Author	Anna Matveeva
Publication	Searching for Peace in Europe and Eurasia - 2002
Year	2002

Summary

Dagestan is an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation, populated by over thirty distinct ethnic groups. Intergroup competition for power and resources makes conflict prevention the main preoccupation of the republican authorities. The multitude of different but interrelated conflicts constitutes the main constraint to conflict resolution. Spillover of instability from neighboring Chechnya, proliferation of radical Islamism, and violent crime contribute to the precarious security situation. While the involvement of international NGOs has been modest, Dagestani and Russian authorities have managed to sustain a fragile peace. Still, issues related to the conflicts remain unresolved and the regional security setting adversely affects peace prospects.

Dagestan, the largest of the North Caucasian autonomous republics of the Russian Federation, is situated on the western coast of the Caspian Sea. The republic's most distinct feature is its ethnic diversity: it is made up of a total of thirty-four ethnic groups of either Caucasian or Turkic origin. None of the ethnic groups constitutes a clear majority, or occupies a dominant position, although the main rivalry is between lowlanders and highlanders. The main groups include Avars (28 percent), Dargins (16 percent), Kumyks (12.9 percent), Lezgins (12.2 percent), Russians (6 percent), Laks (5 percent), Chechens (4.5 percent), Tabassarans (4.5 percent), Azerbaijanis (4.5 percent), and Nogais (2 percent). The majority are Sunni Muslims and the political culture remains highly conservative.

Interethnic tensions place a strain on Dagestan's social stability. There is competition over scarce lands between lowlanders and highlanders. Migration and the concomitant conversion of pasturelands to agricultural use threatens the lowlanders and their traditional economy and way of life. The Nogais and Kumyks are a shrinking minority in their homelands and have claimed that the ethnic group to which a territory historically belongs should be legally recognized as the owner of its land. In their turn, the mountain ethnic groups have argued that their original enforced migration was to lands that were depopulated, and which they invested effort in cultivating. In response the Dagestani constitutional court issued a decision that ethnic groups have no rights to own land or allocate its use, this being the responsibility of the state through the Peoples' Assembly (a republican parliament).

As a result, land tenure is a controversial issue, and is regarded through the prism of the various ethnic groups' claims rather than that of individual rights. The Dagestanis voted against land privatization in a referendum in 1992, fearing that the implementation of a successful land division would provoke interethnic tension (the region had no tradition of individual landownership). Conflicts over land assigned for the use of one ethnic group within the traditional area of another have already led to serious clashes.

Four groups living in the border areas of Dagestan—the Lezgins, the Russians, the Chechens, and the Nogais—have their ethnic kin across the border. Cross-border tensions often involve such separated minorities, especially in the first three cases, when the size of the groups is relatively large.

Some 250,000 Lezgins live in southern Dagestan while there are 177,000 in northern Azerbaijan. After the breakup of the USSR, when the border with Azerbaijan became international rather than administrative, Lezgins found themselves a divided people. The Lezgin issue is caught up in the uneasy relationship between Russia and Azerbaijan, which, unlike Dagestan, does not acknowledge that the division of the Lezgins by the international border presents a problem.

Azerbaijan's reluctance to join the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in 1992–1993 and its refusal to permit Russian border guards to police the Azerbaijani-Iranian border have contributed to a tightening of the Azerbaijani-Russian border regime. The situation was aggravated by the first war in Chechnya. The border with Azerbaijan was closed by Russia in December 1994, and controls and customs were introduced. The establishment of border controls came as a shock to the local population. In April 1996 the regime was relaxed and local residents, mainly Lezgins, were allowed to cross the border freely. After signing the Khasavyurt Accords, which ended the conflict with Chechnya, the Russian government opened the border and recruited local conscripts to serve as border troops. Since 1996 the Dagestani authorities have taken a more proactive approach, exchanging official visits with Azerbaijan, signing a Treaty on Friendship and Cooperation, and supporting efforts at border delimitation.

