I. A Brief History of the Repression of a People
The
1999-2000 crisis in Chechnya is merely the latest episode in a grim,
three-centuries long oppression of Muslims under Russian colonial
dominion. The Chechens, who have lived in the mountains and plains
of Chechnya since the first millenium BC, are a subjugated people
thanks to Russian rule, according to Peter Daniel DiPaola.[1]
“To many westerners, Muslims often seem like constant
trouble-makers or, worse, terrorists”, observes US foreign
correspondent Eric Margolis for the Canadian newspaper the Toronto
Sun. “But let us recall the Muslim world was the principal victim
of rapacious 19th and 20th century European and Russian colonialism.
The majority of France’s, Holland’s, and Russia’s colonial
subjects, and almost half of Britain’s, were Muslims.”[2]
During the last 250 years or so, the Muslim people of the Caucasus -
Chechen, Ingush, Circassians, Abkhaz, and Dagestanis - have
repeatedly attempted to revolt against the repressive rule of
imperialist Russia, with the largest rebellion occurring in the
mid-1800s under the leadership of the Dagestani Imam, Sheikh Shamil.
Russia’s priority has consistently been to crush these uprisings
that threaten its’s hegemony over millions of Muslims. In the
process of clamping down on all these revolts, Russia has even
managed to attempt genocide at least twice.
For
example, in the 1940s 14,000 Chechens and Ingush - 3 per cent of
their entire populations - were shot and killed by Stalin’s secret
police, their bodies then dumped into a pit. The act is comparable
to the mass murder of Jews in the pit at Babi Yar, committed four
years before by Hitler’s forces. Stalin later proceeded to
‘cleanse’ almost all 1.5 million Chechens, forcibly deporting
them to concentration camps in Siberia. About 25 per cent of them
died in these camps. Another 2 million Muslims in the former Soviet
Union, including Dagestanis, were similarly evicted to join their
dying brothers and sisters in Stalin’s death camps.[3]
Eric Margolis thus notes that the Chechens are “the children of a
nation that has three times nearly been exterminated by Russian
genocide: in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the last when Stalin
had tens of thousands of Chechens shot and the remainder of the
Chechen people deported to Siberian concentration camps.”[4]
David
Damren, an Associate Faculty Member in the Department of Religious
Studies at Arizona State University, provides an overview of
Russia’s attempts to wipe out both the Chechen people and their
Islamic faith: “During WWII, when disturbances occurred in
Chechnya in 1940 and again in 1943, Stalin responded with
astonishing brutality that bordered on genocide. Accusing them of
still unproven collaboration with Nazi Germany, in 1944 he forcibly
relocated six entire Caucasian nationalities, including the whole
Chechen and Ingush populations, to special camps in Central Asia.
All told, more than a million Muslims from the Caucasus were
deported, with tremendous loss of life. By some estimates one third
to one-half of the population of Chechen-Ingushetia alone - well
over 250,000 people - disappeared after the republic was liquidated
in February 1944.
“The
Chechens and other groups spent more than a decade in isolated work
camps in Kazakhstan. But by all accounts, the forced resettlement
failed to break either the Sufi brotherhoods or Chechen national
spirit. Describing the fearsome ‘psychology of submission’ that
prevailed in Soviet relocation camps, Russian author Alexander
Solzhenitsyn observed that only one people refused to be broken by
the ordeal: ‘the nation as a whole - the Chechens.’...
“In
1957, when the Chechens and other exiled Caucasian groups were
proclaimed ‘rehabilitated’ and returned to their republics, they
found that their land had been ‘Russified’. Hundreds of
thousands of Russian farmers brought in to work the land during
their absence had become permanent residents and now comprised a
quarter of the region’s population.
“The
Chechens, Ingush and Daghestanis also discovered a land scoured of
Islam. Soviet authorities had experimented with the near total
suppression of Islam in the region, closing over 800 mosques and 400
religious colleges. Mazars
were demolished, converted into state museums, or made inaccessible.
Only after more than 30 years, in 1978, Soviet authorities in the
Caucasus allowed under 40 mosques to reopen and staffed them with
less than 300 registered ulema.”[5]
From
1994-96, the Russians waged yet another war to crush the Chechens’
popular plea for self-determination. Though the Chechens eventually
managed to drive Russia out, Russian forces still succeeded in
slaughtering 100,000 Chechens, wounding 240,000, and scattering 17
million anti-personnel land mines across the country.[6]
Russia had used “mass artillery, rocket barrages, and airstrikes
to smash Chechen villages and towns”, “conducted wide scale
torture, and razed most of Chechnya to the ground”, reports the
Toronto Sun.[7]
The former Soviet Union’s imperialist imperative had also received
wholehearted support from its former Cold War enemy, the United
States. “President Bill Clinton... helped finance Russia’s war
in Chechnya.”[8]
Clinton had “lent Yeltsin $11 billion to finance the operation”,
and “even went to Moscow, lauded Yeltsin, likened Russia’s
savage repression of tiny Chechnya to America’s civil war, and had
the effrontery to call Yeltsin ‘Russia’s Abraham Lincoln’.”
The extent of American support for Russia’s campaign to subjugate
the Chechen people was even clearer when in 1996, “Clinton
reportedly ordered the CIA to supply Moscow top-secret electronic
targeting devices that allowed the Russians to assassinate Chechen
president, Dzhokar Dudayev, while he was conducting peace
negotiations with Moscow on his cell phone.”[9]
However,
Russia’s assault on the tiny country failed despite its
devastating impact, and its forces eventually had to pull out. A
treaty was then instigated granting Chechnya de facto independence.
It also recognised the 31 August 1996 agreement stipulating that a
popular referendum be held in Chechnya on 31 December 2001 to
determine the ultimate fate of its independence. Yet in 1999, Russia
launched another attack on Chechnya in violation of its 1996 treaty,
and in violation of the 1990 CFE treaty.[10]
Russia’s attack was justified as a response to bombs that exploded
in Moscow and other cities in September 1999, killing over 200
people. Russia blamed the bombings on Chechen ‘terrorists’.
However, “no convincing evidence has been presented to support
allegations of Chechen involvement in the bombings.”[11]
According to the Economist: “No clear evidence has yet been found
for who was responsible for those bombs, and no one has claimed
responsibility.”[12]
In fact the bombings “were more likely carried out by Russian
political provocateurs as a pretext for Moscow hardliners to invade
Chechnya and intimidate freedom movements in other parts of the
Caucasus.”[13]
This conclusion is supported by “the record of violent crime and
political assassinations on the part of Mafia elements that compete
for influence within Russian government circles”.[14]
The
ambiguity surrounding the possible perpetrators of the bombings, and
the sheer lack of evidence that they were carried out by Chechen
“terrorists”, was further reported by the International
Worker’s Party (Russia), which noted that the bomb attacks in
Moscow “were soon followed by a number of scandalous mutual
accusations between different power groups in Moscow and the
Federation which incriminated Russian secret services. The
commission of investigation has still not produced any convincing
results which will permit the conclusion that the attacks were
organized by the Chechen guerrillas.”[15]
Moreover, the US must have been fully aware of the non-existent
results of the Russian investigation - which have not produced any
evidence of Chechen involvement in the bombings - since the State
Department and FBI chief Louis Freeh offered “technical and
investigative assistance” to the Russian government in its
investigation of the four apartment explosions in Moscow.[16]
Nevertheless, along with its European subordinates, the US has
chosen not to expose the vacuity of Russia’s pretext for its war,
but has instead expressed open agreement that Russia has a problem
with Chechen “terrorism” - this consent to Russian propaganda
has ominous implications which we shall be returning to in due
course.
