Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
08MOSCOW530
2008-02-27 12:43:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Moscow
Cable title:  

NORTH CAUCASUS SECURITY: CHECHNYA BETTER, OTHERS

Tags:  PREF EAID PGOV ASEC RS 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXYZ0012
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHMO #0530/01 0581243
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 271243Z FEB 08
FM AMEMBASSY MOSCOW
TO RUEHXD/MOSCOW POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUCNRCC/REFUGEE COORDINATOR COLLECTIVE
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 000530 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR PRM/ECA

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/27/2018
TAGS: PREF EAID PGOV ASEC RS
SUBJECT: NORTH CAUCASUS SECURITY: CHECHNYA BETTER, OTHERS
WORSE, SAY AID WORKERS

REF: MOSCOW 207

Classified By: POL M/C Alice G. Wells, reason 1.4 (D).

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 000530

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR PRM/ECA

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/27/2018
TAGS: PREF EAID PGOV ASEC RS
SUBJECT: NORTH CAUCASUS SECURITY: CHECHNYA BETTER, OTHERS
WORSE, SAY AID WORKERS

REF: MOSCOW 207

Classified By: POL M/C Alice G. Wells, reason 1.4 (D).


1. (C) Summary: While the security environment in Chechnya
has stabilized sufficiently to allow the Danish Refugee
Council to base its operations in Grozny, Ingushetiya and
Dagestan are experiencing increased violence due to
separatist and extremist activities, high unemployment rates,
easy availability of arms and explosives, and ineffective law
enforcement agencies, the UN and NGOs report. Unpredictable
attacks and, even more so, federal governmental ambivalence
regarding foreign humanitarian presence make the North
Caucasus a difficult operating environment, according to
expatriates doing PRM-funded humanitarian work in the region.
End Summary.

--------------
UN Presents Mixed Picture
--------------


2. (SBU) A February 11 United Nations Department of Safety
and Security Russian Federation (UNDSS) "concept paper"
provided to Refcoord summarized mixed developments in North
Caucasus security and its effect on the ability of foreign
humanitarian aid workers to undertake their mission:

-- Chechnya: The UN notes "perceptible improvement in the
security environment." Thanks to tight control by forces
answerable to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, the UN was
able to increase humanitarian missions to Chechnya from 136
in 2006 to 156 in 2007.

-- Ingushetiya: The UN recorded an up-tick in violence
against law enforcement and government authorities. This
"remained the most unstable and unpredictable republic in
terms of security situation during 2007" in spite of enhanced
government counter-terrorist operations.

-- Dagestan: As in Ingushetiya "(T)he unpredictable security
situation is dominated by armed clashes between law
enforcement agencies and militants, a high crime rate,...and
increasing dexterity of militants in using explosive
devices." The UN observed that "(b)ombings and targeting of
civilian officials, spiritual leaders and law enforcement
personnel took place regularly and (are) likely to continue

in future."

Furthermore, the UN paper noted that, region-wide, "Despite
the low level of home invasion and car-hijacking, kidnapping
remains a perceived threat for the UN operations in view of
the social tradition (sic) of kidnapping for ransom and other
types of abduction."

--------------
Life in a conflict zone
--------------


3. (C) Geographic and social isolation, inadequate health
care, and constant government monitoring of their activities
are the main hardships afflicting humanitarian workers in the
North Caucasus, according to Jo Hegenauer, Jr., a Canadian
who is UN Area Security Coordinator and UNHCR Head of Office
for the North Caucasus. "Someone is shot and killed or a
bomb goes off every day" in Ingushetiya Hegenauer said, but
expatriates remain fairly safe. Hegenauer attributed this to
Russian concerns over western perceptions as the GOR builds
up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, not in "Russia
having too much at stake should an aid worker get hurt."


4. (C) Reflecting on his 22-year career in humanitarian aid
during a February 20 conversation, Hegenauer said his three
years in the Caucasus had been the most difficult. The main
obstacle to his agency's effectiveness, he maintained, was
the host nation's "essential antipathy" to outside
involvement in its internal affairs. The GOR will find a way
to compromise even "squeaky clean" expatriates whose work it
fears will undermine government authority. Unlike in a place
with a failed or transitioning government, in Russia all the
structures are in place to keep aid workers under constant
surveillance, Hegenauer regretted.


5. (SBU) Hegenauer's younger colleagues in the field express
greater anxiety. Refcoord met February 11 with Thomas Hill,
the International Refugee Committee (IRC) Russia Country
Director and spoke by telephone with Siobhan Kimmerle,
Russian Federation Program Director for World Vision. Both
are American citizens in their early 30s with fluent Russian
and previous experience in development work. Hill had
recently attended IRC's Regional Management Conference in

MOSCOW 00000530 002 OF 003


Bangkok, Thailand, bringing together country representatives
serving in the Caucasus and Asia. Kimmerle had attended a
World Vision field representatives' meeting in Cyprus in
December. Both reported that, based on their and their
colleagues' accounts of obstacles to achieving their aid
objectives, their organizations have concluded that the North
Caucasus is a hardship post on a par with Afghanistan.


