Police Mount Huge Operation in West Caucasus

The Russian authorities say strongarm police operations in two North Caucasian republics west of Chechnya have struck a vital blow against radical extremists, but many local people are drawing unfavourable comparisons with the heavy-handed tactics used by security forces in Chechnya itself.

Although information is hard to come by, it seems the two operations in Kabardino-Balkaria and neighbouring Karachai-Cherkessia were timed to follow the killing of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov last week.

Armed men in flak jackets and camouflage appeared on the streets of Nalchik, capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, in the early hours of March 10. Teams of three or four policemen stood at every intersection in the city, stopping and searching practically every car and checking the documents of those inside. The armed men were obviously from outside the republic.

No explanation was given as to what was happening and people could only guess that this was another mass search operation, similar to five that took place last year with the assistance of Russian federal soldiers. Policemen from elsewhere had evidently been brought in because the local units were not considered trustworthy.

Simultaneously. a massive sweep operation was also taking place in villages in the mountainous south of the republic and in neighbouring Karachai-Cherkessia.

Several local people repeated the rumour that the operation was launched after a tip-off from men captured during the operation which killed Maskhadov that a terrorist act was being planned in Kabardino-Balkaria.

For the next three days, the republic was rife with fears and rumour. An official statement was finally made only on March 12. Kabardino-Balkaria’s interior ministry announced that a large-scale anti-terrorist operation conducted in Nalchik and four other regions of the republic had been successfully completed.

Khizir Makitov, administrative head of the Elbrus district, told IWPR that raids had been made in every town and village in his region. This region, which contains the highest peak in Europe, Mount Elbrus, is mainly populated by the minority Balkar group, and is often said to be a haven for Islamic radicals. Muslim Atayev, the leader of a “jamaat” or Islamic cell called Yarmuk, who was killed in Nalchik in January, came from here. (See CRS 272, February 3, 2005, “Islamist Group Destroyed in Kabardino-Balkaria”.)

“This is the fourth ‘clean-up operation’ in the region since the beginning of 2005 and in all this time, there have been no serious results,” said a distressed Makitov. “The last operation came up with nothing: two persons were detained, but no weapons or any other illegal items were found. All they managed to do was frighten off tourists from the Mount Elbrus area. We are suffering big losses in the tourism business because of the police activity.”

The official press release said that “36 criminals had been arrested”, and that 12 were on the Russian Federation wanted list, while the rest were being investigated for possible involvement in earlier crimes. It suggested that the scale of the operation was extensive, saying “21,000 homes, 3,800 garages, 60 hotels, 47 hostels, 38 markets, 229 private dachas and 7,200 vehicles were inspected”, and 31,400 residents had been subjected to checks.

Many families are now trying to get access to their detained relatives. The father of one of the 36 detainees told IWPR that his son disappeared and they eventually located him in a detention centre in the nearby town of Pyatigorsk. He had not been told why he was arrested and was denied a lawyer.

“In exchange for a bribe, we managed to get a note to him and received a reply,” the father said. “Our son wrote that he’d been beaten, which is why they don’t want to show him to us. During the interrogation he was handcuffed behind his back. They pressed various metal objects against his hands – guns, grenades and some other things. That’s how they get fingerprints on material evidence.”

“They are obviously trying to stitch him up. We can’t do anything about it. As long as they are holding him, we have to keep our mouths shut, otherwise they could simply kill him and get rid of the body”. For this reason, the father was unwilling to give either his name or that of his son.

Many local people see parallels with the notorious passport-checking operations in Chechnya which resulted in arbitrary arrests and torture. “The behaviour of the military in Chechnya is explained as something that happens in time of war. Yet there is no war over here. But they treat us as brutally and unceremoniously as they do Chechnya at war,” said writer Zaur Naloyev.

The authorities say they seized a large quantity of weaponry. But although the official press release does not make this point, officials admit that the haul consisted almost entirely of hunting guns whose owners had forgotten to renew their licenses. Past experience suggests that these firearms will be returned to their owners once they have gone through the proper procedures.

Almost a week after the operation in Kabardino-Balkaria, almost nothing is known about the fate of those arrested and the prosecutor’s office has not been approached to start legal proceedings against anyone. Zamir Misrokov, assistant to the public prosecutor, told IWPR that, by law, anyone arrested during document checks can be detained for up to 72 hours.

Just as shadowy has been the police operation carried out in the hills of Karachai-Cherkessia, which was carried out with the help of security services from Stavropol, a neighbouring Russian region located.

Like Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachai-Cherkessia has been increasingly linked with extremist violence over the past year. On February 20, a militant named Issa Akbayev, reported to have links to Chechen rebels, was killed in the town of Karachayevsk. He was said to have been a member of a jamaat group that the Russian authorities hold responsible for the explosions in a series of Moscow apartment blocks that killed hundreds of people in 1999.

The republic’s interior minister Alexander Osyak declared the latest operation a success, and confirmed there was a connection with Chechnya. “We could say that the fighters are trying to stage revenge operations on behalf of Maskhadov,” he said. “But rumours about an escalation of terrorist activity in the near future are strongly exaggerated. As a result of special operations in the North Caucasus, it was not only Maskhadov who died. A series of fighters who held prominent positions in terrorist organisations were liquidated.”

However, a policeman who took part in the raids told IWPR that they had not delivered any significant results and that this kind of mass sweep operation was ineffective. “Surprise operations using a small mobile contingent are much more effective,” he said.

A Russian special forces veteran told IWPR, “Terrorist organisations do not have a single, centralised structure as the army, for example, does. They are like a bunch of grapes – a number of autonomous small groups linked together such that the failure of one of them does not mean the whole system collapses.”

Fatima Tlisova is a correspondent for Novaya Gazeta and an IWPR contributor in Nalchik. Murat Gukemukhov is a correspondent for REGNUM news agency in Cherkessk.