Tensions between Lezgins and Azeris began in 1992, but reached a peak in mid-1994, a time of heavy casualties on the Karabakh front and Lezgin resistance to conscription in the Azerbaijani army. Violent clashes occurred in Derbent, Dagestan, and in June in the Gussary region of Azerbaijan. In Dagestan in 1991 the Sadval political movement had called for the creation of an independent Lezgistan. The Dagestani authorities never supported this claim and it was officially rejected in April 1996 at the sixth congress of Sadval. However, the fear of assimilation as a result of what they saw as Azerbaijan's Turkic nationalist policies and the perception of a threat to their survival as a distinct community remained powerful. Unlike other Dagestani ethnic movements, Sadval and its splinter groups were not led by powerful individuals, and their direct political influence is limited. A Lezgin splinter group organized a meeting in Derbent in October 1998 to demand the creation of a Derbent autonomous region within the Russian Federation, but outside Dagestan.

Akki Chechens live in lowland Dagestan on the border with Chechnya and are estimated to number some 100,000, but many believe the actual numbers are higher. In 1944, they were deported to Central Asia along with other Chechens, and since their return have aspired to resettlement in their historical homelands in the Novolak and Khasavyurt region. These lands are now occupied by Laks and Avars who were forcibly resettled in these territories from the mountains. Tensions center around the disputed villages of Leninaul and Kalininaul and the question of resettlement of the Laks and Avars, should they be persuaded to move from the villages. These disputes have been recently overshadowed by Dagestani suspicions about where the Akki Chechens' loyalties lie.

Prior to the first Russian intervention in 1994, the attitude of the local Chechens and Dagestani population as a whole toward the Dudayev regime in Chechnya was largely negative; his independence claim was regarded as unrealistic, and the breakdown of law and order clearly obvious in a republic that was suffering from the disruption of railway traffic caused by frequent robberies in Chechnya. This attitude has changed since the beginning of Russian military intervention, when Dagestan accommodated the displaced Chechens. Some Dagestani young men volunteered to fight against Russia in Chechnya on religious grounds. As the fighting escalated, the war started to affect the border areas of Dagestan directly, and caused local resentment toward Russian federal troops.

The anti-Chechen feeling was provoked by the taking of 3,000 people hostage in 1996 in Kyzlyar by a group of Chechen fighters led by Salman Radyuev, but this was overshadowed by the brutality of the Russian retaliatory assault. In 1996 the influential Dagestanis facilitated the first meeting between Aslan Maskhadov, later to become president of Chechnya, and Alexandr Lebed, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, leading to the signing of the Khasavyurt Accords in August 1996 in Dagestan, ending the war. This, however, failed to bring peace dividends to Dagestan, since lawlessness in Chechnya produced more destabilization than did the straightforward conflict between the separatist republic and Russian federal power.

The Russians are a diminishing minority in Dagestan, with a steady pace of emigration to more ethnically homogeneous regions of the Russian Federation. There is no official pressure on Russians to leave, and measures are in fact taken to encourage them to stay. In reality, however, all the important economic and socially prestigious positions, as well as viable political appointments, are being filled by indigenous groups. Moreover, many Russians used to work in the numerous defense enterprises in the region, but with the collapse of heavy industry and a shift in economic activity to the trade and service sectors, many Russians have lost their jobs. Their ability to adapt to the new situation has also been restricted by the absence of extended family networks and lack of investment capital. Russians more readily consider emigration, as few have roots in the North Caucasian republics and some have places to return to in other parts of Russia.

The existence of criminal networks organized around ethnic affiliations is a distinct feature of Dagestani social culture. Local mafias are based on a core kinship group with a powerful, often young and ruthless individual in the center of it, surrounded by a group of supporters from whom he commands strict loyalty. Groups normally secured start-up capital from criminal activities, but gradually moved into other areas, including legitimate businesses. Presently, the North Caucasus rates highest in the Russian Federation for violent crime and terrorist acts. Political terrorism, assassination attempts, and kidnappings have become frequent occurrences in Dagestan. The death of sixty-nine people as a result of the bombing of an apartment block in Kaspiisk near Makhachkala in 1996 and about seventy in Buinaksk in 1999 were just the most publicized of many such acts of violence. Most of the acts of terrorism are not a direct result of the groups attempting to gain power in the republic, but rather violence among elites that is a part of a political bargaining process in Dagestan. The kidnapping of civilians has become a virtually unpunishable offense unless the victim's family can afford to embark on a vendetta, and hostages are freed without ransom only when local ethnic leaders intervene. Currently, since the beginning of the second Russian campaign in Chechnya, the situation regarding kidnappings has markedly improved.

