Russia aims to build a $15 billion ski resort complex in its mainly Muslim North Caucasus region, where an Islamist insurgency claimed the lives of almost 1,000 people last year, a business forum said on Friday. Dotted across the same mountain range where the 2014 Winter Olympics will be staged, the government hopes it will bring tourism to Russia and employment to the impoverished, violence-racked region the Kremlin calls its biggest problem.Although the volatile republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia are not included in the scheme, Dagestan -- home to the pair of suicide bombers who killed 40 on the Moscow metro in March -- will be. In those three regions, at least 862 people were killed last year in clashes, bombing and gun battles, according to the Internet news agency Caucasian Knot. Other regions in the five resort complex are the nearby Muslim-dominated Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria, and majority-Christian Adygea and North Ossetia.
Russian officials are hoping to raise half of the project's 451 billion roubles ($14.46 billion) from banks including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Citi, with the balance coming from private investors, state-run RIA news agency said. It added the complex will be built over the next 10 years.
Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who narrowly escaped a suicide bomb attack on his life last year, said on Friday tourism should not be considered while the insurgency rages on. "When the situation is stabilised and we have restored the economy, only then we can talk of comparing the Caucasus to Switzerland as a tourist destination," Yevkurov told Reuters.