The four victims of the May 20 double car bombing in Machakhkala bring the number of people killed since Russian President Vladimir Putin named Ramazan Abdulatipov acting president of Daghestan in late January to 96 -- an average of almost one per day. That compares with a total of 405 fatalities in insurgency-related violence in 2012. But the North Caucasus insurgency is only one of many intractable problems that Putin has tasked Abdulatipov with solving. Others include endemic corruption, an ongoing battle for influence between powerful interest groups, a stagnating economy, dilapidated infrastructure, and high unemployment.

Abdulatipov, 66, is a former academic and diplomat who served in the mid-1990s under then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin as nationalities minister. He is generally regarded as affable, energetic, forthright, and resolute.

Abdulatipov has wasted no time in identifying his priorities. They include rendering the government more effective and accountable; attracting federal investment; revamping the economy, in particular the moribund industrial sector; reducing Daghestan's financial dependence on subsidies from the federal budget and encouraging small and medium-sized business; cracking down on corruption and cronyism; and improving the security situation.

But when Abdulatipov set about selecting officials capable of tackling those tasks, he found himself unable to deliver on his pledge to fire all ministers who had held cabinet posts for over a decade and bring in young blood. Constrained by the unwritten requirement to guarantee that all the republic's 14 titular nationalities are represented in the government, Abdulatipov ended up appointing some ministers who had served under his predecessor, Magomedsalam Magomedov, to posts for which some analysts suggested they were not ideally qualified.

Abdulatipov made clear to the new cabinet from the outset that he expected them to produce a detailed assessment of the sector for which they are responsible, together with a list of priorities for the next three months, one year, and three years, and to work around the clock to achieve them ("you can forget about taking weekends off"). Few cabinet members complied with that demand to produce a coherent plan of action within the time frame allowed. Abdulatipov similarly warned he would show no mercy to any government official who tried to have embezzle government funds or demand bribes or kickbacks.

Abdulatipov issued a similar injunction to local government heads to work more efficiently and conscientiously, especially in the allocation of budget funds. He also warned they face dismissal if they fail to curtail insurgency activity.

He acknowledged openly what journalists and the public have been saying for years, namely that arbitrary and gratuitous reprisals by the police and security services are the primary cause of the uninterrupted flow of recruits to the Islamic insurgency. He described the "power" agencies and bureaucrats as "the main violators of human rights in Daghestan."

The negative role played by Daghestan's Interior Ministry goes far beyond the abduction and torture of men suspected of abetting the insurgency. In an interview two years ago, Nikolai Petrov of the Moscow Carnegie Center suggested the Daghestani Interior Ministry is not a part of the government called on to protect the state system but rather an independent actor, a "fortress under siege" that seeks in the first instance to defend "its own corporate interests."

The Russian daily "Izvestia" reported that investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the republic's police were behind the May 20 Makhachkala bombings. If that is indeed the case, their motive was presumably to discredit Abdulatipov at a point when the statutory press conference to showcase his accomplishments during his first 100 days in office has inexplicably been postponed indefinitely. Ironically, Abdulatipov affirmed in one of his first interviews after his appointment as acting president that "one of my principles is 'you don't fall down before you're shot,'" which is the title of a classic study of the Interior Ministry special-purpose troops (ONOM).

Possibly as a result of revelations by a group of current and former Daghestani police officers of the extent and seriousness of corruption within the republic's Interior Ministry, the federal Interior Ministry dispatched to Makhachkala last month a team of 25-30 investigators to probe the suspected complicity of Daghestani police officers in a number of high-profile crimes. Abdulatipov has told "Komsomolskaya pravda" that some Interior Ministry personnel are believed to have protected a drug-trafficking ring.

Whether that probe will culminate in the replacement of Abdurashid Magomedov (no relation to Magomedsalam), who was named interior minister in August 2010, is unclear. The appointment of the interior ministers of the various federation subjects is the prerogative of the Russian president.

Abdulatipov has taken a tougher line on the insurgency than Magomedov did. Specifically, he has questioned the relevance and effectiveness of the government commission established in 2011 by his predecessor to help young insurgents who want to lay down their arms and return to civilian life. That commission has not met once since Abdulatipov's appointment as acting president.

Abdulatipov says nonetheless he is promoting low-profile talks with adherents of the Salafism espoused by the insurgency.

In a recent interview, Abdulatipov deplored the existence within the republic's political elite of what he termed "a toxic milieu that perpetuates corruption, fanaticism, and banditry," and which "devoured" his predecessors as president. At the same time, Abdulatipov said he does not plan to investigate the alleged theft and embezzlement of billions of rubles by former senior officials, although he did not rule out the possibility they could use those funds to try to undermine him. Yet if he fails to identify and punish the most egregious cases of corruption, Abdulatipov is unlikely to succeed in his stated aim of restoring the population's faith in the republic's leadership.

