One of the last acts of Natalia Estemirova, the human rights activist who was abducted and found murdered on Wednesday in Ingushetia, was to document the killing of a Chechen villager shot for allegedly giving a sheep to rebels.
These two murders add to a fresh surge of violence across Russia’s north Caucasus, which is setting off a powder keg of Islamic extremism, top-level vested interest, interclan rivalry, traditions of vengeance and ingrained suspicion of the behaviour of human rights activists.
The stability of the region is deteriorating, nearly a year after Russia attacked Georgia over the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Attacks by Islamic insurgents on officials in the north Caucasian regions of Ingushetia, Dagestan and Chechnya are becoming ever more regular.
The Kremlin declared it had pacified the region only three months ago, lifting its designation of Chechnya as a “counter-terrorist operation” zone. But soon afterwards insurgent attacks intensified in neighbouring republics, beginning with the killing of Dagestan’s interior minister, shot dead at a wedding in June, while the recently installed president of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, is still recovering from a near-fatal attack by a suicide bomber.
The Kremlin’s backing for the brutal methods used by Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen president, to bring the region under control, in which his opponents have been killed off one by one, appears to be stoking the insurgency and creating conditions in which human rights activists can be killed with impunity, say analysts and human rights workers.
“Kadyrov uses all methods necessary to decide his aims almost without limits,” said Dmitry Trenin, head of the Moscow Carnegie Centre. “But in the Caucasus such acts are never forgiven. There is always a response, even if it is long after Kadyrov has forgotten what he did.
“There could be a destabilisation in Chechnya,” said Mr Trenin.
“It had seemed that Kadyrov had gotten rid of his political opponents and ensured order in Chechnya, where he is the undisputed ruler. But now it is becoming clear that this is not so ... More and more people are starting to come out and attack the police and other government figures.”
Vladimir Vasilyev, the head of the Russian parliament’s security committee, blamed the recent surge of violence in the region on forces who did not want to see a smoothing of relations between Russia and the US.
Opponents of Mr Kadyrov have been regularly murdered, not only in Chechnya but also in central Moscow. Human rights leaders have blamed Mr Kadyrov for Estemirova’s killing.
Mr Kadyrov denies any involvement.
In an open letter to Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, leaders of Russian human rights groups wrote on Friday that “systematic violations of human rights, including murders”, by “law-enforcement and groups close to them acting as ‘death squadrons’ ” had increased lawlessness in the region.
“The myth of stability in Chechnya has burst like a bubble and the armed conflict is gradually spreading into neighbouring republics,” the letter said.