Rather
than being a response to terrorism, as Dr. Aslambek Kadiev explained
to the BBC: “There are two main reasons for the two wars which
Russia has launched against Chechnya. The first is economic. Russia
wants to control the Caucasus oil fields and pipeline routes. The
second is connected with the political situation in Russia, and
particularly inside the Kremlin... The political purpose of the
first Chechen war was to increase Boris Yeltsin’s popularity and
get him re-elected as president in 1996. The main aim of this second
war is to ensure that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former [KGB]
spy and President Yeltsin’s anointed heir, becomes president at
the next elections. The apartment bombings in Russian cities early
this year were used by Russia to justify its invasion.”[17]
II.
Manufacturing A Pretext for Extermination
Dr.
Kadeiv’s observations were confirmed when the Independent obtained
a videotape in which Russian officer Lieutenant Galtan testified:
“I know who is responsible for the bombings in Moscow [and
Dagestan]. It is the FSB [Russian security service], in cooperation
with the GRU [Russian military intelligence service], that is
responsible for the explosions in Volgodonsk and Moscow.”[18]
Further evidence arose when on 22 September 1999, a third bomb was
discovered in the basement of a block of flats 100 miles south of
Moscow. Local residents had noticed two men and a woman acting
suspiciously and called the local police, who then arrested them.
The police discovered explosive devices hidden in what looked to be
bags of sugar. It was soon discovered that the suspects planting the
devices were Russian FSB agents.[19]
According to
Russian bomb squad officer Yuri Tkachenko, who defused the third
bomb, “It was a live bomb”, made of the same explosive as the
previous bombs (Hexagen). Its detonator had been set for 5:30AM, and
would probably have killed most of the 250 tenants of the block of
flats it was planted in. Boris Kagarlitsy, a member of the Russian
Institute for Comparative Politics, stated: “FSB officers were
caught red-handed while planting the bomb. They were arrested by the
police and they tried to save themselves by showing FSB identity
cards.” The first man to enter the basement, Police Inspector
Andrei Chernyshev, related: “It was about 10 in the evening. There
were some strangers who were seen leaving the basement. We were told
about the men who came out from the basement and left the car with a
licence number which was covered with paper. I went down to the
basement. This block of flats had a very deep basement which was
completely covered with water. We could see sacks of sugar and in
them some electronic device, a few wires and a clock. We were
shocked. We ran out of the basement and I stayed on watch by the
entrance and my officers went to evacuate the people.” Despite the
arrest of the FSB officers by the police, they were quietly released
when the secret service’s Moscow headquarters intervened. The
Observer reports that the next day, in an attempt to cover-up the
discovery, “the FSB in Moscow announced that there had never been
a bomb, only a training exercise.”[20]
The fact of Russian
complicity had been finally confirmed once again when Sergei
Stephashin, Russian Interior and Prime Minister for most of last
year (he was Interior Minister up to May and then Prime Minister
until August, therefore having been at the centre of Russian
decision-making), testified according to British correspondent
Patrick Cockburn that “Russia made its plans to invade Chechnya
six months before the bombing of civilian targets in Russia and the
Chechen attack on Dagestan which were the official pretext for
launching the war. His account wholly contradicts the official
Russian version... which claims that it was only as a result of
‘terrorist’ attacks last August and September [1999] that Russia
invaded Chechnya.” Stephasin himself testified that the plan to
send the Russian army into Chechnya “had been worked out in March
[1999]”, and he had played a central role in organising the
military build up before the invasion. He stated that the invasion
“had to happen even if there were no explosions in Moscow”.
Cockburn points out: “The revelation by Mr Stepashin, that Russia
planned to go to war long before it has previously admitted, lends
support to allegations in the Russian press that the invasion of
Dagestan in August and the bombings in September were arranged by
Moscow to justify its invasion of Chechnya.”[21]
Boris
Kagarlitsky,
a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Comparative
Politics, “drawing on a source with close knowledge of the GRU”
similarly stated that the bombings in Moscow and elsewhere were
arranged by the GRU. He noted that the Russians manipulated
“members of a group controlled by [a Chechen warlord] Shirvani
Basayev... to plant the bombs” which “killed 300 people in
Buikask, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September.” The “invasion of
Dagestan by Shamil Baseyev himself” - Shirvani’s brother - “in
August was pre-arranged with a senior Kremlin leader at a meeting in
France in July.” Kagarlitsky observed that the motive for all this
“was the need for the political leadership in the Kremlin to
control the succession of Boris Yeltsin”, who by “last summer”
“was deeply unpopular”, and whose “family and associates”
feared for their “fortunes if a president hostile to their
interests was elected this June.”[22]
One option being considered by the Kremlin and its oligarchical
associates to ensure an appropriate presidential successor who would
protect their “freedom and fortunes”, was “terror bombings in
Moscow which could be blamed on Chechens”, reported Moscow
correspondent Jan Blomgren in the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet
four months before the first bomb, based on sources who were
familiar with discussions within the Russian political elite.[23]
Kagarlisky added
that in July 1999 - a month after the Swedish report - “a meeting
took place in the south of France attended by Alexander Voloshin,
head of the presidential administration, Shamil Basayev, the Chechen
warlord, and Anton Surikov, a former official belonging to the army
special services. Both sides had interests in common. Mr Basayev’s
political fortunes had ebbed in Chechnya and might be restored by a
small war. The Kremlin was also in need of an outside enemy.
According to Mr Kagarlitsky they agreed that Mr Basayev would launch
a military foray into Dagestan and that Russia would respond by
invading northern Chechnya up to the Terek river.”
Basayev’s forces thus invaded Dagestan at Russian
instigation on 8 August. “The next day Vladimir Putin replaced
Stepashin as prime minister.” However, the invasion of Dagestan
“did not go as planned.” Basayev’s forces “were beaten off
but, according to the Russian magazine Profile, were virtually
escorted back to the Chechen border by two Russian helicopters.”
The invasion was also “insufficient to mobilise Russian public
opinion” necessitating the GRU’s arrangement of terrorist
bombings in Moscow. “It was the wave of anger and hatred among
Russians against Chechens, universally blamed for the attacks, that
gave Mr Putin the backing he needed to invade Chechnya. An unknown
figure when appointed, with just 2 per cent support in the polls, he
was soon the leading candidate to win the presidency. In December Mr
Yeltsin was able to retire more gracefully than seemed possible six
months before and Mr Putin became acting president.” However,
importantly, Cockburn further reports that according to Kagarlitsky,
Shirvani Basayev and his men “did not know exactly why they had
been recruited by the GRU for a special mission.”[24]
This lends credence to the notion that they were not entirely aware
of Russian motives, the actual nature and purpose of the mission,
and thus the plans of those who “recruited” them, which strongly
suggests that Russian agents had in fact misled them.
As the
international Islamic political movement, Hizb ut-Tahrir, concluded
from the Russian-directed actions of these Chechen military men:
“it seems clear to us that it was sections of the Russian
government which planned for this in order to realise their
objectives. Basseyev and Khattab [another Chechen military man] have
fallen into this Russian trap.”[25]
The war on Chechnya thus exists thanks only to the Russian terrorist
elite, and its manipulations of two Chechen military men who it
seems were unaware of the deceptive nature of Russia’s
machinations.[26]
III.
Acts of Genocide: A Small Price to Pay for Political Gain
Russia
utilised its propaganda-bombing swiftly, immediately demonising the
Chechen people, and carrying out mass arrests in Moscow. Soon about
11,000 people were rounded up by Russian police, hundreds of whom
were Chechen and many others who were of Caucasian descent.