True, the Daghestani parliament's vote last month to amend the republic's constitution to abolish direct elections for the post of republican head means voters will not have the opportunity to register their disenchantment with Abdulatipov at the ballot box. But his rivals for that post, even those who are fellow members of the ruling United Russia party, can be counted on to spin any and all of his perceived failings to their own advantage.

In line with a recent amendment to last year's law reintroducing direct elections for the heads of Russia's 83 federation subjects, the parliaments of the Republic of Daghestan and the Republic of Ingushetia have both voted overwhelmingly for the alternative option of empowering the legislature to select the most fitting candidate for that position. Karachayevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria are likely to follow suit. Whether Chechnya will do so too is an open question, however.

The draft amendment creating the alternative to direct elections was the brainchild of Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Research head Dmitry Badovsky, who is reportedly close to Russian presidential administration head Vyacheslav Voloshin.

As formulated by President Vladimir Putin in December, the rationale for depriving voters in selected North Caucasus republics of the right to choose their leader was to preclude "national and interethnic religious conflicts" such as occurred during the Karachayevo-Cherkessia Republic presidential ballot in 1999.

In fact, however, in the case of both monoethnic Ingushetia and multiethnic Daghestan, the primary consideration has clearly been to facilitate the election as republic head of the candidate favored by the Kremlin, even though the specter of clashes between the various ethnic groups has been adduced by some senior Daghestani officials to lend weight to their arguments against holding direct elections.

The public discussion in the run-up to the respective parliamentary votes served to highlight the profound differences between the political landscapes of Daghestan, the largest North Caucasus republic, and Ingushetia, the smallest. Daghestan has the freest media and at the same time the largest number (up to 10) of potential serious candidates for the post of republican leader in the event of a direct election; some of those potential candidates head powerful local interest groups engaged in a permanent competition for power. Commentator Eldar Aygumov argues that those "clans" have replaced, and perform the functions of, political parties, even though their members all belong to the ruling United Russia party.

In Daghestan, the Kremlin wants the parliament to endorse the candidacy of former Nationalities Minister Ramazan Abdulatipov, an Avar whom President Putin named acting Republic of Daghestan president in January in place of the seemingly sincere but arguably ineffective Magomedsalam Magomedov, whose term was not due to expire until early 2015. In an open ballot, Abdulatipov would face serious competition from several other political heavyweights, including long-time Makhachkala Mayor Said Amirov.

During the debate over the pros and cons of direct elections, senior Daghestani officials and public figures cited a variety of reasons why they are not appropriate at this juncture. Some argued that the population does not understand what democracy is all about, or is not mature enough to make a reasoned and sensible choice. Others predicted that direct elections would inevitably lead to violent upheaval in an increasingly fractured society.

Deputy Public Chamber Chairman Alyuset Azizkhanov said openly that neither the authorities nor civil society could guarantee that a direct election would be free and fair. Kamil Davdiyev, who chairs the Daghestan parliament's committee on interethnic relations, said parliament should select the republican head "because Daghestan has never held direct elections for republic head before."

Rizvan Kurbanov, who represents Daghestan in the Russian State Duma and helped draft the legislative amendment allowing for the election of the republic head by parliament, reasoned that given the huge disparity in the size of Daghestan's 14 titular ethnic groups, direct elections are unfair to representatives of what he termed the "small" nationalities. Kurbanov is a Lak, the fifth-largest of those ethnic groups, which accounts for just 5.6 percent of the republic's population of 3 million.

At the same time, Kurbanov rejected a return to the collective Daghestani leadership that existed from 1993-98 on the grounds that its members would invariably put the interests of their own ethnic group above those of the republic as a whole. But in a seeming contradiction, he also predicted that in the unlikely event of a representative of one of the numerically smaller ethnic groups being named republic head, that person would do all in his power to ensure peace and prosperity.

The population at large, however, was apparently not convinced by those arguments. Makhmud Makhmudov, first secretary of the Daghestan chapter of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation that set about collecting signatures in support of direct elections, estimated that support at between 90-95 percent, with just 5-6 percent of the electorate favoring the election of the republic head by the legislature.

Lawyer and blogger Rasul Kadiyev argued that it is through the process of direct elections that the population assumes the role and responsibilities of citizens, and the various ethnic groups merge into a civil society. Kadiyev plans to sue for 10 million rubles ($318,142) compensation for the alleged loss of his civic rights.

In the event, Daghestan's parliament voted on April 18 by a vote of 74 to nine, with three abstentions, in favor of amending the constitution to stipulate that the republic head is elected by parliament rather than in a direct ballot. Although both the KPRF and Patriots of Russia parliamentary factions had announced they would oppose the proposed change, the number of votes against (nine) was lower than the combined strength of those two factions (14 deputies).

