War in South Ossetia reminds Ingushetia residents about conflict in Prigorodny District

The residents of Ingushetia who were interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent on the occasion of the military events in South Ossetia and the flow of forced migrants to southern regions of Russia, have not expressed any special sympathy with residents of South Ossetia, while recollecting the events of the Ossetian-Ingush conflict of 1992.

"Now Russia pities South Ossetia, but the Ingushes who very well remember everything don't," says Inessa, 19, from Nazran, recollecting the murders of Ingushes in the Prigorodny District and marking that "nobody had specially pitied" the victims of that conflict and nobody had righted for them.

The point is in the events of October 1992, when armed clashes between Ossetians and Ingushes burst out in the Prigorodny District of North Ossetia, which are now referenced in history as "the Ossetian-Ingush conflict". The tensions in Ossetian-Ingush relations, caused by these events, persist even today.

Currently, the forced migrants from South Ossetia are accommodated, among other places, in the Prigorodny District of North Ossetia, where mainly Ingushes live.

Issa, 39, a resident of the Prigorodny District, is negative to all this. He believes that local authorities have been long preparing the district for settling residents of South Ossetia.

Umar, 32, from the same Prigorodny District, thinks that natives of South Ossetia should not be accommodated in the District; he is afraid that it will bring no good. "Now, about 30 percent of Ingushes' houses are empty, since people are intimidated and scared to come back. Local authorities are now making the inventory of these empty Ingush houses in order to put South-Ossetian refugees there. It will really be the case, you will see," Umar is sure.

"We're still living in other people's house, and don't have ours; however, they'll now render every possible help to South Ossetia," said Raiana, 28, from Karabulak, recollecting that natives from South Ossetia had also participated in murdering Ingushes in 1992.
Meanwhile, the official position of the Ingushetian leadership on the Georgian-Ossetian conflict is in the need of its exclusive political settlement.

Earlier Mikhail Ilezov, the head of the Department of the Russian Federal Migratory Service for Ingushetia has stated that the republic is capable to accept up to one thousand refugees arriving from the conflict zone. However so far, no refugees from South Ossetia have arrived to Ingushetia, unlike a great number of other regions of the South Federal District (SFD) of Russia.