President Boris Yeltsin ordered an “intensified security regime”
for airports, railway stations, markets and other areas. “We
should not be afraid to cross into Chechen territory to destroy
militants and restore constitutional order,” declared General
Vladimir Ustinov. Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev elaborated,
asserting that if air strikes were ordered, bombings would occur
“thoughout the territory of Chechnya, irrespective of where the
bandits are.”[27]
Meanwhile, “civilian militias” began forming within areas of
Moscow to patrol the cellars and entrances of apartment houses. The
Russian newspaper Izvestia
reported that “the population has decided to build up its own form
of security, having recognised that the state could not guarantee
their safety. Bewilderment and fear are gradually being transformed
into hatred, and the slogan ‘for every house in Moscow, a village
in Chechnya’ has become enormously popular.”[28]
On 22 September
1999, Russian planes commenced bombing raids against Chechen
targets. Ten days later, 50,000 Russian troops advanced into
northern Chechnya backed by over 1,000 armoured vehicles, massive
artillery and air power.[29]
By mid-October, the army had encircled the country and cut off all
gas and electricity supplies from Russia. Already, Chechen cities
and villages had been bombarded by 24-hour Russian air strikes and
artillery attacks.[30]
There were continual reports of deliberate attacks on the civilian
population. In early October, residents of the region bordering
Dagestan testified that inhabitants had been killed by snipers while
fetching water or bringing in the harvest. In one village half a
farmhouse was demolished by Russian rockets, while elsewhere
schools, hospitals, market places and manufacturing plants were
similarly bombarded and destroyed. Even a refugee bus was bombed by
the Russian army.[31]
By November, an estimated 200,000 Chechen refugees had fled to
nearby Ingushetia, 4,000 had been killed, and 10,000 wounded.[32]
Another 170,000 were “still inside Chechnya in freezing
temperatures with no access to relief. Thousands, many of them women
and children, have been trapped at the main border crossing for
nearly two weeks in worsening conditions”; “huge columns of
refugees have trudged in freezing rain to the borders of their
homeland. Heavy air bombardments on Grozny and other Chechen towns
and cities have spurred on this mass exodus.”[33]
By April, according to other reports, an estimated 40,000 Chechen
civilians has been killed as a result of the war.[34]
Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov had appealed in vain to US
President Bill Clinton to take measures to prevent the “genocide
of the Chechen people.” Foreign minister Iyas Akhmadov stated:
“The Chechen people are now standing on the threshold of total
destruction.”[35]
Clearly, Russian Generals were living up to their repeated vows to
“exterminate”[36]
the Chechens.
Extermination
certainly seemed to be a primary motive. On 4 February 2000, Russian
air and ground forces deliberately targeted the Chechen village of
Katyr Yurt, west of Grozny. The village was occupied by hundreds of
refugees fleeing the fighting elsewhere in Chechnya, as well as its
regular inhabitants. The devastating onslaught commenced in the
early morning, with three planes bombing until mid-afternoon.
Russian ground troops moved in after the buildings were bombed to
loot and kill any other survivors. Particularly horrifying was the
departure of a civilian convoy assembled in the afternoon. The
convoy had been promised safe passage out of the village by Russia
through a certain road accordingly dubbed a ‘safe corridor’.
“As it departed, down a two-kilometre road on the western edge of
Katyr Yurt, each vehicle bearing large white flags made of blankets,
it too came under systematic attack,” reports Dispatches. “Whole
families, old men, women and children, were slaughtered. Eye
witnesses and survivors counted the number of the dead at 363. Many
of the bodies, they reported, were simply piled into mass graves by
Russian soldiers. The war crime at Katyr Yurt is one of the dirtiest
episodes in Russia’s dirty war in Chechnya.” Dispatches reporter
John Sweeney, met with survivors and eyewitnesses at the border with
Russia, and then at the village itself. They testified that “the
Russian army had herded Chechen civilians into vehicles and then
deliberately opened fire on them as they drove down the supposedly
‘safe corridor’ to the border.” Dispatches further notes that
“far from being an isolated incident, carried out by low-ranking
soldiers in the heat of battle, the Katyr Yurt massacre was just one
of a series of atrocities reported by refugees of this bloody
war.” The Emmy-award winning team of investigative reporters
“found that the finger of blame pointed right back to the man in
charge at the Kremlin itself.”[37]
This particular
atrocity was elaborated on by Sweeney in the Observer: “The
village of Katyr Yurt, ‘safe’ in the Russian-occupied zone, far
from the war’s front line, and jam-packed with refugees, was
untouched on the morning of 4 February when Russian aircraft,
helicopters, fuel-air bombs and Grad missiles pulverised the
village. They paused in the bombing at 3pm, shipped buses in, and
allowed a white-flag convoy to leave - and then they bombed that as
well”. The result was “a landscape as if from the Somme, streets
smashed to matchwood, trees shredded, blood-stained cellars, the
survivors in a frenzy of fear. The village was littered with the
remains of Russian ‘vacuum’ bombs - fuel-air explosives that can
suck your lungs inside out, their use against civilians banned by
the Geneva Convention.” There is, furthermore, no question of the
sustained attack on the civilian convoy being a ‘mistake’.
Russia had actually ceased bombing at about half past four in the
afternoon, leaving the population two hours to leave. Buses with
white flags were sent in by Russian forces for this apparent
purpose. “The convoy set off, each car showing a white flag, some
cars showing two or three, packed with mainly women and children -
the men held back, to make more room for children, said Rumissa [one
of the eye-witnesses and survivors of the attack]. It headed west
towards the town of Achoi Martan and safety. ‘When we were on the
open road, they fired ground-to-air rockets at us. It was a big
rocket, not as big as a car. It was strange. It didn’t explode
once, it exploded several times. Every car had flags, how many cars
I don’t know. It was a mess, lots of them. They hit us without
stopping.’ Could the Russians have mistaken the white-flag convoy
for fighters? ‘No, they couldn’t mistake us. They knew very well
there were a lot of refugees: 16,000 refugees and 8,000 locals in
the village. In front of us was a big car full of children, not
grown-ups. They burnt before my eyes.’... Another eyewitness, a
wounded man of the killable age, said: ‘They started bombing.
Bombs, artillery. They were killing people. At our local school on
the edge of the village there were Spetsnaz troops. They said: We
will give you a safe corridor. So everyone started to go towards
Achoi Martan. Then they used rockets against us. Some say 350
refugees were killed, 170 from the village itself.’”[38]
In other words,
Russia’s arrangement of the so-called ‘safe corridor’ was a
set-up, expressly designed it appears, to “exterminate” the
Chechen people. In accord with this sublime objective, Russia has
established four concentration camps - “filtration camps” -
supposedly designed to ‘filter’ out Chechen ‘terrorists’
from civilians. The largest camp is at Chernokozovo “with about
700 detainees” - possibly ranging to over a thousand - reports the
British press, only 7 of whom are genuinely suspected of taking part
in the war. “Russian soldiers are beating, raping and torturing
Chechen prisoners” according to human rights groups, prisoners who
“have been summarily arrested on the flimsiest of pretexts.”
