I suspect my attitude toward Chechnya is considerably more hawkish than that of anybody else on this list. I am in emphatic agreement with the following piece, especially with respect to human-right organizations in the Caucasus.
From: "Robert Bruce Ware" <... at brick.net> Subject: Human Rights in the North Caucasus (Re JRL 6603) Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 2
Reading JRL, one finds entry after entry featuring Western commentators complaining with bitter disbelief that pressure from Western organizations has had no effect upon Russian policies in Chechnya. Yet a review of JRL 6603 provides an indication as to why this has been the case. This edition of JRL featured an article titled "Human Rights in Russia and Chechnya: an Interview with Elena Bonner", followed by two articles on the death of Chechen warlord Salman Raduyev in a Russian prison, where he was serving a life sentence. The first of these was an RFE/RL article titled "Relatives, Chechen Leaders Question Official Version Of Raduev's Death" by Jean-Christophe Peuch. The second was the Independents obituary for Raduyev by Felix Corley.
The Peuch article opens with the explanation that Raduyev was imprisoned for "a spectacular hostage-taking incident in 1996." One can only try to imagine how we Americans would take an article in the state-sponsored Russian media referring to the destruction of the World Trade Center as "spectacular". The comparison is not hyperbolic. On January 9, 1996, Raduyev and his raiders forced 3,000 hostages (and not 300 as the Corley article erroneously states) under threat of death into a hospital in the Dagestani city of Kizlyar. On the same day, Chechen President Djokhar Dudayev threatened additional raids. Partly as a result of Russian military bungling, approximately 100 of Raduyev's hostages later died in the rubble of the Dagestani village of Pervomayskoye. Few of the hostages were ethnic Russians. They were Dagestanis, including many ethnic Avars.
>From 1831 to 1859, Dagestanis and Chechens united in their resistance to
Russian imperialism. After 1835, they were led by a Dagestani Avar named
Immam Shamil. During the war in Chechnya from 1994-1996, Dagestanis
accommodated 130,000 Chechen refugees, mostly in their own homes, and they
protested when Russian troops attacked Chechnya from Dagestan. The treaty
that gave Chechnya de facto independence in 1996 was brokered by Dagestanis
and negotiated and signed in a Dagestani city. Yet none of this prevented
Raduyev from attacking his supporters, sympathizers, and Islamic brethren
in Dagestan. Raduyev was finally apprehended in March 2000 after Russian
troops returned to Chechnya. He was subsequently tried, convicted, and
sentenced in a Dagestani court.
Peuch describes how the Chechenpress has joined Raduyevs kin in challenging the official account of his death in prison. Suspicions are inevitable given that Raduyev evidently died of internal bleeding, and no challenge would be inappropriate since all of humanity is responsible for the treatment of any prisoner. Inquiries concerning Raduyevs fate are particularly important in view of brutalities suffered regularly by detainees in Chechnya.
Yet both of these articles ignore the other half of the story. First, Raduyev would not have been in a Russian prison had Chechen officials arrested him in 1996 after he returned to Chechnya from the Kizlyar raid. What had the Dagestanis ever done except to support (indeed, at one time lead) the Chechen resistance? Why didnt the people of Chechnya exact justice upon Raduyev for his crimes against their historic allies and Islamic brethren? Why did''t the people of Chechnya take responsibility for their own?
Raduyev's raid was but one of many reasons why the people of Dagestan today hate Chechens far more bitterly than to the people of Moscow. During the three years after Raduyev's attack Dagestanis were ravaged by the Chechen hostage industry, and by daily raids and incursions from across the Chechen border.
Today the very best that one can hear about Chechens in Dagestan is that the Chechens are responsible for what has happened to Chechnya, something one rarely hears from Western writers such as Peuch and Corley. What other fate than that of Chechnya could possibly befall a society that tolerated open slavery into the twenty-first century, and accepted the medieval predation of its closest allies and supporters--a society that has never yet come close to accepting responsibility for itself, for what it has done, and what it has failed to do. Indeed, why should the Chechen people accept responsibility for themselves when no one ever calls upon them to do it? For much of the world it is enough that the Chechens are fighting the Russians, and they are held accountable for nothing else. What could make this clearer than the fact that none of the articles about Raduyev in the last week has asked why the people of Chechnya did not apprehend Raduyev and hold him responsible for his terrorist activities in Dagestan?
