Magas, Ingushetia. Image: Tanya Lokshina. As the call to prayer rolls over of Magas, the capital of Ingushetia, Russia’s smallest North Caucasus republic, hundreds of men busily unroll plastic mats, turning the central square into an open-air prayer ground. “Allahu Akbar!” The men kneel, get up, and kneel again — a sea of kneeling men stretching out in front of me. Done with the prayer, they roll back the mats. Then they continue with the rally that has gathered them here out on the square. to call for the annulment of a recent agreement on the demarcation of Ingushetia’s administrative border with neighboring Chechnya that will see Ingushetia lose territory.
Estimates vary on how much territory would be lost to Chechnya. Official estimates put it at five per cent of Ingushetia’s entire current territory, totaling 1,240 square miles. Independent experts estimate seven per cent, and some of the protest organisers say the loss is up to 10 percent.
During the Soviet era, Chechnya and Ingushetia were one republic. An interim agreement on the border reached in the early 1990s, after Chechnya sought independence from Russia while Ingushetia chose in a referendum to remain in Russia, was revised on several occasions, but the demarcation was never finalised.
