Speaking in Kislovodsk last week, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that unemployment was the main problem in the Caucasus. Kommersant's special correspondent Olga Allenova disagrees.
Putin said that unemployment is the main problem facing the Caucasus. He suggested creating 400,000 jobs in order to resolve it. Strictly speaking, this proposal is not new. It is also clear that the problems of the Caucasus cannot be resolved with new jobs alone.
I've already reported on how people in the Caucasus, in Dagestan for instance, do not only take up arms because they are unemployed. They turn against the government because of rampant corruption and excesses committed by law-enforcement officers. Ordinary people are panicked and frightened by the sight of these uniformed men who have complete impunity on all their actions, up to and including murder. And then there is the fact that the law on countering Wahhabism functions as a de facto ban on the freedom of religion. These are just some reasons for their anti-government stance.
Making justice triumph in the Caucasus today is extremely difficult. Those trying to achieve this are branded "enemies of the people, enemies of the law and enemies of the state." That is what Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov called human rights champions from the group Memorial in his recent interview on the TV channel Grozny. Meanwhile, these very same "enemies of the state" attended President Dmitry Medvedev's meeting with human rights activists. Medvedev has persistently advised regional leaders to be in dialogue with representatives of civil society. He even suggested that those who are unwilling to do so ought to resign. However, it seems that the president's suggestions have long been perceived merely as rhetoric in the Caucasus as in the rest of Russia.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's orders are accorded a different response. Putin has ordered the construction of Olympic facilities in places where massive reprisals against Circassians were carried out, and they are being built regardless of anyone's reaction. One Circassian leader, Murat Berzegov, a descendant of the now extinct Ubykh people, told me: "The language of my people is dead because all of them - men, women and children - were destroyed by tsarist Russia. Now Olympic facilities are being built in Krasnaya Polyana, where they used to live. And there is not a single monument to those who lived and died there, but monuments to Russian generals Lazarev and Yermolov, who destroyed these people, stand all over the coast. This does not give the Circassians any peace of mind."
So, jobs alone will not compel Circassians to accept this scornful attitude to their past. Moreover, having announced its intention to create 400,000 jobs, the government does not even mention the need to develop civil institutions, independent courts and the prosecutor's office, without which no business will survive there. No amount of arm twisting today could make businessmen flock to the Caucasus because they will have to pay ‘tribute' not only to corrupt officials and law-enforcement officers as in Moscow or St Petersburg but also to the militants, that is, if they want to stay alive. Quite often these payments make any business quite unprofitable.
"Look at the capital Grozny" some may protest. It is indeed a beautiful and blooming city complete with fountains, high-rise buildings and paved streets. Local officials have luxury cars and their wives wear diamond necklaces and chic dresses.
This is all true but what does it have to do with business? It is all the result of the Russian money that Moscow uses to buy Grozny's loyalty. Moscow pays in order to prevent Kadyrov or anyone else from uttering the word "self-determination." But that is not the word Kadyrov needs to utter, because Chechnya has already gone through a process of "self-determination." It is practically an Islamic state where women are gunned down for improper conduct, where people use pneumatic pistols to shoot paint at women who do not cover their hair and where Kadyrov gives interviews saying that they deserve it. Chechnya is a state where a Grozny district prefect has officially told militants' parents: "If you think that from today you can live and move about freely, you are mistaken." It should be recalled that Article 316 of the Russian Federation's criminal code (Concealment of Crime) relieves close relatives of the criminals of culpability for concealing a crime, so long as they did not agree in advance to do so.
The Chechen leadership's particular attitude to Russian laws is affecting the adjacent regions. One of my acquaintances in the Pyatigorsk administration told me that many local businessmen dislike the fact that Chechens are buying out shopping malls, restaurants and houses in the city and behave arrogantly: "They pull up in expensive cars with their KRA license plates (KRA stands for Kadyrov Ramzan Akhmatovich). They ignore red traffic lights, and traffic police officers do nothing to stop them. Nobody wants to mess with them because every single one of them is armed. They set their own rules in whatever companies they buy here. And our people do not like the fact that there is one law for us and another for the Chechens. In general, people in Stavropol are very unhappy with Moscow for indulging Grozny at the expense of the other regions."
In Kislovodsk Putin spoke about the economy, unemployment and the development of sports and tourism but he only needed to say one thing - that the law applies to everyone. Then I'd believe that he is sincerely striving for peace in the region. However, neither the Russian government, nor the Chechen authorities respect the law.