Last week the president of the tiny Russian federal republic of Ingushetia in the Caucasus sacked his prime minister and Cabinet because, apparently, they had not stamped out corruption. So what, one might say? There is plenty of corruption around the world. What have problems of a small impoverished Russian republic in the troubled Caucasus have to do with Saudi Arabia?
Not a lot — other than the fact that Ingushetia is one of Russia’s Muslim majority republics is caught up in a cycle of violence and looks increasingly like an Afghanistan in the making.
It is not corruption that is the main problem although it has played no small part in alienating Ingushetians and has been used by the extremists pushed out of neighboring Chechnya as pretext for their bloody campaign to take over the place. It is Moscow’s iron-fisted response. It is making the situation far more unstable.
Violence is almost a daily occurrence. In June President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was lucky to escape with his life in an assassination attempt. The response by the local authorities, backed by Moscow, has been to meet violence with even greater violence. Extra Russian troops have been poured into the miniscule republic but they act like jackbooted thugs. Because of the insurgents, the Russian military sees all Muslims as suspect — that means almost all Ingushetians. They lash out blindly and mercilessly. There are ever growing reports of ordinary civilians being targeted and killed — often in revenge for attacks on the security forces — and then accused afterward of being “terrorists”. Hundreds have been killed this year; hundreds more have simply “disappeared”. Not a single Russian soldier has been brought to book for these crimes.
The result is that young men are taking to the hills to join the extremists in increasing numbers — not for jihadi reasons but for revenge. The view of the few independent monitors of events in Ingushetia as well as of reporters there recently is that Ingushetia is on the brink of the abyss, that there could soon be an uprising. The great irony is that when the militants fled from Chechnya the Ingushetians had no love for them whatsoever; Russian brutality has pushed them into the militants’ arms.
Repression is always a dangerous tool; it can so easily backfire with far greater force. A century ago, Ireland had largely come to terms with being part of Britain; nationalism was left to a few romantic hotheads. But when the British reacted with extreme brutality against those few staged the 1916 uprising in Dublin, public opinion changed. Those executed and cut down by the British became martyrs for a national cause. At a stroke most Irish became nationalists and Britain lost Ireland.
It is lesson the Russians should heed. If there were some carrot rather than just stick in Ingushetia, it might be different — investment in the infrastructure, some new hospitals or schools to give people hope for the future and a reason to want to work with the system. There is none. Only repression. It is bound to fail — and Russia that is the loser.