For no one in Chechnya accepted responsibility for Raduyev, nor repudiated him, nor apologized for him. Nor did they stop Basayev and Khattab from invading Dagestan again three years later. So why didnt the people of Chechnya join their Dagestani brothers in fighting against Basayev and Khattab? Had they done so the Northeast Caucasus might be a peaceful place today, and Chechnya might be independent.
In 2000, when Russian authorities announced plans to return Raduyev to Dagestan for trial, the Dagestani Prosecutor General asked them not to do so on the grounds that Dagestani security forces would be unable to guarantee Raduyev's safety. So many Dagestanis had sworn blood vendettas against Raduyev that the police expected that they would be overpowered in their efforts to prevent Raduyev from being beaten to death. In fact his return to Dagestan was met by angry mass meetings that called for his immediate execution. If it is now true that Raduyev was beaten to death by officials in a Russian prison then that is a horrible thing, but it is mild compared to what would have happened to Raduyev had officials simply allowed him to step through the doors of the courtroom onto the Dagestani street. It is horrible if Raduyev was brutalized in prison, but perhaps some Dagestanis may be forgiven if they think it no less significant that he promised to kill 3000 people in his captivity?
Peuch writes that the "Kizlyar hostage taking in Daghestan ... was one of the most decisive setbacks suffered by Russian troops during the first Chechen campaign." But he doesnt mention that it was also the single worst setback suffered by the Chechen side. Had the Dagestanis joined the separatist cause there would be a viable Islamic state in the North Caucasus today. While that outcome was unlikely before Raduyevs raid, it was certainly impossible afterwards.
Yet somehow Elena Bonner managed to get through her entire interview about human rights abuses in Russia without mentioning any of this. She said nothing about the massive human rights abuses that were committed by the Chechen side against their neighbors, about the fact that in recent months slaves were still being liberated in Chechnya. Nor has Amnesty International ever mentioned any of it. Human Rights Watch hasn't discussed it. Neither MSF nor the UNHCR has brought it to anyones attention. All of these groups abandoned the people of the North Caucasus after Russian troops left Chechnya in 1996. They left the region because they were terrorized by the Chechen hostage industry. Yet not one of these groups has ever found the integrity to publicize the terrors that occurred during those years, nor to admit that they only found the courage to return to the region in the wake of the Russian military, nor to acknowledge that they can only operate there today under the protection of those same Russian troops whom they condemn on a regular basis. The cowardice displayed by these organizations is bad enough, but they have entirely disqualified themselves by means of their imbalanced and misleading accounts of events in the region, and have thereby reduced themselves to a condition of utter irrelevancy. Anyone with any experience in the North Caucasus can see their "reports" as being, at best, a conglomeration of half-truths. Certainly the Russians can see it. So it is simply impossible for anyone with any influence in the region to take these organizations seriously.
In the Northeast Caucasus the human rights community has completely marginalized itself. It has failed to produce any result. It has become a cipher. It has had no effect whatsoever because it has had no integrity.
If these organizations cared about the peoples of the Caucasus they would have said, or would now say, something about the suffering of those peoples from 1996 to 1999 when the Russian army was out of Chechnya. The fact that they have failed to do so suggests that they care less about the local people and more about convenient opportunities to bash Russia. But all the Russia-bashing regularly served up by a host of Western organizations and governments has never accomplished anything except to alienate and undercut moderate Russian officials and strengthen the hand of Russian hard-liners. In other words, it has never done anything but exacerbate and prolong instability and suffering in the Caucasus. On the other hand, President Putin announced that he would crack down on brutal "cleansing" operations in Chechnya only after American officials began to publicly acknowledge that international terrorist forces were operating in Chechnya. Sooner or later anyone who truly cares about the peoples of the Caucasus must recognize that only a balanced approach to their problems will have any effect. When Western officials recognize that along with international terrorists there are also plenty of local terrorists in Chechnya, when they call upon the Chechen people to take responsibility for themselves and do something about it, then there will finally be an opportunity for peace.
One must sympathize with Raduyev's wife, who will not have the return of her husbands body, but she is wrong to deny that Raduyev was a terrorist. There is no other word for someone who holds 3000 people in a hospital under threat of death.