Each of the five political parties represented in parliament must now submit three presidential nominees to Putin, who in turn must draw up a shortlist of three candidates, on whom the parliament must vote. Given that some of Abdulatipov's potential rivals have solid support among the 62 (of a total of 90) lawmakers from United Russia, that procedure raises the question: Which two additional candidates will United Russia propose?

Similarly unclear is when the actual vote on the three proposed candidates will take place. Parliamentarians reportedly assumed that it would be held on September 8, when seven other federation subjects are slated to hold direct elections for republic head. But since municipal elections are also scheduled in Daghestan for September 8, lawmakers formally asked President Putin to approve holding the vote sooner.

Commenting on that request, the deputy chairman of Russia's Central Election Commission said that body is ready to assist both Daghestan and Ingushetia in scheduling their respective elections on September 8, while one of his colleagues argued that the timing of indirect elections for republic head is not regulated by existing legislation, and so the votes should take place after the incumbent's term has expired.

Whether that means that Abdulatipov will remain acting president until Magomedov's term would have expired in early 2015 is unclear, but Abdulatipov has told parliamentarians he is not in any hurry, given Putin's "absolute trust" in him.

In Ingushetia, by contrast, the political landscape is more clear-cut, and the time frame for the vote clear. The executive and the legislature alike are subservient to republic head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and his entourage. The feisty and vociferous opposition Mekhk Kkhel (shadow parliament) doggedly criticizes Yevkurov in an endless stream of denunciations and appeals to the Kremlin but exerts minimal influence on the political situation on the ground.

A former career military intelligence officer, Yevkurov was named president by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in late October 2008; his term therefore expires this fall. Many in Ingushetia regard him as incompetent, inept, and corrupt, possibly to an even greater degree than his despised predecessor, Murat Zyazikov.

Consequently, there has been a flood of impassioned postings on independent websites defending Ingush voters' right to deny Yevkurov a second term as republican head by voting in a direct election for an alternative candidate. At the same time, a grassroots campaign was launched to nominate as a presidential candidate Zyazikov's predecessor, Afghan war veteran and retired General Ruslan Aushev. Aushev initially said he would not run, but after 50,672 signatures were collected in his support (more than the 49,200 votes Zyazikov received in Ingushetia's last direct presidential election in 2002), he formally stated on April 16 that he considers he has a moral obligation to participate in the ballot.

The Kremlin, however, has apparently decided to keep Yevkurov as Republic of Ingushetia head despite his stated objection to a differentiated approach to direct elections. The most likely explanation is that Yevkurov is regarded as a necessary counterweight to Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov. The two men are embroiled in an acrimonious dispute over the border between their respective republics, with both laying claim to the Sunzha district.

The Russian leadership has not intervened to end that dispute despite the passage last fall by the Chechen parliament of an amendment to the republic's constitution to include Sunzha as one of Chechnya's municipalities.

On April 10, just one week after Putin signed into law the legislative amendment allowing individual republics to decide whether or not to hold direct elections, Yevkurov issued a decree scheduling a "congress of the Ingush people" in Sunzha on April 20 to discuss both the border dispute with Chechnya and the upcoming election for republican head. Virtually all the 300-plus handpicked delegates were government officials or bureaucrats. Among the few exceptions were Mekhk Kkhel Chairman Idris Abadiyev and prominent human rights activist Magomed Mutsolgov. Aushev and Zyazikov were both invited, but only Aushev attended; he was seated on Yevkurov's right.

Aushev declared openly at the congress that "if we respect ourselves and the Ingush people, we must hold direct elections." But predictably, most deputies took their cue from Yevkurov, who has argued consistently that even though there would be no danger of destabilization as a result of direct elections, Ingush society, and Russian society as a whole, is not mature enough to hold them. Mutsolgov said the organizers did not even bother to count how many delegates voted against abolishing direct elections.

According to presidential administration head Zelimkhan Yevloyev, the congressional vote constituted a "recommendation" and was not binding on the legislature. But within days, the Republic of Ingushetia parliament passed in the first reading, and two weeks later in the second and third readings, an amendment to the constitution empowering its members to elect the president. Meanwhile, the United Russia faction named five candidates, including Yevkurov and parliamentary speaker Mukharbek Didigov, to compete in primaries for the three nominations to be submitted to Putin.

The opposition issued a formal statement on May 15 branding illegal the parliamentary vote abolishing direct elections. Oppositionist Magomed Khazbiyev, whom the Republican Party of Russia Parnas had selected as its presidential candidate in the event of a direct election, said the opposition will now organize a series of protest demonstrations.

It is unclear whether the Kremlin plans to extend to the other North Caucasus republics the precedent set by Daghestan and Ingushetia. Kabardino-Balkaria Republic head Arsen Kanokov and his Karachayevo-Cherkessia counterpart, Rashid Temrezov, whose terms expire in 2015 and 2016 respectively, are likely to concur with whatever model Moscow advocates. By contrast, Chechen Republic head Kadyrov, whose term expires in March 2016, has made it clear he would prefer a direct election.

