Chechen Demands in Dagestan Threaten to Destabilize Entire North Caucasus

Executive Summary:

•  Ethnic Chechens in Dagestan and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov have stepped up demands that Makhachkala live up to its promises to restore a Chechen district in Dagestan by the end of 2024.
• Doing so would likely require the Dagestani authorities to expel the Avars and the Laks, who moved there after Stalin deported the Chechens in 1944.
• Such action will destabilize Dagestan, prompt Chechnya to annex the restored Chechen region, and reopen other border disputes, likely sparking more violence and creating a new headache for Moscow.  

A long-running problem in a border area of Dagestan, one that has been under the radar screen of most, is finally on the verge of exploding. This comes as the result of a deadline Grozny imposed on itself in 2019 to restore a Chechen district by the end of 2024 that Stalin disbanded in 1944 (see EDM, February 28, 2023). The explosive situation has been further exacerbated by increased competition for housing and land in the area between Chechens who have returned and have the support of the Chechen Republic and the two other nationalities—the Avars and the Laks—who moved in after the Chechens were deported (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, December 15, 2016; OC Media, July 10, 2017, March 1, 2021). These groups are minorities in that region but are far larger and more politically influential in Dagestan as a whole. Perhaps most importantly, the situation continues to deteriorate as the Kremlin has stayed above the fray due to uncertainty about what, if anything, it should do.

Moscow restored the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1957, allowing the Chechens and Ingush to return to their homelands in the North Caucasus. The 16,000 ethnic Chechens who returned to Dagestan expected the Aukh District to be re-established and their homes and pasturelands returned. Instead, neither happened. The area was occupied by the Avars and the Laks and divided between a NovoLak District, populated by the Laks, and the Kazbek District, where the Avars have dominated. The Chechens protested, but during Soviet times, they had few possibilities to advance their cause.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Chechens of Dagestan, supported by Chechens in Chechnya and relying on a new law guaranteeing the restoration of the rights of deported peoples, became more active. In 2019, Makhachkala committed to meeting their demands by 2025. Since then, however, it has dragged its feet, fearful of sparking ethnic conflicts that could undermine its own power and open the way for Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, to annex an ethnically pure Chechen region. (For background on this complicated history and the protests it has entailed, see EDM, March 16, 2015, February 27, 2020, February 28 2023.)

As the 2025 deadline nears, Chechens living in Dagestan have stepped up demands that regional officials live up to their promises (Kavkaz.Realii, March 11). Makhachkala, however, fearful of Avar and Lak opposition and Chechen Republic aggression, has not only dragged its feet but also continued to build housing in the disputed area, handing it out primarily to Avars and Laks rather than Chechens (Window on Eurasia, March 8). In the past, most Chechens in Dagestan might have been mollified if Makhachkala simply ended giving housing and pastureland predominantly to Avars and Laks in areas the Chechens consider their own (Kavkaz-uzel; Kavkaz.Realii, March 4). Now, more are being radicalized and demanding the republic government act on their behalf.

Dagestani officials are frightened by this development and have been conducting meetings to explore how they might reassure the Chechens without enraging the Laks. They especially hope to avoid setting off the Avars, who form almost a third of the republic’s population and have long dominated political life in Dagestan (Golos-vremini.ru, March 30, April 25; Minnacrd.ru, April 25). These meetings, however, have not achieved their ends. Instead, officials have failed to address key demands, radicalizing both sides (Kazkaz.Realii, May 7). That trend is now echoing across the North Caucasus and in Moscow.

This should come as no surprise as the border between Chechnya and Dagestan has long been among the most contentious in the post-Soviet space. Only in 2008 were any moves taken to delimit the border. For a decade, however, those steps were half-hearted. In 2019, Moscow declared that the Chechens and Dagestanis, as well as all other federal subjects, must settle border disputes by 2021. Dagestan resisted, and Chechnya created a crisis by erecting border posts well within what Makhachkala considered Dagestani territory, including portions of the Aukh region that the Chechens of Dagestan are now seeking to restore (Kavkaz-uzel, June 12, 2019; Window on Eurasia, June 10, 2020).

Talks began but were undercut by Grozny’s declarations about its interest in the Chechens of Dagestan and its dispatch of Chechen officials and even horsemen to visit them—actions Dagestani police were powerless to stop (Kavkaz.Realii, April 7, 2021). In recent weeks, Grozny has continued to make statements about supporting the Chechens in Dagestan and has acted in overbearing ways toward Makhachkala. Most recently, a senior Grozny security official threatened Dagestani border guards and then walked away scot-free (Gazeta.ru, April 24).

Dagestan has no choice but to address Grozny’s claims. Kadyrov has demonstrated that he feels quite free to annex portions of other republics, and recently, Makhachkala was forced to drop a reference in its constitution to the defense of the republic’s borders (Kavkaz.Realii, October 26, 2022). If Dagestan does restore an ethnically pure Chechen region on the border and then Grozny proceeds to annex it, that action will disturb many of the other republics of the North Caucasus. Almost all have populations, if not regimes, who still believe that lands now within other republics belong to them, and some are becoming increasingly violent again. Ingushetia is the clearest example of this. Its people and many of its officials want to reverse Chechnya’s acquisition of 10 percent of its territory and North Ossetia’s earlier imposition of control over an Ingush area (Fortanga, June 4, 2022, October 4, 2023). The most recent cases of violence have spread from the eastern North Caucasus to the central portions of that restive region (Window on Eurasia, April 24).

These prospects make the situation with the Chechens in Dagestan very much Moscow’s problem. To date, the Kremlin has sought to play down its responsibility lest it be compelled to divert forces from Ukraine to the region or take responsibility for any unpalatable prospective outcomes. Even in the case of the detention of a Chechen security official at the Dagestani border, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointedly said the center was not responsible for solving the situation (Gazeta.ru, April 24). In the long, hot summer that appears to be on the horizon in Dagestan and the North Caucasus, it is unlikely that Moscow will be able to maintain its hands-off approach.