Conflict Dynamics

While relations between Dagestan and Moscow have improved and the situation around the Lezgin community has de-escalated since 1996, and the morale of the Russians has improved with the commitment of the Putin government to protect their rights, the war in Chechnya and Islamic extremism remain extremely dangerous sources of potential conflict.

The Chechen-Dagestani border has been the scene of major tensions since the signing of the Khasavyurt Accords. After years of cross-border violence, looting, and kidnappings, Dagestanis' initial sympathy toward the Chechens during the first war has turned into fear and animosity. In August 1999, field commanders in opposition to President Maskhadov in Chechnya led an offensive by Chechen and Dagestani militants into the highlands of Dagestan. Their proclaimed goal was to establish government by Shari'a (Koranic) law in Dagestani territory and to end colonial rule by Russia. However, having suffered defeat in confrontation with detachments of Dagestani fighters and Russian federal troops, the militants retreated to Chechnya. A Russian assault in September on the Islamist strongholds in central Dagestan provoked a second wave of attacks from across the border. The September fighting resulted in another setback for the Chechen fighters.

Apart from religious zeal, there were more mundane reasons for the Chechen attacks. Unification with Dagestan—which has over 2 million citizens, access to the Caspian Sea, and a much longer border with Azerbaijan—would have created a new Chechen-Dagestani state with improved chances of surviving as an independent entity. The Russians would be denied the opportunity to cut the Chechen sector of the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline, excluding the republic from oil transit, since the bulk of it goes through Dagestan. The Chechen tactics have been to exploit three political tools: to use the Akki Chechens, their ethnic kin across the border, to start an anticolonial struggle against Russian domination, and to call for a holy war to create an Islamic state. Chechens, who themselves fought under the nationalist banner, have failed to realize that there is no anti-Russian separatism in Dagestan, but that, on the contrary, anti-Chechen sentiment is widespread. Far from attracting support, the Chechen attacks provoked fury among Dagestanis, who were quick to set up self-defense units and demand weapons. The authorities reluctantly accepted this. Ethnic "barons" led small, but decisive private forces who fought alongside the Russian federal troops. Thus the events in Dagestan together with bombing raids on the apartment blocks in Moscow led to the second Russian military intervention into Chechnya in October 1999.

As a result, when Russia's second military intervention in Chechnya started, Dagestan did not allow ethnic Chechen refugees to enter its territory, and agreed to only receive people of Dagestani ethnic groups fleeing Chechnya, such as the Nogais, Kumyks, and Avars. The refugees were screened because of a fear of infiltration. Reprisals have been carried out against the Akki Chechen community of Dagestan for their collaboration with Basayev and Khattab. Laks and Avars, who had been resettled in the villages of deported Chechens, and were intimidated throughout the 1990s by Chechen threats to expel them from their historical Chechen homeland, were particularly active. They also feared that the Chechens wanted these lands back in order to detach them from Dagestan and join them to Chechnya. Anti-Chechen sentiment has led to the expulsion of all Chechens who do not hold permanent residence permits and to the disarmament of Dagestani Chechen paramilitary groups.

Such developments were further aggravated by the rise of Islamism—an ideology aimed at gaining power to establish a system of government based on Islam—in Chechnya and Dagestan. Dagestan is one of the most religiously devout areas in the former Soviet Union and the birthplace of the Islamic Revival Party in 1990. In 1998 three settlements proclaimed an independent Islamic territory ruled by Shari'a law, where Dagestani (and Russian federal) laws were not applicable. Links with Chechen Islamist militants were established, and preparations made for a long struggle against the Russians and against secular Dagestanis. It was claimed by the Russian government that this was facilitated and financed by international agents of radical Islam. The Russian and Dagestani authorities tolerated the rebellious Islamic territory for a year, and probably would have continued their policy of accommodation but for the Chechen cross-border attack in August 1999. Irrespective of whether the Dagestani Islamists supported the Chechen guerrillas militarily, their political links were well known. The Islamists mounted ferocious resistance to the Russian advances, but suffered a defeat.

