The International Crisis Group (ICG) released a new report this month on the volatile Russian republic of Dagestan, finding that the growing Islamist militant movement there is fueled in large part by rampant corruption, massive unemployment, and an abusive security apparatus that persecutes observant Muslims. Government ministers, journalists, businessmen, lawmakers, and scores of policemen have been killed in recent years, and much of the violence is attributed to Islamist groups whose ranks have been replenished by angry young recruits. The unrest has escalated despite some attempts at political and anticorruption reform by federal officials. Similar conditions in neighboring Chechnya and Russia’s other impoverished North Caucasus republics suggest a pattern in which nationwide authoritarian governance effectively thwarts reform efforts and encourages the region’s downward spiral.
A series of major terrorist attacks in 2004, including the Beslan hostage massacre in the republic of North Ossetia, made it clear that the destruction of the separatist enclave in Chechnya beginning in 1999 had failed to ensure stability in the region. Dmitri Kozak, who oversaw the North Caucasus as presidential plenipotentiary for the Southern Federal District, identified local corruption as a key security threat in 2005 and pushed for the dismissal of several republic presidents. Recent federal legislation had eliminated elections for the executives, allowing Russian president Vladimir Putin to appoint them instead, though Moscow had already exercised a comparable degree of control in practice. In Dagestan, Kozak set his sights on Magomedali Magomedov, who had come to dominate local business and patronage networks since taking office nearly two decades earlier. The Kremlin replaced Magomedov with Mukhu Aliyev in 2006, and electoral reforms that year abolished the old system of ethnic districts and voter lists.
These changes upset the balance of power in Dagestan, but any campaign for thorough reform would have clashed with the dismissive attitude toward principles of sound governance that prevailed throughout the Russian system, and many of the old ways of doing business persisted. Individuals who lacked the proper connections were shut out of the economy, and young men suspected of “Wahhabism” continued to be rounded up and tortured. Clannish elites competed for a grip on state patronage: the March 2007 legislative elections amounted to a duel between Aliyev’s faction and that of Makhachkala mayor Said Amirov within United Russia, the party of power at the federal level. Amirov, who controlled the capital’s construction industry and other sectors of the economy, sought to draw on support from smaller parties, but they faced harassment and violence during the campaign period. Ultimately, Aliyev came out on top; United Russia captured 47 of 72 seats, with smaller parties each taking no more than eight. When it came to the federal elections of December 2007 and March 2008, the Dagestani authorities ensured victory for the Kremlin. They reported a 91 percent voter turnout for the December State Duma elections, with 89 percent backing United Russia, and a 90 percent turnout in March, with 92 percent endorsing Dmitri Medvedev, now Russia’s president.
The 2005 removal of the president of nearby Kabardino-Balkaria similarly failed to alter that republic’s course. Shortly after wealthy businessman Arsen Kanokov was appointed as the new leader, Islamist militants assaulted the capital in fairly large numbers. Reprisals and repression by the authorities have continued since then, and Kabardino-Balkaria’s post-Soviet economic collapse has largely gone unaddressed. President Murat Zyazikov has kept his post in the republic of Ingushetia, but he is increasingly resented for galloping corruption, an unemployment rate of 67 percent, and a cycle of violence involving brutal security forces and rebel assassins. In Chechnya, President Ramzan Kadyrov has built an autocracy based on fear, extortion, and federal largesse. Moscow, which has given him a free hand, seems content with the reduction in major violence he has achieved, but such a ruler is unlikely to foster long-term stability.
Like Dagestan, all of these republics have gone to extremes in manipulating federal elections to suit the Kremlin, producing outlandish results that dwarf the significant distortions in the rest of Russia. The election figures could be seen as a form of payback for the huge federal subsidies the North Caucasus receives. For example, about 80 percent of the Dagestani government’s budget comes from Moscow. The local economies depend heavily on the infusions, for which officeholders serve as gatekeepers and conduits, perpetuating the culture of clientelism and graft. The arrangement is not unlike that in Russia as a whole, which depends on oil and gas revenues controlled by the state. With wealth and power flowing from the top down, there is little democratic accountability, and public services—including policing and economic management—are allowed to deteriorate to the bare minimum required to uphold the system.
What is to be done? Last year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a list of recommendations for the North Caucasus, including support and training for local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), encouragement of private investment, and sponsorship of investigative journalism as “a critical component to combating corruption and creating a rule of law society where rights are respected.” However, each proposal would run up against obstacles identified in the Countries at the Crossroads 2007 report on Russia. Federal legislation enacted in 2006 severely restricts NGO activity, property rights have suffered from judicial manipulation and a drive for greater state control over the economy, and independent media have been systematically stifled through economic pressure, legal harassment, and physical violence. The problems described in the ICG’s new Dagestan report are clearly tied to basic flaws in the larger Russian system, and any lasting solution to unrest in the North Caucasus will have to address those flaws.
Photo: Seat of Dagestan government in Makhachkala (credit: Flickr user allie)
