Election of Kremlin-Backed Alkhanov is Said to be ‘Guaranteed’

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The New York Sun

MOSCOW – When Chechens march to the polls this Sunday to elect a new president, they will be doing so amid two almost certainties: that the Kremlin-backed candidate, Alu Alkhanov, will win and that he has little chance of stemming the violence that has torn apart the rebellious Muslim republic.


The August 29 election was called after Chechnya’s pro-Moscow president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was assassinated in a bomb attack on a stadium in the Chechen capital Grozny on May 9. Kadyrov, a respected and widely feared former warlord, was central to the Kremlin’s bid to bring order to Chechnya, where Russian forces are waging a campaign – the second since the Soviet Union’s collapse – against separatist rebels.


The violence in Chechnya often spills over to the rest of Russia, and extremist rebels have claimed responsibility for bomb attacks and suicide bombings that have killed hundreds over the last few years.


While investigators have yet to reach any conclusions, a terrorist attack could be behind the twin passenger plane crashes in Russia this week that killed 89 people. The two planes went down minutes apart after taking off late Tuesday from the same Moscow airport. Investigators said yesterday that data recorders taken from the wreckage of the two planes provided no reliable information on the disasters’ causes.


Chechen rebels had promised to disrupt Sunday’s election with attacks both in Chechnya and the rest of Russia. No one has claimed responsibility for the plane crashes and moderate Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov has denied any involvement.


Tackling the violence in Chechnya will be the main task of Mr. Alkhanov, a 47-year-old career police officer with little political experience. His ascendancy was virtually guaranteed after President Putin received Mr. Alkhanov in a televised Kremlin meeting a month after Kadyrov was killed. In the months since, Mr. Alkhanov has appeared repeatedly with top Kremlin officials, including a visit with Mr. Putin to Kadyrov’s grave during the president’s surprise visit to Chechnya a week before the vote.


Rebel leaders have decried Sunday’s vote as a sham and Mr. Alkhanov as a puppet of the Kremlin. None of the six other candidates are well-known and the only opponent who had a chance of defeating Mr. Alkhanov, Moscow-based businessman Malik Saidullayev, was removed from the race on a technicality in July.


Human-rights groups have accused the Kremlin of manipulating the vote and Western observers have refused to monitor the election out of fear for their safety.


Mr. Saidullayev said the Kremlin is making a serious mistake by installing another pro-Moscow leader as president. “They are trying to create a new Kadyrov. They have not learned any lessons from what happened,” he said. “There will be the same instability there is now.”


Mr. Alkhanov is intensely loyal to the Kremlin, but comparisons with Kadyrov end there. Kadyrov was a former mufti with a strong regional power base and powerful militia backing him up. His religious position and political acumen had earned him the respect of even his enemies. Mr. Alkhanov, on the other hand, is an untried politician with little support.


“His election is guaranteed, but his authority is not,” said an independent expert on Chechnya, Yegor Engelhardt. “Unlike Kadyrov he does not come to this job with his authority already in place. It’s going to be very difficult and it’s going to take a long time for Alkhanov to attain the level of power that Kadyrov had.”


Experts said Mr. Alkhanov will find it difficult to balance the interests of the Kremlin and those of the quasi-warlords who control much of Chechnya, especially Kadyrov’s ambitious and widely feared son, Ramzan. The 28-year-old boxing enthusiast controls a thousands-strong private militia left to him by his father, and though he’s too young to stand for the presidency, Ramzan Kadyrov is known to harbor strong political ambitions.


Still, Mr. Alkhanov’s greatest challenge may be avoiding the fate of his predecessor. Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for Kadyrov’s death and have vowed to kill whomever the Kremlin puts in his place.


The last few months have shown that despite nearly six years of fighting a guerrilla insurgency against Russian forces, the rebels are far from powerless. They continue to stage frequent raids in Chechnya, with Russian soldiers and pro-Moscow Chechen servicemen dying almost daily in attacks. In the last week, more than 50 people – including civilians, Russian soldiers, and Chechen rebels – have been killed in the fighting.


The New York Sun

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