Paul Goble
Vienna, December 13 – The Manezh violence, many Moscow analysts are suggesting, shows that ethnic Russians are organizing and that North Caucasian diasporas can no longer act as they please, while other writers are suggesting that these diasporas may respond with violence, especially since the militia quickly released those involved in Saturday’s violence.
But one analyst, Mikhail Delyagin, the director of the Moscow Institute of the Problems of Globalization, argues that what took place in Moscow streets over the weekend has re-ordered the political balance within the tandem in Vladimir Putin’s favor and that this in turn points to popular support for a new wave of repression against minorities and the opposition.
In an interview with Andrey Polunin of “Svobodnaya pressa,” Delyagin suggests that before these clashes, President Dmitry Medvedev was gaining the upper hand in the ongoing political contest with Prime Minister Putin, but “the disorders on Manezh Square caused everyone to be afraid” (svpressa.ru/politic/article/35417/).
And that fear, in turn, has “removed from the order of the day questions of human rights, liberalism and modernization. After all, Delyagin asks rhetorically, “what kind of modernization can there be” if one segment of the population thinks it can act with impunity while “the rest feel themselves defenseless before this new Medievalism?”
“If the main thing for society is human rights,” the commentator continues, “then there is no question that Dmitry Medvedev will be the president in 2012. If [however] the main thing is security, then the president in 2012 will be Vladimir Putin for the very same reasons by which he became president in 2000.”
Thus, the Manezh events have reordered the political dynamics in the Russian Federation decisively in Putin’s direction, Delyagin says.
Not surprisingly, this development has already led some to speculate about whether the siloviki and the special services were somehow behind these events, organizing or at least tolerating them as a means of boosting Putin and themselves against Medvedev, reflections that in and of themselves have the potential to add to the tensions in the Russian capital.
That is all the more so because of the precedents of the 1999 apartment bombings, explosions that cost more than 300 Russian lives and that many still believe were the work of officers or groups tied to the security services on the basis of evidence gathered by various researchers and widespread reporting on what many call “the Ryazan case.”
That incident involved Ryazan residents spotting security service officers planting what looked like a bomb in an apartment building and then getting local media to cover it, forcing the powers that be to declare that what they were doing was simply an exercise and in no way related to the apartment bombings.
On the basis of those tragic events, Putin restarted the war in Chechnya, became the hero of the day for many Russians who feared for their lives, and rode into office as President Boris Yeltsin’s handpicked successor.
But now the situation has changed in at least three ways, each of which makes the situation even more explosive. First, the way in which the militia arrested and then released those involved in the Manezh events has led many of the radicals to conclude that the powers that be are on their side and that they can engage in more violence.
Second, the non-Russian diasporas and the non-Russians in the North Caucasus also are paying attention to what the militia is doing. While some may be intimidated, others appear likely to use the weapons they have to respond to any further attacks, all the more so because they too are coming to believe that the powers that be are not on their side.
And third, both the Russian radicals and the non-Russian diasporas have seen a clear demonstration that the Russian state structures are not nearly as all-powerful as many had thought, leading each to assume that violent action is the best means to promote their interests and even to force the weakened state to do what they want.
As a result, more violence is likely, even though cold weather rather than militia or military action is probably going to limit the number somewhat. Attacks by Russian radicals and attacks by North Caucasus diaspora members and by militants in the North Caucasus are thus likely to escalate to the point that many Russians will support anyone who promises to stop it.
By his statements in support of the militia and his push for expanded police protections, Medvedev is clearly trying to position himself as someone who can control the situation within a legal framework. But many Russians have concluded that whatever that framework may be, it is now so frayed that they are prepared to accept repression as the price for security.
Such a shift in attitudes may indeed help Putin in the short term, but it will not be good for Russia over the longer haul, as the events after 1999 show with violence in the North Caucasus again on the rise and violence between Russians and North Caucasians in Russian cities growing,
Monday, December 13, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Kazakhstan Abuts Central Asia but Isn’t Part of It, Commentator Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, December 13 – With the demise of the USSR, observers from within and without the post-Soviet states have redrawn regional categories and hence their mental maps Nowhere has this redrawing been more common or more wrong in Central Asia where many people increasingly include Kazakhstan as part of Central Asia, according to a “Parus” commentator.
Throughout Soviet times, officials and academic specialists always spoke about “Central Asia and Kazakhstan,” a reflection in the first instance of the demographic difference between the latter and the former: Until the 1980s, Kazakhstan had an ethnic Russian plurality, the result of Moscow’s ethno-political engineering.
