MOSCOW: The Kremlin praises Ramzan Kadyrov as fearless in battling Chechnya’s militants, but he has stealthily gained more independence for his Caucasus region than the separatists had before Russia sent troops to destroy them.
Analysts say the latitude Moscow is allowing the region’s newly appointed prime minister could result in it losing control over Chechnya and could push the whole North Caucasus further into chaos.
Currently pliant leaders of the ethnic patchwork on the Russian side of the Caucasus are watching Kadyrov closely to gauge their chances of autonomy, while the Kremlin’s alliance with often corrupt regional leaders risks alienating new generations angry with widespread poverty and violence.
“You see this in all sorts of colonial situations — the expense of keeping an army in the field is enormous and eventually states recruit local forces,” said Andrew McGregor, director of the Aberfoyle International Security Analysis centre in Toronto and an expert on violence.
“The pattern is the same. History repeats itself. If the Russians had any sense of historical perspective, they would see that it has never worked very well — like the Americans’ Vietnamisation in Vietnam.”
Kadyrov, who controls an army of former rebels accused by rights groups of murder and abduction, dominates the republic — a role he inherited in 2004 when his father, the Moscow-backed president, was assassinated by rebels.
The 29-year-old was elevated to premier this month, in charge of an administration that is a collection of his allies and clan members.
He has already started to create laws he says are more suitable to Chechnya’s Islamic heritage — restricting alcohol, banning gambling and enforcing women’s use of headscarves — in defiance of Russia’s secular constitution.
Allies say he has to be tough to restore order.
“Ramzan knows all the problems from his own experience. He has worked very effectively... he needs support from all of us who are more experienced,” said Akhmar Zavgayev, veteran deputy for Chechnya in Russia’s parliament.
But not all officials are so positive.
President Vladimir Putin’s top aide in the Caucasus has repeatedly warned his boss against over-reliance on regional elites, saying it is dangerous to associate the Kremlin with only one clan in each region.
Dmitry Kozak has said that governing through corrupt and violent regional strongmen could drive young residents of Chechnya and neighbouring regions like Dagestan, Ingushetia or Kabardino-Balkaria — which have also experienced widespread clashes with police — into the arms of the rebels.
But analysts say Kozak’s warnings are being ignored, and that policy is in the hands of security services obsessed with tracking down Muslim militants.
“The most scary thing is that Kadyrov is being watched by all the leaders (in the other regions) — they have understood what he is doing very well,” said Yulia Latynina, a respected independent Russian journalist.
“If the federal government wants something that these leaders do not want, they have learned they can just ignore it,” said Latynina, whose work is widely read in the Caucasus.
Chechnya’s militants have attacked other regions and helped local Muslim militants rise up against the police and tried to use the threat of expanding the war as a bargaining chip.
The pro-Chechen militants who seized 1,300 hostages in a school in the town of Beslan in 2004 — a raid that killed over 330 people, half of them children — specifically told negotiators that the separatists would stop encouraging other region’s militants if Chechnya was granted independence.
But Latynina said Putin would never agree to an independent Chechnya, and would rather pander to Kadyrov than lose face. Putin was a prime mover behind a decision in 1999 to pour troops into the region to crush the proclaimed independent Chechnya
Many in Moscow also fear any formal independence could stir separatism in other regions, beyond the Caucasus, in a country stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific and embracing countless ethnic groups.
“It is not important to the Kremlin whether Kadyrov’s Chechnya is really a part of Russia or not,” Latynina said. “It is only important that it pretends to be.
“Kadyrov is no fool, this man has given Chechens a centralised state for the first time in their history.”—Reuters
