Translated material
Oriental tales
Dagestan waited for the emir before the president
Each subsequent crime news from Dagestan (where at the end of last week two high-ranking police officers were killed at once) reminds of the inexplicable delay in the appointment of the head of the republic. The first presidential term of the current Dagestan President Mukhu Aliyev expires in less than two weeks. According to the standards established by the federal center itself, it should have become known as early as January 19 whether Mukhu Aliyev would remain for another term or whether he would be replaced by a successor - one of the four alternative candidates included in the list that the United Russia party compiled last year ".As the Kremlin's decision continues to be postponed, local residents have a very natural feeling that the war in the streets is no longer being waged so much by militants against the state, but by political rivals against each other. Even if one or another influence group is not directly behind a specific shelling or explosion, each episode is still interpreted as a sign of the failure of the leadership, and therefore can be considered part of this strange behind-the-scenes “election campaign.” In which, however, there is only one voter - the head of state.
Approximately the same thing happens in those cases that, it would seem, can be clearly attributed to the assets of law enforcement agencies. The fact of the liquidation of a famous militant can be viewed from two completely opposite angles: on the one hand, as the valor of the security forces and the merit of the local authorities, on the other hand, as a reason to criticize this very government: “Look who they cheated right under their noses! " The situation becomes even more complicated when local residents doubt whether the militant was really killed, and not just their fellow villager.
Just on Wednesday, the FSB Directorate for Dagestan reported that a most dangerous extremist, almost the founder of the North Caucasus branch of Al-Qaeda, Egyptian citizen Mokhmad Mohammad Shahban, nicknamed Seif-Islam, had been eliminated in the mountains. News agencies circulated a photo of a black-bearded man with an unkind look, as well as a video with the corpse of a killed militant and a mountain of seized weapons. According to official reports, a local resident who gave him a lift was killed along with the Egyptian.
And in the evening of the same day, a well-known lawyer in Makhachkala, Rasul Kadiev, published a message on his blog about what he himself saw at the site of the alleged liquidation of the Egyptian several hours after the operation. The lawyer writes that he came to Botlikh on business and saw that the entire central square of the high-mountain village of Andi was packed with residents. The Andes reported that one of them was killed last night.
The murdered man was the younger brother of Ibragimov, the head of the Andi administration, and worked, according to Mr. Kadiev, as deputy head of the financial department of the district administration. That ill-fated night, he agreed to give a ride somewhere to an acquaintance who worked “at a nearby construction site.” On the way, the car was shot by some security forces - in Botlikh, according to the lawyer, they think that they were FSB or GRU officers. The Botlikh District Department of Internal Affairs responded to the shots, an officer drove to the scene in a UAZ, but he, too, was killed. Later, a search was carried out in the house of a Botlikh accountant, as a result of which a machine gun was found. The body of the murdered man was returned to his relatives, but his son, a tenth grade student, was taken away.
The lawyer believes that as soon as mourning ends in Andi (and this should have happened just yesterday), local residents will begin “public actions.” Apparently, because they cannot understand which of the three killed was an Egyptian citizen and a fighter of global jihad - an accountant, a builder or a policeman.
It is not easy to confirm or refute the story of lawyer Kadiev, if only because it is a full day’s journey from Makhachkala to Botlikh. It is quite possible that local residents did not tell the lawyer the whole truth: the practice of recent years shows that in the North Caucasus a situation is quite possible when an employee of the district administration, if not a militant himself, is at least collaborating with them. But, according to Rasul Kadiev, the Ibragimov family is known among fellow villagers for its irreconcilable position towards the warring religious radicals.
It remains to be assumed that the eminent militant was a builder, but judging by the fact that late in the evening he turned to the Botlikh accountant with a request to give him a ride somewhere nearby, the accountant knew him well. This means that either the accountant was an accomplice of the militants, or the builder had nothing to do with the militants. If you know what the mountainous Botlikh outback looks like on a winter night, it is, of course, difficult to imagine where two men needed to go at such an inopportune time. But this is still difficult to consider as a basis for declaring them militants. If the men were not militants, their car could have been ambushed by security forces, who may have simply confused it with another car - the one they were waiting in that place. Such episodes happened repeatedly during the latest Caucasian war, and the first move of the security forces was always the desire to convince everyone that they were right, that is, to prove that there was no mistake and it was the militants who were killed. In addition, it may be that a peaceful vehicle just happened to be at the scene of the battle, the specialists simply do not want to reveal the details of what happened, and the relatives of the victims, naturally, do not want to get involved in their professional difficulties.
By the way, on the morning of February 3 there was a message that two militants had been killed in Dagestan - no one even mentioned the Egyptian emir. Perhaps he simply hasn't been identified yet. Meanwhile, the Emir of the Caucasus, Doku Umarov, announced that he had appointed a new Emir of Dagestan instead of the one who was actually shot dead by security officers on December 31 last year. The new emir was one of the leaders of the Untsukul militant group, Ibragim Gadzhidadaev, a man wanted for several serious crimes, but enjoying undisguised respect among his fellow villagers. Ibragim Gadzhidadaev, like two famous imams of Dagestan of the 19th century - Gazi-Magomed and Shamil, was born in Gimry. This is a truly important figure of the North Caucasian underground; it was even strange that he did not become the Dagestan emir immediately after the liquidation of the famous Rappani Khalilov in September 2007. Although Moscow is naturally not inclined to pay attention to the “personnel decisions” of Caucasian militants, last week it turned out that Doku Umarov appointed his representative in Dagestan earlier than Dmitry Medvedev did. Therefore, the news about the liquidation of the Egyptian jihadist could not have come at a better time, and it seemed, apparently, that there was absolutely no need to understand the nuances that stirred up Andi and Botlikh so much.
Meanwhile, even if the message from Kadiev’s lawyer is not at all true, and the security forces, on the contrary, are right in absolutely everything, the situation clearly deserves the attention of the authorities. Local residents would definitely be grateful if the president of the republic or the new plenipotentiary representative of the head of state in Pyatigorsk, Alexander Khloponin, made some effort to understand the details of the incident and reassure all those dissatisfied. For the new plenipotentiary representative, this would be an excellent opportunity to declare himself as a leader who is really going to take care of stability and legality in the territory entrusted to him, but Pyatigorsk is still silent.
The lack of a clear reaction from the President of Dagestan, paradoxically, is quite understandable: Mukhu Aliyev has been in limbo for several weeks, without any official information regarding his future fate. Over the weekend, another confident message appeared in the Dagestan segment of the Internet with links to anonymous informed sources that the son of the former head of the republic, deputy of the People's Assembly Magomedsalam Magomedov, was about to become president. However, similar messages have already appeared several times in connection with the alleged reappointment of Mukhu Aliyev himself or the candidacy of Dmitry Medvedev’s graduate student acquaintance Magomed Abdullaev. Therefore, until the official nomination has followed, it is difficult to perceive these messages as anything other than a continuation of the information war for the post of head of one of the most troubled regions of Russia.