DAGESTAN: Key Player On Sidelines of Russo-Chechen Crisis

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Magomedkhan Makhomedkhanov

MAKHACHKALA, Dagestan, Jul 7 1996 (IPS) - The Republic of Dagestan, one of the 89 constituent parts of the Russian Federation, is in a strategically important position in the North Caucasus on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

The easiest route from Europe to the Caucasus passes through its territory, and has been used since time immemorial by armies out to conquer the Caucasus. Today Dagestan is an object of geo- political interest for Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkey and as a neighbour to tormented Chechnya, of tactical and strategic interest to the Russian Federation’s own domestic intentions.

What are Dagestan’s priorities today? And how will its situation change following the Russian presidential elections on Wednesday, in which — to the surprise of outsiders at least — the country voted against a return to the past and for Russian president Boris Yeltsin.

One cannot answer these questions without bearing in mind the peculiarities of the area. For one thing, the mountains of the greater Caucasus and the valleys of the Caspian lowland form a unique natural landscape.

For another, the enormous mix of peoples who inhabit Dagestan — 28 indigenous ethnic communities — have coexisted over many centuries and worked out a form of ethnic tolerance which reflects on every aspect of social and political life. Thirdly, the harsh climate and constant struggle against invaders has created a unified Dagestani outlook.

Even the Akin-Chechens, who remain faithful to a Chechen value system, increasingly feel themselves to be Dagestani.

Undoubtedly militancy is a strong part of the national character, but it has always been tempered with pragmatism and an ability to adapt to any conditions so as to preserve age-old values and traditions.

Even the Soviet regime was unable to destroy it: the Dagestanis treated communism with a healthy scepticism, viewing it as the continuation of Tsarist expansionism, and adapting it to the needs of the republic as before.

At the same time, most of Dagestan’s population sees itself as part of the Russian nation state, the people in the cities freely speak Russian, and no one wants to carve out a future separate from Russia’s.

Of course there are extremists in the republic, some of whom want full sovereignty and others who want to start a national movement. But they do not enjoy much public support. The ethnic communities in Dagestan jealously keep an eye on each other, and the nationality of any public appointee is always noted.

They are all anxious to avoid the supremacy of any one group, and they count on the efforts of the Russian population to arbitrate. The Dagestanis have a capacity to solve national conflicts through compromise.

Thanks to this, the attempt Djokhar Dudyaev made to draw local Akins into the Chechen war on his side — something he had counted on strongly — was averted.

This may also explain how in 1996 the local leadership managed to prevent mass disturbances in the towns of Kizlyar and Pervomaiskoye, when Russian Federation forces indiscriminately killed Dagestani civilians in their efforts to free Russian hostages held there by the Chechens.

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Dagestan went through a complicated period, both economically and politically. A former autonomous republic the size of Switzerland with a population of around two million, it is virtually cut off from the rest of Russia.

Most of the republic’s industry had been involved in the military- industrial complex. When demand for it collapsed, the impact was felt keenly by people in the towns, particularly those involved in the defence industry.

In Kaspiisk, for example, a town not far from the capital, all three defence enterprises were shut down as well as the naval training complex, and unemployment topped 90 percent.

Military conversion, the cutback of government subsidies, and the destruction of transport links meant many factories that produced diesel engines and electronic equipment stopped work, and the hillside workshops which made their component parts closed down.

Agriculture is also in crisis. The markets are full of goods but they are mostly imports. Paradoxically in Makhachkala, the capital, it is simpler to buy German and American beer for a couple of U.S. dollars than the cheaper local wine.

Local food-processing has collapsed. Bottling and canning factories stand empty, and fish and wine factories have closed down. Cut off from their traditional markets, village producers are forced to sell their food at the lowest prices.

After the Chechen war broke out the most direct road and rail links broke down. North-south communications with the rest of Russia, via the Astrakhan-Kizlyar-Makhachkala railway and a few roads through Stavropol Territory, failed to meet the republic’s needs.

A transport embargo made the economic crisis worse. It is now simpler and cheaper to import goods from Turkey and Iran. Flying remains the most convenient way to get to Russia, but the number of flights has been cut back because fuel that used to come from the Chechen capital of Grozny is now not always available.

Oversettlement in the countryside used to mean disguised unemployment even in communist times. From the 1960s on many thousands of Dagestanis went off to different parts of the USSR to find work as farm labourers, builders, and traders.

Now villagers have no opportunity to leave for Russia and over 65 percent of them are unemployed. The few Dagestanis who do manage to get out to Russia are made to feel unwelcome as ‘people of Caucasian nationality’, particularly in big cities where the ripples of the Caucasian war are strongly felt.

The average policeman does not know that the Avars from Dagestan fought with the Russians in the First World War and helped to expand the Russian empire. Dagestanis come home bitterly disillusioned with the existing regime and intensely hostile towards the president and the government.

A very sore point for Dagestan is the state frontier between Russia and Azerbaijan on the River Samur, which has placed half a million Dagestani Lezgins and Avars on the Azeri side.

Before 1991 no one observed it, but especially after military operations began in Chechnya, it has really sliced through a single people.

Dagestanis have peacefully coexisted with Azerbaijanis for centuries, and they anticipate that the implementation of the Caspian oil project will also bring prosperity to Dagestan.

But this frontier and the bribes extracted by Russian border guards make the local population indignant. A border dispute is brewing which special interest groups in Russia and Armenia will try to exploit to their own advantage.

Azeri officialdom has already accused Sadval, the Lezgin national movement, of causing explosions in the Baku metro and 120 leaders of Lezgin and Avar national organisations have been banned from Azerbaijan.

The population blames President Boris Yeltsin for all this, because he broke up the Soviet Union and is doing nothing to make things easier for the Lezgin or Avar peoples.

The local Dagestani leadership is making the socio-political situation worse. It includes many people who are products of the communist regime, who beyond Moscow’s control turned their positions into a gravy train. It is openly said that posts are bought and many are filled by known ‘bandits’.

Young people, without the means to support themselves, are turning to crime and joining armed gangs that operate inside the republic and in other parts of Russia. The population, finding itself face to face with criminals, is also beginning to arm itself.

Yet while dissatisfaction with Moscow’s policy on the Caucasus is growing every day, but without acquiring the character of a separatist movement. Not one political party in the republic — even the radical nationals — is pushing for national independence.

Hitherto, any dissatisfaction with the Moscow-set status quo had been expressed in support for the communists. In the elections to the State Duma in December 1995, they received more than 60 percent of the vote. Our Home is Russia, the party of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, got 30 percent.

But on Wednesday, in line with the rest of the so-called ‘Red Belt’, the ring of mainly agricultural southern Federation republics, Dagestan voted in favour of Yeltsin and continued reform. The Dagestan vote Wednesday was split in line with national figures; incumbent Boris Yeltsin took 51.20 percent and Zyuganov 45.67 percent. The other votes were spent by citizens marking their ballots ‘neither candidate’.

The shift underlined the fact that Dagestani voters do not want to go back to the Soviet system. Dagestanis are in favour of reform, a free market and democracy.

Nevertheless they have their own regional interests which neither of the candidates for the presidency — least of all Boris Yeltsin — came up with ways of meeting.

— Magomedkhan Makhomedkhanov is a senior researcher in the Dagestan Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography, in Makhachkala. This item comes to IPS via the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in London.