Keeping up with the Kadyrovs!

Something that alt-world-watch has a particular fascination with, other than the overuse of the word 'particular', is nepotism, and the accompanying amassing of power and weath this practice bolsters. We would like to believe that this is something only done in 'bad' countries, but it's universal. Just that different countries and societies practise it to different degrees. However there is one place that seems to be in the news, but not, at the same time, which is quietly but surely is set to break world records and score lucrative deals and endorsements in its achievements in this widespread practice.

The Russian republic of Chechnya is, in all intents and purposes, now the private fiefdom of the Kadyrov family ever since the hereditary change of leadership when former Muslim imam and separatist-turned-Moscow-man Akhmed Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, was killed in a terrorist attack at the Victory Day parade celebrations in the Chechen capital Groznyy in May 2004, passed power to his thuggish, spoilt and immature son Ramzan, then aged 27. Since then Chechnya has experienced peace and stability, but at a very high cost. With Moscow's blessing, the republic is ruled by the mafia-style showboating and sometime eccentric style of the Kadyrov junior, complete with a cult of personality, grandiose construction projects funded from Chechnya's oil wealth, and massive corruption. At the same time, the Chechens continue living in Third World poverty conditions, enjoying little of the apparent excess lavished to such noticeable signs of wealth like the largest mosque in Europe constructed on the ruins of Groznyy.

Chechnya has had a very violent and extremely tragic history. The region only became a part of the expanding Russian Empire in the early 19th century, after many centuries of superficial Persian and Ottoman Turkish rule. The Russians did not grab full control of the region at first and were engaged in a fifty year campaign to subdue the independent-minded and pious Chechens, earning them the monicker of 'warrior-like'. The Chechens call themselves 'Nokhchii', with the term 'Chechen' applied by the Russians coming from the name of the first Chechen village that they conquered. That proved to be the only lasting feature of Russian conquest on the Chechens as they have always been the unruliest of subjects. When the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, the Chechens declared their independence, though the Red Army was to later subdue and incorporate them into a 'Northern Caucasus Republic' within the new Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic. Again, the Chechens put up stiff resistance to this and continued fighting the Red Army for many years into the late 1920s. Chechen spirit for independence and devotion to Islam conflicted with the Communist ideals that Stalin forcefully imposed on all peoples of the USSR, leading to continued Chechen resistance and, consequently, much repression from the Soviet authorities. When the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941, one of Hitler's main battle aims was to take Groznyy due to its large oil supplies and willing and anti-Soviet/anti-Russian population. Hitler did send envoys to recruit the Chechens to fight with the Nazis, but nothing came out of it as the Wehrmacht were held up and ultimately defeated in Stalingrad. However, this act of potential Chechen 'treachery' was reason enough for Stalin to deport the entire Chechen population - that's every Chechen person - to Siberia and Central Asia in 1944. Effectively, the Chechens (along with some other ethnicities) were ethnically cleansed from their homeland, and at great expense to the Soviet authorities, as the resources required to undertake such a large campaign involving the forced movement of millions of people could have been better used in more pressing areas such as the Red Army's then push to liberate Eastern Europe during the final stages of World War 2. Having been uprooted from their homeland and almost destroyed as a people, the Chechens were left to rot in barren and remote parts of the USSR until 1957, when part of the Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation programme, he granted the Chechens and other (though not all) uprooted peoples amnesty and free passage back to their ancestral home. Many thousands of Chechens had died from this Moscow-imposed exile, though the survivors did take the offer to return. Nevertheless, the trauma of this exile only added to already high anti-Russian feeling amongst Chechens, and a reason why this feeling is still quite high in Chechnya to this day. Following the collapse of the USSR in late 1991, Chechnya seized the opportunity to declare its independence. Moscow had enough problems dealing with the shock of the fall of such a monolithic system that it left Chechnya alone. However, in an effort to regain some national pride, and to gain some popular support in what otherwise were then sagging ratings for Russian president Yeltsin, while also showing the world that Russia is still a superpower, in December 1994 Moscow launched an assault on Chechnya in an effort to regain control of the region. The Chechens, like all times before, held the Russians down with determined resistance. The Russian response was to quickly make Groznyy live up to its Russian meaning - 'Ugly', destroying this once thriving oil-producing centre. With the war proving to be no walk through the park, the threat of the conflict spreading to neighbouring Russian Muslim regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia, along with the increase of 'terrorist' activity, popular support in Russia for Yeltsin's war was practically nil. It wasn't until 1999 when suspicious attacks on Moscow apartment blocks led to the deaths of about 100 victims lead to a new Russian military assault on Chechnya, all with the public-pleasing intent of avenging the 'terrorists'. This time Chechnya was subdued but at a great cost to the Chechens. So many massacres and human rights violations occurred, though with the 'War on Terror' climate that overcame the World then, these crimes have been conveniently overlooked and forgotten. So there we come to today, where Chechnya is now Kadyrovistan.

