Russia - 'Caucasian Emirate' War Most Deadly to the Poor

In the Republic of Dagestan in southern Russia, the war for 'Caucasian Emirate' has many casualties, but the most vulnerable are those in poverty and ignorant of their rights.  This article talks about a human rights group that works to aid women who are caught in the crossfire.

War for ‘Caucasian Emirate’ feeds on innocence and poverty

"The Caucasian republic of Dagestan in southern Russia is one of the most volatile areas in the country. Groups of militants operating in this part of the Caucasus have strong links with Al-Qaeda, and look to draw people in while they are young.  Anti-terror raids are constantly carried out in an attempt to eradicate the problem. Although militants usually target police and government officials, terrorism has so often ruined the lives of many innocent families across the region..."

Rural Russia Neglected

Decline and alcoholism exist in the Russian country-side. The death-rate in many rural villages is high and is a cause of population decline. What is happening in rural Russia is summarized by Tom Lasseter of McClatchy.

The government administrator was bursting with optimism: More children are being born, many rubles will be invested in infrastructure and his region is weathering the global economic storm.

"The situation is so good," said Boris Zaitsev, a broad-shouldered man who spoke in a confident monotone.

Outside his office, some 170 miles northwest of Moscow, the front steps to the Soviet-era government building are falling into a pile of rubble. Deep, spine-rattling potholes that rival sections of Baghdad riddle the town's streets. The region's population has plummeted by more than a quarter.

Officials here like to point visitors to Kuvshinovo's new Russian Orthodox church, an elegant wooden structure. Work inside the church hasn't been finished, because the money ran out. Looters searching for icons and cash previously torched the office of another local church. Twice. A priest in a nearby village, who'd led an anti-alcoholism campaign, was burned to death with his family.

The area around this rural enclave is in steep decline; once-thriving fields are empty and the population is in free-fall. Along with many other towns and villages in vast rural Russia, it's a microcosm for a country that, according to recent studies, is withering away.

In Kuvshinovo and outlying hamlets, the population has dropped to 16,000 people from 22,000 in less than 20 years. Russia as a whole lost 12.3 million people from 1992 to 2008. An influx of immigrants, mainly from former Soviet territories, helped hide the extent of the problem. The population is now 142 million, but it would have been 136.3 million without that surge from outside.

The statistics help explain why Vice President Joe Biden struck such a sensitive nerve among Russia's ruling elite when he said recently that the country has "a shrinking population base; they have a withering economy," and added, "It's a very difficult thing to deal with, loss of empire."

Despite the Kremlin's posturing on the world stage and its hard line in what Russians call the "near abroad" — invading Georgia, shutting off natural gas to Ukraine, claiming a privileged sphere in other post-Soviet territories — the decay in the heartland suggests that Russia isn't a resurgent superpower so much as a nation that's trying not to come apart at the seams.

The mansions and gardens of old imperial Russia have faded or crumbled, as have many of the collective farms that fed communist Russia. Today, the hamlets dot a forsaken land of rampant poverty where men drink from morning to night. The interconnected crises of low fertility, high death rates and ragged infrastructure have left much of the nation barren.

Looking over the hayfields that lead to the onion dome and the glistening gold cross of a steeple a few miles outside Kuvshinovo, a Russian Orthodox priest mulled the question: What's happening to Russia?

"There are villages with only two people left, and others where nobody lives," Alexander Peshekhonov said, choosing his words carefully. Peshekhonov, his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, added the obligatory caveat that, "Our country is great."

He then flicked a finger at his throat, a gesture meaning, "They drink."

When spring comes around, he said, the bodies of locals who fell drunkenly into the snowdrifts of winter are found in the pastures and roads. One man responsible for burning the church office in Kuvshinovo was caught in a market, selling icons and religious cassette tapes he'd swiped to raise money for vodka.

"If you read the newspapers and listen to our leaders' propaganda, you get the feeling that everything is OK," Peshekhonov said. "But I don't believe that."

A major study that the United Nations released in April, authored by leading Russian experts, projected that Russia would lose at least 11 million more people by 2025. Another U.N.-sponsored report said last year that the population could fall to as low as 100 million in 2050.

That report cited a recent improvement in fertility but cautioned that, "while these favorable trends may last another five or six years, all recent forecasts . . . predict that Russia's population decline will only intensify."

"There's a risk that in the most negative situation, Russia will stop existing as a state," said Olga Isupova, a senior demographic researcher at the Higher School of Economics, a leading private Russian university in Moscow.

