An Empire’s Fraying Edge

The Economist has a great article on Russia’s quagmire in Chechnya and the spreading violence that is overtaking the entire region. I’d recommend reading the article, but a few choice segments are included below.

Devilishly complex ethnic divisions, within and between republics; ancient but persistent grudges; a Babel of languages; clan-based sub-rivalries; war with Russia, from the tsars to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s current president: such is the historical inheritance of the north Caucasus. Perhaps the most influential tragedy occurred during the second world war. A teacher in Zilgi, a predominantly Muslim village outside Beslan, says that, after the school siege, when her pupils ask her the eternal Russian question””?who is to blame?””?she gives a one-word answer: Stalin.

To live with this legacy””?and to make the most of the powers conferred on Russia’s autonomous republics by the Soviets, which they kept when the Soviet Union collapsed””?the region needs strong, independent leaders. Instead it has communist relics, and ruling clans that monopolise local industry. As in the rest of Russia, business and politics are corrosively intertwined, and corruption is rampant.

While the US seems to be winning the war on terror, Russia’s mess in the northern Caucasus region is getting progressively worse.

The big risk is simply that more and more of the north Caucasus may slip into lawlessness and drift out of Moscow’s orbit. After his meddling in Ukraine, pundits talked of Mr Putin’s plans to reconstitute the Russian empire. But, in a sense, Russia is already its own empire. The possibility that it may one day crumble as the Soviet Union did is Mr Putin’s central fear. The neglect of the north Caucasus may eventually lead to that fear’s realisation.

And with a declining population, widespread alcohol and drug problems, and a messy mix of autocracy and oligarchy that reveals capitalism at its worst, the worst in Chechnya, and in Russia, has yet to come.