As expected, Doku Umarov, the leader of the North Caucasus rebels, was not found among those killed near the village of Upper Alkun in the mountainous part of Ingushetia bordering Chechnya during a March 28 major military-police operation employing military aircraft (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/153198). Nonetheless, the armed... MORE

Insurgency-related violence was reported across the North Caucasus this past week. On April 14, three suspected militants were detained in Kabardino-Balkaria after police stopped a car in which four people were traveling along the Kavkaz federal highway between the villages of Chegem and Shalushka. The... MORE

On March 22, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decreed redrawing the eparchial boundaries in the North Caucasus. Since the Russian Orthodox Church has been known for close cooperation with the Russian state over the past decade, the move attracted substantial attention from... MORE

The future of the nuclear power plant at Metsamor and Armenia’s continued reliance on atomic energy has come under pressure following the nuclear disaster in Japan. The Armenian government is facing renewed calls by local environmentalists to shut down the plant that generates about 40... MORE

On April 5, a statement made by a group of Circassians to the embattled head of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, spread in the Internet. An Israeli specialist on the Circassians, Avraham Shmulevich republished the highly unusual statement offering Circassian assistance to Gaddafi on his blog. The... MORE

Violence continued in parts of the North Caucasus - particularly in Dagestan – this past week despite the major blow dealt to the North Caucasus rebels by a counter-insurgency operation in which 17 militants were killed. There were reports that Doku Umarov, the Chechen rebel... MORE

Watching the serial outbreaks of unrest in Arab countries, Azerbaijan’s radical opposition parties see a possible model for political action in their own country. On the secular side, these groups are much-diminished descendants of the Musavat and Popular Front parties, which continually lost ground from... MORE

In the oversimplifying view of some Western commentators, the ongoing unrest in the “Muslim world” could or should not fail to grip Azerbaijan. On April 2 the veteran protest parties, Musavat and Popular Front, attempted to hold an unauthorized rally in Fountain Square, downtown Baku’s... MORE

Following reports that Russian air and ground forces had killed 17 militants in an operation targeting a rebel base near the village of Upper Alkun in Ingushetia, Moscow waited with trepidation for the official identification of the body of Doku Umarov, the leader of the... MORE

On March 28, the Russian state statistical service released the preliminary results of the 2010 census. The country’s net population loss comprised 2.2 million people or 1.6 percent of the general population, which declined from 145.1 million in 2002 to 142.9 million in 2010. The... MORE