Window on Eurasia: Chechens’ ‘Extra-Territorial’ Status Said a Threat to Russia

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 6 – In order to help Ramzan Kadyrov build authority and thus maintain some stability inside Chechnya, Moscow has granted to Chechens living elsewhere in the Russian Federation what amounts to “extra-territorial” status, a move that makes more clashes between Chechens and other groups likely.
That is the intriguing conclusion Pavel Svyatenkov, a Moscow analyst who has written regularly on ethnic and religious issues inside the Russian Federation, presents in an article posted on the APN web portal today entitled “The Extra-Territorial Nation” (http://www.apn.ru/publications/print17218.htm).
Svyatenkov begins by observing that the Chechens are involved in far more ethnic clashes than are other groups. Their involvement, however, cannot be explained merely by their participation in conflicts -- Azerbaijanis, Armenians, and Russians have done so as well – or the fact that the Chechens uniquely fought against Russia as such.
Instead, the Moscow analyst says, “the basic source of the problem is the unregulated status of Chechnya” and particularly Moscow’s current effort to deal with it by supporting Kadyrov who, while illegitimate in the eyes of many Chechens, appears to give Moscow its best chance of preventing a new outbreak of war there.
For Kadyrov to remain in power, he cannot rely on the coercive power of Moscow alone. He must build some “legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Chechens,” and the way he and Moscow have chosen for him to do so, Svyatenkov continues, is to have Kadyrov present himself as the defender of Chechens across the Russian Federation.
Moscow has been willing to meet him more than half way on this issue, and “as a result, Chechen communities have received on the entire territory of Russia extra-territorial status.” This status is not de jure, Svyatenkov says, but it is very much de facto, a reflection of the fact that “there is a political practice that is higher than the law.”
Here is how this works, he continues: If a Chechen commits some crime, the authorities to do use the standard mechanism of punishment according to the law.” Instead, “they enter into negotiations with the representatives of the local Chechen community. Thus it was in Kondopoga; thus it was also in Stavropol.”
This “mechanism,” Svyatenkov argues, “effectively removes “the Chechens out from under the jurisdiction of Russia, giving them a status more like diplomats than members of an ethnic community and making them feel in at least some cases beyond the reach of the law.
This special status for the Chechens, Svyatenkov suggests, is clear if one considers what happens when a crime is committed by a member of any other ethnic group – “someone from Daghestan, an Azerbaijani, a Georgian or an Armenian.” In such cases, “no one would begin to conduct negotiations with their communities.”
“The organs of power” would simply treat them according to the provisions of Russian laws. Members of other ethnic groups know this, he says, and they behave accordingly. The Chechens know they are in a special situation – and, he implies, they too behave accordingly as well.
There are three possible solutions to this problem, Svyatenkov concludes, but none of them is either easy or especially likely given the broader equities in both Moscow and Grozny that are so obviously involved.
First, Moscow could end this “extra-territorial” arrangement, but if it did, Kadyrov’s regime would likely collapse. That almost certainly would lead to a new round of fighting, something neither the Kremlin nor most people in Russia, including the security agencies, currently has much stomach for.
Second, Moscow could allow Chechnya to become independent. But that would not solve the problem either: Most Chechens would keep their Russian passports even as they acquired Chechen ones – and in that case, they could sometimes act as Russian citizens and sometimes with the kind of extra-territorial status they have now.
Or third, Moscow could encourage Kadyrov to rein in the Chechens, to encourage them to become law-abiding. But he seems unwilling or unable to do that in Chechnya itself let alone in the Russian Federation more generally. And were he to try, that might destroy whatever legitimacy the current arrangement has given him.
Consequently -- and in a way that may strike many as completely unexpected -- President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to end the conflict in Chechnya have had the effect of bringing one aspect of its violence into virtually every major city and every major region of the Russian Federation.