But now Kazakhstan has a Kazakh majority, and ever more people are inclined to count it as just another Central Asian state, but in fact, Konstantin Kasharin argues, “Central Asia is an integral, unique and self-standing region, and Kazakhstan is only its neighbor” regardless of what people in Astana or elsewhere think (www.paruskg.info/2010/12/10/36656).
Central Asia is, Kasharin argues, “one of the unique regions of the world with an ancient history and a rich spiritual-cultural heritage.” There have been states there “since ancient times,” and it was “one of the hearths of world civilization,” with “a pleiade of scholars, artists and writers.
And despite the shocks of recent times, Central Asia has “preserved its uniqueness and its historical-cultural integrity and uniqueness in the form of its sovereign states.” And that preservation is becoming even more importance in connection with “the growth of the weight and importance of Central Asia in world politics.”
Some texts “assert that ‘Central Asia’ [Tsentralnaya Aziya] includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan,” the commentator says. Other text include these countries along with China’s Uyghur Autonomous District, and sometimes Mongolia and Afghanistan.”
Moreover, the terms, “the region of Central Asia and the Caucasus,” “the region of Central Asia and the Caspian basin” and “the region of South and Central Asia” are increasing displacing the Soviet definition of “Central Asia” [Srednaya Aziya] and thus changing how analysts, officials and diplomats conceive the countries in and near these groupings.
The history of Central Asia in recent centuries has been complicated, Kasharin points out. But neither in Russian Imperial times nor in Soviet times was Kazakhstan part of Central Asia. And an honest assessment of the situation, he continues, shows that it should continue to be considered “outside of Central Asia” rather than part of it.
Kazakhstan’s separateness, he points out, is the product of “the lack of clearly expressed geographic identity of the country, the presence of extended borders with Russia and China and also Kazakhstan’s closer economic and transportation-communication links to them rather than to the neighboring countries of Central Asia.”
Moreover, Kasharin says, “the peripheral character of the place and importance of Kazakhstan in Central Asia is also a reflection of the fact that this country de facto has avoided participating in the resolution of the knotty problems of the region,” including energy and water resources and responding to economic crises.
.Despite this longstanding tradition, the commentator continues, some in Astana have tried to present Kazakhstan not only as part of Central Asia but as the natural leader of the region, even though there is no basis for such claims. Indeed, a close examination of these statements reveals that they are rhetoric rather than reality, Kasharin insists.
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev has promoted various integration projects in the past, including a Eurasian Union that would be more closely integrated than the Commonwealth of Independent States, and consequently, it is perhaps no surprise that having been rebuffed in that direction, he is now looking south.
“However,” Kasharin says, “Kazakhstan as a result of a number of strategic and purely geographic characteristics never was and cannot be in its complete territorial extent part of Central Asia.” The Kazakhstan leadership may somehow have “forgotten” about this in pursuit of some geopolitical game.
But “today’s geopolitical realities are such that Kazakhstan in the person of its leaders, despite its verbal games” is pursuing a goal it cannot achieve. The enormous region which some of its leaders want to call Central Asia {Tsentralnaya Aziya] nonetheless remains Central Asia [Srednyaya Aziya] and Kazakhstan.
And as the Soviet leadership understood, that second formulation is critical because as long as Kazakhstan stands outside Central Asia, that region will not unite because Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are not going to be willing to follow the much larger Uzbekistan until and unless Kazakhstan plays a balancing role.
Consequently, Kasharin’s somewhat precious linguistic discussion may in fact be evidence that the fight over a broader Central Asian unity is beginning to develop, a fight that could transform that region’s political arrangements far more radically than changes in any one of the countries there, at least with regard to outside actors.
Vienna, December 13 – With the demise of the USSR, observers from within and without the post-Soviet states have redrawn regional categories and hence their mental maps Nowhere has this redrawing been more common or more wrong in Central Asia where many people increasingly include Kazakhstan as part of Central Asia, according to a “Parus” commentator.
Throughout Soviet times, officials and academic specialists always spoke about “Central Asia and Kazakhstan,” a reflection in the first instance of the demographic difference between the latter and the former: Until the 1980s, Kazakhstan had an ethnic Russian plurality, the result of Moscow’s ethno-political engineering.
