Today an excellent article appeared in the Estonian Daily Newspaper, imaginatively titlet The Estonian Daily Newspaper, about the crisis in Chechenia and the terrorism in Russia. Written by Kadri Liik, one of the foremost foreign politics experts in estonian journalism, the article gives an excellent overview and analysis of the background of the Beslan crisis, and other acts of terror in Russia. I've translated the article for your reading pleasure, be warned though, the article is rather thourough, and thus a long read. But it pays off in full.
ANALYSIS: The roots of the Beslan school hostage crisis lie in Russia's dumb policy in Chechenia
The events of the past two weeks have been shocking, even considering the usual amount of catastrophes in Russian life.
First two airplanes crashed, then there was an explosion near the Moscow metro, and finally, the most horrifying, the hostage crisis in the Beslan School. Four preplanned acts of terror, resulting in at least 400 - but maybe up to 700 - casualties. What the hell is going on?
In the words of president Vladimir Putin, we are dealing with "an anti-russian intervention by international terrorism." President George W. Bush was glad to agree, by assuring that USA and Russia stand side-by-side in the War Against Terror. Even the Estonian goverment copied the rhetoric of the bigger ones, by claiming that what happened in Russia is "the appearance of a vice that has become an international challenge - terrorism."
Actually, I'm a bit embarassed by the latter statement. It is of course understandable why Estonia is singing along to the hypocritical lies of the bigger countries - perhaps they will forget then the monument at Lihula (a monument erected to commemorate the estonian soldiers who fought in the nazi army during WWII that caused an international scandal -stu) - but in truth, we should know that the reasons for the terror in Russia lie elsewhere. We must look for them from Russia's politics in Chechenia, not from some kind of international conspiracies.
A fruit of dumb politics
True, the bearded arabic-speaking guys have been getting along with the Chechens - mostly with the group that has remained loyal to the warleader Shamil Bassayev, who are reportedly behind the hostage crisis in Beslan. So an international element does exist, but this is not the primary reason for the terrorism that originates from Chechenia. This is mostly the result of Russia's dumb politics. The chechens fought the first war alone with a clear goal of independence in sight. The arabs came into play, and some chechen groupings went rogue during the time between the wars, while Russia, unable to control Chechenia, and not willing to declare it independent (which would have given president Mashadov a chance to ask for international aid to both develop the economy and calm the bassayevians), left the country to stand on their own. And when Moscow, after turning it's back on the legitimate president Mashadov, started a new war five years ago, the Mashadov had no other choice but to start tolerating the extremists, who he had been trying to fight against until then.
Then again, as Chechenia-experts confirm, the grouping of arabs associated with the chechens is still relatively small. If the life in the rest of Chechenia would really be calming down - as per Moscow's official rhetorics - then the limping Bassayev and his foreign friends would pose no unsolvable problem, and they would be soon caught. But the problem is, that the infinite reservoir of the spreading terror is not money and arab men, but the desperation of chechenian civilians, which is in turn fed by the behavior of russian federal army.
For the chechens, now in the beginning of the 21-st century, life is without any kind of human rights. It is common for federal soldiers to arrest and take away half the men in a chechenyan village, under the guise of a "cleaning operation", saying that they are suspected in terrorism. In actuality, however, they are hostages - when their relatives pay the ransom quickly enough, then they are set free. If the relatives do not make the payment in time, however, it may well happen, that they'll be sent back for more money, because the hostage has become a corpse, but the ransom of a corpse will be a lot higher, since the Russians know well, that properly burying their relatives is a sacred duty for Chechens. In this way, the federal forces have taken and executed more hostages, than the Chechens in both wars - which is not a justification of the Chechen terror, but it should help to explain its background.
The World Remains silent
Executions without trial are everyday things, as is torture, not to speak of stealing and robberies. Life has been like that in Chechnya for now five years. This is equal to the acts in the former Yugoslavian republic, but the world does nothing. One cannot claim, that the world doesn't know either - at least the fact that something is terribly wrong in Chechnya is well known; at despite Moscow's best efforts, even more detailed info is completely available, if one does a bit of searching, for example on the web pages of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International.