Down a dusty road and then a dirt path from Kuvshinovo, Dr. Anna Voronova holds medical clinics in the village of Pryamukhino. Sitting behind her desk in a dimly lit room with warped floors and chipped paint, Voronova said she saw a lot of people with drinking problems. She didn't mean just vodka and beer.

"They buy household cleaners, or solvents used to clean a machine, and drink it because it's cheap," she said. "It's not one or two people; it's many people."

There were 720 people living around Pryamukhino in 1990. Today, there are about 500, a decline caused in part by an exodus to Russia's cities, but mostly by the fact that deaths outnumber births.

The talk of alcoholism isn't confined to handwringing clergymen and small-town doctors. A study published this June examined three Russian industrial cities with typical mortality trends and found that during the 1990s, more than half of the deaths of those aged 15 to 54 were alcohol-related.

The findings, authored by a blue-ribbon panel of experts including representatives of the Russian cancer research center and the University of Oxford, suggest that Russia is drinking itself to death.

Russian town revolts due to lack of jobs

We found this unique look at how the global recession is effecting small towns in Russia from Time Magazine.

The town of Pikalyovo has rampant unemployment after the local cement factories closed down. People there took to the streets to protest over never receiving back pay. The protest got Vladamir Putin's attention, and the Russian government is taking steps to make sure more protests don't occur in the country.

From Time Magazine, reporter John Wendle gives us the story of the Pikalyovo.

For three months, Pikalyovo's citizens had been living in crippling poverty after the town's recession-hit cement and brick factories started closing down. Thousands of workers were laid off and almost overnight nearly 25% of Pikalyovo's 20,000 residents were unemployed. After making several pleas to their employers for back pay — at one point crashing a meeting at the mayor's office to demand their jobs back — the workers turned to desperate measures. On June 2, they staged a strike along a major highway linking the city of Vologda to St. Petersburg, blocking the route for hours. Finally Moscow took notice and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flew in by helicopter to force local politicians and factory owners to pay the town's workers the money owed to them. Now Pikalyovo's shops, cafes and banks are doing good business again, but as the recession sweeps across Russia, small single-industry towns all over the country are just one factory closure away from suffering the same plight. (See pictures of Putin.)

"You wouldn't have seen anything like this — people were fed up and angry," says Alexander Plush, 41, another former factory worker standing in line at the ATM. Plush had worked for 17 years at one of the Pikalyovo's cement factories until it closed a few months ago. "Before we got paid, people were living on bread and water and the food they could grow in their gardens this early in the year," he says.

The situation was so bleak that, according to Russian media, people in Pikalyovo were forced to eat wild plants, while the city's hot water was shut off after residents couldn't pay their bills. When Putin came in to save the day, he saw PR potential in Pikalyovo's distress. During a nationally televised meeting in the town, the prime minister scolded local officials and factory owners, including billionaire tycoon Oleg Deripaska, a onetime Kremlin favorite whose investment company Basic Element owns the town's BaselCement factory. "You have made thousands of people hostage to your ambitions, your lack of professionalism — or maybe simply your trivial greed," Putin said.

Yet even Putin's harsh words and the disbursal of pay have not put an end to the feeling here that the crisis will continue. "It's unlikely the situation will change. Receiving our pay was a small gesture, a short-term solution," says Denis Yershov, a former employee at the local electricity plant who helped block the road last week. "I'll be happy when we have work again. I'll be happy when we have stability and I'm able to feed my family."

Yershov's sentiments — and those of nearly everyone else TIME spoke to in Pikaylovo — are playing out at checkout counters in shops all over town. "People are only buying the cheapest brands. It's like they don't believe the change will last," says Oksana Gavrilova, a staunch Putin supporter who had worked at the EuroCement factory for eight years before she was laid off. Leaning down into a nearly empty cooler to grab a kielbasa, she says, "Without the factories, Pikalyovo is nothing."

And she is right. Pikalyovo is one of hundreds of cities across Russia whose populations are supported by just one factory or one industry. If that factory or industry is wiped out by the global economic downturn — as Pikalyovo's was when the price of cement dropped and Deripaska's company Basic Element put half of its workforce on forced leave — the whole town is sent into a tailspin

Russia says they want to become a leader in global food supply

Recently, Russia announced an aggressive plan to boost the amount of food it grows and supplies to the world. Russia plans on spending more money and using more of it's land to grow food and become a leader in global food supply.

