Paul Goble
Staunton, January 7 – Moscow’s failure to understand the nature of the problems it confronts in the North Caucasus and the ways those are interconnected with the problems of the Russian Federation as a whole has reduced its range of choices about what to do next to an “extremely narrow” one, according to a leading Russian analyst.
Indeed, Sergey Markedonov argues in an essay posted on Caucasustimes.com, the North Caucasus has been left “between an unstable past and an unclear future” and Moscow is now forced to try to navigate between “the Scylla of Gorbachevism” and the Charybdis of a new “pseudo-patriotic” authoritarianism (www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=20704).
Markedonov, who is currently a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says that despite Vladimir Putin’s earlier willingness to talk about the North Caucasus and even exploit events there, conditions in that region “until the middle of last year, were outside the focus of the ruling elite of the country.”
In many respects, the shift from focusing on the North Caucasus as a problem caused by outsiders to one with domestic roots was signaled by President Dmitry Medvedev’s June 9, 2009 speech in Makhachkala during which he identified “social-political turbulence” as a major driver of militant violence.
The president spoke about “corruption, unemployment and poverty” and promised to address them. But Markedonov continues, Medvedev did not open the way for “an honest conversation” about either the role of Islam and national traditions, “about the shortcomings in the administration” there and about Moscow’s exacerbation of problems.
Those shortcomings have informed the activities of Aleksandr Khloponin who was named presidential plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus, a manager who talked not about force and extremists but about investments and innovations. But despite the hopes of many, the result “was not for the better but like always.”
Moscow was prepared to send force and money to develop the region even as it kept as “taboo” subjects “religious relations and inter-ethnic conflicts.” Indeed, Markedonov insists, these things were considered “only as ‘a superstructure’ that arose from the social-economic base,” an approach that severely restricted Moscow’s ability to make progress.
“Instead of developing a broad strategy for the development of the Caucasus, [Moscow] limited itself to the social-economic side,” Markedonov notes. “There is no argument that this sphere is important, but under current conditions of political instability, it does not play the defining role.”
In many respects, the Russian analyst continues, this perceptual and policy failure and the lack of “political levers” not only reduces the effectiveness of the presidential plenipotentiary but “gradually has become to recall the work of the pre-revolutionary zemstvos,” institutions that could have proved decisive if they had been used in “an optimal manner.”
None of this is Khloponin’s personal fault: he simply has not been given the tools and the authority he would need. But it does set him and Moscow up for more failures given that every one of the last 12 months has featured “a broadening of terrorist activity, especially a year after the end of the counter-terrorist operation regime in Chechnya.”
That trend has been the case despite “the liquidation of significant personages of the Jihadist underground,” something that all claims notwithstanding has “not brought peace to the region.” And “unfortunately,” Markedonov says, “neither the state nor society” will be able to do so until they engage in a serious discussion of “the character of the terrorist threat.”
That may change. “In 2010,” he points out, “the North Caucasus as never before became an all-Russian problem” with the flow of migrants from the region sparking movements “which use the slogans of ethnic Russian nationalism” and ultimately leading to the clashes in Moscow during the last month.
Tragically, these events are leading some politicians and officials to propose doing things that will be counterproductive. Moving away from free movement within the country and creating “internal borders” are trend that involve both “apartheid” and “the strengthening of extremist attitudes both in the Russian and the Caucasus ‘streets.’”
In looking forward, the analyst suggests, there are both positive and negative features on the horizon. Among the positive ones are “the lack of powerful ethno-separatist movements” and the fact that many of those going into the forests are doing so less because they are Islamists as such but because they are engaging in the only form of protest available to them.
This combination of circumstances both objective like “exhaustion from force and a striving for stability” and subjective like the consideration of political opinion and the organization of dialogue between the powers and society “can allow Moscow in the near term to minimize political risks in the region.”
But there are some very negative factors at work as well. First among these is “the growth of radical Islamism,” a development that in many ways in a response to “all-Russian social Darwinism that has acquired in the Caucasus hypertrophied forms” and to which “Islamic egalitarianism” provides an answer many like.
The actions Moscow and its regional rulers are taking, however, are pushing many things in the wrong direction, Markedonov suggests. Moscow’s failure to fully integrate the region into the rest of the country has raised questions in the minds of many there and elsewhere about the future of the North Caucasus.
