On June 4, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev affirmed the new makeup of the government commission for the socio-economic development of the North Caucasus. The commission is comprised of 26 top officials and headed by Medvedev himself. Moscow’s envoy to the North Caucasus, Aleksandr Khloponin, and... MORE

Several Ukrainian people’s deputies had their faces bruised and their shirts torn in a fistfight in parliament on April 24. The opposition caucuses of Our Ukraine and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc (BYT) provoked the brawl in order to disrupt voting on a controversial... MORE

At the end of May and the beginning of June, a series of militant attacks shook Dagestan. On May 31, the former police chief of Dagestan’s Untsukul district, Magomed Abdulmalikov, was killed in Buinaksk. Abdulmalikov headed the Untsukul district police until 2006. The district is... MORE

Sunni Arab tribalism has a significant socio-cultural, political, and security impact on the current uprising in Syria, with strong implications for post-Assad governance formation. Tribalism has fueled unrest throughout Syria, including in places such as Dera’a, where mass opposition demonstrations began on March 15, 2011,... MORE

The government of the Philippines recorded two key political and military successes in Mindanao in the first half of 2012. First, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) eliminated Abu Sayyaf leader Gumbahali Jumdail, the Malaysian and Singaporean Jemaah Islamiyah militants Zulkifli bin Hir (a.k.a.... MORE

The course of events in the republic of Ingushetia, the smallest and youngest republic of the Russian Federation, has changed dramatically over the past two years. In particular, changes were seen in the confrontation between the armed opposition, the Sharia jamaat and the pro-Moscow authorities,... MORE

On May 21, Russia’s freshly re-minted President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to reform the cabinet. The government now includes the newly-created Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East, which will coordinate the implementation of regional development programs and manage state-owned assets, except... MORE

The last few days in May have been tense in Chechnya, including inside the pro-Moscow government of Chechnya, with Ramzan Kadyrov sacking the republican government. Odes Baisultanov, Kadyrov’s cousin, had presided over the government since 2007 (https://ria.ru/politics/20120521/654518251.html). The former minister of agriculture, Abubakar Edelgeriev, replaced... MORE

US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul – former director for Russia and Eurasia on the US National Security Council, considered the architect of President Barack Obama’s “reset policy” of improved US-Russian relations – arrived in Moscow last January and almost immediately got into trouble. A... MORE

On May 21, over 50 people from Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Adygea chose to commemorate the anniversary of the Russian-Circassian war in the 19th century in Georgia. “In practice the issue of the Russian-Caucasian war’s results should be discussed in Russia, by Russian scholars,” the head... MORE