Kabardino-Balkaria May Face Sustained Instability

Residents of Kabardino-Balkaria, slowly recovering from the attacks on the capital Nalchik two weeks ago which left 136 people dead, are asking whether their North Caucasus republic is now vulnerable to a longer-term outbreak of Islamic militancy.

The North Caucasian republic has so far seen relatively low levels of violence and instability that have plagued Ingushetia and Dagestan, not to mention Chechnya, but some observers now fear it is heading down the same path.

Tension in the region is still high, as reports filter in of a general crackdown on anyone suspected of Islamic militancy, and the authorities refuse to release the bodies of gunmen killed in the October 13 fighting to their families.

The latest official figures suggest that 14 civilians and 35 police were killed and 100 injured. On the rebel side, there are 87 bodies suspected to be those of insurgents, but to date, only 68 of them have been positively identified as such.

Many of the gunmen were local young men, and from respectable families. Among those killed were the sons of a well-known local scientist and a businessman.

Officials say the average age of the approximately 150 insurgents was 25, with many 18- to 20-year-olds among them. The youngest was just 15.

“Most of the bandits, contrary to popular opinion, came from well-off families,” said Alexander Torshin, deputy speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, the Council of the Federation, at a press conference in Moscow.

Muhammed, 65, an engineer, says that he does not understand how his 25-year-old son and 20-year-old nephew ended up dying among the attackers. (All the individuals interviewed asked for the names of their children not to be printed.) Neither young man exhibited signs of radicalism or extremism, and both were raised in the ways of their ethnic group, the Kabardins, who practice a tolerant, apolitical form of Islam.

“They were sociable and kindhearted, and both had a higher education,” Muhammed told IWPR. “Sometimes they used to go to the mosque, but not regularly. But on the day of the attack they appeared among the attackers - why?”

Muhammed is not the only one asking such questions. The radical Islamic tone of the attack, and the fact that the attacks appeared to have been planned well in advance, has shocked many in Kabardino-Balkaria.

According to residents of the village of Svetlovodsk, some days before the attack a group of local young men sacrificed a ram and celebrated their own funerals, handing out their personal belongings to relatives and friends.

When asked what they were doing, the young men apparently answered, “We shall be in Paradise soon, so we won’t be needing all this.”

A number of insurgents also left behind wills and instructions for their own burial. One note which an IWPR correspondent saw was dated August 23 – almost two months before the attacks. Some left instructions that their bodies should not be washed before interment since they would be dying as “shahids” or martyrs.

Vladimir Meshev, an expert on local traditions, disputes the assertion that the bulk of the gunmen were religious fanatics. “Among the dead gunmen, there are very few with beards – regarded as one of the distinguishing features of Islamic radicals,” he said.

Instead, Meshev believes the discourse of Islam merely provided a channel for wider social, political and economic grievances. The lack of alternative means of expressing political views in Kabardino-Balkaria was one of the driving forces behind the attacks, he says.

Meshev added that a number of those involved in the multiple attacks on police buildings appeared to get involved almost by accident, some having been called only minutes beforehand and asked to help. “There were cases where they recruited people straight off the streets,” he said.

Madina, 55, showed IWPR a note from her 22-year-old son who died in the fighting, which suggests that not all the gunmen acted out solely out of religious conviction.

“Forgive me, mother, I can’t live this way,” the boy wrote. “Better to be killed with the others, because after the events that are going to happen I won’t have a life of my own - they will haul me in and beat me and in the end I’ll be beaten to death.”

Madina says the authorities had labelled her son a “Wahhabist”, a term loosely applied to any Islamic fundamentalist trend here, and was routinely taken in for questioning by police.

“He was beaten many times, and they warned that if he suddenly disappeared from where they could see him, they would declare him a wanted terrorist, and then they would not arrest him but kill him on the spot,” she said.

Madina and other parents of dead militants have spent almost two weeks picketing government buildings in pursuit of their demand to get their children’s bodies back so they can be given a decent burial.

Russian law forbids the bodies of people they deem to be terrorists from being delivered to their families. Instead they are buried in unmarked graves.

The return of the bodies is becoming a major political issue, as many locals believe that those involved in the fighting should be buried properly, regardless of crimes they may have committed.

“The court will have to decide in each instance whether it was a case of terrorism. That will take a long time, and it may turn out that some individuals were not terrorists at all,” said Larisa Dorogova, a lawyer working with families of the dead gunmen. “The humane thing would be to give the bodies to their relatives for burial.”

The biggest question now is what lies in store for Kabardino-Balkaria in the near future.

Some observers fear that the republic may be in for a bout of prolonged instability, fueled by a general sense of political and economic dissatisfaction and aided by Islamic extremism.

Yuri Shanibov, of the political science faculty at Kabardino-Balkaria University in Nalchik, talks of the “Dagestan and Ingushetia scenarios” – the two North Caucasian republics on either side of war-torn Chechnya which have also seen clashes between insurgents and Russian forces.

Shanibov says that a crackdown is under way to root out possible Islamic insurgents, but he warns that this could backfire, as the authorities have targeted many innocent Muslims as well as the families of the gunmen.

“The threat that this will turn into Dagestan or Ingushetia is very real,” Shanibov told IWPR. “It started out there in the same way as the attack on Nalchik: soon afterwards, officials began to repress Muslims, and death squads appeared. After that, many people who’d had nothing to do with the original attacks began to avenge relatives who had been abducted or killed.”

Other observers do not share this view, however, and argue instead that Kabardino-Balkaria’s government has so far been successful in maintaining stability.

The Nalchik attacks and their aftermath are a major challenge for Arsen Kanokov, who became Kabardino-Balkaria’s president only two weeks beforehand, replacing Valery Kokov who had ruled the republic for the past 15 years.

So far, Kanokov has been cautious in his handling of the crisis, but some observers say that is perfectly understandable given the risks he faces.

Murat Khokonov, an academic, believes that Kanokov’s ability to influence the situation at the moment is “very limited”, because policy on the ground is currently being driven by the [Russian] Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

“As happened in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya, the republic’s leadership may lose all control over these [security] agencies, and events may then spin out of control,” said Khokonov. “Kanokov at this moment is just managing to hold the situation down – but his resources… may soon run out.”

Valery Khatazhukov is director of the Human Rights Centre in Nalchik, and an independent journalist.