Eight of these nine tukkhums are within the borders of the modern-day Chechen Republic. The last is the Akkintsy, also known as the Aukhovtsy after the region they inhabit, Aukh. Aukh was also part of Chechnya, or rather the Checheno-Ingush ASSR, until 1944, when Joseph Stalin deported the entirety of the Chechens to Central Asia. Upon their 1957 return, their republic was reinstated in its previous boundaries, with two exceptions: the Prigordnyi district of western Ingushetia, and Aukh. It, and its Akkin Chechen inhabitants, stayed within the Republic of Dagestan, where they remain today. Several abortive agreements to reattach the region to Chechnya and resettle its ethnic Lak and Avar inhabitants, whom Stalin moved there in 1944, have occurred, most recently in 2016. None have yet been successful.
In the past, the indigenous Chechens of Aukh likely gravitated more towards Chechnya’s capital, Grozny. Yet today another city dominates their society. Khasavyurt, the second-largest city of Dagestan, lies astride the main east-west North Caucasus highway. It is ten kilometers from the present border with Chechnya. Another figure dominates there: Saigidpasha Umakhanov, who served as mayor of the city from 1997 to 2015. A former wrestler, Umakhanov became the head of an informal union of Avar elites in northern Dagestan in the 1990s. Their backing secured his election as mayor in 1997. Two years later, he organized thousands of Avar militiamen to defend the city and its environs from the August 1999 invasion of Dagestan by Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev and his Saudi accomplice Ibn Khattab.
The successful resistance secured Umakhanov the gratitude of Moscow. The Russian government’s forces launched the Second Chechen War against Basayev and other Chechen separatists shortly thereafter. Moscow helped bolster Umakhanov’s political position in the years that followed. Umakhanov soon rose to become the head of the Northern Alliance, a broad Avar political movement across Dagestan. In turn, the Northern Alliance repeatedly challenged the Kremlin-appointed leadership in Makhachkala, the republic’s capital. While Umakhanov was forced to resign in November 2015, exchanging his title for that of Dagestani minister of transport, he has continued to rule Khasavyurt from the shadows via his handpicked successor and a commanding patronage network.
Rival strongmen and a war of words
Umakhanov’s ran Khasavyurt as his personal fiefdom for almost two decades. But his city’s location and ethnic breakdown (a third of its population are Chechens) has brought him into conflict with Kadyrov. The two had a tense start, with a brief rapprochement in 2009 proving short-lived. A series of public spats with the Chechen leader, who called Umakhanov a ‘bandit’ and ‘criminal’ in 2014, have seen ethnic and regional tensions grow. Kadyrov has been seeking influence in the city via coopting local Chechen elites. This includes Buvaysar Saitiyev, a Khasavyurt native and one of the greatest freestyle wrestlers of all time. But Kadyrov has so far met with little success.
The potential for this high-stakes rivalry to turn violent became clear last year. A July 2017 standoff between local Avar and Akkin Chechen residents in the villages of Leninaul and Kalininaul, just south of Khasavyurt, nearly escalated into large-scale ethnic clashes. Relatives from Chechnya proper streamed into the area to aid their kin. The personal intervention of Kadyrov’s close ally Magomed Daudov prevented violence. But the specter of further conflict was again inflamed by Kadyrov’s critical remarks towards Umakhanov. He called him “provocative” and claimed the Avar leader had remarked on the Chechen delegation’s arrival in Leninaul with the words “our enemies have arrived.”