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RUSSIA’S POLITICS IN THE NORTHERN CAUCASUS: SYSTEMIC CRISIS AND HOW TO OVERCOME IT
Sergey MARKEDONOV
Ph.D. (Hist.), head of the Department of Ethnic Relations, Institute of Political and Military Analysis (Moscow, Russia)
Today, the social and political situation in the Russian Northern Caucasus is becoming increasingly unstable. It is no longer the problem of a gradually rising number of terrorist and other extremist acts and radical political initiatives—it is a widespread systemic crisis of Russia’s North Caucasian policy and its key elements (administration, appointments, and ideology). In the absence of anti-crisis measures, the continuing crisis trends are fraught with unpredictable results.
It would be methodologically wrong, though, to look at the region as the “breeding soil” of terrorism and extremism. The North Caucasian situation not only reflects the problems of Russia’s domestic policies and its “ailments”—it makes them even worse. The re-division of property is accompanied by assassination of the losers; the power struggle goes hand in hand with ethnic and religious conflicts; and the privatization of power is tinged with clan and tribal hues.
Conflicts Reloaded
In 2005, several local ethnic conflicts (believed to be frozen since the mid-1990s) were reloaded. The Battle of Borozdinovskaia, in the course of which the Iamadaev brothers “mopped up” a village populated by ethnic Daghestanis, worsened the already bad relations between the Chechens and Daghestanis. The imminent reform of local self-administration caused another upsurge of ethnic tension between the Ossets and Ingushes in the Prigorodniy District, since one of the conflicting sides (the Ingushes) was convinced that its ethnic interests were endangered. The contested Prigorodniy District claimed by North Ossetia and Ingushetia united the anti-Ziazikov (read: anti-Kremlin) opposition in Ingushetia. In 2005, it tried to launch a regional “color revolution” in Nazran, but this attempt failed.
The far from friendly relations between the Ossets and Ingushes caused another round of the “arms race” in the Caucasus. In September 2005, Minister of Internal Affairs of North Ossetia Sergey Arenin suggested that civilians should be armed and united into groups to protect themselves and, as the minister put it, “people’s squads” armed with hunting rifles would exercise public control over the law enforcement bodies; they were also expected to help prevent ethnic conflicts. The neighbors did not like it: Musa Apiev, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia, dismissed the idea as “doubtful” and said quite rightly that the civilians should be disarmed rather than en-
couraged to take up weapons. At the same time, Kazbek Sultygov, chairman of the Republican Committee for Refugees, wrote to President Putin suggesting that direct federal rule be introduced in the Prigorodniy District; by way of explanation he added that the Osset leaders were turning a blind eye to the mass illegal actions against the Ingushes. The North Ossetia leaders, in turn, submitted a report about the crimes committed by ethnic Ingushes in their republic. The Center preferred to let the events take their own course. It was not the Center’s firm and principled position that softened the North Ossetian minister’s initiative. Today, the Chermen checkpoint on the administrative border between North Ossetia and Ingushetia looks more like a fortress on a state border. However, the leaders of the single country to which both republics belong are painstakingly avoiding any political and legal assessments of the armed conflict between the Ossets and Ingushes which dates back to October 1992.
In March-April 2005, the “Circassian world” promptly closed ranks in response to the official statements about a possible unification of the Republic of Adigey and the Krasnodar Territory. In late May and early June 2005, tension between the Kabardins and Balkars grew worse under the pressure of the administrative-territorial changes in the Elbrus area. Until that time, Kabardino-Balkaria was the most peaceful among the North Caucasian republics—today it has become another terrorist area. Its terrorism did not arrive from Chechnia and Daghestan: jamaat Iarmuk exploits Islamic slogans together with ethnic (Balkar) ideas. The fragile stability maintained by late president of Kabardino-Balkaria Valery Kokov’s political will may disintegrate with the unpredictable results after his retirement and death. It should also be noted that at one time the late president merely froze, but did not resolve the ethnic and political opposition between the two peoples; he equally failed to find an adequate answer to the radical Islamic challenges. In Karachaevo-Cherkessia, too, the revived ethnic factor brought to mind the early 1990s: the local Abazins and Nogais want ethnic districts of their own. This means that for the first time after the 1999 presidential campaign political apartheid has been revived.
