The North Caucasus: Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia

[kaur]

President Dmitry Medvedev’s statement in Daghestan last week that foreign forces are behind anti-Russian movements there is leading some Russian commentators to overstate the role of such forces there and thus to misunderstand the nature of the conflicts in that region, according to a leading Russian expert.

In his July 9 comments, Medvedev attempted not only to “sum up the threats to Russian statehood” in the region but also “to explain their causes,” the Moscow analyst says. The Russian president pointed to unemployment and poverty as among the most important, but he listed others as well.
Among these, the Russian leader said, are massive and widespread corruption, “systemic deformations of government administration,” and the “extremely low” quality of regional officials, charges that while true raise questions such as “who formed these power structures” if not the current tandem at the head of the much ballyhooed power vertical.

http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/...-in-north.html

If anyone is interested about more general situation in Northern Caucasus, then you can dowload paper "Kreml and Northern Caucasus" here. This paper is in Russian

http://www.politcom.ru/tables/docl.doc

[kaur]

Couple weeks old news. Last summer there was killed head of Dagestan's ministry of interior affairs. Today there is version that killer weapon was "loaned" to killers by Russian military personnel in Dagestan.

Couple articles in Russian

http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2010/021/15.html

http://newsru.com/russia/26feb2010/brigada.html

http://www.gzt.ru/Gazeta/proisshestv...t-/292192.html

[bourbon]

In Russia’s Dagestan Region, Police Live in Fear, by Ellen Barry. The New York Times, March 20, 2010.

It is all a measure of how thoroughly order has broken down in the Russian region of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus. Fifty-eight police officers were killed in attacks here last year, according to the republic’s Interior Ministry, many of them while running errands or standing at their posts. Last month alone, according to press reports, 13 officers were killed in bombings and gangland-style shootings.

[kaur]

High ranking FSB officer killed in Dagestan.

http://nv-daily.livejournal.com/401530.html