The Kabardino-Balkaria-Karachai (KBK) wing of the North Caucasus insurgency has confirmed that the fighter killed two days ago in a special operation in Nalchik was Alim Zankishiyev (nom de guerre Ubaydullakh). He is the third KBK sector commander to be killed in the past two years, and the third regional insurgency commander to be killed so far this year.

Ingushetia's Emir Adam was killed in late January, and Daghestan front commander Ibragimkhalil Daudov (Emir Salikh)  two weeks later.

Security forces surrounded the house where Zankishiyev was holed up early on March 27, and fetched his wife, Madina Sozayeva, who sought unsuccessfully  to persuade him to surrender. From the contradictory media reports, it is not clear whether Zankishiyev was killed when he detonated a grenade that apparently set the building ablaze, or shot by security personnel.

Zankishiyev was born in March 1982 in the village of Verkhnyaya Zhemtala in the southern Cherek district. He was a Balkar, like Asker Dzhappuyev (aka Abdullakh), whom he succeeded as emir. His name was entered on the federal wanted list in 2006, which suggests he may have been one of the surviving participants of the ill-fated multiple attacks on police and security facilities in Nalchik in October 2005.

Zankishiyev  is believed to have participated in the killing in November 2007 of a group of hunters, and may have been Dzhappuyev‘s accomplice in the killing in January 2008 of senior Kabardino-Balkaria Interior Ministry official Anatoly Kyarov. Dzhappuyev himself is on record as saying he and two other fighters killed Kyarov, but he did not name them.

Self-styled Caucasus Emirate head Doku Umarov named Zankishiyev last September    to replace Dzhappuyev, who was killed in April 2011 with nine other insurgents and support personnel after the wife of one of them betrayed their whereabouts to the security forces.

Zankishiyev in turn appointed five younger fighters to command the various sectors. Whether one of them will be named to succeed him is not clear; an alternative possible candidate is the Kabardian Hadzhi-Murat Bekov, who in late 2010 was already one of Umarov's inner circle.

The large number of successful special operations against fighters in Kabardino-Balkaria and Daghestan can partly be attributed to informers. But the fighters would not run the risk of detection and betrayal if they remained in the mountains, the way their Chechen brothers in arms do, rather than head for the republican capitals. Umarov, the most-wanted man in Russia, has after all successfully avoided capture for years.

The fact that the security personnel were reportedly almost certain from the start of the operation that the man they had trapped was Zankishiyev suggests that they may have intercepted calls from his mobile phone and identified him from a voice print. Again, senior Chechen commanders avoid the use of mobile phones precisely because of the security risks involved.

It is conceivable that the fighters in Kabardino-Balkaria do not have at their disposal such an extensive network of bases and foxholes as do the Chechens -- especially after the sealing in the fall of 2010 of all known entrances to the molybdenum mine at Tyrnyauz that reportedly served them as a hiding place. But that does not excuse elementary security violations such as Dzhappuyev and two of his most senior deputies spending the night under the same roof.

As anticipated, none of the four candidates in the March 25 repeat election for de facto president of Georgia's unrecognized region of South Ossetia polled the 50 percent plus one vote required for a clear first-round win. A runoff  has accordingly been scheduled for April 8 between opposition-backed candidate Leonid Tibilov, who polled 42.48 percent of the vote, and human rights ombudsman David Sanakoyev, who finished second with 24.58 percent.

The original election for a successor to Eduard Kokoity, who was barred by the constitution from seeking a third consecutive presidential term, degenerated into a major political standoff after the republic's Supreme Court annulled the second-round victory on November 27 of opposition candidate Alla Dzhioyeva.

Following talks mediated by senior Russian officials, Dzhioyeva acknowledged the legality of the annulment in December, but then revoked that acknowledgement and scheduled her inauguration as legally elected president for February 10. Those plans were thwarted, however, by security personnel who forced their way into Dzhioyeva's headquarters and forcibly took her into custody. She was kept under armed guard in a Tskhinvali clinic until the day before the repeat election. 

All four candidates have formally accepted the official results of the March 25 vote, even de facto South Ossetian Ambassador to the Russian Federation Dmitry Medoyev, who finished third with 23.79 percent of the vote -- just 142 votes fewer than Sanakoyev. In contrast to the first round of voting last November, this time there were no allegations of serious malpractice, although Sanakoyev noted various minor violations. Voter turnout was even higher, at 70.28 percent, than during the first round of voting on November 13 (67.05 percent).

Both Sanakoyev and Tibilov are seemingly confident of winning in the second round. Sanakoyev has expressed the hope that Medoyev and Kochiyev will back him in the second round: he stressed Medoyev's potential role in working to secure broader international recognition for South Ossetia, which is acknowledged as an independent state only by Russia and a handful of other countries.

But neither of the two defeated candidates has yet thrown his weight behind one or other of the participants in the runoff. Former South Ossetian parliament Chairman Stanislav Kochiyev, who garnered only 5.26 percent of the vote,  said on March 26 the Communist Party of South Ossetia, which he heads, will decide at a plenum later this week whom it will support. It remains unclear whether Dzhioyeva, who continues to argue the repeat ballot is unconstitutional, will back Tibilov.

Tibilov has stressed that in the event of his election, his priority will be promoting rapprochement with Russia.

Whichever candidate is finally elected, he will no longer have to contend with the pernicious and obstructive tactics of the Kokoity clan, which for the past three months has systematically sought to undermine acting President Vadim Brovtsev.  On March 14, the South Ossetian Security Council made public an extremely negative assessment of the work of the local Prosecutor-General's Office. Brovtsev immediately submitted to the parliament, which is dominated by Kokoity's cronies and supporters,  his dismissal of Prosecutor-General Taymuraz Khugayev, a close relative of Kokoity's by marriage. 

The parliament had voted in December against Khugayev's dismissal and refused in  February even to put the issue to a vote. But deputies finally endorsed Khugayev's removal from his post on March 21. 

That capitulation by the Kokoity camp may be an additional reason why neighboring Republic of North Ossetia head Taymuraz Mamsurov, whom Russian President Dmitry Medvedev named last week as his special representative for South Ossetia, described the March 25 vote as heralding a qualitative change in South Ossetian politics.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has appointed special representatives for Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russia formally recognized both territories as independent states immediately after the August 2008 war triggered by Georgia’s bid to win back control over South Ossetia by force of arms.

Both Medvedev’s appointees are currently heads of Russian Federation subjects that border on the disputed regions in question, and they will continue to hold those positions concurrently.

Their new duties have not been spelled out, but are likely to be tailored to accommodate the very real political and economic differences between the two republics.

An Unsinkable Governor

The presidential representative for Abkhazia is Aleksandr Tkachev, who was confirmed last week for a fourth consecutive term as governor of Krasnodar Krai.

Russian analyst Andrei Yepifantsev has characterized Tkachev as "one of the most unsinkable Russian governors."

In addition to business interests held by Tkachev and members of his family, Yepifantsev recalled a major scandal involving the Krasnodar governor's alleged violations of environmental legislation during the construction of a luxurious villa on the Black Sea coast.

On the plus side, Yepifantsev stressed Tkachev’s proven success as an economic manager.

Moscow-based analyst Modest Kolerov suggests that Tkachev’s appointment may be intended, at least in part, to counterbalance what he calls the "ineffective and politically toothless" Russian ambassador to Abkhazia, Semyon Grigoriev.

Nonetheless, Tkachev’s primary focus is likely to be the systematic implementation of the cooperation agreement he signed in May 2008 with the then de facto Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh.

Among other things, this agreement covers construction materials that Abkhazia is meant to provide for infrastructure projects connected with the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. 

Commenting on his new appointment, Tkachev pledged to do all in his power "to bring our countries closer together."

He also raised the possibility of creating “a single economic space,” presumably comprising Krasnodar Krai and Abkhazia.

Controversial Appointment

Medvedev’s representative for South Ossetia is Taymuraz Mamsurov, who has headed the Republic of North Ossetia – Alania since late 2004.

His appointment is more controversial than that of Tkachev insofar as he has repeatedly advocated the unification of North and South Ossetia.

For example, in March 2008, when he met with the de facto president  of the then still unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, Mamsurov called the division of the Ossetian people "absurd" and said it “cannot last forever.”
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Three months later, Mamsurov said he would appeal to foreign ambassadors to further the unification of North and South Ossetia.

Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin  suggested last summer that South Ossetia could become part of the Russian Federation if this was what the republic’s population wanted.

However, President Medvedev immediately countered that there are no legal or actual preconditions for South Ossetia to unite with North Ossetia as a subject of the Russian Federation.

The leaders of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia have publicly expressed approval of the new appointments.

De facto Abkhaz President Aleksandr Ankvab said Tkachev’s appointment was "good news," adding that Tkachev is well-thought of in Abkhazia, and that he has personally has long enjoyed a good working relationship with him

Likewise, Vadim Brovtsev, the Russian businessman from Siberia who is South Ossetia’s current acting president, praised the choice of Mamsurov, noting that he "understands the situation in South Ossetia better than any other Russian political figure."

Tensions are rising in the run-up to the March 25 repeat election for the post of the de facto president of the Republic of South Ossetia despite Moscow's efforts to ensure that the repeat ballot does not degenerate into a protracted new political crisis such as followed the original ballot in November. Of 22 would-be candidates, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) registered only four, all of them reportedly backed by, or at least acceptable to, the Russian leadership.

The four registered candidates are: former Soviet-era South Ossetian KGB Chairman Leonid Tibilov; human rights ombudsman David Sanakoyev; de facto ambassador to Moscow Dmitry Medoyev; and Communist Party of South Ossetia chairman and former parliament speaker Stanislav Kochiyev. None of them participated in November's abortive election.

By contrast, not a single potential candidate from the entourage of former de facto President Eduard Kokoity succeeded in registering. Alla Djioyeva, the opposition candidate whose victory in the November 27 runoff the breakaway republic's Supreme Court swiftly annulled, refused to participate in the repeat election on the grounds that agreeing to do so would be tantamount to recognizing the legality of that annulment. Two of Djioyeva's closest associates likewise decided against participating in the March 25 vote for the same reason.

A group of Djioyeva's supporters proposed the candidacy of former parliament deputy Sergei Zasseyev, but he was refused registration on the grounds of irregularities among the signatures he collected in his support.

Parliament deputy speaker Yury Dzitstsoity, who backed Djioyeva in her standoff with Kokoity in December, was likewise refused registration.

Djioyeva's plans to proceed despite the annulment with her inauguration on February 10 as legally elected president were thwarted by security personnel who forced their way into her headquarters the previous evening and manhandled her so brutally that she had to be hospitalized. She remains under armed guard in a Tskhinvali clinic.

Three candidates close to Kokoity withdrew their applications for registration for reasons that remain unclear. They are former South Ossetian Deputy Defense Minister Igor Alborov; former State Media Committee Chairman Georgy Kabisov, who placed sixth in the November ballot with 7.62 percent of the vote; and Kokoity's representative in the republican parliament, Tarzan Kokoity. (It's not clear whether they are related.)

The remaining 15 either failed the mandatory Ossetian language examination or the TsIK barred them on the grounds of purported irregularities in the lists of signatures they submitted in support of their registration applications.

Of the four registered candidates, the Georgian website civil.ge identified Medoyev as the favorite. His political credo is clearly formulated in such a way as to appeal to those voters whose loathing of Kokoity's inept and allegedly corrupt leadership team led them to cast their ballots for Djioyeva in November.

In a recent interview, Medoyev singled out as "the most important task" restoring the population's trust in the republic's leaders. He called for an uncompromising struggle against corruption, arguing that "officials should be held accountable for every ruble they spend, and those who have condoned embezzlement should be severely punished."

Medoyev further advocated creating a special commission to investigate how the outgoing leadership brought South Ossetia "to the verge of civil war" after the November election by its efforts "to cling to power."

He said that if elected, he intends to "show what can accomplished" in terms of rebuilding infrastructure destroyed or damaged during the August 2008 war with Georgia "if a stop is put to embezzlement and funds are spent honestly."

But the other candidates' programs too lambaste the dismal legacy of Kokoity's decade in power: the polarization of society between Kokoity's privileged clique and the population at large; the total lack of democracy and transparency; economic stagnation and total financial dependence on Russia; and the embezzlement of most of the funds made available from the Russian budget for post-conflict reconstruction.

Tibilov, for example, affirmed that the failure use more effectively the funds Russia allocated has engendered among the population the perception that the outgoing leadership has destroyed more than it created.

Sanakoyev for his part argued that there should be one set of laws and rights for everyone, and that the president as guarantor of the constitution should ensure that society is not split along clan or political lines.

The one issue on which the candidates diverge is the crucial one of foreign policy, specifically South Ossetia's relations with Russia. Medoyev and Tibilov both single out as their top priority securing broad recognition by the international community of South Ossetia as an independent state. At the same time, both stress that Russia is South Ossetia's main strategic partner.

Kochiyev by contrast calls for the unification within the Russian Federation of South Ossetia and the neighboring Republic of North Ossetia.

When the election campaign kicked off three weeks ago, Medoyev, Tibilov and Sanakoyev signed live on TV a five-point pledge to ensure the elections are honest and fair. Specifically, they undertook not to spread unverified information or deliberately damaging and untrue allegations against each other. In violation of that agreement, however, Tibilov has accused Medoyev of acting as a stalking horse for Kokoity.

Djioyeva has said publicly she does not endorse any of the four candidates, but some members of her campaign team, including Zasseyev, are backing Tibilov as the only one candidate who did not occupy a senior position during the 10 years of Kokoity's presidency. Whether voters who in November cast their ballots for Djioyeva will transfer their support to Tibilov, or whether this election too will go to a run-off, is difficult to predict.

RFE/RL's Ekho Kavkaza quoted Roland Kelekhsayev, head of the extraparliamentary People's Party, as saying many voters are unable to figure out which political group is backing which candidate, and may therefore not vote at all. Kelekhsayev noted that while the TsIK printed 53,000 ballot papers for the November election, this time it has printed only 40,000 for an estimated 38,000 voters, possibly in order to ensure the minimum turnout for the election to be valid.

Reports of the deployment to Daghestan of some 20,000 Russian troops from the Russian military base at Khankala on the outskirts of Grozny have elicited contradictory comments from senior regional officials. The purpose of the deployment remains unclear.

The deployment was reported late on March 17 by the independent website Kavkaz-Uzel and by Kavkaz Center, the official mouthpiece of the North Caucasus insurgency.

Kavkaz Center claimed the contingent numbered some 25,000 men plus a column of armored vehicles that was 10-15 kilometers long.

It said the contingent took up positions in the districts of Karabudakhkent, south-east of Makhachkala, and Sergokala, which borders on Karabudakhkent to the south.

Kavkaz-Uzel quoted residents from the Chechen town of Gudermes, which the armored column passed through, and a village in Karabudakhkent as saying they had “never seen anything like it.”

Kavkaz-Uzel also quoted an unidentified representative of Daghestan’s law enforcement and security agencies as saying the deployment was occasioned by the deterioration in the security situation in Daghestan, which over the past two years has replaced Ingushetia as the region where the North Caucasus insurgency is most active.

The same official said the Russian Interior Ministry has decided to establish in Daghestan a Temporary Operative Grouping of Interior Ministry sub-units like the one that exists in Chechnya. The grouping will be headed by police Major Oleg Kizhayev.

'Routine Rotation'

Daghestan Security Council Secretary Magomed Baachilov, however, said the troops had been sent to Daghestan from Chechnya as part of a routine rotation, to replace Interior Ministry troops sent to Daghestan from elsewhere in the Russian Federation for a normal tour of duty lasting three to six months.
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Baachilov gave a far lower figure than Kavkaz-Uzel initially reported: between 500 and 1,000 men.

Baachilov also said the newly-arrived servicemen will form temporary units.

These will cooperate with the seven recently formed Daghestan Interior Ministry Special Operative Groups, which are to focus exclusively on combating the insurgency, freeing up the regular police to concentrate on fighting routine crime.

But Daghestani journalist Magomed Khanmagomedov, who writes for the independent weekly “Chernovik,” told Kavkaz-Uzel  thatthe contingent in question are not Interior Ministry but Defense Ministry troops.

He linked the deployment to growing tensions surrounding Iran.

Chechen Denial

For his part, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov issued a formal statement denying that any Chechen Interior Ministry troops had been sent to Daghestan.

Kadyrov described the media reports of such a deployment as a shameless lie circulated by “those who covertly or openly sympathize with participants in illegal armed formations and are concerned by the possibility that they may be neutralized.”
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Chechen Interior Ministry troops have been deployed to Daghestan in the past to perform duties that the local police were considered incapable of discharging, notably providing security for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Makhachkala two years ago.

If the intended purpose of the recent deployment is to crush the Daghestan wing of the insurgency, which is currently without a leader following the killing last month of Ibragimkhalil Daudov (Amir Salikh), then Baachilov’s figure of 500-1,000 men seems insufficient.

And if the figure of more than 20,000 cited by Kavkaz Center and Kavkaz-Uzel is true, then it does not appear sensible to concentrate them all in Karabudakhkent and Sergokala.

True, those two districts form part of the zig-zag arc of instability that extends from Kizlyar in the north to Khasavyurt on the border with Chechnya , then south-east via Kizilyurt to Makhachkala, then south to Kaspiisk, southwest to Untsukul, then again south-east to Derbent.

But in recent months there have been at least as many, possibly more, armed clashes elsewhere, in Kizylar and Khasavyurt.

With two months to go before the May 6 Armenian parliamentary elections, serious disagreements have emerged within the Armenian National Congress (HAK), the main opposition umbrella group headed by former President Levon Ter-Petrossian.

Meanwhile, following the collapse of the February 2011 agreement between the three members of the ruling coalition government to contest the ballot jointly, the Bargavach Hayastan (Prosperous Armenia) party, one of the two coalition junior partners, has formally aligned with the small United Labor Party (MAK) headed by businessman Gurgen Arsenian.

The MAK won election to parliament in the 2003 elections and in 2007 narrowly missed garnering the minimum 5 percent of the vote needed to preserve its representation. Arsenian hinted last fall that he would form an election alliance for the 2012 ballot, possibly with President Serzh Sarkisian's Republican Party of Armenia (HHK).

And the opposition Zharangutiun (Heritage) party and the Free Democrats are reportedly close to agreement on fielding a combined list of candidates to contest the 90 parliament mandates distributed under the proportional system. 

At a press conference in Yerevan on March 6, four of the 22 political parties and groups aligned in the HAK announced that they will boycott the May 6 election after failing to reach agreement with Ter-Petrossian on their representation on the HAK's list of candidates for the proportional vote.

Representatives of the National Revival, Fatherland and Honor, and Christian Democratic Rebirth parties and the Armenian Alliance of Volunteers made clear their displeasure that Ter-Petrossian has secured from the HAK board carte blanche to draw up singlehanded the HAK list of proportional candidates.

