From: "Robert Bruce Ware" <... at brick.net> Subject: Response to McFaul and Fitzpatrick Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003
Response to Catherine Fitzpatrick (JRL 7049):
When struggling to make a complex point, one is rarely granted the kind of pedagogical assistance that you, Ms. Fitzpatrick, have provided to me. I have been working hard to persuade readers that Western views on Chechnya are characterized by deep confusion, and I could scarcely have asked for a better illustration of confusion on this topic than that which you have so promptly provided. Yet it seems to me that at the heart of your essay there is at least one interesting, perhaps important, question: Why is fieldwork necessary for an authoritative understanding of recent events in the North Caucasus? You have wrapped your question in layer upon layer of bewilderment, but I'm grateful for that because it seems that your confusion is the answer to your question. Sadly, you've also tarnished your essay with some unfortunate baggage, and I regret that I'm forced to deal with that first.
I am not a racist, nor have any of my arguments in this, or any other discussion, ever been framed in racial terms, nor have they ever suggested racial implications. Far more than most people, I have strong reasons to find racist attitudes toward Kavkasian people to be very deeply abhorrent, and that is one reason why I have often spoken out against them. It simply would be impossible for me to take a racist position toward Kavkasian people. I think that your charges along these lines exhibit your weakness in this field. If you had much confidence in your case you would not have needed to resort to something like this.
...
But returning to your essay, Ms. Fitzpatrick, you are transparently wrong when you state that any major international relief or rights organizations remained in the North Caucasus throughout Chechnya's period of de facto independence from 1996 to 1999. Specifically, all of the organizations that you mention (UNHCR, MSF, OSCE, ICRC, HRW), and many more, abandoned the region in those years because their staffers either were murdered in Chechnya or were kidnapped and held under truly horrifying conditions in Chechen cellars for exorbitant ransoms. The ICRC got out after six of their workers were murdered in Chechnya in late 1996. The UNHCR pulled out of Dagestan in autumn 1997 for this reason, and I can assure you that their international staff was terrified and severely restricted in their operation months prior to their final departure. The UNHCR left the entire North Caucasus after March 1998 when the head of their operation was kidnapped in Vladikavkaz, and then held for eight months in a Chechen cellar awaiting payment of $5 million. I've talked to the Equilibre staffer who was responsible for finally freeing his two colleagues from a Chechen cellar, that is before Equilibre fled the region. He told me: "everyone in Chechnya is involved in the hostage industry in one way or another." That is exactly what many Dagestanis who were hostage in Chechnya have reported. Certainly, many have reported escaping from their Chechen captors and seeking help from other Chechens only to find that they were handed back over to their captors, then beaten or tortured for their attempted escape. Recently an MSF administrator told me that he thought his organization might have been more open in discussing the Chechen hostage industry as the reason they abandoned the region in those years. I understand that two or three small charities did remain open in Chechnya. I admire their staffers, but unfortunately they operated on such a small scale that they could help few people, and without going into details I'm sure that students of the region will recall that staffers of several small relief organizations were also kidnapped during those years.
Now, Ms. Fitzpatrick, regarding your central question about the importance of fieldwork, let's consider these two questions: 1) How do I know about these things? 2) How is it that you don't know about these things? I know about it, first, because I was in the region during those years watching some of these organizations pack up and leave the people who needed them with no assistance whatsoever. I know because I've talked to some of the local staffers that they left behind, and I've talked with people who were forced to do without their help.
But I wouldn't have know about it if I were only reading the popular press because these events have been little covered. Perhaps that explains why you are confused. From what you have written, it appears that you think that because these organizations have now returned to the North Caucasus that they were always there, even during those years of Chechnya's de facto independence. Perhaps you read stories in the popular press about how those organizations are active in the region today, and you evidently did not read stories in the popular press about how they all abandoned the region in recent years. So you think that they were always there. Why was there a lack of information on this topic?
During the three years that Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya the entire region became so dangerous and terrifying that most journalists were understandably afraid to go there. Those few that ventured into the region did so only rarely. So outside the region there was little information about the massive horrors that occurred during that time. In fact, there are many Russians today who don't understand how bad things were in the North Caucasus during those years.
Of course, we all know how bad things are there now. That's because after the Russian army returned to Chechnya in 1999 it became less dangerous for journalists, relief, and rights workers to visit the region. Unfortunately, very few of these workers had the integrity to admit that they were so afraid of the Chechnya-based hostage industry that they did not return to the region until the time when they once again enjoyed the protection of the Russian army. Had they been more honest, then more people might have understood that Russian army had a moral responsibility to go back to Chechnya to protect the local peoples from horrible abuses. Instead most of our journalists and rights workers spent nearly all of their ink publicizing the abuses by the Russians, and rarely mentioning the abuses on the other side.
Relief workers and rights workers did the same thing. I'll be brief, and limit it to a few of the most glaring examples. Ask yourself, Ms. Fitzpatrick, how many reports you've read by AI, or HRW, or MSF, or PACE, or UNHCR based upon their interviews with the 32,000 Dagestani IDPs who were displaced by the invasions from Chechnya, and who endured for 8 months without any help whatsoever from any international relief organization? The answer is: zero. There haven't ever been any such reports. Why not? Because at the time, all the relief and rights workers were understandably too scared to go into the region and talk to them. Then, in 2000, when she was the UNHCR commissioner, Mary Robinson spent a day visiting a prison in Chechnya. That afternoon she was scheduled to visit refugees of the Chechen invasions in Dagestan's Novolaksky rayon, and then meet with Dagestani officials. Ms. Robinson visited the prison in Chechnya, but then went straight to the airport in Mahcahkala without meeting with the Dagestani refugees or officials. The Dagestani officials canceled her flight to Moscow with hopes that they then would be able to meet with her. Ms. Robinson stayed in her hotel room and refused to see the officials. There are dozens of similar stories of the disgracefully imbalanced treatment that these organizations have given to the people of the region. AI, HRW, and PACE have now completely discredited themselves in the North Caucasus, and have rendered themselves utterly powerless, which is a misfortune because the people need their help. MSF's reputation has also suffered locally. That's unfortunate because MSF and UNHCR have a great deal of work to do there. To its credit, OSCE held a hearing on the invasion of Dagestan in Washington, but they had abandoned the Northeast Caucasus at that time. Of if you prefer, Ms. Fitzpatrick, ask yourself how many of these organizations have issued reports about their interviews with victims of the hostage industry.
The point is this, Ms. Fitzpatrick: I know about these things because I went to the region and watched them happen, or I talked to people in the region who watched them happen. You are confused about these things, evidently, because you did not visit the region, and because fundamental information about this region has been virtually unavailable to people who have not gone there to get it. That's an illustration of why it is helpful to do a bit of fieldwork if we are to understand what is happening in the North Caucasus.