So what is the worst job in the world right now?  Chinese judge?  Investor in Venezuela?  Coach of the Oakland Raiders?

Those are all pretty bad gigs, but Dmitry Medvedev has just created something even worse:  a Kremlin envoy to a newly created Federal District containing the heavily Muslim war zones of Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia, the areas of the greatest violence, civil unrest, and political assassinations in all of the Russian Federation.

Things haven’t been going so well for Moscow’s appointees to these regions.  In Ingushetia, for example, local leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov barely survived a car bombing assassination attempt last June (and this was the “good guy”; Medvedev had to fire his predecessor Murat Zyazikov after a few too many disappearances).  The heavy-handed Dagestani President Mukhu Aliyev may be replaced as his term runs out this year – only a few weeks ago a suicide bomber drove more than 100kg of TNT into a police station, killing seven cops and injuring scores of others.  The famous Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov really went out on a tear last year, getting blamed for dozens of murders, including the human rights activist Natalia Estemirova.  The list goes on and on.