The tourism high season is upon us once again, and for many in Ukraine that will mean following the time-honoured road to Crimea for a fortnight of sun and fun at any one of the many new resorts currently springing up amid the wreckage of the peninsula’s Soviet-era infrastructure.
Turkey, Egypt and the like certainly have their all-inclusive charm, but Crimea seems to be making a comeback. At first glance the region would certainly appear to be in better shape than at any time in the past few decades, or for that matter since the Tsarist regime crumbled 90 years ago. It is undergoing a real estate boom with construction works under way all along the coastline, while local officials mull over numerous giant leisure complex options that could transform the economy of the whole peninsula.
The Tatar question
But beyond the sub-tropical beauty of the coast, however, a very different Crimean landscape emerges which does not suggest that this will remain a land of peace and plenty for the foreseeable future. Over the past ten years, vast plots of land have been seized throughout the interior and turned into makeshift settlements for Crimean Tatar returnees, and the informal segregation of the peninsula continues apace. The Tatars are fired by the conviction that they have right on their side, and when one considers the fate to which their ancestors were exposed during the mass deportation of 1944 it is hard to disagree. However, this in itself does not help matters and relations with the Slavic population are showing signs of marked deterioration. The number of Tatars in Crimea continues to grow but the vast majority remain poor, disadvantaged and left to struggle amid a burning sense of grievance while the Russians and Ukrainians who have also grown up regarding the place as their ancestral home look on with barely disguised suspicion.
Allegations of terrorist camps
Last week, reports surfaced once again in the Ukrainian press alleging that terrorist training camps were already operating in the peninsula, offering instruction both to Crimean Tatars and their fellow Muslim brethren. For years now there have been rumours that Saudi Arabian money has been financing extremist Wahhabi evangelists working to radicalise young Muslim Tatars and win them over to the jihadist cause.
Moderate Tatar elders, however, claim to have fought hard to prevent such rousing talk from turning a rumbling row into an open conflict, but if the lot of the Tatars does not improve the moderate majority could find themselves sidelined. Reports of terrorist camps remain unverified but it is nevertheless chilling to consider the possibility that Soviet-era holiday camps which formerly focused on teaching kids the importance of proletarian solidarity and the October Revolution could end up being used to preach a message of Islamic supremacy and intolerance.
This might sound far-fetched to someone used to the Yalta promenade and Soviet Sevastopol, but it does not require a huge leap of faith to imagine how Ukraine’s porous borders and lax visa regime might be exploited by Muslim extremists. Nor does it seem beyond the realms of possibility to smuggle arms into Crimea via the many unguarded sea lanes.
Need to tackle old grievances
The whole threat of conflict needs to be nipped in the bud via a combination of reasonable policies addressing Tatar historical grievances alongside a no-nonsense approach towards any signs of radicalism, but for the time being no political force in the country has given the situation anything like the attention it deserves.
Legends of existing weapons stockpiles may well be simple scare mongering, but the lack of focus on Crimean ethnic issues is complacency on a grand and potentially fatal scale, the end result of which could prove catastrophic for Ukraine.