Evidence shows that “large numbers of young Chechen men are being
rounded up arbitrarily and detained.” In early February, “a
letter detailing the brutality of the camp regime, apparently
written by a Russian soldier there, was leaked to the media.” The
soldier described “how Chechen inmates were being systematically
beaten, killed and raped.” One should note the observation of
Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch representative in the region:
“These men are being taken to unknown detention facilities and
their families are not being informed of where they are. Some men
are never heard of again. Given the mass abuses which took place in
these centres during the last war, we are gravely concerned about
this developing trend.”[39]
Additionally,
“Russian soldiers have been raping Chechen women in areas of
Russian-controlled Chechnya” according to a team of Human Rights
Watch investigators in Ingushetia. Numerous eyewitness testimonies
confirm that cases of the rape of Chechen girls and women by Russian
soldiers is high. The nature of these cases can be gleaned from the
consideration of even just a single incident referred to by HRW,
narrated by “Zaman”, a Chechen women aged 55 from the village of
Alkhan-Yurt. Zaman testified that at one time five or six women were
raped in her village “including one old woman like me. At night at
2:00 or 3:00 a.m., the soldiers came into the cellar. Some soldiers
would stand guard, aiming their guns at [the people in the cellar]
while the others were raping.” Rape is also likely to be
under-reported in Chechnya. Zaman stated: “A lot of women were
raped, but our people won’t talk about it - these women have to
marry.” HRW reports that “Zaman broke out in tears as she
described the extreme precautions she and her neighbors had to take
to protect their young daughters from rape: ‘There were five young
women with us in the cellar: my three daughters aged twenty-six,
twenty, and twelve, and our neighbor’s girls, aged eighteen and
nineteen. We made a pit outside in the yard near the stables. We put
a pipe [for air] in the pit, covered it with earth, and the five
girls were staying in that pit. The soldiers used to come by and
say, ‘Where are the young girls, we need three girls for each
soldier.’ So we kept the girls in the pit. The girls were kept
there for several days.” The testimony unfortunately only
increases. Another witness from Alkhan-Yurt, forty-year-old
“Sultan”, told HRW about another case: “Seven contract
soldiers [non-officers who serve in the military on a contractual
basis] raped a woman in our village. It is a savagery. Her family
lives near the cemetery; there were few people left in that part of
the village. They [the soldiers] pulled her husband out in the
street, and then raped her. The woman is not young, she is forty-two
or forty-three. I know the woman’s name, but it is against our
traditions to name her.”[40]
This state of
humanitarian crisis is unlikely to be over soon. The French Press
Agency (Agence France Press [AFP]) reported that “Russian troops
will remain in Chechnya ‘for decades’ in their bid to maintain
control over the rebel province, according to Duma parliamentary
Speaker Gennady Seleznev.”[41]
The fearless Russian-American journalist Andrew Babitsky, who was
arrested by Russian authorities in Grozny and detained for six
weeks, testified from his experiences: “In Chechnya, there is a
Russian police state that quite effectively rules by fear... There
were hundreds and hundreds of civilians in Grozny, and only a few of
them had a chance to leave.” AFP reports that Babitsky “had
compiled video interviews with several hundred civilians cowering in
the city’s basements, who told stories of how Russians pulverized
whole sections of the rebel capital from the air with no regard for
the people trapped inside”; the footage however was “confiscated
by federal troops and never returned”. Babitsky was sent two days
later to “the notorious Chernokozovo ‘filtration’ camp”,
where he stated that “guards brutally beat him and tortured many
others, including women, for hours on end” (he “was to be
hospitalized... for treatment after what he claimed was weeks of
physical abuse by Russian captors”). He affirmed of Chernokozovo:
“This is a concentration camp in every sense of the word. There
were practically no fighters there. They are sweeping up civilians
and breaking them down in Chernokozovo.”[42]
“I suffered the same treatment as everyone, without exception, who
passes through there. That is to say dozens of blows with batons.”
Whilst in the camp, “they tortured a woman. I say tortured because
I can’t find another word for it. Her screams showed that she was
suffering extreme, unbearable pain, and over a long period... I saw
people beaten very heavily, black and blue, for example Aslanbek
Sharipov, from Katir-Yurt, who was beaten endlessly, morning, midday
and night. Most of his teeth were broken.” He also observed:
“We’ve all read about concentration camps during the Stalin era,
we all know about the German camps - it’s exactly the same
there.”[43]
The camps have also
been confirmed by Human Rights Watch which reported how “Russian
camp guards are torturing, beating, and on occasion raping Chechen
civilians at a ‘filtration camp’ inside Chechnya” on the basis
of credible testimony from former detainees. “What’s happening
in these filtration camps is unspeakable”, said Holly Cartner,
Executive Director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human
Rights Watch. “We saw the same kind of torture and ill-treatment
in filtration camps during the last Chechen war.”[44]
Horrific acts of genocide committed by Russian soldiers have been
ongoing since the beginning of the war. Widespread massacres of
Chechen civilians, along with arson, rape and looting, have occurred
with systematic impunity throughout Chechnya in various villages and
towns.[45]
The ruthless
subjugation of Chechnya has been useful in strengthening Putin’s
popularity, as was planned by the Russian elite. The American
intelligence think-tank Stratfor pointed out soon after the Moscow
bombings that “Yeltsin’s opponents, such as former Prime
Minister Yevgeny Primakov, have long feared that Yeltsin would call
a state of emergency for political gain. The recent bombings could
give him the excuse to do this legitimately.”[46]
The press similarly observed: “With the news agenda in Moscow
dominated by the war in the Caucasus, Yeltsin’s presidential
nominee, the hawkish Vladimir Putin, has been given a major boost by
the popularity of Russia’s military campaign. The Kremlin-backed
Unity (Edinstvo) party has also benefited from the war. Led by
Russia’s Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu - shown on television
daily dealing with the human consequences of the Chechen crisis -
the party has soared in the polls, currently trailing just behind
the Communists. Putin’s recent promise of support for Unity
strengthened its position - despite the fact that the party has
still not bothered to give voters any indication of what it stands
for. Shoigu has proffered no economic programme other than to
support whatever Putin’s government does.”[47]
As the Washington Post remarked: “Putin has staked his
presidential candidacy on the war’s outcome, and so far his
popularity has soared.”[48]
The policy of smashing Chechnya for political gain thus ultimately
culminated in a landslide success, with “the appearance of victory
hav[ing] propelled Mr. Putin to power in what critics have denounced
as a brazen bid by Kremlin insiders to bypass the democratic
process”, and install a president not hostile to their
oligarchical interests, according to the Times.[49]
Putin’s victory is thus primarily a result of the sheer mass of
domestic pro-war propaganda being constantly trumpeted by Russian
media, described by the Institute for War & Peace Reporting as
“A Chilling Flashback to the Soviet Past”.[50]
Unlike Russian
warmongering, however, Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov put forth
offers of peace talks to resolve the dispute. The AFP reported at
the beginning of March 2000: “The Kremlin flatly rejected on
Thursday an offer of peace talks from Aslan Maskhadov, the
separatist president of Chechnya, and warned that it would wipe out
the last remaining rebel units within a week.”[51]
The Institute for War & Peace Reporting further noted of the
amnesty offered by Russia “for rebel fighters to voluntarily hand
over their weapons” - which was extended to 1 April - that the
numerous reports of “summary executions and savage brutality at
the Chernokozovo ‘filtration’ camp will serve to dissuade any
war-weary fighter from throwing himself on Moscow’s mercy.”[52]
At this time - early in March - a political solution to the war in
Chechnya was not in Russian interests, since Putin had not yet
achieved his domestic political victory; only once the political
victory was achieved near the end of March did the utility of
Chechen blood become questionable. According to the Guardian:
“In his three months as acting president, his only policy has been
to prosecute ruthlessly his war in the Caucasus. Having exploited
Chechnya as his vehicle to power, he may now turn to the search for
an exit strategy and the quest for a political settlement.”[53]
IV.
Undercutting the Investigation of Human Rights
Russian
representatives have frequently proclaimed their willingness to
allow independent commissions of inquiry to investigate human rights
abuses in Chechnya. However, the actual effectuation of these
endorsements reveals that such announcements are designed
specifically for public consumption - not for significant action. We
can gauge the meaning of Russia’s willingness to invite
international independent organisations to investigate the Chechen
crisis, by evaluating - for example - the visit of United Nations
high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, to Chechnya in
March. British journalist Ian Traynor reported from Moscow that
Robinson “ended a much-delayed and frustrating visit to
Chechnya” on 3 April, “her attempts to assess alleged war crimes
and atrocities by Russia troops stymied by her Russian escort. She
was prevented from travelling to three villages outside Grozny where
international human rights monitors say Chechen civilians were
massacred by Russian troops. Her requests to inspect several
detention centres where Russian troops were alleged to have tortured
prisoners were also ignored.” “Her Russian hosts added insult to
injury” when planned “meetings with senior government
officials” were cancelled “officially because inclement weather
kept her grounded in Dagestan”, delaying her by one day.
