By Huseyn Aliyev (the 11/12/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
New legislation adopted by the Russian parliament in November, aimed at punishing families and relatives of terrorist suspects, intends to legalize the “hard” form of counter-insurgency already practiced in several North Caucasus republics. The new law allows authorities to confiscate the assets of suspected terrorists' family members, and obligating them to compensate for damages incurred by those acts. The new legislation entered into force on November 17 and although it has not yet been implemented in practice, the collective punishment practices it permits are already used by authorities across the restive North Caucasus.
By Valeriy Dzutsev (the 13/11/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
One by one, the North Caucasian republics are declining direct elections of governors, instead sticking to the appointment procedure by the President of Russia. Moscow appears to be orchestrating the process to ensure that completely loyal governors are in place in the restive region. Their loyalty, however, comes at the price of greater volatility and lower predictability in the region. Moscow’s policies in the North Caucasus illuminate the crisis of the highly centralized system of governance in Russia. Ironically, regions of Russia that are most adversely affected by the lack of a participatory political system are further deprived of popular voting mechanisms.
By Valeriy Dzutsev (the 16/10/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
The exclusion of North Caucasians from the pool of conscripts to the Russian military signifies steady a plummeting of the single national identity in the Russian Federation. As the insurgency warfare drags on in the North Caucasus, the Russian military is increasingly unwilling to draft ethnic non-Russians from the North Caucasus. Apart from security concerns, the government is wary of constant clashes between the North Caucasians and ethnic Russians in the army. The separation of the North Caucasians from the civil duty, mandated by the state, further increases the divide between ethnic Russians and North Caucasians.
The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst is a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Transatlantic Research and Policy Center affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Council, Washington DC., and the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm. For 15 years, the Analyst has brought cutting edge analysis of the region geared toward a practitioner audience.
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