Das Pogrom gegen die Inguscheten von 1992 und was Moskau dagegen unternommen hat (nichts)

Aus Allah's Mountains:

Across the border in Ingushetia, land certainly does count for a lot - it often does to repressed peoples. When the Ingush were deported by Stalin, they thought only about coming home. Their culture and gene pool were under assault, but the land was something firm and indestructible. Even though they officially no longer existed, erased from encyclopedias and their territory given out to other nations, the deportees knew where their forefathers were buried and that to them was vital proof of their own continued identity. So the discovery that their rich agricultural territory of Prigorodny was now closed off by a border and inhabited by Ossetians cam, understandably, as a blow.

Under post-deportation Soviet rule, the Ingush shared a joint republic with the Chechens. When the Chechens declared independence from Russia in 1991, the Ingush decided, overwhelmingly, not to follow, and instead got Moscow's blessing to set up an autonomous republic of their own within the Russian Federation. The new Ingush republic, which came into legal existence in December 1992, had no city or much else to show itself. [...] For the 270,000 Ingush, recovering control of their Prigorodny lands over the border in North Ossetia was now more important than ever.

Remaining loyal to Moscow seemed like a good first step, and President Yeltsin responded favorably -- promising the Ingush during his 1991 presidential campaign that their problems would be resolved by the end of the year. [...] Meanwhile, with or without permission, the Ingush were reclaiming their lands. By 1992, 30,000 had moved back to Prigorodny, according to official figures, although the real figure, including people who dodged the Ossetian resideny permits system, was closer to 60,000. In addition to pressure for the territory to come officially within Ingushetia, some Ingush made a more provocative claim on the entire northeastern side of the city of Vladikavkaz [...]. This part [...] had also been Ingush territory in 1924 [...]. But the maps had been withdrawn in 1934, well before the deportations, and Vladikavkaz then decreed part of North Ossetia.

Tension grew throughout 1991. Ossetian thugs harassed the Ingush in Prigorodny, and a slow exodis of refugees began across the border into Ingushetia. Many Ingush refused to buckle. [...] Both sides began to arm. For the Ingush, there was the Chechen arms market [...]. North Ossetia was the only autonomous republic in Russia allowed to create an official [...] armed force. In addition, the republic became the new base for some of the troops withdrawn from areas of the ex-Soviet Union and eastern Europe, including East Germany. [...] Another source of weapons [for the Ossetians] was the war in South Ossetia an the ex-combatants flowing North Ossetia.

It is unclear who fired the first shot. In late October 1992 a North Ossetian armored personnel carrier ran over an Ingush child in one of the Prigorodny villages. This provoked clashes between Ingush crowds and Ossetian police, with several people killed on both sides. On 24 October, the Inguish leaders ordered their villages to set up barricades and prepare for defence. On 30 October, the Ossetians began shelling Ingush parts of villages. So the next day the Ingush drove out the Ossetian police from the village of Chermen, captured weapons and rampaged through Ossetian areas until the Prigorodny region was in their hands. [...] Boris Yeltsin declared a state of emergency in the region on 2 November and ordered 3,000 Russian Interior Ministry soldiers and paratroopers units to intervene.

The battle ended in a disaster for the massively outgunned Ingush, who were burned and driven from their homes until there were none left in Prigorodny. Russian officials registered 65,000 refugees from North Osetia into Ingushetia. Offically, 419 Ingush, 171 Ossetians and 60 others were killed. Other figures gave death tolls as high as 750 and 500 wounded. In all, 3,000 Ingush houses were burned.

The Ossetians said the Ingush were to blame, that they provoked a justifiably furious response by launching an assault on Vladikavkaz. The story you heard everywhere, always the same but impossible to prove, was that Ingush civilians in North Ossetia knew in advance that there would be a big Ingush assault to capture Prigorodny and Vladikavkaz. Secretly, they sneaked away before their fighters struck, leaving their former Ossetian neighbours and friends no warning of the attack. [...]

The Ingush were not blameless. Nationalists were agitating for the division of Vladikavkaz, and Ingush fighters were likely as much to blame as their young Ossetian counterparts in provoking the fatal first incidents. But there was no 'assault' on Vladikavkaz. The fighting was in Prigorodny. The story of Ingush inhabitants commiting a premeditated, mass betrayal of their Ossetian neighbours seems ludicrous. Many Ingush were themselves caught unawares by the sudden start of war and had to flee North Ossetia in desperate, often fatal, circumstances only after the fighting got away.

The actual fighting was so one-sided that it was more a pogrom than battle. First the village came under artillery fire, while helicopters either fired or directed fire. Then the settlements were attacked by troops equipped with armored personnel carriers and no Ingush was safe. Many Ingush houses were set ablaze by arsonists, not as a result of fighting. You could see that in the ruins years later. The Ingush accused Russian troops in the area of directly supporting the Ossetians to commit ethnic cleansing in Progorodny, and their case was not without basis. The heavy weapons and helicopters, and presumably the crews, could only have been supplied by the Russian armed forces. Two damning facts are sure. First, the Russian force did not intervene as it should have to prevent the massacre of civilians. Second, the end result of the war -- even if this was not the aim, as the Ossetians insist -- was ethnic cleansing. The Ingush fled en masse.