The vast scale of nepotism in Chechnya makes the practices current in Central Asia look like examples of the triumph of democracy and human modesty. Having built a mosque on the square named after his father and next to the monument to him, Ramzan Kadyrov continues to create memorials to his ancestors, installing members of his immediate family in the institutions of power as he goes along.

Taking what seems to be a leaf out of the eccentric style of Turkmenistan's late crazy dictator Sapamurad Niyazov Türkmenbashi, last year Chechnya’s Minister of External Relations, National Policy, Press and Information (wow, what a title!) Shamsail Saraliyev announced that Chechnya will soon have televisions, mobile phones and computers marked with the brand name "Aymani", which, coincidentally, is the name of the Chechen president’s mother.

While Kadyrov senior was careful to select a wide range of people to be part of his administration to bring together all warring clans, Junior has gone much further – the system of power he has constructed possesses the features of a mature and fully developed tyranny in which all the rules of transparency have been conveniently tossed out of the window. Basically, he's keeping it in the family. Outdoing Romania's Ceausescu, Razman made his maternal uncle Odes Baysultanov Prime Minister. Soon after, posts also appeared for other close relatives. Ramzan’s sister Zulay holds the post of presidential adviser (i.e. she's gets money for doing nothing, but you need to bribe her if you want something big to be done in Chechnya so she can say good things to her brother). Akhmad-Khadzhi’s brother Magomet Kadyrov is a member of the Chechen parliament. Ramzan’s uncle once removed, Khozh-Akhmed Kadyrov, is chair of the Council of Alims.

But the most important position now goes to mama. Ever determined to show how much he is a mummy's boy, and that means more than just getting a range of electrical goods named after her, Junior has also appointed mama Aynami as head of the Akhmat Kadyrov Regional Charitable Foundation, a body not lacking in funds and run in grand style, often functioning as the sponsor of all kinds of investment projects and programmes connected with the republic’s reconstruction and development. So yet another Evita Peron. How nice!

Ramzan Kadyrov, when not parading around wearing shell suits while driving around in expensive cars, is busy thinking up new and weird ideas. Some of these include proposing that Groznyy be renamed after his father, ordered that all Chechen women wear headscarves and set up a group of teenagers to go around squirting 'immodest women' with waterguns, closed the many refugee camps in Chechnya because they are full of "international spies who are interested in stoking conflict between Chechnya and Russia, who are seeking to destabilize the situation in our region", stated his approval of honour killings, and his own private horse Mourilyan camed third in the 2009 Melbourne Cup - earning him US$380,000. He is also (rightfully) accused of severe human rights abuses, war crimes and corruption, having also been implicated in the extra-judicial shootings of human rights campaigners like Nataliya Estemirova, and opponents like Sulim Yamadaev in Dubai earlier this year.

So what to do? Despite human rights groups doing their best to publicise his crimes, Kadyrov still receives tacit support from Moscow, and indirectly from the West, as he is seen as a plug to the spread of Islamist expansion and terrorism... oh, and because Chechnya has oil. The Chechens are still sufferring under Russian rule, though not directly but at the hands of the family they have placed in power. This cannot last, as the Chechens have always been independent-minded. No matter what 'stability' exists now, Chechnya is just a ticking time bomb. It should have been given its well-deserved independence in 1991. Instead, the situation since has only lent to create what will be a worse fall-out in the future, all to the detriment of the long-suffering Chechens.