The longstanding struggle between Russia's territorial integrity and North Caucasus' secessionism

Abstract

The status of the North Caucasus region has been the source of conflict between the Russian government and the North Caucasus’ secessionists for more than 200 years. Since the start of the movements, the Russian government and the secessionists, have adopted various strategies, violent or non-violent, to gain their interests and resolve the conflict. However, the efforts were not fruitful as the Russian government always protected its territorial integrity by adopting any strategies necessary while the secessionists were also willing to do the same for their secession. Therefore, this thesis addresses one research question on why North Caucasus secessionists’ movements prolonged despite various strategies adopted by Russia to end the conflict? In order to produce a comprehensive analysis, the method of qualitative research has been chosen with the light of Edward Azar’s Protracted Social Conflict (PSC) Model and also Alan C. Tidwell’s Three Required Conditions of Conflict Resolution. This thesis found that the opportunity posed in the creation of the Accord of Khasavyurt, the Novye Atagi ceasefire, and the 12 May 1997 were not utilized maximally. This is because the Second Chechen War and North Caucasus Insurgency emerged after the creation of the agreements. Moreover, the capacity to communicate peacefully with each other in the creation of the agreements were not adopted in the conflict most of the time. Both parties rather adopted coercive strategies against each other to gain their interests. In addition, both parties also had lack of willingness to negotiate with each other since the history between them have created hated and negative perceptions against each other which halted the process of conflict resolution between them.