The other six federation subjects where elections for governor or republican head are scheduled for September 8 have until the end of May to decide between direct and indirect elections. Meanwhile, the State Duma continues to discuss whether direct elections should be abolished elsewhere in Russia, not just in the North Caucasus. Participants in a roundtable last month proposed that only those republics whose budgets are not dependent on subsidies from the federal budget should hold direct elections -- which would put paid to Kadyrov's aspirations.

Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili announced on May 11 that his Georgian Dream (KO) coalition has chosen as its candidate for the October presidential election Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Giorgi Margvelashvili. A virtual unknown, Margvelashvili, 43, does not belong to either of the two parties aligned in the coalition. Meanwhile, incumbent President Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (ENM), which ceded power following the October 2012 parliamentary election, plans to select its presidential candidate by means of U.S.-style primaries by the end of this month.

Margvelashvili studied philosophy at Tbilisi State University and served twice, from 2000-06 and 2010-12, as rector of the U.S.-funded Georgian Institute for Public Affairs. Ivanishvili appointed him education minister last fall and deputy premier in January.

Ivanishvili characterized Margvelashvili as “very creative,” an experienced manager, a good analyst and team-player, and “unique in crisis situations.” The popular perception of Margvelashvili is somewhat different, however: In a March public-opinion survey commissioned by the National Democratic Institute his popularity rating was just 29 percent, far lower than Justice Minister Tea Tsulukiani, Defense Minister Irakli Alasania or Foreign Minister Maya Panjikidze.

Margvelashvili has also been criticized for the controversial withdrawal (subsequently retracted) of accreditation for the Agrarian University and for announcing the distribution of school textbooks free-of-charge, a decision protested by publishers who stand to lose out financially as a result.

Ivanishvili said the choice of Margvelashvili  as presidential candidate was unanimous and his candidacy was the only one considered. That statement lacks conviction insofar as the meeting to select a candidate reportedly lasted between 1 1/2 and two hours. In addition, some journalists have suggested the purpose of French-born former Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili’s arrival in Tbilisi on May 11 was to discuss her possible candidacy with Ivanishvili. Zourabichvili said on May 12 that she is considering running as an independent candidate.

Last fall, Ivanishvili had named as a possible KO presidential candidate Vakhtang Khmaladze, a respected legal expert and one of the authors of Georgia’s 1990 and 1995 constitutions. Khmaladze represents the Republican party, one of the two GD members, in parliament. Defense Minister Alasania was also considered a potential candidate, but he is rumored to have incurred Ivanishvili’s displeasure by telling members of his Free Democrats party that he aspired to the presidential nomination. Alasania has affirmed his unequivocal support for Margvelashvili and predicts he will win.

Irrespective of the merits of KO’s candidate, most analysts believe that the ENM is so discredited that it stands no chance of victory. Merab Pachulia, who heads the GORBI pollster, told the Russian daily “Kommersant” the ENM could even place third to former parliamentary speaker Nino Burjanadze if Burjanadze waged a convincing campaign. Burjanadze’s Democratic Movement--United Georgia has reportedly said it will propose her as its candidate.

Shalva Natelashvili, chairman of the extraparliamentary Labor party, announced in late March that he plans to participate in the October presidential ballot. Natelashvili placed fourth in the January 2008 presidential ballot with 6.49 percent of the vote.
As for the ENM, it has no clear front-runner. (Saakashvili is barred by the constitution from serving more than two consecutive presidential terms.) Until last month, many analysts had considered former Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili the most likely choice. Saakashvili named Merabishvili ENM head in the wake of the party’s election defeat last fall, tasking him with transforming it into a more effective and appealing political force capable of returning to power.

Merabishvili conceded in February that there was a “high possibility” that the ENM would lose the October presidential ballot. At the same time, he contributed to the speculation he would be its presidential nominee, saying in early April that an ENM rally scheduled for April 19 would yield “surprises” and “a drastic change” in the political situation. Just days before that rally, however, Saakashvili announced that the ENM’s presidential candidate will be selected in primaries in late May.

Merabishvili confirmed on May 9 that the party would hold primaries but declined to say whether he would seek nomination. Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava said the same day he considers former Tbilisi Mayor David Bakradze the most worthy candidate from the ENM. Ugulava had himself been considered for several years as a possible successor to Saakashvili, but he made clear in March he would not run. In addition to Bakradze, former Deputy Prime Minister Giorgi Baramidze has said he will seek the ENM nomination.

It is not clear whether damaging allegations posted on his Facebook page by former senior Interior Minister Dato Akhalaya may have demolished Merabaishvili’s presidential chances. Akhalaya claimed Merabishvili was behind the recruitment of the Chechen fighters who were killed in eastern Georgia in August in circumstances that remain unclear. He also suggested that Merabishvili leaked video footage in September of the abuse of prisoners at a Tbilisi jail with the explicit intention of discrediting Akhalaya’s brother Bacho, who had succeeded Merabishvili as interior minister.