In this analysis from Guardian writers Amie Ferris-Rotman and Karl Plume, many say that Russia will need to spend more on infrastructure to follow through with their ambitious plans.

The Kremlin's pledge to ease a world food shortage needs investment in port capacity and farming know-how if Russia and its Black Sea neighbours are to usurp the United States as the world's biggest grain supplier. Russia, with a tenth of the world's arable land, said at the weekend it could double grain exports within 15 years. By becoming a top supplier in a world where every sixth person goes hungry, it aims to carve out a similar key role in food security to the one it holds in energy supply.

But while some in the grain markets believe the Black Sea region can become the bread basket for the entire world, right now it does not have the capacity to do so.
"They are some years away from being considered a massive grain powerhouse," said Gavin Maguire, director at Chicago brokerage EHedger, though he added the region had potential.

"If they did invest significantly in the infrastructure there -- building roads, building rail and port facilities that are capable of moving meaningful amounts of grain -- we could have something interesting emerge over the next decade or so."
Russia plans to add 50 percent to its grain harvests by bringing into use some 20 million hectares of derelict farmland, or an area the size of West African nation Senegal. The target was unveiled by President Dmitry Medvedev at the Kremlin's showcase World Grain Forum in St Petersburg.

This extra grain could meet a chunk of a forecast 50 percent rise in world demand over the next two decades, a result of the more than 60 million people born each year, Asia's rapid growth and the better diet sought by a 2 billion-strong middle class.

Medvedev called the world's fixation with profit "immoral" and backed a proposal to create a global grain reserve to better administer food resources and curb price spikes such as those that led to riots from Haiti to Senegal to Indonesia last year.

Russia enters the global recession

The latest report from the World Bank deals with Russia and forecasts how it's economy will fare in the near future. The World Bank says that the Russian economy will recede on 2009. The news of the report sent the stock markets in Russia falling as well as a drop in the value of the ruble.

From the story in the New York Times writer Ellen Barry tells us how this will impact the poor in Russia.

The World Bank released a grim report on Russia on Monday, projecting a 4.5 percent contraction in the economy in 2009 and warning that the financial crisis would push 5.8 million Russians into poverty unless the government shifted more spending to poor families.

The report was a sharp revision of the World Bank’s November forecast, which predicted an increase of 3 percent in gross domestic product in 2009. World Bank analysts also took a more pessimistic view than the Russian government, whose experts are predicting a 2.2 percent contraction.
...

The World Bank report addresses a particular worry of Russian authorities: that unemployment will translate into civil unrest. Already, nearly 6.4 million Russians are unemployed and 1.1 million are on forced leave or working part-time schedules.

By the end of 2009, unemployment will probably reach 12 percent, the World Bank predicts. The poverty rate will climb to 15.5 percent, erasing some of the gains made in the last decade, when poverty fell to 10 percent from about 20 percent, the report said.

The report recommends a package of payments, including increases of 70 percent in unemployment subsidies and 220 percent in child welfare payments, which Mr. Bogetic said “could alleviate some of this social pain.”

“These instruments are better than all the others in reaching the poor,” he said. “You need to jack them up sufficiently.”

Nations begin to barter for food

We are beginning to see the effects of the global credit crunch is having on nations securing food.

Experts have been telling us for a while that credit drying up will make it harder for underdeveloped nations to obtain credit to buy food. They have warned of the damages this could have for world trade. This also raises prices for locally grown food.

Now some countries have begun to admit that they are bartering for food staples. Javier Bias from the Financial Times lists some of the countries who have fessed up to bartering.

In a striking example of how the global financial crisis and high food prices have strained the finances of poor and middle-income nations, countries including Russia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Morocco say they have signed or are discussing inter-government and barter deals to import commodities from rice to vegetable oil.
...
The countries have not disclosed the value of any deals, and some have refused even to confirm their existence. Officials estimated that they ranged from $5m for smaller contracts to more than $500m for the biggest.

Josette Sheeran, head of the United Nations’ World Food Programme, said senior government officials, including heads of state, had told the WFP they were facing “difficulties” obtaining credit to purchase food. “This could be a big problem,” she told the Financial Times.

Last week, Malaysia’s commodities minister, Datuk Peter Chin Fah Kui, said Kuala Lumpur had already signed a barter deal swapping palm oil for fertilizer and machinery with North Korea, Cuba and Russia. He said Malaysia was talking to Morocco, Jordan, Syria and Iran about other barter deals.