The spring and summer of 2005 saw a series of ethnic clashes in the “Russian South.” In March, leaders of the “new Cossacks” organized a series of Armenian pogroms in Novorossiisk; in August, two conflicts flared up one after another—between Chechens and Cossacks in the Remontnoe District (Rostov Region) and between Chechens and Kalmyks in the village of Iandyki (Liman District, Astrakhan Region). Both the regional and federal powers made the same mistake while trying to settle the conflicts: they demonstrated that they preferred to play down the ethnic side and dismiss the conflicts as banal everyday disagreements. The regional leaders, for their part, naturally wanted to diminish the real dimensions of what had happened, they entrusted conflict settlement to bureaucrats of the middle level in order to submit moderately optimistic reports.
The main problem is that the conflicts in the Don, Kuban, and Stavropol areas are growing fiercer and crueler with the increasingly radical demands. Federal power has obviously underestimated the ethnic conflict between the “new Cossacks” movement and the Meskhetian Turks, which, in the summer of 2004, prompted residents to leave the country for ethnic reasons, the first time this has happened since Jewish emigration. As distinct from the Jews, the Meskhetian Turks were prepared to stay behind with Russian passports. The ethnic and political situation on the seemingly peaceful lands of Southern Russia deserves close attention. If further ignored, the regional latent conflicts might cause the open conflicts to spread further afield. This will happen if the present “wait-and-see” policy continues: the Chechen conflict and the Daghestani crisis will spread to the “Russian South” while the problems now plaguing Chechnia and Daghestan will spread to the Stavropol and Kuban areas and the Rostov and Astrakhan regions. This will happen not only because the inflow of new workers will cause flare-ups of uncivilized rivalry among certain forces for social niches. Ethnic nationalism and religious extremism, as well as negative stereotypes together with the insults the local ethnic groups endured from the federal and regional powers will add fuel to the fire.
Today, some of the typically Caucasian conflicts have already been reproduced in the “Russian South:” between traditional Islam and the “revivalists” (Salafis and Wahhabis) and between different ethnic groups.
What is going on in the Northern Caucasus today brings to mind the “sovereignty parade” of the early 1990s, yet the similarity between the vast ethnic and political crisis of the Yeltsin era and the destabilization of the “fortifying the vertical” period is superficial. In both cases we are witnessing ethnic nationalism mobilizing its forces. In the 1990s, it was the Soviet past that caused the problems; it was not the Center’s fault that the region suddenly woke up—it was the regional political communities that woke up the region. They forced the Center to pacify the Caucasus by trial and error: the Khasaviurts, treaties on the delimitation of power, bribing the regional elites, and the use of force. True, these tactics curbed the wave of ethnic conflicts everywhere, with the exception of Chechnia, yet the main problems persisted: high population density and resulting unemployment, tension over land, urbanization mountain-style (moving mountain dwellers down to the valleys); the archaizing of sociopolitical life, fossilized ethnic and confessional groups, different legal systems, and strong influence of customary law.
The problems Russian power is facing in the region were caused, in many respects, by its own mistakes and failures and its unwillingness to address the obvious problems. In fact, the state acts post factum, it is bringing more and more troops into the region, and organizing random raids and mopping up operations. This cannot uproot the causes of Caucasian terrorism and extremism. The efforts to fortify the vertical of power launched in 2000 in the Northern Caucasus were reduced to signing a new pact between the Center and the regional elites. The latter agreed to abandon the nationalist discourse as evidence of their loyalty to the Kremlin. In exchange, the Kremlin is turning a blind eye to the “petty” sins of the local regimes, therefore the cases of Budanov and Ulman are discussed in all newspapers while the “feats” of the Iamadaev brothers and Kadyrov’s special purpose forces are passed over in silence. This plays into the hands of “corporate communities” which have their own interests in mind different from those of the Russian state.
The “Chechenization” of Chechnia alone, when power and control over the local resources were transferred to the local elite (which included recent fighters, among others), demonstrated that the Center and its institutes had no power in the region. The Center’s vacillation over the Daghesta-ni issue (ranging from forcing the local elite to accept direct presidential elections to reaching an agreement to drop the issue of elections in general) is a sign of the same weakness. In the Caucasus, the appointment of republican heads in the absence of public procedures and criteria will do nothing but increase corruption.
Systemic Separatism
“He is 29 years old, bearded, exhorts his troops to fight in the name of Allah, and speaks Russian with a heavy Chechen accent. Not long ago, that would have perfectly described one of Moscow’s most bitter foes.
“But now, while his former comrades-in-arms dodge troops in the Chechen mountains, Ramzan Kadyrov is a hero of Russia, a frequent guest of President Vladimir Putin and a regional leader of the pro-Kremlin political party.
“Kadyrov is officially deputy prime minister of Chechnia,1 but observers say the Kremlin has made him de facto leader—something, they add, it may come to regret.
1 In February 2006, Ramzan Kadyrov became prime minister.
“Kadyrov’s every move dominates local television reports. When his first son was born last month, the region enjoyed a public holiday marked by all-night salutes of machine-gun fire which left civilians cowering in their basements.”
This abstract was borrowed from an article by Oliver Bullough of Reuters called “‘Little Stalin’ Kadyrov Runs Russia’s Chechnia” and faithfully reflects the political atmosphere in “peaceful” Chechnia.
The system of power and administration became completely Chechen. After holding a parliamentary election in November 2005, Moscow let the local elite rule the republic and rewarded its loyalty by granting it considerable political and material privileges. In 2003, Moscow imposed a new constitution on Chechnia, which contradicted both the laws of the Russian Federation and the new rules Vladimir Putin had formulated for the Center and the regions. While many of the North Caucasian constituents (Adigey, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Daghestan) abandoned their bi-chamber parliaments within the frameworks of “leveling out the legal expanse,” Chechnia acquired a bi-chamber parliament. Moreover, the parliamentary election was announced even before the status of three mountainous districts of Chechnia (Galanchozhskiy, Staroiurtovskiy, and Cheberloevskiy) was legally registered; they received their status while the election campaign was in full swing. Today, Chechnia has a president, a government, and a representative branch staffed with local people. Does this help realistic, rather than perfunctory, incorporation of Chechnia into the rest of the country? The policy of creating local ethnic power systems with the help of behind-the-scenes agreements in the absence of a strong civil society and real, rather than pocket, parties has already created a local elite that pursues its own line different in many respects from what Moscow wants. In this way, while fighting a-systemic separatism, federal power is supporting systemic separatism.
The new parliament will legalize all “oral agreements” reached on the administrative market. It will also legalize the Treaty on the Delimitation of Powers between the Center and the Republic, a “tasty morsel” for the republican elite. Politicians and political scientists were too engrossed in calculating the votes received by the republican committees of United Russia, the Communist Party, and the Union of Right Forces to realize that the new parliament had been elected not for the sake of the “long-suffering people.” It was set up to complete the deal Moscow and Grozny concluded on the administrative market. The Treaty is the Center’s special concession to Chechnia since similar practices were discontinued elsewhere in the country in 2000. Today, the status of Chechnia differs a great deal from that of Tatarstan and Bashkiria; the republic has acquired more “sovereign rights” than other republics. This means that the privatization of power in Chechnia is nearly over: it was carried out with the help of vox populi and elected deputies. As for terrorist acts and murders, they will not stop. In 2005, terrorism remained part of the political practice of “pacified” Chechnia. The transfer of power to the local people has been exported to Daghestan; the events in Borozdinovskaia, a Daghestani village in the Shelkovskoy District, are the best illustration of this. In fact, the systemic separatists under Russian flag are following in the steps of the a-systemic separatists when they try to play the role of an all-Caucasian hegemon, but under federal protection.
Their political appetites have not yet been satisfied. The Russian authorities have just finished reporting about the successful parliamentary elections in Chechnia when then acting premier of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov offered another political initiative, which, if realized, may blast the Northern Caucasus. On 5 December, 2005, when speaking to the parliament, he announced that the republic’s borders should be delimitated as soon as possible. The republic has been living without its borders far too long, for almost 15 years, he argued. In the meantime, the borders have been shifted at random, he added, as a result of which the republic has lost part of its territory. He also pointed out that “according to the Constitution of the Chechen Republic and the current laws of Russia,” the new-
ly elected parliament was expected to draw the borders of Chechnia. This meant that the de facto leader of the republic confirmed that the highest representative body of power was expected to legalize privatization of power by the regional political allegedly pro-Russian elite. To start privatization, however, the borders of the property to be privatized must be known. This should be done according to the law rather than in keeping with criminal rules. Ramzan Kadyrov said further: “Our people are very much concerned with the territorial issue. We did our best to calm the people by saying that it should be resolved within the law. Time has come—the parliament should get down to business.”
