Regarding massive human rights abuses committed by people in Chechnya against other Chechens, and against other peoples of the region, Ms. Fitzpatrick, you may already be aware that slavery is a human rights abuse. Between 1997 and 1999 there was an open slave trade in Chechnya. In fact, some slaves have been freed from their Chechen "masters" within the last year. You see, Ms. Fitzpatrick, in Chechnya kidnapping was not a casual and occasional affair, like one of your embassy lunches. There were several organized gangs, sometimes associated with Chechen clans, who kidnapped, tortured, dismembered thousands of people, including women and children, and including many of their fellow Chechens. Often they were tortured and mutilated on videotapes that were sent to their family members, not for purposes of entertainment you understand, Ms. Fitzpatrick, but for purposes of extracting exorbitant ransoms from their impoverished families. Do you understand Ms. Fitzpatrick? Body parts were regularly sawed off of people, including little girls and boys, on videotape. Then the videotapes were sent to their families along with the severed body parts. Such things were common and frequent occurrences throughout those three years. There were places in Chechnya where dozens of victims were kept in small cages, like animals. Many people were chained, sometimes by their necks in tiny dark holes. I know someone who was kept in Chechen cellar with a couple inches of water entirely covering the floor. These things happened to some of my friends, Ms. Fitzpatrick. Also, it happened to a lot of people that I don't know. When I was in Dagestan in 1998 it seemed that nearly every apartment building, sometimes nearly every stairwell, had someone who had been kidnapped, beaten and tortured in Chechnya. That was certainly true of my apartment building. So I have a little trouble seeing how anyone can really understand what happened in that region unless they were present in 1997, 1998, or 1999, or unless they've spent some time with people there today. But I didn't find any other Westerners anywhere around there in those years. I didn't ever see any journalists; I didn't see any human rights workers, and by 1998 I didn't even see any relief workers. Even the Russian Federation didn't seem to have much of a presence there in those years.
The point, Ms. Fitzpatrick, is that the Chechnya-based hostage industry involved several extensive organizations that deprived thousands of people of their liberty, enslaving some and torturing many, over a period of years. That's what I call massive human rights abuse. I think that I have a good understanding of what all of this means because I was there in those years. By contrast, it doesn't seem that you have any understanding of what it all means, and in fact the only people that I've ever met who seem to have any real understanding of what it means are people who were there. In other words, I think a bit of field work is important if one is really interested in trying to grasp a problem of this magnitude so that one will be in a position to present oneself as an authority.
Now it's at about this point, Ms. Fitzpatrick, where your discussion becomes so confused that it is almost impossible to respond to you. You see, Ms. Fitzpatrick, after Russian troops left Chechnya, there was no one that hostages and slaves in Chechnya could turn to for help. Effectively there were no authorities of any kind, and there was no effective police force. There was chaos, and criminal gangs associated with many of the 160 Chechen clans, and warlords with their gunmen, and there was a "government" that quickly degenerated to the point that it was little more than one clan against all of the others. Even the emissaries that Moscow dispatched to try to negotiate with that government were kidnapped and killed. There were effectively no authorities and no police in Chechnya until after 1999 when the Russian military returned to the region and began to set them up.
Perhaps, like many people, you've been confused by the remarkable "Catch 22" of those years. Here's how it went: People in Chechnya committed such massive human rights abuses that nearly all journalists, rights, and relief workers were afraid to go anywhere near the area. Also very few scholars ventured into the region to conduct fieldwork. So few people know what happened in the region during those years. So few people believe that people in Chechnya committed massive human rights abuses. Or consider this "Catch 22", Ms. Fitzpatrick: Between 1996 and 1999, Chechens were incapable of sustaining an authoritative political structure. Hence, chaos reigned. Hence, there were massive human rights abuses. But (as you point out, Ms. Fitzpatrick) human rights organizations don't hold anyone at all accountable for those abuses because (get ready because here comes the beauty of it) there was no government in Chechnya. The world is full of people who want to consider Chechnya an independent state at all times except those times when Chechnya could be held accountable for the horrible things that happened in those years when it was an independent state. It's the kind of logic Lewis Carroll would have loved, except it's far darker than anything you'd ever find at the bottom of a rabbit hole.
The journalists and rights workers haven't helped us sort through Catch 22s of that sort, Ms. Fitzpatrick, and that's why we need more scholarly fieldwork. It seems that some people think that the situation in Chechnya is comparable to that in Hungary, Poland, or the Baltics prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. When you get a little closer you see that it's not.
Wars sometimes occur when cultures need to change. For example, problems in Nazi German society, and in Imperialist Japanese society contributed to causes of World War Two, and the war culminated in the transformation of those two cultures in ways that are generally regarded to have been constructive. One of the things that I admire about many Germans is that they tend to accept responsibility for the problems of their society during those years, and for the fact it took a war to bring them to a point where they could begin solving those problems.
It seems to me that the situation in Chechen society is comparable, except that in Chechnya the problems may be worse because they center on a social structure that is much older. Why is it that there has been so much violence in Chechnya? Certainly historical grievances are part of the problem. But the Dagestanis led the Chechens against the Russians in the 19th century, and there are no problems between Russians and Dagestanis today. The Ingush and other Kavkasian groups suffered the same brutal deportation as the Chechens in 1944, but today there are relatively few problems between the Russians and these other groups. So how do we explain Chechen exceptionalism? Maybe it has to do with Chechnya's distinctive social structure, based upon a kinship hierarchy, and centered around clans. Dagestani society has long been united by political structures that trump kinship structures, but in Chechnya kinship structures are preeminent. Chechen society seems to remain fragmented along clan lines, and that seemed to be one of the reasons why Chechens were unable to sustain an independent, authoritative political structure when they had a chance to do so. If that is part of the problem then it would help to explain why Chechen leaders have chronically framed their appeals for popular support in terms of nationalist anti-Russian rhetoric, or in terms of radical Islamist rhetoric, or in terms of Chechen warrior mythology. All of these appeals seem to help Chechens to overcome social fragmentation, and to unite. The problem is that such appeals lead to catastrophic problems with their neighbors, and within their own society. If we're serious about finding a way out of the conflict in Chechnya then we need to understand its causes, and we won't be certain how to do that until we have considered all reasonable possibilities. Ms. Fitzpatrick, I've gone into a little more detail about these issues in Problems of Post-Communism (47, 2), in Europe-Asia Studies (53, 1), in editions of Analysis of Current Events published in December 1999 and in February 2002.
I regard these issues as complex and controversial. I care a great deal about them, and I know that I don't fully understand them. I would be grateful if other scholars, perhaps some of those who are better equipped than I am, would help me to understand them better. I truly believe that one cannot really grasp what has happened in the Caucasus without spending some time there. It seems obvious to me.