A fifth HAK member, the Hanrapetutiun party headed by former Prime Minister Aram Sarkisian, signalled similar frustration two weeks ago that Sarkisian will be its sole representative on the HAK list.

It is conceivable that Ter-Petrossian is prepared to alienate some elements within the HAK in the hope of joining forces with BH. True, BH failed to respond to Ter-Petrossian's statement last November that cooperation between the two parties could "radically change the configuration of political forces" in Armenia. Echoing that overture, senior HAK member Armen Musinian said 10 days ago the HAK "is ready" for cooperation with BH if the latter "demonstrates in the coming months and on election day that it is really interested in free and fair elections."

Ter-Petrossian for his part told a rally in Yerevan on March1 he welcomed the decision by former Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian to join BH, insofar as it's likely to compound dissent between the HHK and its coalition partners. Oskanian attended the MAK congress one week ago at which Arsenian announced the alignment with BH.

Ter-Petrossian referred disparagingly to President Sarkisian, to whom according to official returns he placed second in the February 2008 presidential election, as "a sinking ship."

Another Alliance

The third potential new alignment is that between Zharangutiun and the Free Democrats. Zharangutiun, which has seven mandates in the outgoing legislature, is headed by Raffi Hovannisian, a U.S.-born Armenian who served in 1992-93 as Ter-Petrossian's first postindependence foreign minister.

The founding members of the Free Democrats quit the HAK a year ago under pressure. They include yet another former foreign minister, Alexander Arzumanian, who headed Ter-Petrossian's 2008 presidential election campaign and was subsequently jailed for his participation in the postelection protests that degenerated into violence on March 1-2 of that year.

Free Democrat Ararat Zurabian told RFE/RL's Armenian Service that the alliance between the two parties "already exists" and only "technical issues" remain to be ironed out. A formal announcement is expected at a Zharangutiun congress scheduled for March 18.

Meanwhile, speculation continues as to how many and which specific parties will be represented in the new parliament, and whether the HHK will resort to refined falsification to preserve its overall majority. Most observers predict that the HHK, BH, and the HAK will win representation, together with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun) and Zharangutiun.

It's not clear whether the third coalition partner, Orinats Yerkir (Law-Based State), which is headed by Security Council Secretary Artur Baghdasarian, will survive as a viable political force.

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov met for three hours last week with the revamped opposition Mekhk Kkhel, the alternative parliament established in early 2008 that has repeatedly denounced him to the Russian leadership. It's not clear from the published reports of those talks whether the two sides succeeded in reaching agreement on any of the issues over which they are at odds.

According to Mekhk Kkhel Chairman Idris Abadiyev, Yevkurov sought the opposition's "support" for the upcoming March 4 Russian presidential election. Abadiyev did not elaborate, but presumably he meant that Yevkurov wanted a pledge from the opposition not to challenge openly the outcome of the ballot the way they questioned the official results of the December 4 elections to the Russian State Duma.

The Mekhk Kkhel for its part made public after last week's meeting its list of 11 steps  its leaders believe Yevkurov should take to win back public trust.

Ingushetia's population of a little under half a million initially greeted with exultation the appointment in October 2008 of Yevkurov, a career military intelligence officer, to replace incumbent President Murat Zyazikov. Zyazikov was bitterly detested for having condoned massive corruption and inefficiency that compounded economic stagnation, and for having fuelled the ongoing low-level fighting between police and security forces and the North Caucasus insurgency by giving the former carte blanche to abduct and kill any young men suspected of links to the latter.

Yevkurov has indeed succeeded in stabilizing Ingushetia: the incidence of fighting has declined dramatically over the past two years, even though Yevkurov himself narrowly escaped death in a car bombing in June 2009. But young men are still sporadically abducted and either vanish or turn up dead, and Yevkurov has admitted that the security forces in all likelihood are behind at least some of those abductions.

