SEPARATISM NOT THE ROOT CAUSE OF INSTABILITY IN

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 000380

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/12/2018
TAGS: PGOV PINR KDEM SOCI PHUM PTER ECON RS
SUBJECT: SEPARATISM NOT THE ROOT CAUSE OF INSTABILITY IN
THE NORTHERN CAUCASUS

Classified By: Pol Minister Counselor Alice Wells. Reasons: 1.4 (B,D)


1. (SBU) Summary: While Moscow-based experts believe that
the insurgencies in the various North Caucasus republics are
different in nature, none think that separatism is their root
cause. Experts tell us that while the insurgency in Dagestan
may have a religious basis, violence in Ingushetiya and
Kabardino-Balkariya reflects displeasure with the local
government, the state of the local economy and heavy-handed
tactics by police. Most believed that the insurgencies in
each of the republics are not inter-related or
centrally-coordinated, although there may be loose, informal
contacts among the various groups across the Caucasus. The
Kremlin may be closer to replacing Ingushetiya's President
Zyazikov, but has to finalize a strategy to offset his clan's
anticipated opposition. End summary.

North Caucasus Republics are Separate Cases
--------------


2. (C) In a series of meetings the week of February 4-8 with
several Moscow-based experts on the North Caucasus and
representatives of the Coordinating Center of Muslims of the
Northern Caucasus (Coordination Center),all agreed that the
insurgencies and violence that currently exist in each of the
republics of the North Caucasus have different origins and
should be considered distinct. Some commentators pointed to
the complex clan politics of the region, which feeds off a
tradition and culture of revenge, as an additional element in
the equation. Aleksey Malashenko, an expert on the North
Caucasus at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said that it is
important to remember that the North Caucasus was never
modernized during the Soviet period and that a huge
difference exists even between the North Caucasus and the
rest of Russia's southern federal region. He noted that
except for three cities in Dagestan and perhaps the largest
cities in each of the other republics, the remainder of the
North Caucasus is mainly "traditional." According to
Malashenko, corruption in the North Caucasus is worse than in
the rest of Russia.

Economic Factors Dominate
--------------


3. (C) Human Rights Watch researcher Tanya Lokshina,
formerly with the NGO Demos, noted that Ingushetiya is second
only to Dagestan in the level of unemployment among the North
Caucasus republics. Malashenko believed that the actual
level of unemployment in the North Caucasus is 70-80 percent,
which includes 250,000 unemployed in Chechnya out of a
population of one million. According to Malashenko, this is
the lowest figure for any of the republics and is better than
last year's rate in Chechnya. Malashenko warned of another
problem, the emigration of the young and educated
intelligentsia in search of work elsewhere in Russia or
abroad, which means that the economic potential and quality
of society left in the North Caucasus will continue to
deteriorate. He added that the huge number of uneducated,
non-Russian speaking youth in the region has an explosive
potential.


4. (C) Experts do not see any quick fixes to the economic
challenges. The former mufti of Ingushetiya, Magomed
Albogachiyev, now First Vice President of the Moscow-based
Coordination Center, told us that 95 percent of Ingushetiya's
budget comes from Moscow. Gregoriy Shvedov, a member of the
board of the NGO Memorial and Deputy Editor of the
internet-based newspaper Caucasian Knot, added that after the
division of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic around the
break-up of the Soviet Union, Ingushetiya was left without an
industrial base. The Coordination Center's Executive
Director Shafig Pshikhachev added that in his native
Kabardino-Balkaria, the government publishes great looking
statistics about the economy, but when you visit there it is
another story. Pshikhachev lamented that Kabardino-Balkaria
has an agrarian-based economy and that the people are poor,
some earning as little as 3,000 rubles (about USD 120) per
month.

Separatist Appeal Does Not
--------------


5. (C) Separatist demands, however, are not seen as an
important factor. Albogachiyev said that displeasure in
North Caucasus has nothing to do with a desire for
independence and is not anti-Russian; residents there simply
want a better life. Sergey Markedonov, Head of the
Inter-ethnic Relations Department at the Moscow Institute of
Political and Military Analysis agreed. Both he and Lokshina
believe that unlike Chechnya, the insurgency in Ingushetiya
has never been separatist.



6. (C) According to Lokshina, the situation in Ingushetiya
is about Zyazikov having no respect among the people, who are
increasingly aware of the rampant corruption. She added that
this is exacerbated by the level of violence in Ingushetiya
which in the past 12 months has begun to resemble the
"mopping up" exercises that had been carried out by federal
and local troops in Chechnya. Lokshina added that the
opposition in Ingushetiya is energized by the disappearance
case of two members of the Aushev family, distant relatives
of former Ingushetiya President Ruslan Aushev. After several
hundred people rallied in September 2007 to protest their
disappearance, the Minister of Internal Affairs of
Ingushetiya made a deal with his Chechen counterpart for
their release. According to Lokshina, people in Ingushetiya
now believe they can bring about change.

Religion Plays Greater Role in Dagestan
--------------


7. (C) Most experts agreed that religion plays the greatest
role in the insurgency in Dagestan. According to Shvedov,
people in Dagestan tend to be more religious. Shvedov
believed that while only 25 percent of residents of
Ingushetiya are religiously active, the number in Dagestan is
about 80 percent. Lokshina and Markedonov agreed with
Shvedov that Dagestan has its own history of fundamentalism,
with a home-grown Salafist movement in predominantly Sufi
Dagestan dating back to the 1930's. Markedonov added that in
the 1990's, proponents of "ethnic nationalism" in the North
Caucasus began to use religion to convince the people to join
their cause. According to him, the insurgency in Dagestan is
fueled by Islamic scholars, religious extremists, criminals
and unemployed youth who are susceptible to the money offered
them by religious extremists.