Imagine yourself as a Chechen woman, whose children have been killed in an air assault, and whose husband is missing - after he was taken in the middle of the night by masked men driving a federal army truck. You write pleas to all kinds of justice organizations, naming the time of the action, and the license plate of the vehicle (which you saw, because even though usually they are covered by mud, that day, the rain washed the mud). The only answer that you receive is that no-one knows anything. Then one day the tortured and mutilated body of your husband is found somewhere by the road. You grieve, but try to move on with your life, you move to Groznyy, get a job, find a place to live somewhere in the ruins - but after every two weeks masked men barge in there, robbing, and raping. There is no-one to complain to, and a change is nowhere to be seen.
This is not a fictional tale. In the book by Anna Politovskaya "The Second Chechenyan War", which was just translated into Estonian, such stories are common. Is it then remarkable, that a woman like her finally goes, gets and buys a pack of explosives, to blow up herself and a TU-154? She no longer cares, that there are innocent people in the TU-154. After all, her husband and her children were innocent as well! In addition, from her point of view, we are all guilty - both the Russians, and us, the Europeans, because we know what is happening, but are doing nothing. It is extremely likely, that a woman - or a man - like that once gets to blowing up a nuclear plant. And it is highly unlikely, that he or she will be watching the wind, while doing it (so he'd cancel the action, if the wind isn't towards Moscow, but towards Tallinn, or Berlin instead).
An enemy worth keeping
Of course, the military always tends to act brutally and cause violence in the civil population. The Americans have been unnecessary violent in Iraq as well, no doubt about that. But the big difference is that for the Russian army in Chechnya, the war has become a profitable business. They have no big reason to want it to end. Think of the income: the ransom for dead or alive hostages, the money from Chechnya’s illegal oil business, the money that comes from selling arms to their enemy, the money that is given to rebuild Chechnya, but can be easily slipped into their own pockets by claiming that terrorists attacked the rebuilt object, and destroyed it...
An enemy is needed to keep this business alive. And it is for the best, if the enemy is understanding, cooperative. And as the small amount of objective information that is dripping out of Chechnya confirms, Bassayev and the other rogue Chechens are exactly like that - and thus, the enemy worth keeping exists. Time and again civilian population testifies, that Bassayev, with Arabic vahhabeets went through the village, but the federal army did nothing to stop them. As soon as Bassayev had left, they started shooting randomly in the village. First testimonies like that were given already, when Bassayev left Dagestan under the guard of federal forces, five years ago - but that wasn't the last time.
I would very much like to know what Putin thinks of this business relationship between the Chechens and the federal army. Does he know of it? And uses the situation just like the others - because after all, the totalitarian regime, which is so rapidly reappearing in Russia, needs an enemy?
No, maybe not like that. When speaking of Chechnya, Putin usually does not control his emotion. The subject of Chechnya wipes the calculated facial expressions of an ex-KGB agent, and he becomes his former self - a street kid from the Vassili Island in Sankt-Petersburg. When he is speaking, for example, about the benefits of the free media (which he is destroying), or the integrity of private property (while expropriating Yukos), he is calm, impassionate, sometimes even cynically smiling.
Under international Control
So, that means that Putin doesn't know, what is going on? Also, unbelievable. A man surrounded by special agents, should certainly know of things like that. Most likely Putin simply doesn't put two and two together - the reality of Chechnya, and the terror emitting from there. As a fine KGB officer, he underestimates the role and motivation of the common man, for him the world consists of a small number of power centers, who must deal with each-other. For Putin, ordinary people are manipulated by those centers. As the KGB once searched for the hand of Washington or London behind Solidarnost, not realizing that polish themselves to be the starters of something like that, Putin is now searching for foreign power centers behind the chechenyan terror, who - as he said on his speech on Saturday, have struck because the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia showed signs of weakness: "But the weak are beaten."
This last sentence is probably Putin's sincere truth of life, which in the public apartment in Vassili Island probably applied to everyone, and was a good guide for life. But the crisis in Chechnya cannot be resolved by relying on this maxim. In Chechnya, one has to do the opposite - the weak, in other words the civilians, should not be beaten, but protected. Give them elementary human rights, and stop the mutually beneficial business between the Russian army and the Chechen terrorist. Then perhaps becomes the capture of the terrorists possible. But lasting peace cannot be brought into Chechnya without the involvement of a third party - the international public. The hatred between the Russians and the Chechenyans goes too deep, and the criminal relations are too convoluted for that. Chechnya must become an international protectorate at least for a time. That would be the only thing that would guarantee safety for the Russians as well, but unfortunately it will take a lot of time, and a lot of lives, before Kremlin realizes that.