Yevkurov has been less successful, however, in eradicating the endemic corruption that was a hallmark of the Zyazikov leadership, or in galvanizing the republic's stagnating economy, reducing its dependence on subsidies from the federal budget, and creating desperately needed new jobs. Moreover, some of Yevkurov's critics consider him and his family just as corrupt and untrustworthy as the previous leadership. The recent scandal involving a distant relative of Yevkurov who swindled dozens of villagers out of 5 million rubles ($170,000) with fraudulent promises of grants doubtless contributed to that perception.

Getting Back Prigorodny

Yevkurov made a point of meeting with opposition representatives soon after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev named him republic head. But he alienated them within months by pushing through the republican parliament a law on municipalities that did not designate the disputed Prigorodny district of neighboring North Ossetia as part of Ingushetia.

Until the 1944 deportation, Prigorodny was part of the then-Checheno-Ingush ASSR. Redrawing the current border between the two republics to return it to Ingushetian jurisdiction, in line with the 1990 U.S.S.R. law on the rehabilitation of the deported peoples, has long been one of the opposition's primary demands. Indeed, a recent article goes so far as to claim that the only criterion by which Ingushetia's population judges the republic head is his stance on winning back the territories Ingushetia "lost" to North Ossetia and Chechnya. 

Clarification of Yevkurov's position vis-a-vis Prigorodny and of how he intends to secure implementation of an agreement he signed in 2009 with his North Ossetian counterpart, Taymuraz Mamsurov, on the return to Prigorodny of Ingush who fled their homes there during a brief but bloody conflict in late 1992 figured prominently in the list of 11 demands the Mekhk Kkhel made public last week.

The first of those demands, however, focused on last December's simultaneous elections to the Russian State Duma, the republic's parliament, and to local municipal councils. According to the official State Duma election results, voter turnout in Ingushetia was 88 percent, of whom the overwhelming majority cast their ballots for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. The Mekhk Kkhel claims to have evidence that those figures bear no relation to reality, and that no more than 6-15 percent of the electorate turned out to vote. It is demanding the parliamentary election results be annulled and a repeat ballot scheduled for the fall of this year.

Prominent oppositionist Magomed Khazbiyev sought unsuccessfully to induce Ingushetia's Shari'a Court to summon Yevkurov and Central Election Commission Chairman Musa Yevloyev to answer for the imputed vote-rigging under Shari'a law.  Mufti Isa Khamkhoyev countered that such issues do not fall under the court's jurisdiction. At the same time, the opposition began collecting signatures from persons who say they did not vote: to date they have amassed some 27,000 signatures.

The election debacle served as the catalyst for a congress of the Mekhk Kkhel in late December attended by some 300 delegates who elected Abadiyev as its new chairman. The following day, the republic's Interior Ministry searched Abadiyev's home on the pretext that his son was a suspect in a robbery, and briefly detained him for questioning.

Over the past two months, the Mekhk Kkhel has addressed three successive appeals to Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin outlining their grievances, but has apparently not received a response to any of them. Meanwhile, speculation is intensifying that once Putin is reelected Russian president, he may move immediately to replace Yevkurov, whose term as republic head expires in October.

It is therefore understandable that Yevkurov may have tried last week to co-opt the Mekhk Kkhel to endorse publicly whatever percentage of the vote Putin is said to garner in Ingushetia on March 4, rather than risk Putin bringing back Zyazikov (who like Putin, made his career in the KGB/FSB) to replace Yevkurov as republic head. Zyazikov emerged from obscurity last week to publish a glowing endorsement of Putin. 

If this is indeed what Putin has in mind, then given the hatred and mistrust many Ingush harbor toward Zyazikov, Putin will need to engineer Zyazikov's return to power before the proposal to bring back direct elections for the heads of federation subjects is voted into law and implemented.