By Paul Goble
United Press International
VIENNA -- Setting up local armed militias to support the work of the authorities highlights the weakness of state power in the Russian Federation and simultaneously threatens both the existing state system and the territorial integrity of the country.
According to Sergei Markedonov, a specialist on ethnic affairs at the Moscow Institute of Political and Military Analysis, local officials who set up "druzhinniki" are dangerously mistaken in believing that these groups of armed citizens will strengthen the state and its institutions.
Several ethnically Russian regions have taken this step in recent months, but Markedonov's comments came following an announcement two weeks ago by Sergei Arenin, the interior minister of North Osetia, that his republic has already set up "druzhinniki" in the capital city and plans to create more.
According to RIA Novosti news agency on Sept. 12, Arenin said that the creation of such groups will not only help the government protect key institutions but also give citizens who possess weapons the opportunity to register them with the authorities. And he added that he believes that in his republic, "the more druzhinniki [we have], the better."
In his discussion of Arenin's plans, Markedonov suggests that the "druzhinniki" Mozdok is establishing will not strengthen the position of the authorities but rather instead highlight and exacerbate their weaknesses. And as a result, this move will not calm ethnic tensions there and in the region but rather make those conflicts more violent.
Officials in North Osetia should understand all this on the basis of their own experience, Markedonov continues, because this is not the first attempt by the authorities there to make use armed popular groups in the name of promoting North Osetian interests.
The first of these came at late 1991 -- early 1992. At that time, officials and local activists worked to create what they called "detachments of self-defense" in the Ingush villages of the Prigorodniy rayon. The result? An armed conflict between Osetians and Ingush in which 583 people died, 939 were wounded, and 40,000 were forced to flee.
Given the dangers involved of arming the population during periods of political and social instability, Markedonov says, it is striking that no one in Moscow or in the apparatus of the force structures subordinate to the Southern Federal District has denounced Arenin's plans or taken any steps to stop them.
Their inaction is all the more striking given that officials in neighboring republics of the north Caucasus have reacted negatively. Musa Aliyev, the deputy minister of internal affairs of Ingushetia, for example, described Arsenin's ideas as of "doubtful" value.
What Arsenin is doing may be especially dangerous given the tinderbox quality of the north Caucasus. But unfortunately, Markedonov notes, it is far from unique. Astrakhan Gov. Sergei Zhilkin has called for the creation of similar "druzhinniki" in his area, as have government leaders in Stavropol, Krasnodar, and the Kuban.
In the last of these places, armed "druzhinniki" are already playing a role in the operation of the notorious filtration camps where "undesirable" arrivals are detained. And Markedonov reports, there are ever more "demands to arm the Cossacks and give them the right to protect law and order -- above all, against outsiders."
The immediate consequences of such steps, Markedonov, will be more clashes among the ethnic groups in this region, but over the longer term, the impact of these "druzhinniki" could be more serious because the existence of such groups will convince ever more people that neither the local authorities nor Moscow can defend them.
And those who reach this conclusion will thus become ever more inclined to "arm themselves, to defend their own population and lands, thereby undermining the unity of [the country's] legal s pace and creating the conditions for the flourishing of illegal armed formations."
No one should be under any illusion that this dangerous trend can be stopped without Moscow's intervention, Markedonov argues -- or that it may not be fatal for the state, noting that "similar mass arming of the population in Karabakh, Abkhazia and Transdniestria took place at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union."
Law enforcement then and now, Markedonov points out, "cannot be a subject of the creativity of the masses" because if that happens, people "at first not believing in the militia, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the army will begin to defend themselves." And after that, they will begin to redefine the territory worth defending as less than the country as a whole.
If armed patrols of the citizenry spread in Ingushetia, this process is likely to jump over quickly to adjoining Russian regions where Cossacks will be allowed to conduct "purges" of non-Russian groups, something that officials in Moscow ought to understand, given what happened only 15 years ago.
But so far, Markedonov concludes, those in the central Russian government do not appear to be aware of just how dangerous all this is, and as a result, they are acting or rather not acting in ways that may push the Russian Federation as a whole "along the path of self-destruction."
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