RUSSIA'S TINDERBOX - Belfer Center for Science and International ...

the situation in the region. At the news conference following the meeting, the then First Deputy
Chairman of the Russian parliament’s Council of Nationalities, Ramazan Abdulatipov, expressed
great concern about the Confederation of Peoples of the Caucasus’ “possible plot against Russian
interests.” Russian Procurator General, Valentin Stepankov, also noted that his office was engaged
in preventing “confederation attempts to become a parallel state power” in the North Caucasus. 41
In spite of Moscow’s concerns, the KNK has not yet become a parallel state power in the
North Caucasus. Indeed, by the fall of 1994, the KNK had lost much of its vigor as a political force
as a direct result of its own internal contradictions.
Since its formation in 1989, the KNK has been high on rhetoric, but low on concrete action.
In fact, the KNK has offered little in the way of a coherent political strategy for the North Caucasus.
There is no blueprint for the actual implementation of the 1990 Confederative Treaty, and the
conception of the subsequent relationship with Moscow and the rest of the Russian Federation has
remained vague. 42
After January 1993, the influence of both Abkhazia and Chechnya in the KNK declined
steadily. Having concluded ceasefire agreements with Georgia in the fall of 1993, Abkhazia
distanced itself from the organization, and the Chechen leadership gradually became preoccupied
with its own struggle rather than broader regional politics. Once the Abkhazian-Chechen alliance
was broken and the two republics went their separate ways, the organization lost its ideological
motor and was unable to come up with a new political platform.
Assessment of the Role of the KNK in the North Caucasus:
The KNK’s vision of a Confederation based on a tradition of struggle with Moscow and a
collective Islamic heritage is not a long-term prospect for either promoting cooperation among the
non-Russian peoples of the North Caucasus or integrating the region. It is also not a tenable platform
for operating in an environment where the majority of the population is Russian, and where Russians
constitute a significant proportion of the populations of every national republic. In aspiring to
regional leadership on this basis, the KNK has reproduced, within itself, the problems that beset the
North Caucasus.
First, as a collection of representatives from the individual national movements and ethnic
groups the organization has no serious leadership with regional appeal. Second, the prevalence of
conflict in the region suggests that the republics and peoples of the North Caucasus do not have as
much in common today as geography, culture and a shared historical experience might indicate. The
41 See “Caucasian ‘Highlanders’ May Act Against Russian Interests,” ITAR-TASS, May 14, 1995.
42 On the first issue, there were suggestions that an initial confederation of Dagestan and Chechnya would set an
example for the rest of the North Caucasus, but this was opposed by the Dagestani government. On the second,
there was no agreement on whether the proposed Confederation should be created within the framework of the
Russian Federation, or as a separate entity with some kind of associative arrangement with Russia. (This
information is from interviews conducted by Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov and leaders of the KNK since
1991.)
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