However,
Vladimir Kalamanov, Putin’s special representative for human
rights in Chechnya, “dismissed the UN’s complaints”, insisting
- in his own words - that “we have honoured our commitments... We
were quite open, we showed her everything she wanted to see.” In
fact, Mary Robinson’s letter to the Kremlin before arriving in
Moscow had requested “information on mass human rights violations
by Russian troops or [Chechen] terrorists.” Kalamanov did not take
kindly to Robinson’s mention of “mass human rights violations by
Russian troops”, although this is exactly the issue in dire need
of immediate investigation. “That’s an insult”, he declared.
“Ours is a modern, civilised European army.”
The
UN high commissioner for human rights, however, disagreed with this
assessment: “I am hearing of very serious problems of human rights
violations carried out by those in Russian military uniforms,
special forces uniforms. It is very important that these be fully
investigated and that those responsible do not have impunity.” The
Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH)
concurred: “The civilian population is the first target of the
operations carried out by the Russians... who are responsible for
the most serious violations of human rights and international law.
These violations constitute war crimes and crimes against
humanity.”[54]
Vladimir
Kalamanov - the man who finds even the suggestion that Russian
troops are committing “mass human rights violations” to be “an
insult” - also heads Russia’s attempt at an ‘independent
commission’ to investigate atrocities in Chechnya. The Guardian
reports that Kalamanov “is Vladimir Putin’s response to western
criticism of atrocities perpetrated by Russian troops in
Chechnya.” While he publicly “insists he has a mandate to
bulldoze through bureaucracy and demand answers”, the progress of
his ‘investigation’ reveals otherwise. For example, “Asked for
details of alleged war crimes, the military prosecutor’s office
sent Mr Kalamanov a perfunctory letter revealing nothing. He tried
again. He was told that 129 investigations had been launched. Most
were about bullying and other offences within the army. Only seven
concerned alleged offences against civilians in Chechnya.”
Furthermore, he “has asked the army for answers on three specific
alleged massacres. No response. Nor can he get the resources he
needs. He was appointed on February 17, yet he still has no budget.
The staff he has recruited have not been paid.” Despite having a
nice “large office in Moscow”, “he has been unable to make
contact with his people in Chechnya.”
His
section has one phone line and one fax in Chechnya. There’s no
phone link to Moscow, and no email.” In fact, many of his claims
regarding Chechnya are apparently quite inaccurate. For example, he
brandished “one detailed list of 646 Chechen detainees, another of
49”, of whom “500 have been released.” “Such assertions are
contested by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, who say
that thousands of Chechens have been detained by Russian troops.”
Unfortunately,
it is Kalamanov who heads the proposed ‘independent’ national
commission to investigate Russian atrocities in Chechnya, that has
been so lauded by politicians in the West eager to lend a
humanitarian sheen to their new “strategic ally”. Although the
“UN and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
which is training some of Mr Kalamanov’s staff, are clearly hoping
to entrench him in office and then to gradually institutionalise a
human rights monitoring mechanism in Russia”, the Guardian notes:
“that will be too late for Chechnya.” The effectiveness of such
a commission of inquiry is called further into question by the
position and attitude of Kalamonov himself. One senior Western
diplomat is reported to have confessed: “He faces so much
obstruction and opposition. His operation is an empty shell...
he’s not in a position to do much.” Diederik Lohman of Human
Rights Watch in Moscow similarly noted: “he has a reflexive
distrust of anything the displaced Chechens say. If that’s your
attitude before you start your investigation, you know there will be
no results.”[55]
V.
Western Humanism in the Caucasus
What
has been the response of the ‘international community’ to
Russia’s terrorism? A brief review is revealing. Mariano Aguirre,
Director of the Spain-based Centro de Investigación para la Paz
(CIP) in Madrid, comments: “In its ignoring of the plight of the
Chechen population, the international attitude - that of the US, the
EU, the UN Security Council and the World Bank - has been
disappointing and cynical… Those leaders, politicians,
intellectuals, journalists and representatives of the armed forces
who became indignant over Serb repression of Albanians in Kosovo (an
autonomous province of Serbia) and who flew the flag of armed
humanitarianism during the NATO operation have remained silent over
Russian repression in Chechnya.”[56]
Near
the end of February, the Guardian reported that acting Russian
president Vladimir Putin, the major masterminder of the whole sordid
operation, “has been sitting amid the refurbished splendour of the
Kremlin for the past month courteously receiving one western visitor
after another while his troops simultaneously smash a city the size
of Edinburgh to pieces, beyond the point of reconstruction and
recovery.
“Madeleine
Albright from the US, Hubert Védrine from France, Joschka Fischer
from Berlin, Lord Robertson from Nato and, finally, Robin Cook - the
first British cabinet member to meet the new leader - have been
charmed by the ex-KGB man who is a month from being crowned
Russia’s new democratic leader, even though he has never contested
a democratic vote in his life.” According to the Moscow-based
newspaper Kommersant, “Cook was clearly against putting pressure
on Russia because of Chechnya.” In fact, the newspaper noted that
“The west has done its bit to ensure Putin’s election as
president”, the same man overseeing the genocide of the Chechen
people, concentration camps et. al. Thus, the crisis in Chechnya,
despite surpassing in scale that of Kosovo, was not met with any
cries of denunciation or outrage by Western politicians.
Conveniently, there were no indignant condemnations of Russian
genocide, no imposition of sanctions, no talk of humanitarian
catastrophe in Chechnya. On the contrary, “Mr. Cook and Mr. Putin
laughed at one another’s jokes.” While the British Foreign
Secretary claimed that protests about Chechnya “have not fallen on
deaf ears”, the US human rights and war crimes official David
Scheffer expressed his distress that “so much concern expressed
about Chechnya appears to have fallen on either deaf ears or ears
that wish to focus on other issues.” The extent of the British
government’s professed “concern” is clear from the fact that
“Amid further reports of Russian atrocities against Chechen
civilians... Mr. Putin on Wednesday morning referred to the two
countries’ alliance in the second world war.” Cook declared
happily while Chechens were being massacred by Russian forces that
this past alliance between Russia and Britain should be transformed
into a “strategic partnership” with Russia, “a top priority of
British foreign policy.”[57]
Cook further justified the Russian attack, with the redundant
qualification that he did not agree with its ‘scale’: “In the
case of Russia, there is a case for military action against the
terrorists”.[58]
Prime
Minister Blair mouthed similar sentiments. A Blair spokesman
admitted that “Russia is too important a country to ignore or
isolate over Chechnya”[59]
- with its 13 per cent of the world’s oil and 36 per cent of its
natural gas reserves.[60]
“We recognise that the Russians do have a serious problem with
terrorism”, Blair himself told the BBC’s Robin Oakley (hence
supporting Russia’s fabricated pretext for its war), ommitting to
mention Chechnya’s rather more serious (and real) “problem”
with Russian state terror which has lasted for three centuries.
Oakley asked: “But is the right response to terrorism to raze a
city like Grozny to a pile of rubble?” The Guardian
commented on Blair’s revealing reply: “A simple ‘no’ would
have sufficed, but Blair couldn’t bring himself to say it. Nor did
he display any outrage at Russia’s atrocities in Chechnya”.
