The decline and shifting geography of violence in Russia’s North Caucasus, 2010-2016

Abstract

A spatial analysis of the geography of insurgency in the North Caucasus of Russia from 1999 through the end of 2016, focused on the period since 2010, corroborates other work on the incidence of violence in the region. A sharp drop in the absolute number of conflict events over the past half-decade occurred as violence diffused from Chechnya in the mid-2000s and is attributable to a range of domestic and international factors. Domestically, the decline is broadly linked to the securitization of the region around the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the return to the use of the Kremlin power vertical as a system of political management after an interlude focused on economic development as a mitigation strategy, and the wider adoption of harsh management tactics at the regional and republic scales. Internationally, potential insurgents have left Russia to fight in the Middle East and Ukraine. Using a conflict-event data-set (N = 18,960) from August 1999 through the end of 2016 and focusing on the period since the creation of the North Caucasus Federal District in January 2010, the paper identifies a set of notable trends within the decline and shift in violence. Key findings include a percentage increase in arrests carried out by Russian security services, a decline in retaliation across conflict actors, and the failure of federal subsidies to contribute to declines in violence in the region. The long-term prospects for continued insurgency in the North Caucasus, specifically in light of the collapse of the Islamic State and Russia’s domestic challenges, remain uncertain and should acknowledge the recent decline in violence in the region.