United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Eye on Eurasia: Fascist fires in Caucasus

Fascism in the Russian Federation is generating anti-Russian attitudes among many in the northern Caucasus who until recently had been loyal to Moscow, a development that may point toward even greater violence across that region in the future, according to the major of the Daghestani city of Khasavyurt. In an interview conducted by the Regnum news agency and posted online by IslamNews.ru earlier this month, Mayor Saygidpasha Umakhanov said that fascism among Russian officials and ordinary Russian citizens is creating an explosive situation in many regions of the northern Caucasus. His words on this point merit extensive quotation. "Peoples in the Caucasus today are humiliated and abused," Umakhanov said. "Every day one or two corpses are returned to the Caucasus from the center of Russia -- and these are precisely the victims of fascism. But these fascists," he continued, "like in Voronezh are called simply hooligans." At the same time, the Khasavyurt mayor said, "in the Caucasus itself, [Russian security forces frequently] shoot at people who have no connections with terrorism only because they are accidentally acquainted with suspicious personalities."