«Expert Online»Home Rule Unlimited
Photo: ITAR-TASS
Russia’s State Duma has adopted its final amendments to the draft law “On measures aimed at organizing self-government in the Republic of Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic.” According to the document, the local authorities of the two territories will be involved in organizing their self-government until January 1 2010.
The implementation of the law however, will be hampered by unresolved territory disputes between the two republics and is likely to bring about the issue of a unity between Chechnya and Ingushetia that used to be one administrative territory in the former Soviet Union.
Akhmar Zavgayev, one of the initiators of the bill and Duma Deputy from the Chechen Republic told Expert Online that the bill was first introduced to the Duma as early as on September 11 2006. However, it never adopted the law because no clearly defined borderline existed between the two republics. The border dispute even caused an armed conflict in 1992.
Border disputes survive for example in the Sunzhensk district where both Ingush and Chechen administrations have to co-exist somehow. On October 12, the day of election to the Chechen parliament there even was a spontaneous rally in support of a unity between Chechnya and Ingushetia in the Sunzhensk district.
The discussion on the unity may easily resume if triggered by the adoption of amendments to the draft law.
It is worth mentioning that on the eve of the Duma hearings, Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov condemned the idea of a possible unification between Chechnya and Ingushetia. Kadyrov called the idea “ill-timed” and added that the Chechen Republic was “undergoing intense restoration of its social and economic spheres” and it did not need “any additional social, political, and economic strain.”
The Russian presidential administration has declared that it conducts no discussions or consultations about uniting the two republics at present.
