Osama bin Laden has declared in the latest tape attributed to him that a terrorist hostage-taking attack was part of his jihad against the infidels. Some in the media, the academy, and even among U.S. policymakers are still debating whether killing innocent civilians in conflicts that have ethnic, religious, or territorial roots can be viewed as something less than terrorism. Others justify U.S. targeted assassinations of terrorists, while denying other countries to do the same. But the war in Chechnya has its own brutal logic. Since the hostage crisis in Moscow, President Bush and President Putin, who will meet in Moscow later this month, have been facing it with unprecedented clarity.
The foreign- and security- policy fallout of the hostage-taking crisis is far more toxic than the Fentanyl Russia's Alpha forces used in the course of the rescue. According to the statement of the Wahhabi Chechen military leader Shamil Basaev on the rebels' website, his "martyrs' battalion" has expanded attacks to the heart of Russia. Basaev combined the murder-suicide bombing tactics of al Qaeda, Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Islamic Jihad with hostage-taking. And Basaev's language, replete with phrases such as Allah Akbar (God is great) and Inshallah (God willing), is eerily reminiscent of bin Laden's.
The statement that the Chechen terrorists released to al-Jazeera referred to "loving death more than loving life" — a typical jihad phrase. This, along with their use of signs in Arabic (a language very few Chechens speak) and the black chadors worn by the women terrorists, prompted President Putin to speak the influence of outside forces on the Chechen situation, and of the necessity to take the war against Chechen terrorism beyond Russia's borders — just as President George W. Bush did in the aftermath of 9/11.
The hostage-taking came at a time of increased contacts between the Russians (such as former Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin) and the moderate nationalist Chechens, concerning ways to end the war. Blowing the peace option to pieces made plenty of sense from the perspective of the radicals, who are interested in continuous fighting and who seek to provoke Russian repression, which they then can use as a recruitment and fundraising tool.
The Moscow attack happened in the aftermath of the massive terrorist bombing in Bali, the murder of an American diplomat in Amman, the assault on a French tanker (reminiscent of the attack on the USS Cole), and an attempt to crash Internet servers around the world. It seems to be part and parcel with global terrorist attacks against "soft" Western targets.
Both sides now will escalate the use of force, including against innocent civilians. President Putin has spoken of the Chechens using arms "comparable" with weapons of mass destruction. A U.S. Army War College expert has warned that this — together with Russia's use of a highly toxic gas (albeit not a prohibited chemical weapon) — might pave the way for the Chechens and the Russians to use weapons of mass destruction in the future.
The target list has also become more deadly. Chechen "vice president" and former senior field commander Ahmad Zakaev, arrested in Denmark on October 30, warned that the next operation may involve a nuclear reactor — something al Qaeda has considered doing in the United States. And in view of the poor performance of the Russian security police (FSB) — which failed to prevent the penetration into Moscow of 40 Chechen fighters armed with over 100 kilograms of high explosives — such a catastrophic scenario may not be far from reality.
Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman Al Zawahiri, has recently warned that U.S. economic interests are in the cross-hairs. Many in the Arab Gulf states would be happy to strike a blow against the Caspian basin, which now serves as an alternate (albeit modest) source of oil for the world market. Thus, Washington experts are fearing a mega-terrorist event such as attacks on the Tenghiz-Novorossiysk Oil Pipeline (CPC) operated by Chevron, or against the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline currently being built by a consortium led by British Petroleum.
U.S. State Department officials in charge of Caucasus policy are concerned about a sweeping Russian operation in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia. Such an operation could further undermine Georgian sovereignty and deal a blow to the already weakened President Shevardnadze, though for now he seems to have acquiesced to Putin's pressure.
All of this brings analysts to a grim view of a future Chechen state — or para-state.
Even if the fighting stopped tomorrow, the challenges to Chechen viability as a state are towering. Following the 1996 Russian troop withdrawal, Chechnya was turned into a haven for kidnappers-for-ransom, slave traders, and murderers of nuns and foreign-aid workers.
Basaev pushed Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov into adopting repressive Sharia laws. Sources in the State Department report that Maskhadov acquiesced when radical Islamist networks funneled $100 million to Chechnya for jihad. Maskhadov could not forestall the invasion of Daghestan in July 1999, led by Basaev and Khattab — an invasion which ended Chechnya's de facto independence and propelled Vladimir Putin to power. As the State Department notes, today Maskhadov is hardly a proper partner to negotiate peace with the Russians.
Everything hinges on what kind of entity the future Chechnya will be. Is it to be a caliphate run by terrorists, with an education system that brainwashes its youth to kill "sinners" and infidels — or a nascent democracy fostering secular education and the arts, such as the Chechens demonstrated they are — or were — capable of sustaining during the Soviet era?
It will be important for the Chechens to break their ties to global terrorist Islamic networks and to the funders of mayhem in the Gulf, London, and elsewhere. It will also be vital to disarm, and for Russia and the West to provide a massive humanitarian package for refugee resettlement and rebuilding. Neither the Maskhadov organization nor the Russian government is equal to this task. Moreover, it will be imperative to give up the current rhetoric about building a Chechen-led caliphate "from sea to shining sea" — i.e., from the Black Sea to the Caspian.
A radical and impoverished Islamist state in Europe, on the doorstep of Russia and the weak South Caucasus states, would unquestionably be dangerous. It would act as a destabilizing factor, and would scare off the investors who otherwise could improve the lives of millions of people in the region. Unfortunately, the European Union policy makers, such as Xavier Solana, the security policy chief, have repeatedly demanded that Russia finds a negotiated settlement with the Chechens, while refusing to answer who may be Russia's "peace process" partners, or what outcome such settlement may accomplish. Parallels with the EU Middle Eastern myopic policy are obvious - and dangerous.
The United States is facing an unenviable situation in the Caucasus and in its relations with Moscow. The brutality of the Moscow hostage-taking, its undeniable ties to the same enemy the U.S. is fighting — and above all, the need for continuous Russian support in the coming war against Saddam Hussein and beyond — demand a closer cooperation. At the same time, Russian incompetence in the use of gas, and the cover-up that followed, make such cooperation problematic, to say the least. U.S. ambassador to Russia Alexander Verschbow said as much, though the State Department later distanced itself from his statement.
Future cooperation with and assistance to Putin on hostage-rescue and in intercepting sources of terrorist funding would make the U.S. a de facto ally of Russia. This has its advantage in the global war on terrorism, and hopefully, in curbing nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile technology proliferation to Iran and North Korea. This same policy, however, can only make future mediation by the U.S. in the Russian-Chechen conflict more difficult.
— Ariel Cohen is a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis.