LA BASE Y EL ENTORNO

From early 1990 the small Ingush people, joined with the Chechens in the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic, had been moving towards a break with the Chechens - despite the fact that the Chechens and Ingush are very close ethnically and linguistically; in fact most of the time their languages are mutually intelligible, and there are suggestions that Dudayev's own clan may be of Ingush origin. They also share the Muslim religion, though the Ingush are much less committed as Muslims than the Chechens, for reasons that will be explored in part III.

Although the political movement founded by General Dudayev in 1991 called itself the Vainakh Party, a name which covers both Chechen and Ingush, in fact from the very beginning of the Chechen national movement there was little attempt to appeal to the Ingush in terms of either interest or sentiment.

No Ingush were present at the founding meeting of the Chechen National Congress in November 1990, and no Ingush leaders took part in the national revolution in Grozny in August-November 1991. The Ingush did not partici-pate in the Chechen elections or the referendum on independence. In November 1991 they declared a republic of their own separate from the Chechens, and the next year a Soviet general (but a very different one from Dudayev), Ruslan Aushev, was elected President. The details of the border between the two republics remain undefined.

Most of the central reasons for the Ingush-Chechen split were summed up in an interview I had in February 1992 with Magomed Mamilov, a former col-lective farm chief, and now Deputy Chaiman of the Ingush People's Council.

He stressed in particular the critical issue of the lands to Ossctia when the Ingush were deported in 1944, and never returned (the Prigorodny District).

It is difficult at this moment to say whether a Chechen-Ingush Republic still exists, or what our status is. There is certainly no question of our joining an independent Chechen-Ingushetia. We have had discussions with Dudayev, and he has said that he wants a united Vainakh state, inde-pendent of Russia, but that he will not try to force us into this against our will. But we told him that for us, until our territory is returned, no other question has any importance, and we won't take part in any other long-term plans. Besides, we regard the %ltsin government as our ally in this.

We have had several discussions with Yeltsin, and he has promised us that Ingushetia will be returned to its borders of 1944...

This is all-important to us. %u probably don't know this, but the Russian name 'Ingush', by which we are now known in the world, comes

from a village called Angusht. Our own name for ourselves is Ghalghi.

And this village Angusht is now not in our territory, but thanks to 1944, is in Ossetia! My own family's home was in Ordzhonikidze [Vladikavkaz]. After we were deported, they destroyed it, and built a block of flats there. And now, they not only refuse to return us our land, they won't even give us one flat in that block! In any case, in my personal opinion, an independent Vainakh Republic outside Russia is simply not possible. And in the referendum we organised on November 30, 92 per cent of Ingush also voted against this, and for autonomy within Russia. Historical experience shows that completely indepen-dent tiny states cannot exist, especially if they are surrounded by some-one else's territory. So we should remain in the Russian Federation, but with full autonomy and respect for our national rights and democracy...

Unlike the Chechens, we Ingush have always got on well with the Russians, though not always with the Cossacks, it's true. Also we have a calmer attitude to religion. We are good Muslims of course, but not fanatics... Some of us fought with Shamil, but ever since the 1770s, most have fought on the side of Russia. One of my own ancestors signed a treaty with Russia in 1776. Many of them became officers in the Russ-ian army, and even despite the Soviet repressions and deportation, we are now the core of the Ingush national intelligentsia. We are also pre-sent in Moscow. There are only about 6-7,000 Ingush there, but we are playing an important role, and you will see that we will be more and more prominent in future. My cousin is already a powerful businessman there, and a multimillionaire. He is a great supporter of Ingush culture.

We are planning our own television channel and other developments of our state. Perhaps we could make it a free trade zone and the economic centre of the whole region... The problem about the Chechens is that they are in too much of a hurry. They want to rush us into dangers with-out thinking properly, and we don't like that.

In part, Chechen-Ingush alienation therefore was due to history: although both peoples were deported together to Central Asia in 1944, an enduring feeling remained among the Chechens that the Ingush had betrayed them by siding with the Russians in the nineteenth century, while the Ingush have always resented what they see as Chechen arrogance towards them, an arro-gance abundantly demonstrated in recent years.2'

This Ossete-Ingush territorial dispute is one of those Caucasian conflicts which gives some support to Russians who argue that given the way ethnic populations are mixed up together, only a quasi-imperial state is capable of maintaining any kind of peace and order in the region. Traditionally, the Ingush and Ossete populations across much of what is today North Ossetia lived in separate villages but not in distinct areas, as was also true of the Ossetes and Georgians in the mountains to the south.

Following the introduction of Soviet rule, the area went through a whole

series of different administrative configurations, reflecting the impossibility of reaching any generally satisfactory arrangement. First both Ingush and Ossetes formed part of the Mountain Autonomous Republic; then between 1924 and 1934 they had separate units, but shared Vladikavkaz (renamed Ordzhonikidze in the 1930s, and today the capital of North Ossetia), with the Ingush on the right bank of the Terek River, in the ethnically mixed Prigorodny District, and the Ossetes on the left bank. In 1934, the Ingush were joined with the Chechens in one autonomous republic, and they were deported together to Central Asia in 1944.

When the Ingush returned from exile after 1957 they were once again put together with the Chechens. The Prigorodny District, making up almost half of what had been Ingush territory, remained in North Ossetia, however, though some 35,000 Ingush were eventually able to return to their homes there. As with Armenia and Karabakh, as soon as Gorbachev's perestroika allowed a measure of democratic politics, the 'return' of the district to Ingushetia became the central and defining question in Ingush politics, and one which made Russian goodwill a necessity.

The more the Ingush agitated over the issue, the more embittered was the reaction from the Ossetes and the local Russian Cossacks, who had also profited from the transfer of Ingush land, but who claimed that this was in fact the land of White Cossacks confiscated by the Soviet state as a punishment after the Civil War. The Ingush reply that this was originally Ingush land given to the Cossacks by the Russian empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-turies - and so on. Clashes between Ingush and Cossacks escalated after an incident at the end of 1991 when a local Cossack Ataman and several of his men were killed in a fight with Ingush youths - according to the Ingush, because he had staggered drunk out of a wedding party and relieved himself in front of some of their womenfolk.

Meanwhile North Ossetia had its own problems, since it had had to absorb up to 100,000 southern Ossete refugees from the war in the Georgian region of South Ossetia, and argued with some reason that it could not afford to sur-render any land.

The Ingush movement faced Moscow with a dilemma. On the one hand, the Ossetes have always been Russia's most loyal ally in the Caucasus; they are closely allied with the local Russian Cossacks; they provided a disproportion-ate number of officers, and especially senior officers to the Soviet army (and claim to have won more decorations as Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest Soviet award for valour, proportionate to their numbers than any other Soviet people); the southern Ossete revolt had played a major part in defeating Georgian national ambitions; and there was great sympathy in Moscow for North Ossetia's problems with its huge numbers of refugees. On the other hand, Moscow was very anxious to split the Ingush from the Chechens, and thereby weaken the separatist forces of General Dudayev. In addition, Presi-dent Boris Yeltsin's authority in 1992 was still rather weak. As a result, the Russian government sat on the fence until events on the ground forced its

hand; for more than a year in 1991-2, the Yeltsin administration tried to bal-ance between the Ossetes and Ingush.

After an escalating series of clashes, the apparently accidental killing of an Ingush girl by an Ossete police armoured personnel carrier on 20 October 1992 sparked off an Ingush revolt in the Prigorodny District and large-scale fighting. The Ingush villages of the District declared themselves part of Ingushetia and barricaded themselves against the Ossete police, paramili-taries and Cossacks. Both sides were revealed to have accumulated large quantities of arms. Ingush forces crossed the border from Ingushetia, dozens of people were killed on both sides and several villages were 'ethnically cleansed'. By the time the heavy fighting was ended by Russia several weeks later, 261 people had been killed, with the reported numbers almost equally divided between Ossetes and Ingush. However, some 800 people had also disappeared, and though in some cases these were prisoners who were later exchanged, others disappeared for good and a majority of these were Ingush.

Twelve Russian soldiers also died.

On 31 October, Moscow despatched some 3,000 Interior Ministry troops and paratroopers to the area. What happened next is a matter of bitter dispute.

The Russian authorities say that they merely separated the two sides, and point out that to this day, Russian troops are protecting some 3,000 remaining Ingush in the Prigorodny District. The Ingush say that the Russian troops simply drew a line against the Ingush forces along the existing border between Ossetia and Ingushetia, and thereby either passively or in some cases actively helped the Ossetes. As a result, some 31,000 Ingush were driven from the Prigorodny District, nine-tenths of its Ingush population and a vast burden on the small population of Ingushetia, only 160,000 before the refugee influx.

A few Russian soldiers have admitted that in some cases they were ordered to stand by without acting while Ossetes attacked Ingush settlements. In other cases, however, they did help the Ingush, and in April 1993 the second Russian emergency administrator, Vladimir Lozovoi, was wounded while try-ing to release Ingush hostages captured by the Ossetes. The first, Vladimir Polyanichko, had been killed by unknown assailants in November 1992. On 2 November 1992, after eighty Russian soldiers were taken hostage by the Ingush, Moscow declared a state of emergency in the area. As of 1997, the situation on the Ingush-Ossetes border had now been relatively calm for some two years, though with occasional clashes, and although a few miles away in 1995 and 1996, Ingush villages were intermittently bombarded or harassed by Russian troops as part of the overspill from their war in Chechnya.

In the end, therefore, Ingushetia has been an example of how even in the most violent situations, Moscow will usually maintain its control over much of the North Caucasus through the Caucasians' own feuds and conflicting ambi-tions. The Ingush-Ossete conflict is also, however, an example of how in certain circumstances, the region's own bitter disputes can escape from Moscow's control and force a crisis against Moscow's will.24