The second war in Chechnya was a serious setback for Islamism in Dagestan. The internal chaos in Chechnya is the worst advertisement for the Islamist cause, and a relatively stable Dagestan has little sympathy for the Islamists. The Islamists in Dagestan are more feared and hated than before, and are regarded as siding with the Chechen enemy, with the result that society is more openly split along religious lines. Traditional believers have a genuine hatred for the radicals, whom they view as enemies of stability. The Spiritual Board of Muslims of Dagestan, the official clerical institution, has undergone consolidation and leads the struggle against real or perceived Islamists.

The Islamist external links to the Middle East and to the wider radical Islamist movement are a further point of irritation. These links include a few hundred volunteers of Arab, Turkish, and Afghan origin who began arriving in Chechnya during the course of the first war and whose numbers have increased in Chechnya and Dagestan since. The authorities dubbed them "Wahhabis," although few of them are actual Wahhabis, who were followers of the teachings of the eighteenth-century Arab preacher Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab. One genuine Wahhabi is identifiable—the Chechen field commander Habib Abdurrahman Khattab, an Arab of Saudi origin, who came to Chechnya reportedly after fighting with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and forged links with the Dagestani Islamists. The combined influence of Middle Eastern aid and the prestige of their disciplined and fanatic ideology has won the Islamists recruits among disaffected Dagestani youths and provoked ferocious resentment among the more traditional Sovietized population.

Recently, there has been an improvement in the crime situation, since it has become more difficult for kidnappers to hide their victims in Chechnya. Still, the ongoing war in Chechnya and presence of Islamist sympathizers in Dagestan remains a challenge. The Russian federal troops regularly report incidents of seizure of Wahhabi literature, and of arms and communication devices being moved to Chechnya through Dagestan. On one occasion, Afghanis have been detained in the republic while crossing borders. The Dagestan Security Council has stated that the threat of terrorism continues to be acute. It claims that the Chechen field commanders made a decision to intensify the war by taking it to the neighboring territories, including Dagestan. The Security Council also stressed that a threat to security comes from within Dagestan from the ongoing presence of Wahhabis in the republic.

Local disputes for power and money are still often settled by force. Kinship networks and proliferation of weapons feed into the local business culture, making it difficult to break out of the vicious circle.

Official Conflict Management

The Dagestan authorities' chosen conflict-management strategy was to adopt constitutional and political arrangements that reflect the peculiar ethnic and social composition of the republic, and the commitment to preserve interethnic peace by reducing the scope of political rivalry among groups. Dagestan is the only region of the Russian Federation where the head of the republic is not elected directly by a popular vote, but rather by a two-level, indirect procedure. The supreme authority in the republic is vested in the State Council, which consists of representatives of the fourteen major ethnic groups (those which have a written language) and is elected by the Constitutional Assembly for a period of four years. The position of chairman of the State Council can be occupied by a representative of a single ethnic group for a period of four years and then has to be given up in favor of another group. The chairman of the State Council, Magomedali Magomedov (a Dargin), is de facto the acting president of the republic. According to the constitution, the terms of office cannot be extended. This provision for a collective presidency was introduced after an attempt to establish a presidency soon after the breakup of the USSR. This was thrice rejected by referenda in 1992, 1993, and 1999 because of the fear that it would put one ethnic group in a dominant position. The prime minister is also a member of the State Council and therefore precluded from being of the same ethnic origin as the chairman.

However, this commitment to the principle of a four-year period in power for representatives of each ethnic group has proven to be halfhearted. Magomedov's term of office was first extended in 1996 for two years, and then in 1998 Magomedov succeeded in pressing the deputies into passing a constitutional amendment to abolish altogether the provision that the chair of the State Council should be changed in favor of another ethnic group. Magomedov was voted in for a second term in July 1998. This in effect meant the power balance was secured in favor of the Dargins, the second ethnic group, especially after election of Said Amirov, a prominent Dargin, to the important position of mayor of Makhachkala.

