The death on August 31 in an as-yet-unclarified shooting of Magomed Yevloyev, the Moscow-based owner of the independent Ingushetian website ingushetiya.ru, has served to focus attention both within Russia and abroad on the catastrophic breakdown in law and order in Ingushetia since the election in 2002 of Murat Zyazikov as president. Whether popular anger at Yevloyev's killing will serve as the catalyst for the emergence of a structured and effective opposition movement remains unclear, however.

Over the past two years, the security situation in Ingushetia has deteriorated to the point that shootings, explosions, and abductions have become an everyday occurrence. Indeed, Ingushetia has overtaken Chechnya and Daghestan to become the least stable of the seven North Caucasus republics. The Russian leadership, for its part, appears either unwilling to acknowledge the accelerating breakdown in law and order or at a loss how to reverse it.

The current crisis dates from June 2004, when Chechen and Ingush fighters under the command of Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev launched attacks on police and security forces in Ingushetia, killing up to 80 people in retaliation for the detention by security forces over the previous two years of numerous young Ingush men, most of whom have never been found. Since then, the resistance has continued to target Ingush police and other law enforcement officials who are viewed as collaborators, Russian Interior Ministry Internal Troops deployed to Ingushetia, and members of other security bodies, including border guards.

Such attacks have become progressively more frequent; so far this year, at least 48 police and security officials have been killed and 97 wounded; the figures for April-December 2007 were approximately 33 killed and 40 wounded. Possibly because of that increased risk, as of mid-August more than 1,300 police officers had submitted their resignations; a further 44 have reportedly done so in the wake of Yevloyev's killing. Members of the official clergy too are regularly targeted, and the homes of government officials subjected to gunfire or mortar or grenade attack. There have been five such attacks so far this year.

Police and security forces, both local and those deployed temporarily to Ingushetia from elsewhere in the Russian Federation, have responded with a series of so-called counterterror operations directed almost as frequently at innocent civilians and their families as at genuine resistance fighters. In one such operation in November 2007, special forces stormed a home in the village of Chemolga in Sunzha Raion where they suspected an armed militant was hiding and shot dead a 6-year-old child. Unarmed young men are frequently gunned down on the street during "counterterror" operations, and then weapons are placed by their bodies to provide photographic "evidence" of the authorities' competence in containing the threat posed by radical Islam.

Warnings by NGOs and public figures that such indiscriminate violence on the part of law enforcement agencies is counterproductive have had little or no effect. Even a February 2008 appeal by Ingushetian parliamentarians to the Prosecutor-General's Office to dispatch to Ingushetia a task force to investigate human rights violations committed by the police and security services failed to produce a response.

The authorities' indifference only serves to reinforce and compound a broader sense of alienation, frustration, and anger among the republic's population of 480,000. Both Zyazikov and the republic's government are widely perceived as corrupt, venal, unscrupulous, self-serving, inept, and incapable of solving the serious social and economic problems that plague the republic. In addition to the breakdown in law and order, those problems also include economic stagnation (industrial production in Ingushetia fell by 27 percent during the first six months of this year; by contrast, Daghestan registered an 18.5 percent increase), 67 percent unemployment, and the unresolved dispute with neighboring North Ossetia over Prigorodny Raion.

Zyazikov appears nonetheless to have succeeded in convincing Moscow that the republic's economy is flourishing, that the population wholeheartedly supports the national leadership, that the overall situation is "stable," and that the threat posed by Islamic militants has been grossly exaggerated by the Russian media.

Silencing Ingushetiya.ru

Over the past year, Yevloyev's website has evolved from being simply an important (but not the only) source of information about developments in Ingushetia, including corruption and the ongoing war of attrition between the resistance and the security forces, to become a political actor in its own right. That shift is reflected in the exponential increase in users logged onto the site at any given time: until mid-2006, that number was frequently in single digits; one year later, it averaged a few dozen; now it is rarely less than 80-120.