This was said not by opposition or radical nationalists. In the spring of 2005, when the political forces opposing President of Ingushetia Ziazikov demanded that the Prigorodniy District should be returned to Ingushetia, the local leaders and federal power dismissed the initiative as nationalist and extremist. Today, the politician, who is associated with the Kremlin and positions himself as Vladimir Putin’s consistent supporter, is demanding that the map of the Caucasus should be changed. No response came from the federal structures; the Russian vertical of power passed over this statement in silence, just as it passed over the Borozdinovskaia events in silence, the Khasaviurt epopee of Ramzan Kadyrov (when his special purpose forces clashed with Daghestani militiamen)...
Daghestan is Waking Up
The year 2005 will go down in North Caucasian history as the year of Daghestan: the largest of the North Caucasian republics lived through more terrorist acts than Chechnia. There were about 80 terrorist acts in the first six months of 2005. These developments reveal the ideological, or theoretical and methodological impotence of those responsible for Russia’s Caucasian strategy. The events of 1999 in Chechnia and around the “rebel republic” were described as a “terrorist threat,” while the fight against it was called a “counterterrorist operation” and “struggle against international terrorism.” These terms are inadequate; the Center, however, made an attempt to place the “Chechen crisis” in a system of coordinates and interpret the events of the mid-1990s in its own way. Officially, the upsurge of terrorist activities in Chechnia was blamed on foreign Islamist missionaries and political extremists wishing to make the republic part of worldwide jihad. In Chechnia, the Russian state was fighting not so much against separatism as against “world terrorism,” which had inflicted huge losses on the Chechens themselves.
The events of2005 in Daghestan received no systemic official interpretation, even an inadequate one. As distinct from the terrorist activities in Chechnia, the terrorist acts in Daghestan are not anonymous. In Chechnia, terrorism has declined slightly. After the Beslan tragedy, it took the form of a struggle of individual groups which no longer regard independent Ichkeria as their aim. Indeed, it is much wiser to become “systemic separatists” to receive guaranteed administrative privileges from Moscow. Today, separatism in Chechnia wants to preserve its small “territory of war” controlled by neither Russian nor Ichkerian powers. The 2005 terrorist acts in Daghestan were demonstratively personified: the Shariat jamaat assumed responsibility for all the political assassinations. For example, in March it declared a total war on officers of the law enforcement bodies “guilty of the murder of Muslims.” The jamaat minced no words about its final aim: an Islamic state on the territory of Daghestan. Being aware of their influence and strength in the republic and across the Caucasus, the Islamic radicals launched an offensive.
Today, Daghestan is the most terrorism-ridden republic. What should Russia do about it? Should it launch another “counterterrorist operation?” How should it be waged? Who is responsible for the
rapid “Chechenization” of Daghestan: international terrorists, Wahhabis, or a third force? So far, we have no answers to these questions. Meanwhile, in the early 1990s, terrorism as a political instrument developed into a key political factor in these two republics. The methods were and are different: from the very beginning terrorism in Chechnia was tinged with separatism and anti-Russian sentiments. Despite the Islamist rhetoric of those who organized and carried out terrorist acts, it should be said that “defense of Islam and purity of the faith” were of secondary importance, pushed into the background by the idea of Chechnia’s independence. Political scientist Omar Alisultanov was quite right when he wrote: “Islamic extremism was ‘imported’ from certain Arab countries and was brought to Chechnia by Daghestani radicals. During the first and second wars, this marginal trend gained popularity among the fighters in Chechnia. Supported by Islamic fanatics from other countries, some groups presented their struggle as a jihad against faithless Russia and announced that their main aim was to ‘liberate’ all the Caucasian Muslims and set up a Muslim state. Most of the separatists, however, despite their frequent appeals to Islamic values, used them to achieve their political, not religious aims.”
In any case, in Chechnia, terrorism is inseparable from the ebb and flow of Russian policy. Terrorism in Daghestan is not so rigidly connected with federal policies. The Chechen separatists justify their aims by the need to stand opposed to federal and, to a lesser extent, republican power. In Daghestan, terrorism is aimed at Makhachkala; this should not dupe the Center—Moscow’s turn will come. There are many Daghestanis fighting in Chechnia side by side with Chechens; the jamaat Shariat already announced that it has sent suicide bombers to Moscow. Today, Chechens and Daghestanis are carrying out terrorist acts for different reasons, the level of their ideological and political awareness is different; the level of passion that drives them is also different. In Chechnia, the fighters are struggling to preserve their “riot islands,” while in Daghestan they are fighting for an Islamic mega-project. This means that the government still has a chance to change the situation by playing on the contradictions among those who organized “great upheavals.”
