Analytical Articles

On November 9, the Kavkaz-Tsentr website posted a video entitled “Address of Chechens Living Abroad to Organizers of fitnaht al-mujahedin”, showing unidentified people, one of whom was speaking in Chechen. He delivered a message connected to the recent split among Chechen rebels and the renunciation of the bayat (oaths of allegiance) to North Caucasus rebel leader Doku Umarov by rebel leaders in Chechnya. This video has been interpreted as signaling that Chechens abroad have aligned with Umarov and the jihadi faction in opposition to the national faction in the recent rift between the two parties. However, the long-term influence of Chechens settled in Europe on the conflict is likely to assume quite a different form.

Russia’s growing alienation and isolation from Europe’s NATO-dominated security order was evident when President Dmitry Medvedev delivered a speech in June 2008 proposing a restructuring of Europe’s security architecture. In place of “a bloc politics approach that continues by inertia,” the Russian President raised the idea of convening a summit of European governments to draft a new legally binding European security treaty that would establish equal and indivisible security throughout the continent. At the recently completed Astana OSCE summit, Medvedev acknowledged that his efforts to restructure Europe’s security order had failed. Russian security efforts are now focused on enhancing the role of the Collective Security Treaty Organization in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The unsettled legal status of the Caspian Sea has put brakes on the construction of undersea pipelines. Last month the third summit of all five littoral countries at the head-of-state level took place in Baku. Not only did Turkmenistan for the first time declare that undersea pipelines could be built without the approval of all littoral states, opening the way for such a pipeline to Azerbaijan. Also, Iran expanded its claim beyond the 20 percent of the Caspian Sea upon which it has heretofore insisted, yet without saying how far beyond or upon what justification. The others in attendance took the new claim as an attempt to sabotage the possibility of any agreement whatsoever.

The OSCE summit in Astana on December 1-2 concluded Kazakhstan's OSCE chairmanship and was designed to finalize the results of the year-long foray to reinvigorate this Euro-Atlantic body. Many international experts including Kazakhstan’s policy makers have been divided over the evaluation of the goals and outcomes. One group believes that the main goal of Kazakhstan’s diplomacy at the OSCE was to focus on the regional security issues and to reconfigure the security architecture in the region, making sure that Central Asia is not marginalized in the European security strategy. The other group believes that Kazakhstan’s main goal was no more than placing the country on the international map as an outspoken and visible player.

The situation in Dagestan is becoming increasingly grim. Russia’s leadership has started to complain about President Magomedsalam Magomedov’s failure to jump-start the republic’s economy; meanwhile, Magomedov blames local security services for their failure to provide a favourable investment climate by stabilizing the security situation in Dagestan. Amid this latest round of finger-pointing, Magomedov has set forth a controversial proposal that would see volunteer militias, comprised of native Dagestanis, tasked with tackling the rebel organization in the republic. However, the social conditions in Dagestan and the Kremlin’s limited patience with Magomedov suggest such a replication of Kadyrov’s counter-terrorism tactics will be difficult to implement.

During the December 1-2 OSCE summit held in Astana, a separate document about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was adopted, which largely expressed the OSCE’s ambition to maintain the status quo in the conflict and prevent the situation from deteriorating further. This implies that Nagorno-Karabakh is considered the most serious conflict on the OSCE’s territory. However, the Azerbaijani and Armenian positions voiced during the summit reconfirmed that the OSCE’s ambitions for conflict resolution do not match its capabilities. The positions of the conflicting parties remain far apart; underscoring the risk that Nagorno-Karabakh may not only remain an unresolved conflict, but may see a future return to military violence.

A recent series of statements and concrete actions by leaders from Ashgabat shows a clear willingness and desire to implement the “European direction” as a component of the country’s international gas export policy. Technical obstacles are mainly solved, and the only remaining political obstacle appears to be Europe’s difficulty in concentrating its attention to take the necessary steps from its own side. The last chance for this seemingly will begin to expire early next year.

Azerbaijan’s recent parliamentary elections once again highlighted the economic factor in the country’s domestic politics. In an era of rapid economic growth, the opposition finds it very hard to compete with the ruling party. At the same time, the latest elections showed the changing dynamics within the ruling party. Compared with previous elections, The Yeni Azerbaijan Party spoke with a more unified voice and fewer party members dared to run against each other, as had been the case in 2005.

On September 14, 2010, the Romanian, Azerbaijani and Georgian presidents and the prime minister of Hungary signed the Baku Declaration on the implementation of the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector (AGRI) energy project. This project, which is expected to transport liquefied natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe via the Black Sea, has received little media coverage, and was almost entirely absent at some important events on energy issues such as the 2010 Baku Caspian Oil and Gas Conference. Experts have been skeptical about the chances of carrying out the AGRI project, which was initially interpreted as a means for Baku to exert pressure on Ankara during a difficult period in Azerbaijani-Turkish relations.

On the morning of October 19, as Russia’s Minister of Internal Affairs was preparing to meet Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov at the Parliament building in the Chechen capital of Grozny, militants stormed the Parliament compound with assault rifles, RPGs, and suicide vests in an attack that left six killed and seventeen others wounded. This bold assault on one of the region’s most significant government institutions was the product of a developing schism within the region’s insurgency, which, rather than weakening the insurgent movement, foreshadows a new challenge for a government that appears to have few ideas for addressing the longstanding problem of violence in the North Caucasus.