Window on Eurasia: FSB Chief Says Extremists Are Found in Many Religions in Russia

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 6 – Nikolai Patrushev, the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), said in Makhachkala yesterday that “Islamist extremist groups are not the only ones operating on the territory of Russia.” Alongside them, he suggested, are “radical Protestant, Buddhist, and other religious groups.”
And these extremists, he said, not only threaten their respective but also the Russian state and Russian society more broadly. To counter them, “all branches of the government and society” -- not just law enforcement bodies -- must struggle against it (http://www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/print.php?act=news&id=18642).
Patrushev and other security officials have warned about religious extremism beyond Islam before, but this is the most sweeping attack yet on that phenomenon by the FSB chief and could, if it comes to inform Moscow’s policies, trigger new witch hunts not only against Islam but against other religions.
Some are certain to downplay his remarks: He was after all speaking to a Muslim audience and his suggestion might be read as playing to his audience. But both the vehemence of his remarks and the rapidity with which Russian websites have picked up on them suggests that his words will have a broader impact.
The remarks of another speaker at that meeting add weight to that interpretation: Rashid Nurgaliyev, Russia’s interior minister, not only suggested that militia forces are the main obstacle blocking the spread of extremism and terrorism in Daghestan but that those phenomena are directed by domestic and “external anti-Russian centers.”
Nurgaliyev noted that over the course of the last 30 months, there were almost 270 terrorist actions in Daghestan along, and that these attacks had as their victims dozens of militia officers, including senior officials in the republic’s interior ministry (http://www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/print.php?act=news&id=18635).
That Russian security officials are concerned about what they see as a rising tide of religiously-inspired extremism at a time when President Vladimir Putin is trying to play down that threat is suggested by two other remarkable but lower profile events this week – in addition, of course, to the ethnic clashes and demonstrations in Stavropol.
On the one hand, Russian analysts have been publishing detailed articles about some predominantly Russian areas adjoining the restive republics of the North Caucasus – including Stavropol (Sergei Markedonov, “The War of ‘the Worlds’ in the South of Russia,” at http://www.apn.ru/publications/print17206.htm) and Rostov (Igor Dobayev and Rinat Pateyev, “After Stavropol,” at http://www.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=774).
And on the other, two low print-run books issued in 2006 -- “An Atlas of the Ethnopolitical History of the Caucasus” and “An Atlas of the Social-Political Problems, Threats and Risks of Russia’s South” – are now attracting more attention (http://www.kavkaz.geopolitika.ru/arlas?PHPSESSID=491f8579866e69ae9403da647d342948).

UPDATE ON JUNE 7 – The Moscow media have not given additional coverage to the conference in Makhachkala, but the Caucasus Times had its own correspondent at the meeting (http://www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=12701). He reports today that Daghestani President Mukha Aliyev said that “corruption is a greater misfortune than terrorism” and urged that Moscow devote more resources to overcoming the social problems in the North Caucasus. In addition, he described extremism as a phenomenon that operates “under the cover of Islam” rather than part of Islam itself.

Window on Eurasia: Are There Really More Chinese than Ukrainians Working in Russia?

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 6 – According to the Federal Migration Service (FMS), there were 210,000 Chinese citizens registered to work in the Russian Federation at the end of 2006, a figure that means there are now more registered Chinese workers in that country than Ukrainian citizens (of whom 170,000 were registered at that time) working there.
Forty percent of these registered Chinese workers are employed in Moscow, the FMS report continued, where they form approximately 20 percent of all registered foreign workers. Twenty-three percent of the Chinese work in the Far East, and 19 percent in Siberia. Overwhelmingly – 62 percent – work in trade.
But in reporting these figures today, the Moscow newspaper “Vedomosti” cast doubt on their usefulness as indicators of how many citizens of the Chinese People’s Republic or even more on how many other foreigners are in fact working in the Russian economy (http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article.shtml?2007/06/06/127028).
According to estimates prepared by the FMS itself in 2005, there were more than 12 million foreigners employed in the Russian Federation, although very few of them were registered. And the paper gave as example the case of the Georgians: There are an estimated one million Georgians working in Russia, but only 4300 of them are registered.
Chinese workers, “Vedomosti” pointed out, are “one of the most disciplined group of migrants, the overwhelming majority of whom are officially registered.” That means that when the total numbers of registered foreign workers are compared, they occupy first place. But when all foreign workers are, they fall far down the list.
And even with the Chinese, the actual number is almost certainly higher than the total registered. Andrei Karneyev, a scholar at Moscow’s Institute of Asian and African Countries, suggested that the real number of Chinese citizens employed in Russia “is significantly more than” the latest FMS statistics suggest.