profile assassinations in the mainly Muslim provinces of southern Russia is forcing the region back up the Kremlin's agenda. Moscow has claimed a success in returning stability to Chechnya under former rebel Ramzan Kadyrov after two wars, though rights activists say this came at a heavy human price. But analysts say growing violence in neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia has highlighted the danger of the Kremlin's policy of handing control to local elites to try to stem unrest. On Tuesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev flew with his top national security officials to Dagestan for a special meeting, days after the region's interior minister was shot dead by a sniper in a brazen daylight attack. “This is a cynical challenge to the authorities, to the state,” said Medvedev. “Despite our achievements the situation remains difficult”. Demonstrating just how difficult, suspected rebels shot dead two policemen and laid siege to a police station in a series of attacks in Dagestan just hours after Medvedev spoke. “This spring the situation has got worse in Dagestan, in Chechnya and in Ingushetia,” said Alexei Malashenko, an expert on the region with the US-funded Moscow Carnegie Centre. “The Kremlin's system is simply not working”. Poverty, unemployment and corruption remain chronic problems across the North Caucasus, as they have since the Soviet collapse. But the influence of Islamist rebels in the region's republics varies greatly, a dynamic that appears to depend on the leaders selected as Kremlin proxies. Malashenko said the Kremlin made a decision at the end of the second Chechen war to effectively contract out the running of the ethnically diverse regions. If local leaders could provide relative peace and stability, the Kremlin would give them a free hand. But the success of Kremlin appointees has varied massively with Kadyrov achieving the most dramatic transformation. Residents in Chechnya's showpiece capital Grozny, once too scared to leave their apartments after nightfall, have found themselves in one of the most stable cities in the region. A wave of construction, generously funded from Moscow, has removed the scars of war from the city's buildings and created a marble-clad facade of normality. Local police boast no terror attacks were registered last year and in April the Kremlin agreed to lift security restrictions that were clamped on the province for a decade. But rights groups say the trouble simply moved out of sight, with government-backed agents using covert violence against the families of suspected rebels and detaining regime critics. The relative calm was shattered last month when a suicide bomber outside the interior ministry building in Grozny killed two officers. Commentators say the Kremlin is nervous that it has allowed Kadyrov to accumulate too much power amid the mass withdrawal of Russian servicemen. They are also worried that Kadryov has launched a drive to Islamize Chechnya, with unpredictable long-term consequences. “They don't know what to do with Ingushetia and Dagestan,” said Moscow-based commentator Yulia Latynina, an expert on the region. “They are afraid of creating another Kadyrov.” The Kremlin in October dismissed the unpopular president of Ingushetia, one of Russia's smallest and poorest regions, after a surge of violence. But his replacement, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, has failed to stem the bloodshed. On Wednesday a senior judge was shot dead in Ingushetia, 18 months after her predecessor was also shot. A study by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shows Ingushetia has had the highest level of violence in the past year in the north Caucasus. Dagestan, the largest and most ethnically diverse of the three regions with a population of over 2.5 million, is causing serious concern. The level of violence in the region has also eclipsed that of Chechnya in recent months, the CSIS said. President Mukhu Aliyev, a popular choice when appointed in 2006, has proved a weak leader, allowing Islamists to step into the power vacuum, said Oslo-based International Peace Research Institute analyst Pavel Baev. The Kremlin, largely preoccupied with the financial crisis and relieved that the violence is not spreading elsewhere, seems willing to leave the leaders to their own devices. “The federal center has convinced itself that the Chechen war is over, that the threat from the region has fallen to the degree that it is now localized” said Baev. “But instability is growing.” It could take a major attack in Moscow, he said, to force them to take the region seriously again.
