By Tomas Šmíd (the 30/10/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Chechnya’s economy has been struggling with long-term problems, which have had a significant and visible impact on standards of living in the republic. Post-war reconstruction of the economy is far from accomplished and development is still hindered by an enormous level of unemployment. This provides a ground for both emigration and open sympathies with the opposition, which is currently represented by the radical Islamist wing alone. The Chechen government itself endeavors to spur some sectors of the economy, e.g. the tourist industry; however any major progress can hardly be expected without the implementation of significant political-economic reforms, and above all, an improvement of civic freedoms.

By Bakhtiyar Aslanov (the 30/10/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Since the 1994 cease-fire agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia, negotiations between the parties have been overseen by the OSCE Minsk Group without any particular success towards peaceful solution. After the deadlock in peace negotiations over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 2011, Azerbaijan and Armenia both accelerated their stockpiling of arms and intensified their public rhetoric of preparing for a new war.

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By Valeriy Dzutsev (the 16/10/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)

The exclusion of North Caucasians from the pool of conscripts to the Russian military signifies steady a plummeting of the single national identity in the Russian Federation. As the insurgency warfare drags on in the North Caucasus, the Russian military is increasingly unwilling to draft ethnic non-Russians from the North Caucasus. Apart from security concerns, the government is wary of constant clashes between the North Caucasians and ethnic Russians in the army. The separation of the North Caucasians from the civil duty, mandated by the state, further increases the divide between ethnic Russians and North Caucasians.

131002Analyst.pdf