But now Kazakhstan has a Kazakh majority, and ever more people are inclined to count it as just another Central Asian state, but in fact, Konstantin Kasharin argues, “Central Asia is an integral, unique and self-standing region, and Kazakhstan is only its neighbor” regardless of what people in Astana or elsewhere think (www.paruskg.info/2010/12/10/36656).
Central Asia is, Kasharin argues, “one of the unique regions of the world with an ancient history and a rich spiritual-cultural heritage.” There have been states there “since ancient times,” and it was “one of the hearths of world civilization,” with “a pleiade of scholars, artists and writers.
And despite the shocks of recent times, Central Asia has “preserved its uniqueness and its historical-cultural integrity and uniqueness in the form of its sovereign states.” And that preservation is becoming even more importance in connection with “the growth of the weight and importance of Central Asia in world politics.”
Some texts “assert that ‘Central Asia’ [Tsentralnaya Aziya] includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan,” the commentator says. Other text include these countries along with China’s Uyghur Autonomous District, and sometimes Mongolia and Afghanistan.”
Moreover, the terms, “the region of Central Asia and the Caucasus,” “the region of Central Asia and the Caspian basin” and “the region of South and Central Asia” are increasing displacing the Soviet definition of “Central Asia” [Srednaya Aziya] and thus changing how analysts, officials and diplomats conceive the countries in and near these groupings.
The history of Central Asia in recent centuries has been complicated, Kasharin points out. But neither in Russian Imperial times nor in Soviet times was Kazakhstan part of Central Asia. And an honest assessment of the situation, he continues, shows that it should continue to be considered “outside of Central Asia” rather than part of it.
Kazakhstan’s separateness, he points out, is the product of “the lack of clearly expressed geographic identity of the country, the presence of extended borders with Russia and China and also Kazakhstan’s closer economic and transportation-communication links to them rather than to the neighboring countries of Central Asia.”
Moreover, Kasharin says, “the peripheral character of the place and importance of Kazakhstan in Central Asia is also a reflection of the fact that this country de facto has avoided participating in the resolution of the knotty problems of the region,” including energy and water resources and responding to economic crises.
.Despite this longstanding tradition, the commentator continues, some in Astana have tried to present Kazakhstan not only as part of Central Asia but as the natural leader of the region, even though there is no basis for such claims. Indeed, a close examination of these statements reveals that they are rhetoric rather than reality, Kasharin insists.
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev has promoted various integration projects in the past, including a Eurasian Union that would be more closely integrated than the Commonwealth of Independent States, and consequently, it is perhaps no surprise that having been rebuffed in that direction, he is now looking south.
“However,” Kasharin says, “Kazakhstan as a result of a number of strategic and purely geographic characteristics never was and cannot be in its complete territorial extent part of Central Asia.” The Kazakhstan leadership may somehow have “forgotten” about this in pursuit of some geopolitical game.
But “today’s geopolitical realities are such that Kazakhstan in the person of its leaders, despite its verbal games” is pursuing a goal it cannot achieve. The enormous region which some of its leaders want to call Central Asia {Tsentralnaya Aziya] nonetheless remains Central Asia [Srednyaya Aziya] and Kazakhstan.
And as the Soviet leadership understood, that second formulation is critical because as long as Kazakhstan stands outside Central Asia, that region will not unite because Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are not going to be willing to follow the much larger Uzbekistan until and unless Kazakhstan plays a balancing role.
Consequently, Kasharin’s somewhat precious linguistic discussion may in fact be evidence that the fight over a broader Central Asian unity is beginning to develop, a fight that could transform that region’s political arrangements far more radically than changes in any one of the countries there, at least with regard to outside actors.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Seeks to Counter ‘Kavkaz-Tsentr’ with its Own ‘Tsentr-Kavkaz’
Paul Goble
Vienna, December 13 – Moscow officials have tried various ways to shut down the pro-Caucasus Emirate portal, Kavkaz-Tsentr, including denial of service attacks, pressure on IP providers to drop it, and demonstrations against governments that agree to allow the portal to operate from their national territories.
But now these officials have adopted a new tactic, one that recalls the Soviet period when the USSR jammed foreign radios by broadcasting on a nearby wavelength. In this case, Moscow has established a new self-described “anti-terrorist site ‘Tsentr-Kavkaz” to sow confusion among potential visitors to “Kavkaz-Tsentr.” (www.riadagestan.ru/news/2010/11/25/106252/).