6. (C) Hill affirmed that tension in Ingushetiya has grown
steadily since Autumn 2007 as local communities have started
expressing their frustration at perceived favoritism,
nepotism, and weakness in President Murat Zyazikov's
administration. The Ingush, Hill concluded, want a strongman
like Chechnya's Ramzan Kadyrov. Hill, who moved to the North
Caucasus with IRC in September 2007, reported that he has
rewritten the Ingushetiya office's security plan, basing his
revisions on his organization's procedures in Afghanistan.
Based on increased violence in Ingushetiya, Hill has drawn up
contingency plans in the event IRC is forced to close its
Nazran office. Hill allows his expatriate staff to spend
only three nights and two days at a stretch in monitoring the
IRC's programs in Chechnya. That leaves Vladikavkaz, where
the expatriate staff live a 45-minute drive from Nazran, as a
potential base of operations, but IRC's local (Muslim) staff
are not safe in (predominantly Christian) North Ossetiya.


7. (C) Meanwhile, official corruption is an ongoing barrier
to efficient INGO operations, Hill regretted. Movement
through republican border checkpoints is a problem. This
winter, two of his local staff lost their driver's licenses
when they refused to pay bribes on a journey to
Kabardino-Balkaria for staff training. In December 2007
Chechen officials denied IRC permission to work with the
organization's chosen local partner on an EU-funded community
mobilization infrastructure project, charging that the local
group, Save the Generation, did not operate transparently.
The Chechens recommended a different local partner, an
organization that had not even applied for the tender. When
IRC objected, the authorities recommended a third
organization, one that had applied for the tender -- but by
this time IRC was so suspicious of republican officials'
motives that it resolved to use its own staff.


8. (C) Kimmerle expressed frustration similar to Hill's. The
previous Saturday she had wanted to travel from her
Vladikavkaz apartment to World Vision's Nazran office to
spend a couple of hours catching up on work, she said, but
was refused by her security chief. Later, she learned that
there had been an explosion at a checkpoint she would have
needed to traverse.

--------------
DRC to Move to Grozny
--------------


9. (C) One NGO, the Danish Refugee Council (DRC),has decided
to abandon its Nazran headquarters and base its operations in
Grozny from March 2008. In a February 14 conversation with
Refcoord, Eugene Sienkiewicz, DRC's Head of Program, said
that DRC is in the final stages of closing its Ingushetiya
office and finding apartments in Grozny for its expatriate
staff, who until now have resided in Vladikavkaz.
Sienkiewicz, a 56-year-old American citizen, observed that
"Ingushetiya is particularly uncomfortable right now," but
added that the "constant, low-level" violence appears
targeted at local officials and Russian-speaking residents,
not expatriate aid workers. Sienkiewicz echoed other
assessments that place blame for the unrest in Ingushetiya on
dissatisfaction with Zyazikov's leadership and outrage at
authorities' overly harsh and arbitrary law enforcement, he
posited; in Chechnya, from pro-independence and anti-Russian
feeling. (Note: DRC operates only through a local partner
in Dagestan, and its expatriate staff do not travel there.
End note.)


10. (C) In Chechnya, Sienkiewicz noted, Kadyrov has
successfully pacified the territory north of the mountains,
including Grozny, but people still do not feel safe outdoors
after dark. DRC will require its staff to observe an 8 p.m.
curfew once they move to the Chechen capital. Their
apartments will be located sufficiently close to each other
to share a guard post, thus keeping security expenses down.
(Note: World Vision and IRC achieve the same objective by
using group houses, something DRC's somewhat older staff
wishes to avoid. End note.) For any kind of movement, DRC
will continue to use three or four armed guards and a couple
of vehicles with drivers, just as it now does in Ingushetiya.

--------------
Donor Considerations

MOSCOW 00000530 003 OF 003


--------------


11. (C) Comment: Humanitarian assistance in the Russian
Federation is a frustrating business because the federal
government is wary of "interference" and weary of INGO
presence in a region it prefers to present as poised for
prosperity. For the foreseeable future, humanitarian
operations in the North Caucasus will require carefully
planned static and mobile security arrangements.
International aid organization staff are encouraged by the
appreciation of local government officials bent on
reconstruction, and by the gratitude of aid recipients who
fear being forgotten by the outside world. The lesson for
donors is that security must continue to be an essential
component of cooperative agreements. End Comment.
BURNS