Political analyst Ramaz Saqvarelidze has suggested that the ENM may disassociate itself from Merabishvili in the same way it has done so from Bacho Akhalaya, who is currently on trial on charges of exceeding his authority by engaging in the torture of prisoners. Saakashvili, however, rejected Akhalaya’s allegations against Merabishvili as “unserious” and categorically denied any rifts or infighting within the ENM.

After five months of court proceedings that Chechnya’s human rights ombudsman, Nurdi Nukhadzhiyev, dubbed a "witch hunt" and a travesty of justice, a Moscow court has found the ethnic Chechen Yusup Temerkhanov guilty of the murder of former Russian Army Colonel Yury Budanov -- even though two eyewitnesses say Temerkhanov was not the killer and he had no obvious motive.

The presiding judge then sentenced Temerkhanov on May 7 to 15 years in prison. The prosecution had asked for a 16-year sentence.

Investigators established that Budanov was shot dead on a busy Moscow street on June 10, 2011 by a lone gunman who escaped in a silver Mitsubishi Lancer with false papers and license plates that was later found abandoned. Budanov had gained notoriety during the 1999-2000 Chechen war for the cold-blooded rape and murder of Elza Kungayeva, a young Chechen woman he claimed he believed was a sniper. He went on trial for that killing in 2002 but was acquitted.

Following a repeat trial, Budanov was sentenced in July 2003 to 10 years in prison but released on parole in early 2009 after serving only half his sentence and seeing the charges against him annulled. Those rulings triggered a storm of protest in Chechnya. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov pronounced Budanov an enemy of the Chechen people and argued that his sentence should have been harsher, while human rights ombudsman Nukhadzhiyev wrote to Investigative Committee head Aleksandr Bastrykin denouncing as without legal foundation the decision to annul the charges against Budanov.

Meanwhile, Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer who appealed Budanov’s release on behalf of Kungayeva’s family, was shot dead in Moscow in January 2009.

The circumstances of Temerkhanov’s arrest are disputed. The authorities say he was arrested on August 26, 2011. Temerkhanov, however, claimed in a seven-page written deposition that he was abducted in Moscow one week earlier by masked men who claimed to work for military intelligence and who said they had information that he had been asked to kill Budanov by then-Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Magomed Daudov. Temerkhanov said the men also asked him if he knew whether Chechen Republic head Kadyrov was involved in Budanov’s murder.

Temerkhanov claimed that when he denied any personal acquaintance with the two top Chechen officials he was subjected to torture. His abductors drove him back to Moscow a week later and left him handcuffed to a tree in a park. He was formally arrested shortly afterward.

The murder investigation lasted almost a year. It established that Budanov had been under scrutiny in the days before his death and that his car had been shadowed by a silver Mitsubishi Lancer in which, according to eyewitnesses, the man who shot him escaped. An identical car was later found abandoned, an attempt to set fire to it, possibly in order to destroy evidence, having failed.

In the car, police reportedly found the gun the killer had used together with a pair of gloves and sunglasses with traces of Temerkhanov’s DNA and a magazine with his partial palm print on it. They also are said to have found groceries and a copy of the daily "Kommersant." A witness for the prosecution identified Temerkhanov as the man who purchased them just hours before the murder.

That latter witness was one of three whose identities were never made public and on whose testimony the formal indictment was largely based. Requests by Temerkhanov’s Chechen lawyer, Murad Musayev, for copies of the protocols of the questioning of those witnesses were refused.

Defense Evidence Rejected

Two unidentified eyewitnesses identified Temerkhanov in court as the killer; his former wife identified him as the man seen on closed-circuit television three days prior to the murder purchasing a blue sweatshirt emblazoned "Fire and Ice" identical to the one the eyewitnesses for the prosecution said the killer wore. A similar sweatshirt was found during a search of Temerkhanov’s Moscow apartment in August 2011. Temerkhanov denied it was his, and his lawyer claimed it had been planted there.

Two other eyewitnesses, however, testified that the killer was shorter than Temerkhanov and had auburn hair. Temerkhanov’s hair is black. According to Temerkhanov’s lawyers, both those men were apprehended by security personnel in February and threatened in an attempt to coerce them to retract their testimony; one was ordered to say Musayev offered him 15,000 rubles ($482) to exonerate Temerkhanov. Chechen human rights ombudsman Nukhadzhiyev publicly deplored those "repressive measures" against witnesses for the defense.

In mid-February, two members of the jury excused themselves from further service, whereupon the presiding judge dissolved the jury, selected 12 new jurors, and began the proceedings again from scratch. Musayev unsuccessfully protested that decision.