At the end of November, the organizers of “Tsentr-Kavkaz” announced the launch of the new site, http://center-kavkaz.ru/. They said that their goal was “to exert ideological resistance to extremism, to black the manifestations of religious chauvinism and separatism, both on the territory of Daghestan and throughout the entire North Caucasus.”
The new portal has hypertext links to materials that “reveal the essence of radical groupings acting in the area,” materials that are grouped in the following categories: events, commentaries, analysis, press, polemics, interviews, history, dossier, and a chronoicle of evil actions.”
Again, according to the organizers, “the portal can help people better orient themselves on questions of protecting their personal security,” with materials from “councils of specialists, psychologists, and experts on how to behave in critical situations.” And the organizers said that they were devoting “particular attention” to the security of children and the elderly.
And the site’s organizers say, they invite the participation of visitors who are asked to send questions and materials including videos to dagantiterror@mail.ru. But as recent materials on the site make clear, the site, on behalf of the people behind it, have a broader agenda, one intended not only to undermine Kavkaz-Tsentr but also to push particular ideas.
On Friday, RIADagestan.ru reported, the Tsentr-Kavkaz sait sent an appeal to the Congress of Peoples of Daghestan calling on that body to appeal to the federal organs to change laws concerning the definition of the legal status of the Internet in order to put the powers to control it (www.riadagestan.ru/news/2010/12/10/107006).
Specifically, the Tsent-Kavkaz site called for legislation that would allow the authorities to bring legal action against any IP provider or perhaps even users of Internet sites on which extremist materials are posted and to establish filters that would limit the ability of sites hosted abroad, like Kavkaz-Tsentr, to reach an audience in the Russian Federation.
This new site thus is triply interesting: as a means of countering the oft-used Kavkaz-Tsentr and other sites like it, as an assemblage of interesting materials on a wide variety of issues having to do with militant groups, and as a useful window into the thinking of those among the Russian special services concerning the threat and how best to counter it.
Vienna, December 13 – Moscow officials have tried various ways to shut down the pro-Caucasus Emirate portal, Kavkaz-Tsentr, including denial of service attacks, pressure on IP providers to drop it, and demonstrations against governments that agree to allow the portal to operate from their national territories.
But now these officials have adopted a new tactic, one that recalls the Soviet period when the USSR jammed foreign radios by broadcasting on a nearby wavelength. In this case, Moscow has established a new self-described “anti-terrorist site ‘Tsentr-Kavkaz” to sow confusion among potential visitors to “Kavkaz-Tsentr.” (www.riadagestan.ru/news/2010/11/25/106252/).
At the end of November, the organizers of “Tsentr-Kavkaz” announced the launch of the new site, http://center-kavkaz.ru/. They said that their goal was “to exert ideological resistance to extremism, to black the manifestations of religious chauvinism and separatism, both on the territory of Daghestan and throughout the entire North Caucasus.”
The new portal has hypertext links to materials that “reveal the essence of radical groupings acting in the area,” materials that are grouped in the following categories: events, commentaries, analysis, press, polemics, interviews, history, dossier, and a chronoicle of evil actions.”
Again, according to the organizers, “the portal can help people better orient themselves on questions of protecting their personal security,” with materials from “councils of specialists, psychologists, and experts on how to behave in critical situations.” And the organizers said that they were devoting “particular attention” to the security of children and the elderly.
And the site’s organizers say, they invite the participation of visitors who are asked to send questions and materials including videos to dagantiterror@mail.ru. But as recent materials on the site make clear, the site, on behalf of the people behind it, have a broader agenda, one intended not only to undermine Kavkaz-Tsentr but also to push particular ideas.
On Friday, RIADagestan.ru reported, the Tsentr-Kavkaz sait sent an appeal to the Congress of Peoples of Daghestan calling on that body to appeal to the federal organs to change laws concerning the definition of the legal status of the Internet in order to put the powers to control it (www.riadagestan.ru/news/2010/12/10/107006).
Specifically, the Tsent-Kavkaz site called for legislation that would allow the authorities to bring legal action against any IP provider or perhaps even users of Internet sites on which extremist materials are posted and to establish filters that would limit the ability of sites hosted abroad, like Kavkaz-Tsentr, to reach an audience in the Russian Federation.
This new site thus is triply interesting: as a means of countering the oft-used Kavkaz-Tsentr and other sites like it, as an assemblage of interesting materials on a wide variety of issues having to do with militant groups, and as a useful window into the thinking of those among the Russian special services concerning the threat and how best to counter it.
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