Where the bullets fly and why

The Soviet Union covered 8,649,538 square miles and had a population of 293 million at the time of its dissolution. Ethnically the Soviet Union was incredibly diverse, with 51% of the population being ethnically Russian despite the insistence of the West on calling the Soviets Russians. The rest comprised of such populations as the Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Latvians, Georgians and Tajiks among others.

But to imagine that the Soviet empire dissolved into homogeneous ethnic states is an error. The Russian Federation is still in itself a country of some 142 million peoples with an ethnic diversity of around 160 countable indigenous and minority groups. Although in the Russian Federation ethnic Russians make up just under 80% of the population, that still leaves around 28.4 million people living within Russian borders who are not considered to be Russians. To put that figure into perspective the population of Afghanistan is 28.1 million.

In the Russian Federation today the non-Russian groups with populations over 1 million are the Tatars followed by Ukrainians then Bashkirs, Chuvashs, Chechens and Armenians. And the complicated system of Federal Subjects means that 21 ‘homeland’ republics with considerable powers of autonomy.

But as most people know, all is not well within the multi-ethnic Russian Federation. For one, and most notably,  there have been two wars in Chechnya: the first raging from 1994 until 1996 leaving Moscow without control of the republic and the second from 1999 till 2009 re-establishing Moscow’s control. However, the second war left behind some estimated 10,000 military casualties on both sides and even more staggeringly an estimated 140,000 civilian deaths. Although it should be noted that the bulk of the second war is considered to be an insurgency as the actual battle phase was won by Moscow in the summer of 2000.

Which brings us to the current situation in Chechnya. Today Islamic militants continue to attack security forces in the Northern Caucasus. As a result, last year 296 soldiers and civil-servants were killed by a variety of attacks from improvised explosive devices to ambushes with 139 civilians also killed. The forces behind such attacks were the Caucasus Emirate and the Arab Mujaheddin in Chechnya. The Emirate is technically speaking the successor to the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which was the attempted successionist state that for various periods of the nineties had de facto control of Chechnya.

Declared in 2007 by Dokka Umarov, the former president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, the armed wing of the Emirate has claimed responsibility for the Moscow Metro bombing in March this year which killed 40 and injured 102 others. In combination the Caucasus Emirate and the Arab Mujahideen in Chechnya however have only around 500 fighters and in recent times they have suffered nearly 400 dear and 600 captured, severely curtailing their effectiveness. However, even as recently as this weekend in Dagestan and Ingushetia (neighbouring republics declared to be part of the Emirate Umarov) car bombings and gun attacks against police killed two and wounded 4 others. Even a severely bruised insurgency can still kill and create fear and unease.

Ingushetia is also home to an insurgency and the Ingush Jamaat are operatives within the republic as part of the wider Islamic insurgency in the northern Caucuses. They caused 800 deaths during the last decade with its leader Akhmed Yevloyev having only just been captured earlier this month.

The interwoven Islamic insurgency of the Chechnya-Dagestan-Ingushetia triangle of republics aside, there are several other places that experience tension though perhaps not on the scale of Chechnya. The republic of North Ossetia-Alania for a short time was home to a bloody border skirmish between Ingush and Ossetian paramilitaries which resulted in the death of 600 Ingush civilians and the expulsion of 60,000 from the eastern part of North Ossetia.

North Ossetia was also the setting for the Beslan School Siege where Ingush and Chechen gunmen took over 1,000 people hostage and killed over 300. And in 2005 fighting spread to Kabardino-Balkaria where the Yarmuk Jamaat, the local branch of the Caucasian Front, launched an attack on the republics capital leading to at least 70 deaths with reports of dozens more of civilians, militants and security forces also possibly killed.

Ethnic turmoil is not just limited to the Caucus region however. In the Volga region the Mari El republic is the scene for what many are calling ethnic persecution of the indigenous Mari people. President Leonid Markelov closed Mari language newspapers and Marla activists and leaders are being subjected to violence and intimidation tantamount to forced Russification and ethnic repression.

Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the recognition of the independence of South Ossetia by the Russian government two years ago has opened the door for claims of legitimacy from separatist groups in such resource-rich republics as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Separatist movements in both these regions are at a low ebb with much of the real power in the hands of Moscow’s executive thanks to the clever strategy of abolishing direct elections throughout all the federal subjects of Russia. The Bashkortostan president was recently re-appointed rather than re-elected according to the recommendation of the Russian president who, at the time, was Vladimir Putin but who is now Medvedev (read: Putin). Similarly, the Tatarstan president was picked by the Russian president rather than elected.

With this strategy Moscow allows the republics a high degree of autonomy internally but only as long as they get to hand pick the president. This temporarily secures the acquiescence of the republic’s governments but may in the long term lead to increasing grass-roots dissent as the people come to realize that their resources are in their republics and the governments in charge of them are not a reflection of their wishes but hand picked puppets from Moscow.

It is hard to see how the future will develop for the republics of Russia but as the Chechen wars have shown, the process of ethnic repression and violence is a distinct possibility in post-Soviet Russia. Since the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia by the Russian government it is entirely possible that the Russians have created a precedent for separatists to feel a renewed sense of legitimacy which will perhaps in a decades time see us watching a Kosovo scenario unfold in Tatarstan or Bashkortostan or perhaps even Mari El.