At the same time, systems have been developed to encourage cross-ethnic voting. The electoral system is designed to ensure that the balance between the ethnic groups in the assembly mirrors that in the population. According to electoral law, sixty-five constituencies are classified as multiethnic and are allocated to candidates from only one ethnic group living in the constituency. Only members of that ethnic group (not necessarily living in the constituency) could compete against each other, but all the registered electorate, irrespective of ethnicity, vote in the constituency. The government determined which ethnic group would be allocated which constituency, and an arrangement broadly accepted as fair was worked out. Constituencies regarded as monoethnic had an ordinary open-candidate system.

The ministry for nationalities and external relations of Dagestan is vested with the responsibility for overseeing the affairs of nationalities and ensuring that multiethnicity is sustainable. It is a relatively powerful body compared to its Russian counterpart. In Dagestan, however, the ministry assists in promoting the cultural and educational rights of ethnic groups rather than addressing interethnic relations or providing strategies for conflict-prone zones. Still, the minister himself does serve as a special envoy in situations where tensions arise.

A Security Council was introduced in Dagestan in August 1996 to "combat organized crime and promote national security." Its powers and functions are mainly directed toward fighting the impact of instability in Chechnya, but it remains a fairly weak body, highly dependent on the political standing of its head at any given moment.

Russian Government
Since 1991, Moscow policymakers have been searching for solutions to the problems of governance in Dagestan. In the period between the two Russian-Chechen wars in 1999, Moscow's perception of the region was that it had developed into a gangster stronghold where crime was feeding ethnic tensions, and into a bastion of radical and increasingly militant Islamism. The policy undertakings included a mixture of steps to combat crime and corruption, buying off the republican elite by providing federal subsidies to the republican economy, and attempts to mediate between the Islamists and the republican authorities. The commitment of Boris Yeltsin's regime to the North Caucasus in general and to Dagestan in particular appeared halfhearted.

Such attitudes have rapidly changed since the Chechen attacks on Dagestan in 1999, the appointment of Vladimir Putin as prime minister under Yeltsin, and then his election as president of Russia. The Dagestanis' loyalty to Moscow, resistance to the Chechen attacks, and popular support given to the Russian federal troops have persuaded the new regime in Moscow that the North Caucasus is not a lost cause and that there is no threat of separatism. On the contrary, the Dagestanis look to Moscow to provide protection from Islamist threats. The new Russian regime was quick to strengthen its standing in Dagestan, while the republican authorities managed to benefit from Moscow's renewed attention to the republic. The improved economic situation has enabled Moscow to increase subsidies to Dagestan and start building a pipeline bypass around Chechnya through the Dagestani territory, thus creating local jobs. The authorities' position vis-à-vis the ethnic barons has been strengthened and they have gradually obtained the upper hand, so that the leaders of various ethnic factions are less inclined to compete for power.

Multi Track Diplomacy

The great majority of nonstate activities in Dagestan parallel ethnic affiliations and in practical terms coalesce around national fronts and movements of ethnic groups. The collapse of Soviet (civic) identity and the absence of overarching national identity on the basis of which internal coherence could have emerged, strengthened the divisions in the Dagestani society. National movements, formed during the late 1980s, had passed their peak by the mid-1990s, but have fulfilled the important functions of putting ethnic groups' claims on the governmental agenda and serving as platforms for emerging leaders. These powerful individuals, often ruthless, shadowy businessmen, rely on their ethnic, clan, and regional kinship networks among whom they command loyalty and for whom they can negotiate with the authorities and with the leaders of other groups when conflicts arise. Outside this ethnically stratified framework, nonstate initiatives such as NGOs or intellectual groupings are limited. This "ethnic democracy" has little in common with the Western notion of "civil society," but in the absence of strong civic bonds, ethnic ties serve a function in providing a social support network.