Blair’s actual reply was: “Well, they have been taking their
action for the reasons they’ve set out because of the terrorism
that has happened in Chechnya”, a clear attempt to justify
Russia’s illegal and genocidal war against Chechnya’s fight for
freedom by flattening an entire city.[61]
On 11 March 2000, in the first visit of a Western leader to Russia
since the resignation of Yeltsin, the British Prime Minister had
given “Russian acting President Vladimir Putin, who has led a
brutal military onslaught on Chechnya, his broad seal of
approval.” Furthermore, “no concrete concessions” concerning
Russia’s onslaught “had emerged from the talks” held between
Blair and his chum Putin, despite the latter’s rhetorical
assurances. In fact, “British officials appeared to accept much of
Putin’s argument” for the war, reported the British press, with
one Downing Street official concurring: “There is a terrorist
insurrection there on their [Ruter"’s] territory” - a view which
the press notes “will delight the Russian leadership.”[62]
“This
is absolutely the wrong signal to be sending”, pointed out Malcolm
Hawkes of Human Rights Watch in regard to Blair’s ‘night-out’
with Putin during his stay in Russia, “making a private visit to
the opera [with Putin] when war crimes are being committed with
impunity by Russian forces in Chechnya.” He added: “There are
mass executions of civilians, arbitrary detention of Chechen males,
systematic beatings, torture, and on occasion, rape. There is the
absolutely systematic and rampant looting of Chechen homes by
Russian troops; these acts need to be condemned publicly in the
strongest terms.”[63]
Benevolent Blair, however, preferred to chide Putin ineffectively,
while continually accepting his false justifications and emphasising
the new British-Russian relationship that just happens to have
coincided with Russia’s so-called ‘anti-terrorist’ war against
Chechen men, women and children. As Menzies Campbell, the Liberal
Democrat’s Foreign Affair’s spokesman, observed: “No matter
what Blair says, a visit like this will be presented by Putin as a
significant endorsement of his election campaign”, a
“campaign” that has notably involved nothing much other than the
single policy of punishing Chechnya. “For months now this man has
laid waste to Chechnya, in the guise of counter terrorism, and
behaved without any regard to the normal standards of civilisation,”[64]
none of which is evidently a significant problem for Britain. The
reason according to a Blair spokesman is “Russia is too important
a country to isolate or ignore over Chechnya”[65]
- meaning, British strategic and economic interests in the country
easily outweigh our alleged humanitarian concerns. Hence, if our
alleged concerns go unnoticed by Russia, it matters not anyway,
which is why Russia’s continuing bombardment of civilian targets
has not elicited anything from the West except the meaningless much
publicised voicing of such alleged concerns.
On
top of this unconscionable apologetics for Russian war crimes,
British intelligence agencies began sharing “anti-terrorist”
information with Russia, in connection with Chechnya - the import of
which is clear from Blair’s own frequent labelling of the Chechen
independence movement a result of “terrorism”. “The disclosure
came during talks between the prime minister and Vladimir Putin,
Russia’s acting president”, reported the Sunday Times. “Putin
had asked Blair to send British anti-terrorist experts to advise
troops who are fighting Muslim rebels in Chechnya.” Of course, the
public is not supposed to consider that this may amount to any sort
of support for Russia’s war, despite the obvious fact that it is.
The newspaper also reports the “surprise” of the Muslim Council
of Great Britain at Blair’s cordial visit to Russia to strengthen
relations at the height of its genocidal war. “Russian conduct”,
said a spokesman, “must be recognised for what it is - war
crimes.”[66]
Yet, Western leaders like Blair have consistenly refused to even
acknowledge that Russia is committing horrendous war
crimes in Chechnya, let alone condemn these crimes.
The
British position was well articulated by British MP Keith Vaz, the
Minister for Europe, on BBC2’s Newsnight, in a discussion that was
preceded by Newsnight’s ironic commentary on Putin’s visit to
Britain which included “tea with the Queen”. Vaz advocated a
“policy of constructive engagement” with Russia, simultaneously
insisting that “there are no favours being done” to Putin’s
government. He nevertheless admitted that the “importance” of
the humanitarian crisis in Chechnya “needs to be seen in the
context of the bilaterial relationship” with Russia - which is
motivated by the fact that “Russia is a very important country”,
and that “a new generation of leaders” have come to power in
Russia; “it’s extremely important that we have a strategic
alliance with them.” The exact nature of this “strategic
alliance” with Russia - “in the context” of which Britain’s
attitude towards Chechnya has been forged - was inadvertantly
elaborated on by Keith Vaz himself when he referred to “the
discussions this morning with the CBI, with the business community
in Britain,” which show “that there is real willingness for a
positive engagement”. Newsnight presenter Jeremy Vine commented:
“Mr. Vaz is being quite straightforward there because he’s
mentioned business and the business connection.”[67]
The
United States was similarly enthusiastic about its blooming
friendship with the increasingly Stalinist regime, as it pounded
Chechnya and its civilian population into the ground. American
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called warmonger Putin “a
liberal reformer”, while President Clinton wrote that he was
“liberating” Chechnya.[68]
Former US Secretary of State Lawrence Beagleburger rationalised
Russia’s war, saying of the Chechens: “They’re not very nice
people.”[69]
Albright also stated that the devastating war on Chechnya must not
be allowed to damage “relations” between Russia and the West,
which are clearly of greater interest to the West than the 2 million
civilians of Chechnya.[70]
None of which is surprising considering the fact that in early
October “the White House gave Moscow a green light to launch
Russia’s second war - and possible final solution - against the
tiny Caucasus mountain republic of Chechnya”, in the attempt to
“exterminate” the Chechen people. American foreign correspondent
Eric Margolis further reported: “In Moscow, standing next to her
beaming Russian hosts, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
proclaimed ‘we are opposed to terrorism’ - meaning Islamic
rebels in the Caucasus fighting Russian rule. She said nothing about
Russia’s blatant violation of its 1996 treaty that granted
Chechnya de facto independence. She made no protest over Moscow’s
egregious violation of the 1990 CFE Treaty, the most important
east-west arms reduction pact, by moving large new forces into the
Caucasus.”[71]
News
commentator Enver Masud reports that the US is supporting
“Russia’s genocidal war on Chechnya” by “providing billions
in aid to Russia [italics added]”, “through the International
Monetary Fund.” Contradictions in America’s foreign policy to
comparable tragedies expose once again that US ‘humanitarianism’
is a mere political facade. Masud compares the flow of billions of
US dollars to Russia throughout its genocidal subjugation of
Chechnya to “President Clinton’s threat to delay a $42 billion
IMF loan package to get Indonesia to agree to the UN intervention in
East Timor... Contrast this also with the UN sanctions initiated
today against Afghanistan for its refusal to surrender Osama bin
Laden to the US. The US accuses bin Laden of masterminding the
bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but refuses to
provide evidence to back its claim.”[72]
Thus, in March 2000, as part of an $800 million loan package, the
international community’s World Bank paid the Russian government
100 million dollars. “The Bank cannot just pay lip service to the
‘human aspects’ of development”, commented Kenneth Roth, Human
Rights Watch’s Executive Director. “Here we have a government
committing war crimes and other serious violations of international
humanitarian law. The World Bank should not be financing it.”[73]
Madeleine Albright, however, articulated the philosophy behind the
West’s funding of Russian genocide in early November 1999: “We
believe it is very important for there to be economic stability in
Russia. That is in our national interest.”[74]
The lives of Chechen men, women and children are of no interest in
comparison.
Margolis
also refutes the objection that Russia, with its nuclear arms
“can’t be ordered about”, perhaps explaining US/Western
inaction. As Margolis points out, US inaction is one thing -
enthusiastic US/Western support “of Russia’s barbarism in the
Caucasus” by “actually funding Moscow’s crimes against
humanity with American tax dollars” is quite another. Margolis
refers to the crucial fact that “Without weekly deliveries of
planeloads of US $100 bills, the Yeltsin regime would collapse.