And “as a result of the efforts of loyal republic elites, the secular opposition [in those republics] has been in a serious way broken and demoralized,” opening the way for the Islamists and, what may be more significant, for local elites to draw on Islamist themes as part of a populist strategy to win support.
“We could became witnesses of a repetition of the situation of the beginning of the 1990s when” Soviet officials “with various degrees of success” sought to solve their political problems by “borrowing and privatizing the slogans of ‘the informals.” But this time around, that will involve people far less sympathetic to Moscow.
“Thus,” Markedonov argues, “’the corridor of possibilities’ for Russian policy in the North Caucasus is extremely narrow.” Changes in specific policies without “a general transformation of the entire political system of the country” are clearly “insufficient” to bring peace to the region.
And that in turn raises the disturbing question: “Will the Russian Federation in contrast to the USSR be able to pass between the Scylla of Gorbachevism and the Charybdis of pseudo-patriotic ‘toughening?” The answer to that will determine far more than just what is going to occur in the North Caucasus.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Russia’s Special Services Now Focusing on Defense of Political Stability, Soldatov and Borogan Say
Paul Goble
Staunton, January 7 – In a shift with potentially far-reaching consequences, Russia’s intelligence services over the last year have been less concerned with “the number of victims” of terrorist attacks than with warding off any activity that could be “a threat to political stability, according to two leading Moscow specialists on these services.
In a review of the activities of these bodies during 2010 that was published yesterday in “Yezhednevny zhurnal,” Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan of the Agentura.ru portal note that both the Russian special services and the militants who oppose them increased their activities “many times over” (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=10678).
One cannot fail to note, they say, “the growth in the activity of the FSB in the North Caucasus” during 2010, especially given that agency’s earlier efforts to “avoid responsibility for the struggle against terrorism” in order to ensure that the Russian interior ministry would be held responsible for any shortcomings.
The FSB was involved in a number of high profile captures and killings of militant leaders and did not disclaim its involvement as it often had earlier. “It is not excluded,” Soldatov and Borogan say that the growth in the FSB’s activity in the North Caucasus was a response” to an apparent decision of the militants to target not just militiamen but FSB officers.
But the two independent experts note that “despite the liquidation of the leaders of the militants, the number of terrorist acts in the North Caucasus rose many times over, [even according to official sources, which they cite,] a clear indication that reliance on the resolution of the problem by force has not justified itself.”
“The events of this year also destroyed the myth that the policies of [Chechen President] Ramzan Kadyrov are effective against the militants,” the two say. Besides other smaller attacks across his republic during 2010, the militants were able to launch an attack on his home village and on the parliament, serious and symbolic actions.
And 2010 featured another change in militant strategy. Increasingly, Soldatov and Borogan say, “the armed underground as the special services call it” is focusing on infrastructure such as railroads and dams, attacks that the special services have not been able to prevent despite and ones that “demonstrate the failure of state policy in the struggle with terrorism.”
That is certainly the way “independent experts and citizens” view the situation, the two says, “but for the Kremlin, these terrorist acts [against basic infrastructure] did not become the occasion for criticism of the special services.” And the reason for that is not far to seek, Soldatov and Borogan continue.
“According to the current conception of the struggle with terrorism,” they say, “what is critical is not the number of victims but the level of threat [such actions may have] to political stability.” That means, Soldatov and Borogan say, that the special services are far more worried about attacks that threaten existing political arrangements than those involving many deaths.
Last year, the two point out, the FSB “also obtained greater authority [relative to the MVD} in the so-called struggle with extremism” by successfully lobbying for a new law which allows its officers to issue warnings to citizens about “the impermissibility of actions which create conditions for the commission of a crime.”
In the second part of their article, Soldatov and Borogan discuss what they say is “a potentially dangerous tendency” in which the actions of the Russian special services are viewed differently within the country than they are by people living beyond its borders, a divergence which can lead to “the loss of orientation” among the latter.
The clearest example of that trend, they suggest, involves “the scandal around the Russian illegals in the United States.” While many in the West viewed this case “as a defeat for Russian intelligence, “without the country this failure was presented almost as a triumph of the SVR.”
Thus, “the presence of illegals supports the myth that Russia is despite everything still a superpower which is competing with the US as an equal.” Moreover, because all blame was placed on two defectors, this case helped revive “the Soviet tradition of shifting [all] responsibility for mistakes onto enemies.”
