Dagestan will be split into pieces
President of Russian Academy of Geopolitical Problems Leonid Ivashov claims that the geopolitical situation in Dagestan and around it is arising extremely unpleasant for Russia. In his opinion, the stagnation of the situation in Chechnya
is the main destabilizing factor. The second factor is «crawling spreading
of Wahhabism» and the third one is the activity of the United States, which considers Dagestan’s oil as one of the targets for the expansion.
In Dagestan, or rather in the part of the Dagestan shelf prospective oil strata have been explored. The Kremlin regards them as «Russia’s
strategic reserves». In Ivashov’s opinion, the Americans know that and even
back in the days when he used to work at the Joint Staff of the Ministry
of Defense, Washington developed the plan of economic unification of Dagestan’s
oil fields and the Azerbaijani part of the Caspian shelf. American oil companies
are ready to start to mine and transport oil from Dagestan by building an additional thread that would be attached to the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. Ivashov is convinced that the way to Dagestan’s oil for the US lies through internal destabilization of Dagestan, especially when the mafia-type way this republic is run promotes destabilization.
However, in Ivashov’s opinion, the Kremlin is doing nothing to prevent the oncoming events in Dagestan, which will lead to the split of the Republic and to its subsequent separating from Russia.
Right now there are three clans in Dagestan
that control oil, fish industries, manufacture of cognacs and drug trafficking.
Their interests to fight the Islamic factor coincide with the Kremlin’s interests.
There is no answer to what will happen during the turf wars in Dagestan, when, for an example, the interests of mafia clans will differ from Moscow’s
interests. At the same time constant blasts and paid assassinations, permanent
clashes between fish mafia and drug traffickers, as well as skirmishes at
the inter-ethnic level, show that the fragile peace with Moscow can be easily exploded if certain forces get sizeable funds.
Furthermore,
you cannot forget about the increasing influence of Islam, multiplied by
the Chechen factor, which are more and more often playing the role of ideology-forming
structure for everybody who is displeased with the mafia forces that run
Dagestan.
Said Ibrahayev,
for Kavkaz-Center