“[Bartering] could be used for contracts with other countries that do not have the cash,” Mr Chin told the local press. “We can set the conditions for them to supply us with the raw materials that we need.”

Thailand, the world’s largest exporter of rice, is discussing barter deals with Middle Eastern countries, including Iran. The Philippines, the world’s largest importer of rice, has secured rice needs for this year through a diplomatic agreement with Hanoi.

Chasing China

from All Africa

Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
Moscow

A 500 million-dollar development assistance package to Africa marks a new move by Russia to catch up with Chinese expansion into Africa.

"During the Cold War the U.S. and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Soviet Union) competed for influence in Africa by granting development assistance to ideologically sympathetic clients. When the Soviet Union and its economy collapsed in 1991, that competition came to an end," Tom Wheeler, research fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs told IPS from Braamfontein in South Africa.

"As a minerals producer and producer of oil and gas, Russia sees a way of strengthening its role in a multi-polar world by buying into Africa's mineral resources. Now Russia is seeking to achieve in Africa through capitalism what the Soviet Union failed to achieve through communism."

Russia will have to compete for Africa's resources with Europe, the United States, India, China, Japan and South Korea. There remain questions how far the new moves will take Russia, particularly given the rapid advance by China.

Russia and China have irreconcilable geopolitical interests in Africa. Russia is resource-rich while China is relatively resource-poor. "But both countries have an economic-expansionist agenda and lots of cash reserves to invest in Africa's economy," Bright Simons, development director at IMANI, a think tank based in Ghanaian capital Accra told IPS. The IMANI Centre for Policy Studies is a non-profit organisation for educating the public on policy issues concerning business, government and civil society.

"But still, Russia's influence in Africa is not really pronounced after the Cold War," Simons said. "The pro-Russian African states are not many. Even worse, Russia's trade with Africa is paltry, making its economic clout next to negligible."

African countries may not be overenthusiastic about alignment with Russia after three of Russia's competitors in the 'BRIC framework' (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have held high-level summits with Africa as a continental bloc (most recently India), Simons said.

"But if Russia wants to expand the scope of its engagement with Africa, it will have to pay closer attention to burnishing or branding its image in Africa," said Simons, who has researched Sino-African economic cooperation for many years.

Russia is pushing ahead in that direction. Addressing a large gathering of the African community last week, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russian companies are expanding their activities on the continent, and that Russian investment in Africa is increasing.

"Steady economic and social development is largely determined by the level of stability in the region. We welcome the efforts of the African states to settle and prevent conflicts. For our part, we are interested in expanding cooperation, particularly in the creation of an African anti-crisis potential," Lavrov said.

Mikhail Afanasiev, Russian ambassador to Ethiopia, who announced the 500 million dollar development aid package, explained that his country's policy in international development assistance is primarily to fight hunger, poverty, infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS and to address other development related problems on the continent.

He declined to mention specific areas, or which countries will benefit directly from the assistance.

"Assistance to the African countries will be offered in accordance with the recommendations of the UN organisations, including the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), international financial organisations, as well as upon individual requests from African countries themselves -- without any political strings," Afanasiev told IPS from Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

"Russia's activities within the framework of international development assistance do not mean rivalry with any country, including China, and are dictated by the necessity of helping to establish a democratic world order, based on principles of equality and partnership, as well as by obligations assumed within the framework of the Group of Eight (G8, the eight most industrialised nations)."

But influence has long come into the aid business. Prior to the Soviet break-up, several African countries were officially considered "socialism oriented" -- Algeria, Libya, Zimbabwe, Guinea Bissau, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Benin, Congo (Brazzaville), Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Mali, Zambia and Cape Verde. Besides, Sudan, Ghana, Somalia and Guinea were also considered socialist earlier.

Small firms set to boom with microcredit

from Russia Today

Moscow city government has teamed up with a major bank to create a company specializing in microcredit – a method for giving small businesses start-up loans. The President of VTB 24 Bank, Mikhail Zadornov, said the new company, called Microfinace, was looking forward to helping developing firms.

Small and medium-sized firms are key to diversifying the economy away from the oil and gas sector, according to the government.

Zadornov added that in the future he may add new categories of loans for citizens ranging from servicemen to young people.

In 2008, VTB 24 is planning to allocate around 60 million dollars for micro-loans.

Earlier this month, Zadornov met Professor Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist who pioneered microfinancing. He gave his backing to the Moscow-based project, saying he was encouraged that a first-rate bank had got involved.