But there was more dangerous fallout from this affair, the two analysts suggest. On the one hand, it highlighted “how important [such] Soviet mythology” is for “the only special service of Russia which was never reformed.” The SVR is simply the renamed First Chief Directorate of the Soviet-era KGB.
And on the other, the case worked to the benefit of the FSB not only by suggesting that it should assume control of the SVR but also by allowing it to reinforce its version of the case of Igor Sutyagin, an investigator accused of espionage, when Moscow and Washington agreed to exchange him for the Russian illegals.
Staunton, January 7 – In a shift with potentially far-reaching consequences, Russia’s intelligence services over the last year have been less concerned with “the number of victims” of terrorist attacks than with warding off any activity that could be “a threat to political stability, according to two leading Moscow specialists on these services.
In a review of the activities of these bodies during 2010 that was published yesterday in “Yezhednevny zhurnal,” Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan of the Agentura.ru portal note that both the Russian special services and the militants who oppose them increased their activities “many times over” (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=10678).
One cannot fail to note, they say, “the growth in the activity of the FSB in the North Caucasus” during 2010, especially given that agency’s earlier efforts to “avoid responsibility for the struggle against terrorism” in order to ensure that the Russian interior ministry would be held responsible for any shortcomings.
The FSB was involved in a number of high profile captures and killings of militant leaders and did not disclaim its involvement as it often had earlier. “It is not excluded,” Soldatov and Borogan say that the growth in the FSB’s activity in the North Caucasus was a response” to an apparent decision of the militants to target not just militiamen but FSB officers.
But the two independent experts note that “despite the liquidation of the leaders of the militants, the number of terrorist acts in the North Caucasus rose many times over, [even according to official sources, which they cite,] a clear indication that reliance on the resolution of the problem by force has not justified itself.”
“The events of this year also destroyed the myth that the policies of [Chechen President] Ramzan Kadyrov are effective against the militants,” the two say. Besides other smaller attacks across his republic during 2010, the militants were able to launch an attack on his home village and on the parliament, serious and symbolic actions.
And 2010 featured another change in militant strategy. Increasingly, Soldatov and Borogan say, “the armed underground as the special services call it” is focusing on infrastructure such as railroads and dams, attacks that the special services have not been able to prevent despite and ones that “demonstrate the failure of state policy in the struggle with terrorism.”
That is certainly the way “independent experts and citizens” view the situation, the two says, “but for the Kremlin, these terrorist acts [against basic infrastructure] did not become the occasion for criticism of the special services.” And the reason for that is not far to seek, Soldatov and Borogan continue.
“According to the current conception of the struggle with terrorism,” they say, “what is critical is not the number of victims but the level of threat [such actions may have] to political stability.” That means, Soldatov and Borogan say, that the special services are far more worried about attacks that threaten existing political arrangements than those involving many deaths.
Last year, the two point out, the FSB “also obtained greater authority [relative to the MVD} in the so-called struggle with extremism” by successfully lobbying for a new law which allows its officers to issue warnings to citizens about “the impermissibility of actions which create conditions for the commission of a crime.”
In the second part of their article, Soldatov and Borogan discuss what they say is “a potentially dangerous tendency” in which the actions of the Russian special services are viewed differently within the country than they are by people living beyond its borders, a divergence which can lead to “the loss of orientation” among the latter.
The clearest example of that trend, they suggest, involves “the scandal around the Russian illegals in the United States.” While many in the West viewed this case “as a defeat for Russian intelligence, “without the country this failure was presented almost as a triumph of the SVR.”
Thus, “the presence of illegals supports the myth that Russia is despite everything still a superpower which is competing with the US as an equal.” Moreover, because all blame was placed on two defectors, this case helped revive “the Soviet tradition of shifting [all] responsibility for mistakes onto enemies.”
But there was more dangerous fallout from this affair, the two analysts suggest. On the one hand, it highlighted “how important [such] Soviet mythology” is for “the only special service of Russia which was never reformed.” The SVR is simply the renamed First Chief Directorate of the Soviet-era KGB.
And on the other, the case worked to the benefit of the FSB not only by suggesting that it should assume control of the SVR but also by allowing it to reinforce its version of the case of Igor Sutyagin, an investigator accused of espionage, when Moscow and Washington agreed to exchange him for the Russian illegals.