Without life-support from the US Treasury and IMF, the world would
foreclose on Russia.” The recipients of this US support, apart
from helping to finance Russia’s war, constitute “the crooks and
robber barons currently running Russia that the White House has to
keep supporting... lest the current regime collapse.” The collapse
of the current regime is not in US/Western interests for the very
reason that it has become integrated into the global capitalist
economic system, as well as the fact that it “would expose the
Democrats to a tirade of Republican accusations in an election year,
and spark Congressional investigations of financial chicanery
between Washington and Moscow”. Additionally, US/Western funding
of Russia’s war has been accompanied by American military support:
“Clinton ordered the Pentagon to rush Moscow state of the art
night-vision and communications equipment for Russian helicopters
being used against insurgents in the Caucasus.”[75]
The justification for this aid to Russia’s genocidal war?
In the words of the Whitehouse, “to combat terrorism”.[76]
Accordingly,
other Western secret services including the US and German,
“provided Moscow with intelligence on Chechen rebels whom Russia
blames for last year’s bombing campaign on it’s population.”
German government sources revealed that “German and Russian agents
swapped low-grade intelligence”on Chechen rebels, while “The
Americans, the British and the French gave much more data”,
reported one unnamed
German agent. According to the German government’s secret service
coordinator Ernst Uhrlau, “Moscow asked Western governments for
help last year after [the] bombing campaign [that] killed over 300
people” and which had in fact been organised by Russian secret
services in the first place. Notably: “He did not say whether or
how the request has been met.” In light of the fact that the
‘Chechen terrorism’ that was cited as justification for
Russia’s invasion of Chechnya had actually been covertly organised
and perpetrated by Russian secret agencies, it is clear that the
West’s provision of intelligence aid to Russia in regard to the
Chechen “rebels” fighting for the right of Chechen
self-determination and self-defence against Russian invasion,
constitutes nothing other than covert support for Russia’s war.[77]
While
following through with this shameless support of Russia’s
terrorist war on Chechnya, a much publicised OSCE summit in Istanbul
between Russia and the West to review the European security charter
was staged. Notably, Western leaders did not direct any substantial
criticism of the war towards Russia - although European leaders,
such as the French and German, publicly appeared to be a little more
against the war than Britain and the United States. Rather, Yeltsin
challenged them, insisting that the war was against “terrorism”,
and that it would continue until “terrorism” was eliminated. The
absence of forceful and uncompromising criticism from the West on
Chechnya’s humanitarian catastrophe was replaced with the meagre
voicing of the West’s alleged humanitarian concerns, which were
extensively reported by the media, unlike the covert policies
supporting Russia’s war that expose these concerns as mere public
rhetoric. Hence, “prospects for a peaceful end to the seven-week
offensive against the breakaway Caucasian republic remained
uncertain”, while Yeltsin “gave the west just enough to claim
progress on the Chechen crisis” to its public.[78]
Meanwhile, the media eagerly swallowed the West’s rhetorical
concerns, largely failing to notice the sheer inconsistency between
the public speeches and the covert policies.
However,
the rhetorical nature of these concerns is clear from the frequent
affirmations of agreement with Russia’s false pretext for the war
(the fight against terrorism) - particularly from the American
representative at the summit, Clinton. US President Clinton noted
that “I think I speak for everyone here when we say we want Russia
to overcome the scourge of terrorism and lawlessness”, i.e.
Chechens fighting for self-determination. “We believe Russia has
not only the right, but the obligation, to defend its territorial
integrity”, and put down this movement for freedom in the
Caucasus. Pandering to the Russian propaganda which was fabricated
by the FSB and GRU to justify the invasion, destruction and
occuption of Chechnya, Clinton added: “Russia has faced rebellion
within, and related violence beyond, the borders of Chechnya” -
none of which can be accurately labelled Chechen terrorism, however.
Russia “has responded with a military strategy designed to break
the resistance and end the terror”, by in fact escalating
“terror” in Chechnya. “The strategy has led to substantial
civilian casualties and very large flows of refugees”, Clinton
also acknowledged, though that evidently does not stop him from
funding the war. He additionally pointed out “that most of the
critics of Russian policies [presumably including the other Western
powers at the OSCE summit] deplore Chechen violence and terrorism
and extremism, and support the objectives of Russia - to preserve
its territorial integrity, and to put down the violence and the
terrorism.” The ultimate import of these statements is that the
US, and the Western powers which it leads, are indeed pandering to
Russian propaganda and supporting its violent efforts to “preserve
its territorial integrity” by subjugating and slaughtering
thousands of Chechen soldiers and civilians who only wish to live
out their right to self-determination, all of which can be neatly
construed for the public as “putting down the violence and the
terrorism”. In this light, the call for Russia to look for a
political solution rather than a violent solution, though
appropriately glossed with a few essential humanitarian anecdotes,
appears to have been made in light of the cold strategic fact that
violence is unlikely to allow Russia to strengthen its hegemony over
Chechnya, because it may elicit a more intense defencive response
from Chechen fighters. As Clinton stated: “What [critics] fear is
that the means Russia has chosen will undermine its end” - the end
being the enforcement of Russian hegemony over Chechnya in
accordance with the political objective of raising Putin’s
domestic popularity, and the economic objectives of capturing
Chechen oil and establishing a route to Caspian oil. Thus, “if
attacks on civilians continue, the extremism Russia is trying to
combat will only intensify” - the “extremism” in reality
referring to Chechnya’s popular drive for independence and
self-determination, which severely jeoparises prospects for Russian
hegemony and its corresponding strategic and economic interests. The
policy may not work, Clinton argued, because “the sovereignty
Russia rightly is defending will be more and more rejected by
ordinary Chechens... The strength Russia is rightly striving to
build” by bombarding Chechnya, “therefore, could be eroded by an
endless cycle of violence. The global integration Russia has rightly
sought to advance, with our strong support, will be hindered.”[79]
Thus,
Clinton seems to argue, the reason Russia should seek a “political
solution” to the war which it had manufactured, while aiding
Chechen refugees and protecting civilians (if we even take these
endorsements seriously, which is hard to do considering that US
dollars are funding Russia’s bombardment of Chechen civilian
targets in the first place), is merely pragmatic - Russia’s
attempt to seal its hegemony over Chechnya for its own geopolitical
interests is apparently justified and worthy of Western support,
except that it may not work as a matter of practicality. If
Russia’s war continues in the way it does, Chechens may continue
to fight for independence at even more intense levels, thereby being
relegated to the status of “terrorists” in the diction of the
‘international community’, and this “will undermine
[Russia’s] end” - domestic political triumph combined with
establishment of its regional economic imperatives - by “an
endless cycle of violence”. It seems that the killing, torture and
ethnic cleansing of Chechens is only undesirable in so far as it
stands in the way of Russian interests, “strongly supported” by
the US.
The
Anglo-American stance established a precedent for Europe to follow
as appropriate. Despite the “furious denunciations” of
Russia’s brutality in its war on Chechnya by the Council of Europe
(6 April 2000) [the parliamentary assembly of Europe’s top human
rights body, which is separate from the EU] in which was demanded an
inquiry, a ceasefire and peace talks, according to the Guardian the
“suspension” of Russia from the Council “has to be approved by
member governments, which have so far proved conspicuously reluctant
to match verbal condemnation of Russia with practical measures.”