Temerkhanov said in court that he was not in Moscow on the day of Budanov’s murder but out of town undergoing treatment with a chiropractor for his back. The therapist in question testified that he had indeed treated Temerkhanov on the day of the murder. The prosecution, however, produced evidence that Temerkhanov visited a Moscow fitness club on June 10.

A further item of circumstantial evidence was that Dzhamal Paragulgov, an Ingush acquaintance of Temerkhanov’s, asked one of his contacts, who testified for the prosecution, for help in securing false papers and registration plates for a stolen Mitsubishi Lancer identical to the one in which the killer made his escape.

But Aleksandr Yevtukhov, one of the two eyewitnesses who said the murderer was definitely not Temerkhanov but a shorter man, also said that the Mitsubishi Lancer in which the murderer fled the scene was not the car later found abandoned.

Defense lawyer Musayev has outlined the possibility that "Dzhamal" was the real killer but that by the time investigators realized that, Dzhamal had already left Russia, and so they decided to make Temerkhanov the scapegoat. What motive Dzhamal may have had, or whether he was hired to carry out the killing and if so by whom, is unclear.

Investigators inferred that Temerkhanov’s motive for shooting Budanov was hatred of the Russian military en masse, given that drunken Russian troops arbitrarily killed Temerkhanov’s father in February 2000 in his native village of Geldagen. Temerkhanov’s paternal uncle, however, testified in court that Temerkhanov did not feel any enmity toward the Russian armed forces for that killing.

Indeed, if Temerkhanov had, as the prosecution argued, conceived in the early 2000s the plan of killing at random a symbolic Russian serviceman to avenge his father’s death, why should he have waited eight years to do so?

The prosecution construed Temerkhanov’s decision legally to change his name to Magomed Suleimanov as part of his imputed extensive preparations for the murder. (That was the name by which he was initially identified at the time of his arrest.) Temerkhanov explained in court, however, that he did so in order to make it impossible for a senior Chechen official with whom he was embroiled in a personal conflict to track him down.

For the same reason, Temerkhanov said, in early 2004 -- when Budanov was still serving the first year of his 10-year sentence for Kungayeva’s murder -- he concluded a fictitious marriage to a Russian woman in order to secure a residence permit for the capital.

The jury rejected the imputed murder motive of revenge, whereupon the prosecution formally asked the judge to alter the first charge against Temerkhanov from "revenge killing" to "murder." Musayev adduced the formal absence of a proven motive as grounds for demanding a retrial. He also said he planned to appeal.

Three of the 12 jury members also found Temerkhanov not guilty.

The 15 years in prison that Temerkhanov received at his sentencing is considerably longer than the term handed down to Budanov for killing Kungayeva.

On May 1, an improvised explosive device went off outside a store in Makhachkala, killing two high school students and injuring two other men. Daghestan’s security services believe that the bomb was intended as a warning to the owner of the store, who had refused to pay “zakyat” – the percentage of one’s income that the North Caucasus insurgency seeks to extort to fund its activities.

The leader of the Daghestan insurgency wing, Abu Mukhammad, and his namesake, who is qadi (supreme religious authority) of the Caucasus Emirate proclaimed in the fall of 2007 by Doku Umarov, explained with reference to the Koran why it is incumbent on all Muslims to pay that tax in a video clip posted last fall on insurgency websites. It has since been removed from YouTube.

That businessmen in Daghestan and elsewhere in the North Caucasus pay zakyat to the insurgency is no secret. Former Republic of Daghestan President Magomedsalam Magomedov admitted as much during a meeting in Pyatigorsk in October 2012 chaired by Russian Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev. Magomedov told that meeting that extortion from businessmen is the insurgency’s primary source of funding and that the Daghestani authorities are resolutely seeking to curtail it.

Magomedov did not estimate the sums of money involved. But North Caucasus Federal District head Aleksandr Khloponin claimed two years ago that businessmen across the North Caucasus pay the militants billions of rubles.

Then Daghestan Prosecutor-General Andrei Nazarov reported late last year that militants who had been apprehended had identified and provided their interrogators with detailed information about persons engaged in preparing video addresses that are downloaded onto a USB memory stick and sent to businessmen. He said that group alone had extorted more than 7 million rubles ($233,715), without specifying the time frame.

In October 2011, Daghestan’s Interior Ministry rounded up one such group numbering more than 30 people that operated in the northwest of the republic. A second group operating in three districts south and west of Makhachkala was broken up a year later.

An analysis last fall quoted a senior Daghestani Interior Ministry official as saying that criminal groups claiming to represent the insurgency have also begun demanding zakyat from entrepreneurs. The report suggested that the volume of cash the insurgency extorts from the business community is one of the primary reasons for Daghestan’s economic stagnation. It also quoted a former manufacturer of furniture in the southern town of Derbent whose workshop was subjected to an arson attack after he ignored a demand from the insurgency for 2 million rubles. He paid off the sum in installments, then sold his business and emigrated to Azerbaijan.