Window on Eurasia: Encouraged by Moscow, Rusins Step Up Drive for Autonomy and Threaten Kyiv with Armed Revolt
Paul Goble
Staunton, January 7 – Only weeks after Russia’s consul general in Lviv called him the “Moses” of his people, Dmitry Sidor, an Uzhgorod priest loyal to Moscow who heads the Rusin movement in Transcarpathia, declared this week that “after many years” of using only political tactics, the Rusins are now prepared to “defend their freedom with arms in their hands.”
How seriously this threat should be taken is an open question. On the one hand, the Rusins have made similar threats before, most notably at the end of 2008. And on the other, an actual revolt as opposed to the threat of one would complicate Russian-Ukrainian relations and threaten Moscow’s oil and gas exports to Europe, much of which flows via Transcarpathia.
But however that may be, Sidor’s remark, especially coming in the wake of the comment of the Russian diplomat, seems intended both to remind the Ukrainian authorities that the Rusins have not gone away and to send a message to Kyiv that Moscow is paying attention to that community and is prepared to exploit that group if Ukraine does not bend to Russia’s will.
Yesterday, Sidorov said that the Rusins “are accusing Kyiv of ethnocide and discrimination with obvious elements of genocide” because of Ukraine’s “barbaric” failure to recognize the Rusins and “its ban on Rusin schools and the study of the Rusin language” (vvnews.info/analytics/region/65736-rusiny-zakarpatya-gotovy-k-voyne-s-ukrainoy.html).
If Ukraine and the new authorities will be able to recognize the rights of Rusins,” he continued, “then we Rusins are ready to remain a Ukrainian enclave, a Ukrainian Kaliningrad.” But if Ukraine won’t recognize “our lawfrul status of autonomy,” then “we will peacefully divorce. Like the Czech Republic from Slovakia.”
That can take place peacefully, the priest said. But “international law” allows for a solution brought about by force. “A people after many years of seeking its rights,” he said, “has the right with arms in its hands to defend its freedom,” just as the international community recognized in the case of the Croatians.
Sidor says that “we do not intend to fight and seek a diplomatic path because we believe in the reality of the achievement of our rights.” “At a minimum,” 70 percent of the residents of Transcarpathia are Rusins, making them “’a titular nation’” numbering today “approximately 800,000.”
Two years ago, when he and the Rusins made similar declarations and asked that Moscow recognize their independence, the Ukrainian authorities opened a case against Sidorov for threatening the territorial independence of the country. But since that time, two things have changed.
There is now a pro-Moscow government in Kyiv, and last fall Russia’s consul general in Lviv met with Sidorov and compared him to Moses because, he said, the Rusin priest is leading his people out of the wilderness (ru.tsn.ua/ukrayina/genkonsul-rf-nazval-lidera-podkarpatskih-rusinov-novym-moiseem.html).
Almost exactly two years ago, the Rusins asked Moscow to recognize them as an independent country because Kyiv was ignoring their demands for autonomy within Ukraine. That followed the Second European Congress of Rusins in Mukhachevo, which declared that the Rusins would seek independence on December 1st if they didn’t get autonomy.
December 1 came and went, but on December 19, an international scientific practical conference on “Genocide and Cultural Ethnocide of the Rusins of Carpathian Rus (the end of the 19th Century to the Beginning of the 21st Century)” assembled in Rostov-na-Donu and adopted a resolution on their cause.
Among the resolution’s key points was an insistence that alongside the Armenians, the Rusins – or Ruthenians, as they are also known -- were the victims of the first genocide of the 20th century, one carried out by the Austro-Hungarians. Today, the resolution continued, Kyiv is extending this through “a policy of cultural ethnocide.”
In addition, that document declared that the Ruthenians are recognized as a unique people in all countries of the region except Ukraine and that they enjoy the support of international organizations like the UN whose committee on the liquidation of racial discrimination in August 2006 criticized Kyiv for not supporting them.
And it pointed out that the status of the Transcarpathian Rusins has not yet been defined – Kyiv has not yet recognized the 1946 treaty which incorporated them into the Soviet Union – and that the Ukrainian government continues to ignore the December 1991 referendum in which the Rusins voted for autonomy as well as for Ukrainian independence.
But perhaps most important, Rusin leaders then and now noted that “the lion’s share” of Russian gas on its way to European markets flows through Subcarpathian Rus, “twice more than through the Baltic states [in 2008] and twice more than through other neighboring countries” as well.
