"Creeping" civil war in the North Caucasus. OSW Commentary No. 50, 2011-03-15

Over the last year, the situation in Russia’s North Caucasus has become further destabilised. Attacks and armed clashes happen daily, and destabilisation is spreading to an increasingly large area. The extent of violence in the region is so great that it can already be stated that a de facto civil war is taking place, the warring parties being the Islamic armed underground movement which operates under the banner of the so-called Emirate of the North Caucasus, and the secular governments of the individual republics, who are supported by local and federal branches of the Russian Federation’s Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service. Moscow has no idea how to successfully tackle the Caucasus rebellion. Force has proved to be costly and unproductive, while the attempts made since early 2010 to integrate the region with the rest of Russia by implementing development programmes have not brought the desired results, because of widespread corruption and faint interest from businessmen who are afraid to invest in such an unsafe region. A growing problem for Moscow, particularly for the prestige of the state, is attacks by militants on areas near Sochi, where the 2014 Winter Olympics is to take place. It must be assumed that over the next 3 years before the Olympics, Moscow’s priority in the region will be to ensure the safety of Olympic preparations, and then the games themselves. It cannot be ruled out that the North Caucasus Federal District with its ‘troubled republics’ will be surrounded by a kind of cordon sanitaire (Sochi is situated in the neighbouring Southern Federal District). This could in turn strengthen these republics’ isolation, maintain the state of permanent instability, and postpone the prospects of solving the region’s acute economic and social problems.

The Basque Diaspora in Latin America: Euskal Etxeak, Integration, and Tensions. EDAP 1/2016

The establishment of the Basque diaspora in Latin America can be divided in several different periods. First, from the 16th to 18th century, the so-called original diaspora of Basques who were part of the Spanish colonial regime. The second can be traced to the 19th century, consisting of a mixture of impoverished Basque migrants seeking jobs, especially in Uruguay and Argentina, and of refugees fleeing from the Spanish War of Independence and the Carlist wars. The third wave is identified by, but not only through, the considerable amount of refugees from the Spanish Civil War on the 1930's. The fourth wave came during the 1970s, with refugees from the Franco Dictatorship, ETA members and sympathisers. In this paper I will argue that each new wave of migrants brought tension to the diaspora, with the Euskal Etxeak, or ‘Basque houses’, as a focus point. The main idea is to analyse the different tensions and political discussions of this set of diasporic waves in Latin America.

No change in the Russian Caucasus. The Winter Olympics amid a local war. OSW Study 47/2014

The North Caucasus has been the most unstable region of the Russian Federation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Considering the scale of violence, the conflict in the region should be regarded as a local civil war between the Salafi Islamic armed underground and the secular authorities of the North Caucasus republics, supported by the security services. The Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has made himself de facto independent from Moscow, holds a particularly strong position in the region and his ambition is to gain control of the neighbouring territories. The Russian leadership, which sees the security of the Winter Olympics in Sochi as its top priority, is facing a strategic choice between trying to integrate the North Caucasus with the rest of the federation, or isolating the region and accepting the existence of an informal "internal abroad” within Russia. The cultural processes taking place in the region, including Islamisation, de-modernisation and de-Russification, have been driving the North Caucasus ever further away from the rest of Russia, strengthening a mutual sense of foreignness.