Yet local businessmen are not the insurgency’s only source of ready cash. They also tap into budget funds by threatening government officials with reprisals. Magomedov admitted that the use of budget funds by local councils is carefully monitored in light of suspicions that some of those officials channel money to the insurgency. The analysis cited above named one local council head who was shot dead after refusing to pay zakyat and a second injured in an attack the author believed was similarly motivated.

The independent weekly “Nastoyashchee vremya” was fined 10,000 rubles for reporting last year without revealing its source that Magomedov himself had received a threatening “flashka” from the insurgency. The paper did not speculate whether or how much he had paid them.

Then Daghestan Minister for Nationality Policy Bekmurza Bekmurzayev said a year ago that the insurgency in Daghestan receives 70 percent of its funding from “Daghestanis from whom the bandits extract tribute.” He did not clarify what proportion of those “Daghestanis” are businessmen, not bureaucrats.

The Boston Marathon bombings have served to corroborate many observers’ previously unsubstantiated hunch that one reason for the Russian security services’ inability to contain the North Caucasus insurgency is that the various agencies responsible fail to share information among themselves.

In this particular case, Daghestan’s Center for the Struggle Against Extremism apparently failed to share its file on Boston suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev with other agencies.

Over the past week, Daghestan’s Security Council Secretary Magomed Baachilov and Interior Minister Abdurashid Magomedov have both gone on record as saying there is no evidence that, during his extended visit to Makhachkala last year, Tamerlan Tsarnaev had any contact with insurgency recruiters.

The independent Russian-language weekly “Chernovik” on April 22 quoted Baachilov as saying he has no information to indicate Tsarnaev was recruited by the insurgency.

Magomedov for his part similarly affirmed that his ministry is not aware of any contacts between Tsarnaev and members of the insurgency. Magomedov reportedly added that Tsarnaev had spent “only three or four days” with his parents in Makhachkala, although Russian and Western media say he remained there for several months, from late January until July 2012.

Russian journalist Irina Gordienko has demonstrated that both men were wrong in their suppositions.

In an article published on April 27 in "Novaya gazeta,” she quotes an unnamed Center for the Struggle Against Extremism staffer as saying that the agency opened a file on Tsarnaev in April 2012 after he was seen repeatedly in the company of Makhmud Mansur Nidal, 18, a suspected insurgency recruiter. Nidal was killed in May 2012 during an antiterror operation in Makhachkala.

After Nidal’s death, according to Gordienko’s sources, Tsarnaev became a virtual recluse. He left Daghestan two months later, just days after the death in a special operation in Kayakent Raion of William Plotnikov, a Canadian citizen whom Tsarnaev may have met in Toronto in 2009 and with whom he corresponded by e-mail.

Plotnikov reportedly converted to Islam and traveled to Daghestan. He was detained in Izberbash in December 2010 on suspicion of links with the insurgency but subsequently released. It was apparently as a result of questioning him that Russian security forces first asked their U.S. counterparts for information about Tsarnaev.

On the basis of Tsarnaev’s contacts in Makhachkala, Gordienko’s contact in the Center for the Struggle with Extremism advanced the same hypothesis as I did last week: that Tsarnaev may have traveled to Daghestan with the intention of joining the insurgency but that the potential recruiter (Nidal) was initially wary of him. That specialist explained that potential recruits are “quarantined” for several months while their suitability is assessed.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has again denied that the previous Georgian government recruited and trained a group of Chechens with the aim of infiltrating them into the Russian Federation. Saakashvili was responding to what he termed “irresponsible” and “extremely dangerous” comments made by Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili in an April 26 interview with the TV channel Rustavi-2.

Referring to the annual study of the human rights situation in Georgia presented to parliament on April 1 by Public Defender Ucha Nanuashvili, Ivanishvili said in that interview the ongoing probe into the circumstances of a shootout in August in eastern Georgia between Chechens and Georgian troops and Interior Ministry special forces may yield “shocking” results that corroborate Nanuashvili’s conclusion that the previous government recruited, trained and equipped Chechens living in exile in Europe to join the North Caucasus insurgency.

At the time of the August shootout, in which three Georgians and up to 11 militants were killed, the Georgian authorities said they had intercepted and neutralized a suspicious group of armed men near Georgia’s border with Daghestan. But Nanuashvili’s report to parliament presented a radically different version of what happened.

According to Nanuashvili’s sources, the Georgian Interior Ministry recruited and flew to Tbilisi from Europe up to 120 refugees from the North Caucasus, primarily Chechens, to undergo training prior to crossing the border into Russia and joining the insurgency. The men were housed in apartments in Tbilisi, trained at the Shavnabada and Vaziani military bases, and issued with licenses for their weapons.

