North Ossetia: Quit While You're Behind

After hanging on for nine months after the Beslan school seizure where some 330 adults and children died, Alexander Dzasokhov, the North Ossetian president blamed for mishandling the crisis, took everyone by surprise by resigning last week.

Many North Ossetians had wanted Dzasokhov to go ever since Beslan, but few believed he would actually do so - and certainly not now.

His sudden departure, and the appointment in his place of Taimuraz Mamsurov, speaker of the North Ossetian parliament, has brought about a change of regime so sudden that residents of the republic are still trying to figure out what it means for them.

Mamsurov was named by Russian president Vladimir Putin under a new law which stipulates that regional leaders in the Russian Federation – including the presidents of constituent republics – should be appointed rather than elected.

Dzasokhov, a veteran Soviet Communist Party functionary and former ambassador who was first elected president of North Ossetia in 1998, said he was leaving “to make way to a new generation”.

Inside the North Ossetian government building, the mood was upbeat at the news of the president’s departure. An IWPR reporter saw parliamentary deputies and government officials cracking jokes and slapping each other on the back.

However, well-known sociologist Alexander Dzadziev told IWPR, “We may regret this later. I mean no disrespect to younger people, but you just can’t find the right person to replace him at the moment.”

Dzasokhov announced his resignation on May 31 when he met Dmitry Kozak, Putin’s envoy in the Southern Federal District, which includes the North Caucasus.

The next day, Putin summoned Dzasokhov to the Kremlin to say, “I’m not pushing you – it [resigning] was your idea.”

Russian media speculated that Dzasokhov decided to step down after refusing to accept a plan drawn up by Kozak setting out a schedule for the return of Ingush refugees displaced from the republic by the 1992 Ossetian-Ingush conflict. The North Ossetian leader had said that he could not approve the plan so soon after the Beslan crisis, in which many of the hostage-takers were ethnic Ingush, and that it might cause instability.

However, analysts saw a more direct connection with the hostage crisis, in which gunmen led by Chechen militants seized the Beslan school, taking more than 1,200 adults and children hostage.

North Ossetian officials, and Dzasokhov in particular, came under fire for insisting that the gunmen were holding just 354 people and for claiming that the hostages were being well-treated when in fact they lacked food and water. Some criticised Dzasokhov for not offering to take the place of the inside. More broadly, many blamed him for a situation in which corruption was so rampant that the militants simply bribed their way through police checkpoints.

Susanna Dudieva, who chairs the Beslan Mothers’ Committee which emerged as a vocal campaigning group after the tragedy, said that she feels no relief now that Dzasokhov is gone even though her group had held rallies and blocked roads to press for his resignation.

“I feel no satisfaction,” she said. “He should have done it earlier, but it is symbolic that he resigned right before Children’s Day – it’s not a holiday for Dzasokhov, who failed to protect the children of Beslan.”

However, sociologist Dzadziev believes the former North Ossetian leader cannot be held entirely responsible for what happened in the town.

“It is wrong to pin the blame on him for Beslan,” he said. “The basic responsibility for Beslan can be found in Russia’s short-sighted policy in Chechnya, the weakness of the federal government, and the games Russian officials are playing in Chechnya, especially with [pro-Kremlin leaders] Alu Alkhanov and Ramzan Kadyrov.”

Oleg Tsagolov, editor-in-chief of the Vladikavkaz paper Echo, said Dzasokhov was an “world-class politician, and he’ll be difficult to replace.

“He left when we least expected it. The tensions that arose in the wake of Beslan have subsided, and it was hoped that Dzasokhov would stay until the end of his term, but he just went and surprised us all again.”

Dzasokhov was in fact North Ossetia’s last official president, as the republic’s parliament abolished the position and replaced it with that of “head of the republic”, who is appointed by the Russian president in line with the new Russian legislation, and is then confirmed by the regional legislature.

Putin had 14 days to name a successor, but took just one week. In an emergency session on June 7, the North Ossetia parliament approved Mamsurov – one of Dzasokhov’s inner circle – as leader. Dzasokhov gets a seat in Russia’s Federation Council, the upper house of parliament.

Mamsurov’s candidacy was never in doubt, although he faced two other contenders for the post.

Mamsurov, 51, comes from Beslan himself, and his two children were in the school during the hostage crisis. He gained in stature by reportedly turning down an offer to get his children out in one of the groups the gunmen initially set free, saying he would never be able to “look people in the eyes” if he did this.

Despite this, many in Beslan opposed his appointment. Around 30 women from the town, dressed in black, picketed government headquarters in Vladikavkaz in a silent protest.

Opponents of the new leader are critical of his business interests as well as his close ties to Dzasokhov.

“Mamsurov is a lot worse than Dzasokhov,” said Vissarion Aseyev, chairman of the Beslan Teachers’ Committee, one of the main groups that had been pressing for the president’s resignation.

Others, however, hope Mamsurov will prove a tougher leader, and more able than his predecessor at building up North Ossetia’s stagnating economy.

“You can see that he’s an intelligent and practical man,” said Ruslan Chekhoev, a Vladikavkaz café owner.

Tsagolov said, “Policy will as a whole become stricter. Mamsurov is beholden to no one for his own appointment. We’ll have to see who his first appointments are to find out what sort of leader he’s going to be.”

Vitaly Aznaurov, an economic analyst and also deputy director of Transmost, a construction company, believes Dzasokhov did little to boost the economy, but he’s also sceptical that his successor will do any better.

“The government has done nothing to promote Ossetian products outside the republic, and has no policy of attracting inward investment,” he said. “Dzasokhov hasn’t made any difference to Ossetia’s economy. I don’t know if he tried, but if he did he has surely failed. Beslan is being rebuilt by construction companies from Moscow. If Dzasokhov had any clout, local builders would be doing it.”

But Aznaurov added, “Whatever Dzasokhov might have done for the economy wouldn’t have mattered after Beslan anyway. His resignation has got nothing to do with economics, and [the appointment of] the people who succeed him won’t either.”

Alan Tskhurbayev is a reporter for YUFO.RU, a Vladikavkaz-based news service.