By Neil Hauer

January 17, 2019, the CACI Analyst

The ongoing dispute over the transfer of 10 percent of Ingushetia’s territory to Chechnya shows few signs of calming. Regional authorities, including the heads of both republics, have attempted to both assuage and intimidate the incensed Ingush population with little success. The current redrawing of regional borders, unprecedented in the post-Soviet period, threatens to aggravate similar grievances across the region, while raising questions about the sustainability of its current political structure. Ramzan Kadyrov’s willingness to continue expanding his influence at the cost of his neighbors also serves as an ominous portent for regional stability.

By Emil A. Souleimanov and Huseyn Aliyev

December 20, 2018, the CACI Analyst

On September 26, the heads of Ingushetia and Chechnya, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Ramzan Kadyrov, signed an agreement on a proposed land swap between the two Northeast Caucasian republics. While the Chechen public welcomed the plan, which was kept secret until it was signed, the agreement sparked unprecedented protests in Ingushetia. Several thousand Ingush protesters in the republic’s capital Magas have found sympathy from both Ingush siloviki and the public in their resistance to the deal. With bottom-up opposition to the land swap spreading in Ingushetia, this “Maidan” in Russia’s geographically and demographically smallest republic may have far-reaching implications not only for Ingushetia and Chechnya, but also for the rest of the Russian Federation.

 By Huseyn Aliyev

October 2, 2018, the CACI Analyst

On May 27, Ingushetia’s Muftiate (The Muslim Spiritual Center of Ingushetia) excommunicated Yunus-bek Yevkurov, head of the autonomous republic in Russia’s North Caucasus. According to the head of the Muftiate, Isa Khamkhoev, the excommunication implies that Yevkurov is no longer a Muslim and is not allowed to participate in wedding and funeral ceremonies or other Muslim events in the republic. The Muftiate motivated its decision with Yevkurov’s persecution of the religious community, the illegal use of administrative resources to lobby against the Muftiate, and the use of security forces to seize land allocated for a mosque in the capital city Magas. Notwithstanding the excommunication, Yevkurov was reelected as the head of republic in the September 9 local elections. 

 By Huseyn Aliyev

October 11, 2017, the CACI Analyst

On August 23, for first time in over a year, local authorities performed a counter-terrorist operation in the North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia. Local sources report that security forces killed three suspected Islamist militants, including the head of a local militant jama’at (community) during the operation. The armed confrontation between local security forces and Islamist militants was the eight such incident since the beginning of 2017. The Ingush insurgency has been in steep decline over the past seven years. Therefore, this unexpected rise in conflict-related violence in Ingushetia is a worrying trend for local authorities, which have previously declared repeatedly that the Islamist insurgency in the republic is no longer active.

By Emil Aslan Souleimanov

October 6th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

The North Caucasus insurgency has weakened dramatically in recent years. While Chechnya-based jihadist groups now number a few dozen fighters, jamaats operating in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay have been nearly wrecked. In Ingushetia, a few insurgent groups remain numbering a couple of dozen members. In Dagestan, the epicenter of the regional insurgents, several jamaats have survived and number around a hundred active members. Indicative of the unprecedented weakening of the North Caucasus insurgency is the jihadists’ inability to elect an amir of the Caucasus Emirate: since the liquidation of the last amir Magomed Suleimanov in mid-August 2015, the jihadist resistance has been beheaded as it lacks a formal leadership. Yet has the regional insurgency indeed been defeated?