big-game hunting operations launched by the secret services, or we may heed the thesis that the developments in the Caucasus are part of a controllable mega-project of the FSB and Russian military intelligence GRU. Yet these audacious theories must not dispel the truth that any such conflict may eventually get out of control.

6. The idea of appointing regional governors upon consent from local legislatures may be reasonable in the Caucasus where elections held in the 1990s or early 2000s seemed to be based on some blockbuster flick or police movie. However, this idea will deliver the goods only if the appointees are able to break up the clan-ridden and corrupt regimes and make the government popular among the locals once again. Only very independent-minded people are fit for the task, while experience proves that Moscow tends to dislike them. In the meantime, controllable appointees who are unfit for governing can only aggravate the crisis; the “gray” dusk presently covering the Caucasus will quickly descend into pitch-black night under such circumstances.