By IPS Correspondents
VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia, Aug 14 1997 (IPS)

Six more foreigners have been kidnapped in the last two weeks in the troubled Caucasus region, bringing the total of Russian and foreign hostages, mostly journalists and aid workers, held in Chechnya to 14.

They include four Frenchmen from the aid agency Equilibre, snatched over the border in the neighbouring Russian republic of Dagestan on Aug. 2 and two more aid workers, a German and a Slovak taken from neighbouring Ingushetia on Aug 3.

Seven days earlier, two British doctors working for the Moscow- based Centre for Peacemaking and Community Development, Camilla Carr and John James, were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen from the Little Star Children’s Home in the Chechen capital of Grozny.

The night before the two Britons disappeared, the French aid- worker Christophe Andre was taken from the Medicins sans Frontieres combined office and residence in Nazran, Ingushetia. So far nothing is known about the fate of the four and no demand for ransom has been made.

These disappearances are the latest examples of what has become one of the North Caucasus’ most acute problems — kidnappings and the trade in people.

Lately particular attention has been paid to the cases of five Russian TV journalists who have been missing for several months. There are elements in Chechnya and Russia also interested in targeting foreign nationals for the sake of publicity and further destabilising an already unstable region.

There is another powerful motive as well: money. Certain areas of the North Caucasus have become strongholds of organised crime with a very high degree of corruption, and kidnappings have become the quickest way to considerable earnings. With the right choice of victim, the ransom collected can easily run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Six villagers were recently kidnapped from Zmeiskaya in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, transferred and kept in Ingushetia for a while, and later moved to Chechnya where they waited months while their friends and relatives attempted to gather the ransom. On Jul. 7 the last of the six was released; the price was 400,000 dollars.

In addition to the high ransom, this case illustrates another factor: ethnic interplay. North Ossetia and neighbouring Ingushetia suffer very poor relations because of a long-standing dispute over ownership of the Prigorodny district.

Now part of North Ossetia, Prigorodny belonged to the unified entity of Chechnya-Ingushetia before these two peoples were deported to Kazakhstan by Stalin in 1944. As recently as November 1992 the district was the scene of full-scale inter-ethnic fighting resulting in more than 300 dead and 40,000 displaced from their homes.

But even in the difficult inter-ethnic landscape of the North Caucasus, criminal elements are able to negotiate across all borders and ethnic divides.

As the case of the six villagers suggests, it is common practice for Ossetian, Ingush and Chechen groups to either work together or trade hostages between each other, cooperating in a way that sharply contrasts with the lack of cooperation between the different republics’ law enforcement agencies.

At first it seems strange that the friends and relatives of six people from a small village — in one of the Russian Federation republics hardest hit by the breakdown of the economy — are able to find as much as 400,000 dollars.

This, however, is the result of one of the oddities of post- Soviet Russian economic development. While the majority of the population in North Ossetia remains poor and unemployment is high, a small segment of the population has made fortunes on vodka and alcohol production over the last six or seven years.

The small territorial entity of North Ossetia has become one of the main centres of production in the Russian Federation; official estimates of this largely unofficial industry suggest that the turnover in 1996 was around one billion dollars.

With such large amounts of money circulating in the region — not only from vodka but from all sorts of clandestine activity — hostage taking has become a lucrative, indeed a booming business.

The latest official figure in Ingushetia had by the end of July reached 21. But official figures mean little. Many cases are settled on the quiet, without the involvement of official authorities and the media.

However, kidnapping one or more of the ‘new Ossetians’ or ‘new Ingush’ — as the Caucasian nouveau riches are termed — can also be a risky undertaking. There are long traditions of vendetta and retaliation in the Caucasian mountains.

Thus the recent kidnapping of an Ossetian married couple on Jun. 26 (the wife is still missing) led to the retaliatory kidnapping of four Chechens, presumed to be relatives of the perpetrators, from a bus in North Ossetia on Jul. 8.

Leaving aside possible political motives, targeting both foreigners and journalists is attractive because kidnapping them is much less risky than kidnapping rich locals.

The perpetrators know very well that in the case of a foreign aid- worker there is no need to fear local gangs or family members swearing to take revenge.

Law enforcement agencies are not viewed as a danger, given the high level of corruption and the problems of cooperation between, for example, North Ossetian and Ingush officials.

In an attempt to come to grips with the increasing number of such incidents, the government of Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov decreed in late February that, under Islamic Sharia law, kidnappings will now incur the death penalty, while accomplices are liable to 15 years’ imprisonment. But so far this seems to have had little effect.

Following the disappearance of the two British doctors, the Chechen Security Service chief, Lecha Kultygov, stated that a newly formed joint investigation task force including experienced lawyers and several Sharia judges “will put an end to the dirty business of trading in people.”

Maskhadov ordered an all out police sweep this week to find them, but the exercise appeared merely token, a sop to Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who is scheduled to meet Maskhadov any day now.

It remains to be seen whether the Chechen authorities can succeed.

Their earlier promise to find those responsible for the deaths of six international Red Cross workers in their beds at the Novye Atagi hospital in Chechnya just before last Christmas has not been fulfilled. Furthermore, whatever results the authorities in Grozny might achieve within their republic, the dirty business of trading in people is likely to continue in the rest of the North Caucasus.

— Per Ilsaas works for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Vladikavkaz. This item comes to IPS via the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London.

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