Islamic Challenge
Daghestan was waking up in the wider context of the Northern Caucasus’ recovered Islamic identity. In 2005, terrorism as political practice was reloaded. The tragic events in Nalchik on 13 October, 2005 demonstrated that from that time on the Russian State would not be standing against the defenders of “free Ichkeria,” but against the members of the “Caucasian Islamic terrorist international.” In this respect, the Northern Caucasus is following in the steps of the Islamic East. The Mid-Eastern and North African countries have left behind the “change of terrorist generations.” It was in the 1960s-1980s that secular ethno-nationalists (Arafat and the PLO), which invariably wielded religious slogans and values as their main instruments, became the main entities of terrorist struggle. Early in the 1980s, the supporters of “pure Islam” (the Muslim Brothers and Islamic Jihad) came to the fore. With a certain lag, the Northern Caucasus will follow a similar road.
Early in the 1990s, during the notorious “sovereignty parade,” the ideas of ethno-nationalism and ethnic self-identification prevailed in the region. The principle of ethnic domination became the central one in politics, management, and business. The radical ethno-nationalists never hesitated to use terror: it is a more or less old phenomenon in the republic. In the first half of 2005, Daghestan lived through 80 terrorist acts, while between 1989 and 1991 there were over 40 political murders and attempted murders in the republic; in 1992, there were 40 terrorist acts; and in 1993, about 60 murders and armed attacks were committed. There were several highly significant terrorist acts in the early 1990s. In June 1993, fighters of the Avar Imam Shamil Popular Front and the
Kazikumukh Lakh movement captured officials of the local military office in Kizliar and demanded that the special units of the RF Ministry of Internal Affairs should be removed from the city. As distinct from 2005, at that time all the acts were of an ethno-political rather than religious nature. The same can be said about the Chechen separatists who have been fighting for “independent Ichkeria” since 1991.
In the latter half of the 1990s, ethno-nationalism was replaced with the idea of “pure Islam.” This happened for several reasons. First, the ethnic patchiness in the Caucasus makes ethno-national-ism a political utopia for the radicals. (This is especially true of places where none of the ethnic groups is numerically stronger than others, Karachaevo-Cherkessia being one such place.) Second, all efforts to achieve domination for “one’s own” ethnos brings the ethnic elite to power; in a short time, it becomes corrupt and self-contained, absorbed with its own egotistical interests. This leaves the masses with the role of “rally goers.” In the latter half of the 1990s, this brought to the fore the idea of radical Islam, or “Islam of prayers,” as opposed to “Islam of the (burial) rites.” According to political scientist Konstantin Kazenin, throughout its long history of being part of people’s life, Islam caused disagreements between the traditional faith connected with the folk religious ideas and practices and the “pure” faith free from the “impurities” of the folk traditions. The same Islamic trend may present itself as traditional and pure. In the 19th century, Sufism played the role of “pure” Islam, while in the late 20th century this role belonged to Salafi (Wahhabism), the supporters of which declared a war on the “traditionalists,” the Sufis.
This process spread to Chechnia (especially in the post-Khasaviurt period), Daghestan, and other Caucasian constituents of the Russian Federation, including its relatively peaceful western part (Adigey and Kabardino-Balkaria). The ideas of pure, or renovated, Islam were spread by bright personalities well versed in the theological fundamentals of Islam, who differed greatly from the conservative imams of the Muslims’ spiritual administrations. In Adigey, this role belonged to Ramadan Tsey, a repatriate from Kosovo; in Karachaevo-Cherkessia, to Ramzan Borlakov and Achimez Gochiyaev; in Kabardino-Balkaria, to Mussa (Artur) Mukozhev; and in Daghestan, to the Kebedov brothers.