Though “mild sanctions” on Russia imposed by the EU have been
deliberately “limited”, to ensure that Europe’s
“relations” with Russia stay “on track”, the European
reluctance was in practice very much akin to “the role of the
British government in seeking to moderate criticism of Russia”.[80]
The problem has been accentuated by the fact that there exists no
mechanism “for a thorough international probe of the Chechnya
bloodbath without Russia’s agreement.” The only mechanism
capable of performing such a probe is the planned UN international
criminal court launched in Rome, 1998 - however,
“the treaty setting up the court is opposed by a handful of
countries. The US is one of them; and, yes, Russia is another.”[81]
The
reasons for this ongoing alliance between Russia and the West may
not necessarily be immediately obvious, but a reasonable attempt to
understand arrives at some fairly obvious conclusions. The
International Worker’s Party (Russia) observed: “This war is
related, above all, to the oil interests in the Caspian basin and is
aimed at preserving the power of one of the capitalist clans and the
bureaucracy with the support of the arms dealers, the bureaucrats of
the industrial-military complex and the generals who are seeking to
justify the growing power of the military caste.” As for the
interests of the West, “This war serves the interests of the oil
capitalists of Turkey” - a key strategic Western ally - “and the
US, who are demonstrating in this way the greater security of the
Baku-Zheyjan pipeline, and also the interests of the oil
oligarchs” of the West and including some Russians “who are
interested in raising the price of oil in the world market.” The
Party notes “the complicity of the USA and the other G7 powers in
the aggression being carried out by the Russian government. Despite
the hypocritical declarations on their ‘concern for humanitarian
issues’, it is evident that what is taking place is the partition
of the Caucasus on the basis of imperialist interests: that Russia
will ‘re-establish constitutional order’ in Chechnya and NATO
will take the rest under its control, starting with Georgia and
Azerbaijan. If the power of Russia is unable to do the job, then
NATO will send its ‘peace-keeping troops’ to Chechnya, too.”
The acceleration of the political-military plans was evident when
“NATO presented Georgia with a dozen Apache helicopters, sent
instructors and are including Georgia in joint military
exercises.”[82]
The actual intervention of NATO in Chechnya is a much more debatable
issue, but the analysis seems otherwise largely correct. There
nevertheless remains a genuine tension between Russian and
US/Western interests in the Caspian region. Recent policies in the
Caucasus of both Russia and the West suggest that the two blocks are
attempting to resolve this tension. The West anyhow is faced with
two issues: maintaining friendly relations with Russia for the sake
of one set of economic interests in the country; ensuring an access
to Caspian oil that bypasses Russia.
In
October 1997, the French journal Le Monde diplomatique estimated the
potential for friction between the US and Russia: “American oil
companies were interested in the Caspian long before the State
Department came up with a coherent policy for the area... The
negotiation of oil contracts enabled Washington to show a direct
interest in the region. The US government sees it as an extra source
of energy, should Persian Gulf oil be threatened. It also wants to
detach the former Soviet republics from Russia both economically and
politically, so as to make the formation of a Moscow-led union
impossible. In an article published in the spring, former Defense
Secretary Caspar Weinberger wrote that if Moscow succeeded in
dominating the Caspian, it would achieve a greater victory than the
expansion of NATO would be for the West... The Caucasus is an
amazing mosaic of alliances, with each [republic] seeking the
patronage of one or more foreign powers. As the new arrival, the
United States is trying to secure for itself a major role, with a
commensurate reduction in the Russian presence and Iranian
ambitions. Jealous of these developments in what has only recently
become foreign territory, Russia is still reeling from its [1995]
defeat in Chechnya. In short, the next stage in Caucasian history
will be played out between the ascendancy of American power and the
resistance of Russia.”
In
fact, the US/Western pipeline route bypasses Chechnya to avoid
Russian interference. Three US multinational corporations - Exxon,
Pennzoil and Unocal - are involved in an oil consortium of
Azerbaijan and 11 Western companies, led by the British-US
corporation BP Amoco: the Azerbaijan International Oil Consortium (AIOC).
Under US insistence, the pipeline will run from Chechnya’s
neighbour Azerbaijan to Turkey, also passing through another
republic nearby Chechnya, Georgia. Accordingly, as the US has
extended its hegemony to ‘befriend’ these former Soviet
Republics in order to secure its interests in the Caspian, Russia
has no doubt felt the need to both establish its own claim to
Caspian oil, as well as to illustrate its own power to the West in
the face of US expansionism right up to Russian borders. The
subjugation of Chechnya serves this purpose well. Russian air force
chief Anatoly Kornukov had warned in mid-November 1999 while his
planes blasted Chechnya’s civilian infrastructure into rubble:
“We are restoring order in our own country and no one has the
right, or will stop us, from doing so.” “Russia is not Iraq, it
is not Yugoslavia,” he added, apparently directly alluding to
recent US-led Western interventions, “and any attempt at
interference will be resolutely blocked.”[83]
Another relevant fact is that on 29 November 1998, Russia announced
its plans for a pipeline route bypassing Chechnya to carry Caspian
oil to the Russian Black Sea Port of Novorossiyisk. The pipeline was
advanced as an alternative to the US-led route, securing a contract
to pump 5 million metric tonnes Azeri oil annually until 2003, when
the US-led AIOC becomes operational.[84]
Russia’s hefty economic interests in enforcing its imperialist
hegemony over Chechnya are therefore motivated by the desire to
secure the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline for the oil wealth of the
Caspian sea basin. This pipeline route passes through the territory
of Dagestan, located between Chechnya and the Caspian sea. “For
Russia, Dagestan retains an important strategic value. Dagestan
commands 70 per cent of Russia’s shoreline to the oil-producing
Caspian Sea and its all-weather Caspian port at Makhachkala. It
provides the crucial pipeline links from Azerbaijan, where Russia
maintains important oil interests”.[85]
Thus, as former consultant for the US Agency for International
Development Enver Masud observes, “Chechnya just happens to be a
gateway” for Russia “to the Caspian Sea oil worth between $2
trillion and $4 trillion at 1997 market prices.”[86]
Taking
all this into account, we may note the observations of the
London-based Georgian political analyst Leonard Amani, who points
out that if “the leitmotif of [Putin’s] foreign policy is the
rebirth of Russia’s global preeminence and the establishment of
her influence on neighbouring regions,” which certainly seems to
be the case, “these former Soviet republics will become a crucial
political arena.” The new president “will also be eager to crush
anti-Russian sentiments across the Caucasus and reassert influence
in a region which has historically been part of the Russian
empire.” However, “the task of reasserting Russian influence in
the South Caucasus is further complicated by the growing appetites
of Western oil companies in Azerbaijan and NATO’s
military-political interests in the area.” NATO’s military aid
to Georgia may be tied to its desire to seal its military-political
hegemony over the republic, like the other regional former Soviet
Republics infiltrated by NATO to secure a stake in Caspian reserves.
It seems clear, however, that the US still desires a reasonably
strong Russia - integrated into the US dominated global economy and
an ally of the US - to act as a counterweight to China. The
combination of US and Russian interests seem to have led them to
attempt to resolve their conflicting interests in the region under a
sinister alliance. Hence, the “Russian president may agree with
the West to divide up spheres of influence in Eastern Europe and
Asia.” “The spectre of upheaval will probably serve to persuade
the West to agree to a division of spheres of influence”, because
“the West doesn’t want to find itself, sooner or later, in
conflict with Russia in the region.”[87]
We may therefore recall in this regard the observation of the
International Workers’ Party: “Despite the hypocritical
declarations on their ‘concern for humanitarian issues’ [by the
Western powers], it is evident that what is taking place is the
partition of the Caucasus on the basis of imperialist interests:
that Russia will ‘re-establish constitutional order’ in Chechnya
and NATO will take the rest under its control, starting with Georgia
and Azerbaijan.”
Thus,
Russia’s subjugation of Chechnya does no particular damage to
Western strategic and economic interests in the region. Moreover,
the West’s ties with Russia, although they have involved
effectively supporting its massive terrorist war, are certainly in
Western economic interests. The West’s position was summed up well
by British correspondent Ian Traynor reporting from St. Petersburg:
“[British Foreign Secretary] Mr Cook [has] made it plain that
Chechnya would not be allowed to impair the chances of striking a
new and better relationship between Britain and Russia, while the
[British] government takes the view that Mr Putin is a convinced ‘westerniser’,
bent on making Russia more attractive to western - and British -
investment.”[88]
This echoes Albright’s public confession in November 1999 as the
war on Chechen civilians was escalating: “We believe it is very
important for there to be economic stability in Russia”,
