Britannia Radio

TELEGRAPH 2.9.08
Russia faces new Caucasus uprising in Ingushetia
Russia has been forced to increase its military presence in the North
Caucasus amid growing fears that the Kremlin could face the type of
separatist rebellion it has long supported in neighbouring Georgia.

By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow

Over 1,000 people staged a rare anti-government rally in the semi-
autonomous republic of Ingushetia, arguably the most volatile spot in
the troubled region, after a prominent activist journalist was shot
dead while in police custody at the weekend.

The death of Magomed Yevloyev, an outspoken Kremlin critic, is the
latest, but perhaps most significant, incident in a surge of violence
that has gripped the republics of the North Caucasus since Russia
sent its troops into Georgia.

Separatist militants linked to a low-level Islamist insurgency have
launched attacks against state officials in Ingushetia, Dagestan and
Kabardino-Balkaria over the past three days, while Chechnya saw its
first suicide bombing in three years. A Russian soldier and a
civilian were killed in the attack.

The escalation comes amid growing signs of local anger that while
Russia has backed the right of self-determination for the Georgian
breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Ingushetia, separatism in the
Russian Caucasus has been brutally crushed.

But it is Ingushetia, where the population has long been at odds with
its Ossetian neighbours, that is prompting the greatest concern among
observers and western diplomats.

Russian opposition newspapers have claimed that up to 1,200 Ingush
police officers have resigned their jobs in protest at the war in
South Ossetia, creating a power vacuum that could allow the
insurgency to flourish.

Anger has particularly grown since Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian
president, recognised the independence of South Ossetia last week.
Many Ingush fear that could lead to the unification of South Ossetia,
which lies in Georgia, and North Ossetia, which lies in Russia.

Ingushetia and North Ossetia fought a brief war in 1992, which
claimed some 600 lives, over control of a slither of territory called
Prigorodny which had come under Ossetian occupation after Stalin
deported the entire Ingush population in 1944.

Regional experts say that a desire for separatism is now spreading
from radical insurgents to Ingushetia's more moderate underground
opposition.
Mr Yevloyev's death could act as a catalyst for opposition against
regional head Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB officer and close ally of
Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister.

The journalist, who was also one of Ingushetia's best known
opposition figures, was arrested at an airport near the Ingush
capital Nazran. Shortly after his detention, his body, bearing a
single bullet wound to the temple, was thrown out of a police car.

Ingush officials passed off the death as an accident, but the angry
reaction from opposition activists suggested not all believed that -
especially as Mr Zyazikov had been on the same flight as the dead
journalist.

Human rights activists have accused My Zyazikov's administration,
seen by Ingush hardliners as a puppet of the Kremlin, of seeking to
crush the insurgency through a mixture of abductions and extra-
judicial executions.

According to the Caucasus Times, Mr Yevloyev had just begun preparing
a petition to call for Ingushetia's independence.

For the first time yesterday, moderate opposition figures in the
republic said they believe, in light of their colleague's death,
secession from Russia was the only option left for Ingushetia.

"We must ask Europe or America to separate us from Russia," said
Magomed Khazbiyev, an opposition activist who has led a campaign
demanding Mr Zyazivkov's resignation.

That call was echoed by another unrecognized group, the People's
Parliament of Ingushetia Mekhk-Kkhel