A more mundane reason for the slow development of NGOs in Dagestan has been limited international involvement and difficulties in accessing Western funding. Nevertheless, some initiatives have taken place. The Center of Social and Psychological Rehabilitation and Culture of Peace was recently established in Derbent (southern Dagestan), facilitated and sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Masliat, an NGO with a mandate to facilitate conflict prevention and resolution and work toward social consolidation in Dagestan, was set up in November 1993. It publishes a newsletter of the same name, but the impact so far has remained limited.

Women as Peacemakers
Following the deterioration of women's social standing after the communist collapse, with women increasingly pressured to withdraw from running for elected office, and the Dagestani government's introduction of special "women only" electoral districts where only women can compete against each other, women's groups have started to organize themselves on a small scale since the mid-1990s. They mainly address the needs of the most deprived families among the displaced, as the NGO Materinskii Ochag (Motherly Hearth) does, for example, in Khasavyurt. Some of them have been involved in peacebuilding activities; an example is the organization of a seminar on "Dagestan: a Center of Peacemaking" undertaken in Makhachkala by the Don Women's Union.

Conflict-Prevention Fieldwork
International Alert (IA) has been involved in conflict prevention in Dagestan throughout the 1990s. In the early period IA organized three pan-Caucasian seminars in conflict-resolution training attended by individuals from Dagestan, and in 1995 set up a fact-finding mission to assess the situation and design a program of conflict-prevention measures. IA worked in close partnership with the ministry of nationalities of Dagestan and with local administrations in the conflict-prone regions of the republic. IA regarded conflict prevention as the strengthening of the local capacity to govern effectively, and the facilitation of cross-ethnic solidarity while recognizing the different needs of individual groups. In 1996 and 1997 it implemented five problem-solving seminars in Dagestan on such issues as local government in multiethnic areas, ethnic disputes about land distribution, and the situation regarding the Chechen and Lezgin communities in border areas of the republic. The seminars aimed at bringing together the representatives of the authorities from the local and republican levels, as well as members of the People's Assembly and representatives of the society, such as individuals from ethnic movements and journalistic and academic circles. A fact-finding mission to Azerbaijan followed in 1997 to assess the impact of the community division on the Azeri Lezgins and to recommend further conflict-prevention measures. In 1997, IA organized an educational trip by Dagestani administrators to the United Kingdom to familiarize them with the experience of power devolution and the survival of a minority culture in Wales. Deterioration of the security situation in 1998–1999 precluded further fieldwork, but in 2000 IA returned to Dagestan to take part in the women's peacemaking initiative.

Academic Initiatives and Early Warning
In February 1997, Rabelais University of Tours, France, and the Academy of Civil Service of the Russian Federation (Moscow) held an EU TACIS–sponsored international seminar on "Activities of Bodies of State Power and Local Self-Government in Conditions of Social and Regional Conflicts." The seminar was preceded by a site visit. The local partners were Kurban Bulatov, Dagestan deputy procurator general (who was murdered in 1999), and Vice Premier Ilyas Umakhanov.
The Conflict Resolution in the Post-Soviet States Project, pursued jointly by the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (Moscow) and Conflict Management Group (Harvard University), established the Network on Ethnological Monitoring and Early Warning of Conflicts in the early 1990s to provide early warning and discuss possible action. The project produces the Bulletin, published quarterly in Russian and English with regular entries on Dagestan written by local analysts, which plays an important role as a source of information. Since 1998, FEWER also runs a website containing early-warning reports on Dagestan.

Multilateral Undertakings
Representatives from Dagestan have taken part in various multilateral undertakings, either pan-Caucasian or involving the North Caucasians only. The Center for Peacemaking and Community Development (CPCD) has engaged Dagestanis in its Young People's Peacebuilding Network, sponsored by the EU TACIS program, providing individuals and local groups with training in alternatives to violence, and with e-mail communication facilities. Four youth meetings and two seminars have been held since its establishment in 1999. The Caucasus Forum of NGOs, founded in 1998 at the initiative of IA, also includes Dagestani representatives among its members.
A few Dagestanis participated in the Peace-Making Mission for the North Caucasus, established by General Lebed, ex-secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council, in order to facilitate dialogue between Chechnya, its neighbors, and the Russian authorities. Still, with Lebed's political demise, the mission gradually came to a halt.