8. (C) Despite the fact that Wahhabism is outlawed in
Dagestan, recent police actions in the Dagestani village of
Gimry uncovered Wahhabist caches of weapons and ammunition.
Lokshina agreed that Dagestan has its own history of
fundamentalism, but added that the police there are also very
corrupt. She noted that the rate of killings of policemen in
Dagestan is the highest in Russia (although she said the
situation is also deteriorating in Ingushetiya). Reflecting
the difficulty in assessing the proximate cause of any
conflict in the North Caucasus, Lokshina differed with
Shvedov and argued that the situation in Gimry was caused by
a corrupt local police chief rather than Islamic extremists.

Most Experts Think that Insurgencies are not Inter-related
-------------- --------------


9. (C) Of the Moscow-based experts with whom we spoke, only
the muftis from the Coordination Center believed that the
conflict in the North Caucasus are inter-related. In
addition, one regional Circassian activist told us (septel)
of a loose network of informal contacts between the different
groups. Former Ingushetiya mufti Albogachiyev believed the
fighters are working together and have a good understanding
of their common purpose. He said that they have set up
self-styled Islamic emirates in five of the North Caucasus
republics (Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetiya, North Ossetiya
and one for the combined republics of Karachay-Cherkessiya
and Kabardino-Balkariya). None of the others believed this
to be the case. Shvedov dismissed this notion as a "myth
promoted by the Kremlin and sociologists." Shvedov also
believed that although contacts with al-Qaida exist with some
of the fighters, the day that al-Qaida can send instructions
to militants in the North Caucasus is long gone. Malashenko
did not believe that al-Qaida currently played a role in the
North Caucasus, nor did he believe that there is any
widespread Chechen influence in the region. He said there is
a home-grown version of militant Islam in the region,
particularly in Dagestan.

Wide Disparity in Quality of Leadership
--------------


10. (C) The Moscow-based experts drew a distinction between
the quality of the various leaders in the North Caucasus,
with Chechnya's Kadyrov and Ingushetiya's Zyazikov at
opposite ends of the spectrum. Albogachiyev recounted how,
in his fight against corruption and attempt to build a better
life in Chechnya, Kadyrov has been known to put on rubber
boots and wade through drainage canals to see what should be
done to improve them. According to Markedonov, Putin is
dependent on Kadyrov's success to show that he has brought
the situation in Chechnya under control, fulfilling a promise
he made to the Russian people eight years ago. Markedonov
believes Chechens no longer have any desire to leave the
Russian Federation. Chechens have moved to Moscow and other

cities to find work and some have married ethnic Russians,
thereby integrating Chechnya with Russia.


11. (C) Lokshina admitted that separatism in Chechnya is in a
"deep slumber." According to her, the Kremlin's deal with
Kadyrov is that as long as there are no blatantly violent
acts against civilians by local police and troops, he has a
free rein. Although now there is only sporadic fighting and
no longer any large-scale military or police operations,
Lokshina stated that Chechnya is far from a success story.
She said there is a gloomy prognosis for Kadyrov's "managed
civil society" because he has, in fact, wiped out civil
society and any free local press there.


12. (C) Markedonov agreed that Kadyrov is extremely popular
among Chechens, and while President Mustafa Batdyyev of
Karachayevo-Cherkessiya currently has a low public popularity
rating, even he is not as unpopular as Zyazikov. He added
that while Chechens simply want Moscow to leave them alone,
the Ingush want Moscow to help them, and the even the
opposition there looks to Moscow to give the republic a new
president. According to Markedonov, Zyazikov is viewed as an
"occupier" by many in Ingushetiya, as he is from a weak clan
and cannot control the situation. Neither Lokshina nor
Malashenko, however, give much weight to recent attempts to
discredit Zyazikov. Lokshina does not believe 80,000 people
actually provided their names and passport information as
part of the internet-based "I Did Not Vote" campaign.
Malashenko described the January 26 demonstrations to which,
according to him, organizers lured participants with the
promise of gifts, as "more like a disorganized street gang."
Malashenko summarized that the problem is that under Yeltsin
there were two qualities for a local president, you had to be
favored by Moscow and acceptable to the local population;
under Putin, you only needed to be approved by the Kremlin.
Malashenko believed that the Kremlin does have someone in
mind to replace Zyazikov in the near future -- Ingushetiya's
recently elected (and only) current Duma member Bilan
Khamchiyev.


13. (C) Aleksandr Machevskiy, an advisor on the North
Caucasus in the Presidential Administration, confirmed to us
separately February 5 that the Kremlin has candidates in mind
to replace Zyazikov. The problem, according to Machevskiy,
is that in addition to removing Zyazikov, you must also get
rid of others entrenched in the government with him.

Comment:
--------------


14. (C) These sorts of educated opinions on the North
Caucasus are at odds with the picture the Kremlin has painted
in the media, showing that the authorities are making
progress in ensuring stability and paying adequate attention
to regional economic development in the region. The gap is
partly explained by the authorities' heightened sensitivity
toward negative information coming from the region that could
be viewed as destabilizing and not part of Putin's Plan.
However it may also indicate a gap between reality on the
ground and the Kremlin's perception, fueled by overly
optimistic reports by regional leaders dependent on Moscow
for their jobs and more concerned with currying favor with
the Kremlin than dealing with difficult socio-economic and
political problems in the region.
BURNS