Staunton, January 7 – Only weeks after Russia’s consul general in Lviv called him the “Moses” of his people, Dmitry Sidor, an Uzhgorod priest loyal to Moscow who heads the Rusin movement in Transcarpathia, declared this week that “after many years” of using only political tactics, the Rusins are now prepared to “defend their freedom with arms in their hands.”
How seriously this threat should be taken is an open question. On the one hand, the Rusins have made similar threats before, most notably at the end of 2008. And on the other, an actual revolt as opposed to the threat of one would complicate Russian-Ukrainian relations and threaten Moscow’s oil and gas exports to Europe, much of which flows via Transcarpathia.
But however that may be, Sidor’s remark, especially coming in the wake of the comment of the Russian diplomat, seems intended both to remind the Ukrainian authorities that the Rusins have not gone away and to send a message to Kyiv that Moscow is paying attention to that community and is prepared to exploit that group if Ukraine does not bend to Russia’s will.
Yesterday, Sidorov said that the Rusins “are accusing Kyiv of ethnocide and discrimination with obvious elements of genocide” because of Ukraine’s “barbaric” failure to recognize the Rusins and “its ban on Rusin schools and the study of the Rusin language” (vvnews.info/analytics/region/65736-rusiny-zakarpatya-gotovy-k-voyne-s-ukrainoy.html).
If Ukraine and the new authorities will be able to recognize the rights of Rusins,” he continued, “then we Rusins are ready to remain a Ukrainian enclave, a Ukrainian Kaliningrad.” But if Ukraine won’t recognize “our lawfrul status of autonomy,” then “we will peacefully divorce. Like the Czech Republic from Slovakia.”
That can take place peacefully, the priest said. But “international law” allows for a solution brought about by force. “A people after many years of seeking its rights,” he said, “has the right with arms in its hands to defend its freedom,” just as the international community recognized in the case of the Croatians.
Sidor says that “we do not intend to fight and seek a diplomatic path because we believe in the reality of the achievement of our rights.” “At a minimum,” 70 percent of the residents of Transcarpathia are Rusins, making them “’a titular nation’” numbering today “approximately 800,000.”
Two years ago, when he and the Rusins made similar declarations and asked that Moscow recognize their independence, the Ukrainian authorities opened a case against Sidorov for threatening the territorial independence of the country. But since that time, two things have changed.
There is now a pro-Moscow government in Kyiv, and last fall Russia’s consul general in Lviv met with Sidorov and compared him to Moses because, he said, the Rusin priest is leading his people out of the wilderness (ru.tsn.ua/ukrayina/genkonsul-rf-nazval-lidera-podkarpatskih-rusinov-novym-moiseem.html).
Almost exactly two years ago, the Rusins asked Moscow to recognize them as an independent country because Kyiv was ignoring their demands for autonomy within Ukraine. That followed the Second European Congress of Rusins in Mukhachevo, which declared that the Rusins would seek independence on December 1st if they didn’t get autonomy.
December 1 came and went, but on December 19, an international scientific practical conference on “Genocide and Cultural Ethnocide of the Rusins of Carpathian Rus (the end of the 19th Century to the Beginning of the 21st Century)” assembled in Rostov-na-Donu and adopted a resolution on their cause.
Among the resolution’s key points was an insistence that alongside the Armenians, the Rusins – or Ruthenians, as they are also known -- were the victims of the first genocide of the 20th century, one carried out by the Austro-Hungarians. Today, the resolution continued, Kyiv is extending this through “a policy of cultural ethnocide.”
In addition, that document declared that the Ruthenians are recognized as a unique people in all countries of the region except Ukraine and that they enjoy the support of international organizations like the UN whose committee on the liquidation of racial discrimination in August 2006 criticized Kyiv for not supporting them.
And it pointed out that the status of the Transcarpathian Rusins has not yet been defined – Kyiv has not yet recognized the 1946 treaty which incorporated them into the Soviet Union – and that the Ukrainian government continues to ignore the December 1991 referendum in which the Rusins voted for autonomy as well as for Ukrainian independence.
But perhaps most important, Rusin leaders then and now noted that “the lion’s share” of Russian gas on its way to European markets flows through Subcarpathian Rus, “twice more than through the Baltic states [in 2008] and twice more than through other neighboring countries” as well.
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