Humanitarian Assistance
International humanitarian organizations have been involved in Dagestan since the start of the first Russian-Chechen war, providing relief aid to the Chechen IDPs who crossed into the neighboring republic. ICRC (Red Cross/Red Crescent) and Médecins Sans Frontières were the first to arrive, in December 1994, followed by UNHCR and UNICEF in January 1995, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in February, and the World Food Program in March. IOM was first to withdraw in September, following the murder of its expatriate worker in Chechnya, and most other organizations halted their operations inside Chechnya after the murder of six ICRC workers in 1996. The French NGO Equilibre got involved in spring 1995, but closed its operations in August 1997 when four of its workers were kidnapped and taken to Chechnya. A similar fate befell the Hungarian Interchurch Organization, which halted its activities in November 1997 after two of its staff members were taken hostage in Chechnya. Non-Violence International, a Moscow-based Russian NGO, remains actively involved in humanitarian work in Dagestan, mainly in the Khasavyurt region, helping those affected by the 1999 violence in the border areas.

Initially, INGOs were discouraged from becoming involved in Dagestan because of its remote location, conservative political culture, and difficult social environment. Moreover, Dagestani authorities were cautious about international engagement, fearing that disproportional activities might open up dormant wounds. A Western organization unwittingly offended Dagestani sensitivities in the time of a crisis; this negatively impacted the work of the others. Involvement of various U.S. Protestant missionaries in Dagestan made the authorities suspicious that Western actors might have a hidden agenda behind the conflict-resolution front. After 1997, with the proliferation of kidnappings of foreigners and deteriorating security situation, Dagestan became virtually off-limits for international engagement. Worsening relations between the Russian Federation and the West made Dagestanis increasingly see conflict-prevention activities as a weapon of Western neo-imperialism.

Prospects

The war in Chechnya has a very serious impact on security in the border areas in Dagestan, since the Chechen militants and their Islamist supporters in Dagestan periodically raid the territory and engage in fighting against the local self-defense groups and Russian soldiers. This low-key guerrilla campaign may continue for years, distracting the government and population from attention to investments to meet other needs.

To a significant degree, the prospects for stability in Dagestan depend on the success of the policies of the Russian government to strengthen the state and deliver on the law-and-order agenda, as well as on particular ways chosen to achieve such goals. Currently, it is likely that the reassertion of control by the center over developments in its constituent parts will be implemented. In the Dagestani context, this may mean that the law-enforcement function can be taken out of the hands of the republican authorities and administered directly from Moscow, and control over the movement of nationals from the Islamic countries will be reinforced in order to prevent the penetration of Islamist missionaries. The border regime with Azerbaijan is also likely to be tightened, and the division of the Lezgin community will acquire the features of permanence. In such conditions, it will be increasingly difficult for INGOs to engage in conflict-prevention activities in Dagestan even if the security situation improves, since the Russian state is growing suspicious of foreign organizations and their intentions. Deterioration of the Russian-Western relations, war in Chechnya, and improved standing of the security services (with which the current Russian president was once affiliated) mean that Western NGOs' efforts immediately become the focus of attention from local FSB branches.

The important factor that will continue to affect peace and stability in Dagestan is the ongoing conflict in Chechnya. Even if the Russian federal troops achieve a substantive degree of control over the Chechen territory, some spillover of the instability into the border areas of Dagestan is inevitable. The Dagestani Islamists, although having suffered a defeat in 1999, nevertheless are believed to operate underground, and future attacks cannot be ruled out. The Islamist challenge, together with the proliferation of weapons from across the Chechen border, is likely to replace intergroup rivalry as the main security threat.

Recommendations

Out of multiple challenges to stability in Dagestan, two present the most immediate danger: the resentment of the local Chechen community by the rest of Dagestanis and the spread of Islamism. Both are difficult for the outside intervenors to tackle, albeit for different reasons. Recent violence in the areas where ethnic Chechens live and the continuing war across the border make access difficult, and the republican authorities are wary that the outsiders may make the situation worse, or that they may be kidnapped or killed. Conflict-prevention measures with regards to Islamism are difficult to develop and implement because of a lack of knowledge of the essential nature of the challenge, i.e., whether it is a homegrown response to social change or provoked by international agents of radical Islam. So far, analysis has been based on either very remote or highly politicized sources, and as yet there is no real in-depth understanding of the Islamist challenge.