Pure Islam fits the Caucasian conditions perfectly; as distinct from “traditionalism,” it addresses the supra-ethnic universal and egalitarian values, which makes it a “green communism” of sorts. Those who support “Islam of prayers” are not interested in teyp, clan, or ethnic affiliations. This makes it possible to establish “horizontal ties” among activists from different Caucasian republics. In the absence of a clear ideology and conception of national development in Russia, Salafi brought people together in the Caucasus. While the Islamic national project was developing as an anti-Russian one, many “renovation” leaders were not Russophobes and were prepared to accept Russia’s jurisdiction in the Northern Caucasus if the region becomes completely Islamic. At the same time, the Caucasian “Wahhabis” reject the secular nature of Russian statehood and the Center’s power structures. Gradually, quantity developed into quality: the radicals went over from propaganda to terror. By the early 21st century, ethno-nationalism was replaced everywhere (including Chechnia) with religious Islamic radicalism. In October 2005 in Nalchik and throughout the year in Daghestan, there was no talk about separation of Ichkeria from Russia, yet people’s minds had been already captured by the idea of a special social-political reality without Russia and outside Russia.
This means that the nature of threats in the most unstable and conflict-ridden region of Russia changed radically—the Center will be threatened not only from Chechnia. In the near future, the entire region will become a field of uncompromising struggle. It is vitally important to correctly interpret the threat: the state’s leaders should be fully aware of the enemy they have to fight and of its resources. Minister of Defense Sergey Ivanov spoke about a “bandit underground” which threatens the state; before that Vladimir Putin spoke about fighting bandits. Meanwhile Russia’s power and its lib-eral-modernization project are threatened not by bandits, but by politically and ideologically motivat-
ed people well aware of what they want—as distinct from the corrupt and depraved Russian elite both in power and in the opposition.
Not all Islamic “renovationists” have already crossed the line which separates terrorism and the struggle against Russia from mere discontent with corruption and the closed nature of the local leaders. It is not too late to separate criminals from frustrated regional intellectuals and mere losers. It would be a fatal mistake to believe that all the opponents to the regional authorities are Wahhabis and Russophobes. If this is done, Russia will lose a large number of its citizens whose loyalty to the state will be replaced with loyalty to Salafi jamaats. The Center should abandon its idea that the fight for the Caucasus can boil down to social rehabilitation of the region. Money is not the problem—serious ideological confrontation is the main thing. The side with stronger nerves, willpower, and faith will win. Victory will go to those who have the more convincing arguments and the more attractive ideas and aims. Today, federal power is engaged in Russification of the local people, who can barely imagine themselves as citizens of the Russian Federation. Most of the local people concentrate on ethnic, confessional, and clan affiliation rather than on their Russian citizenship. To remedy the situation, the state should overcome apartheid inside the region and optimize migration inside the country.
To successfully address the problem, the Kremlin should revise its personnel policy: the Russian idea in the Caucasus should be entrusted not to people personally loyal to the president or to corrupt bureaucrats, but to politically motivated people (not only Moscow appointees, but also so-called Euro-Caucasians, people from the Caucasus resolved to carry out modernization rather than the tribal-traditionalist project). So far, throughout the post-Soviet period, Russian power preferred informal contacts to formal rules. This ended in loss of control over the situation and to a new “revival of the Caucasus” in 2005.
If the Center fails to disentangle the very complicated set of social, economic, and political problems of the Caucasus today in a systemic way, rather than through endless appointing and dismissing people and looking for scapegoats (the case of Dzasokhov who was found guilty of Beslan), tomorrow other forces will rule the region. The present scenario—everything in exchange for loyalty—will allow the local elites to fully privatize power in their republics. The people, brought up under the conditions that differ greatly from American and European democracy, might start fighting against such privatization with the help of Islamist and ethno-nationalist slogans. In this situation, it will be unclear whether to side with the over-exited mob of poor and intellectually limited people or with those who “privatized” power in the republic.
If Russia wants to remain in the Caucasus, there is no reasonable alternative to strengthening state power in the region. The state should remain there in the foreseeable future, since several federations of warlords is the only alternative. What does stronger state power mean? It does not mean that the local ethnic nomenklatura regimes and their corrupt links with Moscow patrons should become stronger, nor that local resources and power should be exchanged for superficial loyalty, nor that random passport checks and mopping up should be continued. The key to resolving the problems is to be found outside the Northern Caucasus. All projects hinge on one point only. In order to de-privatize such entities of the administrative market as Chechnia, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Adigey, etc., Russia should become a real and strong state which cannot be bribed and which the peoples of the Northern Caucasus would be ready to serve.