That scenario continues like this:

In late August, the men grew impatient and demanded to be taken to eastern Georgia to cross into Daghestan. Their handlers duly deployed them to the Lopota gorge in eastern Georgia. But Interior Ministry special forces transported there separately by helicopter intercepted the Chechens and prevented them from crossing into Russia. The Georgian troops demanded that the men surrender their weapons and return either to a military base or to Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, the largely Kist population of which are ethnic Chechens who have lived there for centuries.

Whether that move was because the Georgian leadership developed cold feet over abetting the North Caucasus insurgency, or whether it was intended from the outset to set the men up and then kill them and brand them infiltrators from Russia (which was the official explanation given in August) remains unclear.

The Chechen recruits reportedly refused to comply with the demand to disarm, whereupon the Georgian side sent for respected and authoritative members of the Georgian Chechen community to reason with them. The Chechens, however, said they would surrender their weapons only after they reached Pankisi. That refusal triggered a shootout in which two Georgian handlers and a military doctor were killed, along with seven Chechens. (The initial reports gave the number of Chechens killed as 11.)

The Georgian Interior Ministry subsequently arranged for the remaining recruits to leave Georgia for Turkey.

That account of events was partially substantiated by Akhmad Chatayev, a Chechen who lost an arm fighting in the early 2000s and was subsequently granted political asylum in Austria before settling in Georgia. Chatayev was one of the Chechens brought to mediate in the standoff between the Chechens and Georgians and was injured in the gun battle between the Chechen recruits and the Georgian special forces. He was apprehended 10 days later and went on trial in November on a charge of illegal possession of two hand grenades, which he denied.

The criminal case brought against Chatayev was shelved in January after the prosecutor’s office withdrew the charge against him.

Nanuashvili’s report names then-Deputy Interior Minister Gia Lortkipanidze as having coordinated the recruitment and training of the Chechens. In October, however, a prominent member of the Chechen community in Georgia, Umar Idigov, said it was former Defense Minister Bacho Akhalaya who conceived the idea of co-opting Chechens and infiltrating them into Russia.

But in a statement posted two weeks ago on his Facebook page, Akhalaya’s brother Dato, himself a former Interior Ministry official, claimed to be in possession of evidence that it was their former boss Vano Merabishvili who masterminded the planned operation. Both Merabishvili and Lortkipanidze have rejected allegations of their involvement as “idiotic” and “absurd.”

Widely regarded as Saakashivili’s eminence grise, Merabishvili was accused by one of Nanuashvili’s predecessors as human rights defender of condoning the formation within the Interior Ministry of "a punitive group that stands above the law and that can liquidate any given individual if doing so is considered expedient." In the wake of the defeat of Saakashvili’s United National Movement by Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream coalition in the October 1 parliamentary elections, Saakashvili named Merabishvili to head the party in the hope he would be able to reverse the catastrophic decline in its fortunes prior to the presidential election due in October 2013.

Nanuashvili called for establishing a parliament commission to probe the events culminating in the Lopota shootout, including the putative involvement of Merabishvili, but the parliament declined that proposal on the grounds that existing legislation precludes setting up such a commission in cases where an investigation by prosecutor’s office is under way. That investigation was launched in November. No details of its findings have yet been made public. Ivanishvili told Rustavi-2 that it will be completed “in the near future.”

It was reported earlier last week that the bodies of two of the Chechens killed in Lopota are to be exhumed to determine precisely how they died. The results of the original postmortems have disappeared.

Meanwhile, the Russian daily “Izvestia” published three articles last week alleging links between Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who with his younger brother Dzhokhar is believed to have perpetrated the Boston marathon bombings on April 15, and Georgia’s Caucasus Fund, which was established in Georgia in the aftermath of the August 2008 war with Russia to promote academic contacts with the North Caucasus. Citing a report compiled by a Georgian Interior Ministry Counterintelligence Department staffer it named as Colonel Grigory Chanturia, the paper claimed that Tsarnaev attended several seminars the Caucasus Fund organized last year.

The Georgian Interior Ministry swiftly denied any connection with Tsarnaev, adding that it has no information he ever visited Georgia. The ministry also denied ever having employed an officer by the name of Grigory Chanturia.

The Caucasus Fund issued a statement similarly denying any connection with Tsarnaev and stressing that its primary objective is to foster scientific, cultural and humanitarian ties between Georgia and the North Caucasus republics. It branded the “Izvestia” article an attempt by “those forces that disapprove of the fund’s activities” to blacken Georgia in the eyes of the international community, and said it will bring a libel case against the paper.

Georgian Caucasus expert Mamuka Areshidze for his part noted the existence within the Georgian security agencies of a “fifth column” that, he suggested, could have passed confidential information to Moscow. Areshidze also suggested that Tsarnayev may have been co-opted in a “false flag” recruitment by the previous Georgian government by someone claiming to work for the Caucasus Fund, but with the aim of discrediting both the Fund and Georgia.