Future conflict-prevention strategies will need to be implemented with the knowledge and cooperation of federal and republican authorities; otherwise obstruction is inevitable. Close cooperation with the authorities may limit the flexibility NGOs might wish for, but it can also improve access to crucial players and provide a degree of protection. Over the longer term, when the war in Chechnya has ended and the law-and-order situation improves, it could be possible to design a comprehensive package of conflict-prevention and development policies to address the multiple needs of Dagestani society.

Service Information

NEWSLETTERS AND PERIODICALS:	Bulletin of the Network on Ethnological Monitoring and Early Warning of Conflicts, Conflict Resolution in the Post-Soviet States Project, IEA/CMG, published quarterly in Russian (by Moscow University) and English (by Harvard University); Caucasus Report, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Prague, Czech Republic; Contemporary Caucasus Newsletter, University of California, Berkeley; EWI Russian Regional Report, EastWest Institute, United States, weekly; FEWER Reports, London; Monitor & Prism, Jamestown Foundation, Washington, DC; WarReport, 1995–98, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, London;
REPORTS:	International Alert Dagestan: A Situation Assessment Report, by Clem McCartney, 1996. The Lezgins: A Situation Assessment Report, by Anna Matveeva and Clem McCartney, 1997. Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, Russia's Tinderbox: Conflict in the North Caucasus and Its Implications for the Future of the Russian Federation, by Fiona Hill, 1995.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS:	Conflict and Catharsis: Developments in Dagestan Since September 1999, by Robert Ware and Enver Kisriev. London, Nationalities Papers, 2000. "Political Stability and Ethnic Parity: Why Is There Peace in Dagestan?" by Robert Ware and Enver Kisriev. In M. Alexeev (ed.), Center-Periphery Conflict in Post-Soviet Russia: A Federation Imperiled, New York, St. Martin's Press, July 1999. Russia's Soft Underbelly: The Stability of Instability in Dagestan, by Edward W. Walker. Berkeley, Working Paper Series, Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, winter 1999–2000. The North Caucasus: Russia's Fragile Borderland, by Anna Matveeva. London, RIIA, 1999.
SELECTED INTERNET SITES:	www.eawarn.ru (Network on Ethnological Monitoring and Early Warning, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, and Conflict Management Group, Harvard University) www.fewer.org (Forum on Early Warning and Early Response, London) www.rferl.org (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Newsline, daily news and analysis) www.socrates.berkeley.edu/~bsp (Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet States)
RESOURCE CONTACTS:	Enver Kisriev, Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography, Dagestan Research Center, Russian Academy of Sciences, e-mail: enver@datacom.ru Anna Matveeva, expert on the Caucasus, London, e-mail: sophiamat@ukonline.co.uk Clem McCartney, consultant in conflict resolution and community development, e-mail: C.McCartney@ulst.ac.uk Edward Walker, Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, University of California, Berkeley, e-mail: eww@socrates.berkeley.edu Robert Bruce Ware, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, e-mail: rware@siue.edu
ORGANIZATIONS:	DATA ON THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS CAN BE FOUND IN THE DIRECTORY SECTION: Local Caucasus NGO Forum; Center for Peacemaking and Community Development; Mission Peace in North Caucasus; International FEWER; International Alert; International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; Médecins Sans Frontières

About the author

Anna Matveeva is a program manager at Saferworld (on small arms and security). She previously worked as a research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House, London) and program head at International Alert (London). As a scholar specializing in issues of conflict and the politics of post-Soviet Eurasia, she has authored publications such as The North Caucasus: Russia's Fragile Borderland (London: RIIA, 1999) and academic articles, and undertook projects for organizations such as the International Peace Academy, EastWest Insititute, Minority Rights Group, and the Heinrich Böll Stiftung.