Yunus is the founder of the Grameen Bank – a world leader in the field of microcredit.

Russia Opens Market to Poorest Countries

from All Africa

Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
Moscow

Africans looking to do business in Russia's burgeoning market can now export goods under new preferential trade agreements.

According to a document from the ministry of foreign affairs, seen by IPS, goods from African countries are eligible for preferential tariff treatment.

Products from least developed countries (LDCs), including those in Africa, will be exempted from import duties. This encompasses the bulk of Russia's imports from African states.

The Union of African Diplomats in the Russian Federation called the Russian initiative to exempt African imports from duties commendable and regard it as a step that will strengthen Russian-African trade relations.

"The initiative, which is part of Group of Eight (G-8) compliance measures and corresponds with the World Trade Organisation's Doha development agenda, will create new opportunities in Russian-African trade which is still very low, compared to other regions," head of the Union of African Diplomats in the Russian Federation, Dr Churchill Ewumbue-Monono, told IPS.

Mesag Mulunga, chief trade policy analyst in regional and bilateral trade relations at Namibia's ministry of trade and industry, suggested that African governments "encourage their exporters to take advantage of such market opportunities, first by making them aware of the existence of such preferences, as well as by supporting them to promote their products in such markets."

As Namibia is not classified as an LDC, its exports to Russia do not qualify for the new benefits, he noted.

Still, preferential trade arrangements accorded by developed countries to developing countries or small economies, including Namibia, create an opportunity for these countries to develop their industries and improve their agricultural production.

"This will inevitably contribute to these countries' abilities to create employment and effectively fight the scourge of poverty, hunger and disease. The challenge for the beneficiaries essentially lies in ensuring that their production base becomes competitive and sustainable, even beyond the expiry or erosion of such preferences," he told IPS.

Some are more sceptical about the benefits. On the question whether or not tariff preferences will help African countries to engage in trade with Russia, the answer is "it depends", said Phil Alves, a researcher who tracks "Development through Trade" at the South African Institute of International Affairs at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Among others, said Alves, it depends on whether the preferences are for goods in which African countries have an advantage.

Overall, the track record of trade preferences granted to Africa is poor, as shown by the poor uptake of trade preferences provided by the European Union and the U.S.. "I see no reason to expect a Russian or Chinese version to be any more effective," Alves cautioned.

Ewumbue-Monono is more optimistic, regarding other trade initiatives like the U.S.'s Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the EU's Everything But Arms (EBA) initiative, as well as preferential trade promotion measures by Canada, China and Japan as competition to Russia's initiative.

He pointed out that AGOA, for instance, has increased U.S. trade with sub-Saharan Africa by 242 percent between 2000 and 2006.

However, "it is important to know that market access measures like the Russian initiative are not enough to increase Russian-African trade. Even more important are trade facilitation incentives, ranging from transportation to simplification of import and export procedures," Ewumbue-Monono added.

Moreover, Russian-African trade could be enhanced through investments in capacity-building, market development and industrial cooperation that would enable the local transformation of products in Africa before exportation with added value, he noted.

These issues have been the object of international trade cooperation declarations by the various conferences of African trade ministers in, among others, Kigali (2004), Cairo (2005) and Nairobi (2006), and could provide a better platform for Russian-African trade promotion.

Franklin Cudjoe, a research fellow at Imani University in Accra, Ghana, told IPS that developed countries present bilateral agreements as ensuring tariff-free and quota-free access for African products to rich markets but frequently contain the caveat that African states should open their markets in return.

Economically, African governments and businesspeople should compare deals and use offers to leverage better deals. "If this happens, it would help African economies if products could be exported at lower duties, which would free up money for better education infrastructure, better roads and good healthcare delivery," Cudjoe said.

Preferential agreements can be beneficial as long as they are on a quid pro quo basis, Cudjoe told IPS.

Dr Andrew Reed, a professor of international economics at Moscow's University of Touro, told IPS: "One of the most interesting aspects of the transitional economy in Russia is that until the state defines the relationship it ultimately wants to have with the private sector, it is hard to judge whether individual initiatives such as this one are really consistent with the overall strategy, or just another ad hoc expedient".

A key question is whether practical steps will be taken to reform the bureaucracy in order to transform it from a "woefully inefficient control structure" to a more modest facilitator of private sector activity, he commented.

Reed said it is hard to imagine many good reasons for foreign companies to operate in Russia, other than the underdeveloped state of the market for consumer goods concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the future potential that may exist but is yet to be unlocked.