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Dagestani violence underlines Caspian
volatility
By Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW - Political violence in the Russian
internal republic of Dagestan returned with a vengeance
on August 27 when Magomed-Salikh Gusayev, regional
minister for national policy, information and external
relations, was killed in an explosion caused by a
magnetic bomb placed on the roof of white sedan in
Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan.
Continued
violence in the mainly Muslim Dagestan highlights
volatility in the oil-rich Caspian Sea region. Gusayev's
demise came as the latest in a series of political
assassinations there. On August 11, a vehicle carrying
Nadirshakh Khachilayev, 44, was strafed with bullets in
Makhachkala. Only 10 minutes before Nadirshah's death,
Major Tahir Abdullayev, an officer at Dagestan's
anti-terrorism unit, was assassinated in Makhachkala.
Nadirshah's political career has been linked to
Chechnya, where he successfully brokered a peace deal to
end the first Chechen war in 1996. The same year,
Nadirshah was elected to the Russian State Duma and
became the head of Russia's Union of Muslims. He moved
to cultivate his image by meeting up with Colonel
Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and invited Louis Farrakhan,
head of the controversial Nation of Islam, to visit
Dagestan. His brother, Magomed, was a head of the
Dagestani Fisheries Company, which controlled the
lucrative trade in Caspian caviar and sturgeon.
Nadirshah opposed the re-election of Dagestani
leader Magomedali Magomedov in March 1998. Two months
later, the two brothers and hundreds of their armed
supporters briefly seized government buildings in
Makhachkala and demanded the resignation of Dagestan's
leadership. They were persuaded to back down, and in
September 1998 Nadirshah was stripped of his seat in the
Russian parliament and went into hiding in Chechnya.
Chechen separatist rebels invaded Dagestan in
August 1999, allegedly with Nadirshah's help, prompting
the Kremlin to send Russian forces back into Chechnya to
fight the second Chechen war. "Russian generals must not
meddle in Dagestan's internal struggles ... " warned
Khachilayev, who was a leader of the non-official
Russian Union of Muslims.
Subsequently, his
brother Magomed was detained, and a year later Nadirshah
himself was arrested in Moscow. Both were freed in early
2000, but Magomed was shot dead in November the same
year.
Dagestani opposition, including ethnic
Laks and Chechens, have land disputes with the Avars and
the Dargins, the republic's largest nations. Khachilayev
has demanded more positions for the Laks in the
Dagestani administration and accuses other ethnic
groups, the Avars and the Dargins, of controlling the
republic's government.
Dagestan, made up of more
than 30 ethnic groups in the Caucasus mountains and
steppes along the Caspian Sea, has been the scene of
increasing border violence with Chechnya in recent
months. With a population just above 2 million people,
Dagestan is one the most ethnically diverse territories
of Russia. It is homeland for over 36 different
nationalities, each one of them with its own language.
It has been argued that the current volatility
has deep social roots in blatant inequality and
deprivation of most Dagestanis. According to some
estimates, about 20 percent of the republic's population
control 85 percent of Dagestan's wealth, while the rest
live in desperate poverty, even by Russia's low
standards. More than 80 percent of young Dagestanis are
unemployed, providing potential recruits for the
militant opposition.
Dagestan's political
violence resurfaces against the backdrop of a dynastic
transfer of power taking place in the neighboring - and
oil-rich - former Soviet state of Azerbaijan. On August
4, Azerbaijan's parliament named ailing President Heidar
Aliyev's son Ilham Aliyev, 42, as prime minister, a move
that could soon make him acting and then actual
country's leader.
Both Alievs are on the ballot
for October's election, but Ilham Aliev says that he
registered as a candidate only to assist in the campaign
of his 80-year-old father, who has been hospitalized in
Turkey and then in Cleveland since July 8.
In
2002, a referendum approved constitutional amendments,
stipulating that the prime minister becomes acting
president if the president is incapacitated or resigns.
Those amendments were opposed by the opposition as
allegedly designed to catapult Ilham Aliyev to power. If
completed, Azerbaijan's dynastic transfer of power would
be the first among former Soviet states so far.
A political transition looms in Azerbaijan at a
time when the country is balancing between the United
States and Russia in a "big game" over Caspian energy
riches. In recent years, Aliyev has strengthened ties
with the US, while at the same time managing to maintain
a relatively friendly relationship with Moscow.
Azerbaijan has invested considerable hope and
credibility in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline,
which would bypass Russia on a 1,760 kilometer course
from the Azerbaijani capital through Georgia to a
Turkish port in the Mediterranean. Moscow has also been
wary of Azerbaijan's perceived intention to build closer
ties with NATO, because Dagestan and Azerbaijan share a
poorly guarded border.
Meanwhile, the BTC
project has recently been dealt a psychological blow. On
August 7, oil companies Total SA and ConocoPhillips
refused to provide a bridging loan to Azerbaijan's state
oil company Socar for work on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
oil pipeline. Other members of the BTC consortium had
agreed to fund Socar's contribution until loans from
international financial institutions arrive later in the
year.
Socar needs to contribute some US$180
million to the BTC consortium, which is building the
pipeline. The total cost of the project is estimated at
$3 billion. BTC's shareholders are to fund 30 percent of
construction, with the remainder coming from debt. BTC's
shareholders are BP Plc 30.1 percent; SOCAR 25 percent;
Unocal Corp 8.9 percent; Statoil ASA 8.71 percent; TPAO
6.53 percent; ENI, Total - both 5 percent; Itochu (3.4
percent); Inpex 2.5 percent; Amerada Hess 2.36 percent
and ConocoPhillips 2.5 percent.
Obviously,
Dagestani-style political violence is the last thing
international investors would like to face in
Azerbaijan.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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