The arrest of Aslan Maskhadov's envoy in Denmark may put an end to the process of negotiations in Chechnya.
Who is Akhmed Zakayev? First and foremost, he is a man who might potentially participate in peace contacts, on Maskhadov's behalf. A compromise figure, someone the Kremlin might have used if and when it decided to get us out of the blind alley of Chechnya.
What do we have without Zakayev? What is the separatist military- political leadership like without him?
It has become considerably more radical since mid-summer. Any more or less reasonable men close to Maskhadov have been pushed into the background, while Shamil Basayev has moved into the spotlight; Basayev and his friend Movladi Udugov (residing in Qatar). Moreover, Basayev appointed himself the "senior military emir" and began threatening to punish Chechens for treason...
Basayev and company soon pushed Zakayev into the background. By autumn, Basayev had branded Zakayev as traitor and blamed him for negotiations being too slow and inactive, accusing him of having sold out to Moscow.
Iljas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the government of Ichkeria, found himself an outcast too.
The so-called generation of "sons" has gained the upper hand and begun replacing the "fathers" of Chechen resistance. That was how things reached the point of the Nord-Ost hostage-taking: a situation where there was nothing left to discuss with anyone, and where the desire to die - killing as many others as possible in the process - drowned out common sense.
Barayev and other leaders of the "shakhid battalion" who ended up in Moscow were part of the "sons", those who are angered by Maskhadov's insufficient radicalism. The "sons" think that Maskhadov issues too few combat orders, and money for that matter. In other words, the presidency is all Maskhadov has, and that aspect is being ignored more and more, even by his closest associates and followers.
I heard people saying "To hell with Maskhadov! We will fight our own war!" over and over in late summer and early autumn.
I heard a similar cry - "Damn your Maskhadov!" - on October 25, only meters from hundreds of people awaiting death in Moscow. Those poor people who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, and were forced to pay for the second war in Chechnya, and for the stupid methods of reproducing terrorism. They were also forced to pay for the criminal incompetence of the Russian secret services, which had once again permitted a tragedy to happen, due to an elementary lack of knowledge of what they were facing.
The "sons" who made it to Moscow in October are dead. How many are left of these young men and women who live only for revenge, and who view Maskhadov as an obstacle?
There are hundreds of them. They are the suicide bombers, or shakhids (call them what you like), in the grip of a simple idea: sacrificing their lives for the sake of an end to the war... The group which is gaining the upper hand in Chechnya nowadays promises us massacres and bloodshed, living from one terrorist act to the next, and the Kremlin's absolute rejection of the idea of negotiations. This makes Maskhadov's future all the more predictable. On the one hand, he must chose the reckless radicalism of the "sons" - or he himself will soon become history. On the other hand, "Maskhadov's transformation into a Barayev", which we are witnessing now, will lead us even deeper into the suicidal abyss. The chances of a peaceful resolution are zero. The Kremlin doesn't even want to listen. We will have to make a much greater effort now if negotiations are ever to start.
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