Carnegie Endowment for Internationa Peace www.ceip.org WHAT HAS PUTIN’S RUSSIA BECOME? Discussion meeting with Carnegie Senior Associates Lilia Shevtsova, Michael McFaul, Anatol Lieven and Anders Åaslund Moderator: Jessica T. Mathews, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Washington,
D.C. Thursday, September 23, 2004 Transcript by: Federal News Service Washington, D.C. [DJ: Q&A can be found at http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/PutinsRussia09-23-04.pdf]
ANATOL LIEVEN: Thank you very much. Of course, Churchill in his Fulton speech also said that many of the historic capitals of Europe were disappearing behind this communist Iron Curtain. That of course is not happening today. We are talking about something which is internal to Russia. Just thought I’d make that point.
Before coming to Chechnya itself, I would like to touch on three ways in which Putin’s latest moves will, I believe, be counterproductive even to his own aims in the struggle against terrorism and Islamist extremism in Russia. The first is the appointment of the governors. It’s not that in the vast majority of cases the central state is going to go out and replace the president or presidents of the autonomous republics. They will be reappointed to their existing positions. The problem is that this creates an extra temptation and an extra possibility of intervening where there is some kind of local dispute, where there is a succession crisis, or where an existing leader steps
from the scene. And I think what we’ve already seen from the example of Ingushetia the extremely dangerous consequences that can flow from this, above all because the Kremlin simply lacks the local intelligence, flexibility, knowledge, sophistication to try to manage these societies.
On the whole, ethnic autonomy has worked very well for the Russian Federation, I would say, over the past 13 years. And it does help explain why thank God Chechnya has remained the solitary exception in terms of actual ethnic revolt and violence. In the case of Ingushetia, of course, the central government got rid of a problematic for them, but very popular local president, Aushev, and in a rigged election replaced him with the head of the local FSB; a disastrous move which contributed directly, I think, to some of the destabilization in Ingushetia that we’ve seen over the past year, and the growing threat that the conflict in Chechnya could extend itself to Ingushetia.
The second point is somewhat recondite, but if you look at the failures of the Russian security forces in recent years, and most notably first at the Dubrovka siege in
Moscow and then in Beslan, something that strikes you immediately is the total breakdown on occasions on many occasions of effective horizontal links between different bits of the Russian security apparatus. These people simply don’t talk to each other.
The failure to provide first aid and effective means of saving the people affected by gas at Dubrovka appears to have come first and foremost from the fact that the Russian special forces, who were planning the operation, simply did not brief the MGS the ministry of emergencies or the local health authority in what they were going to do. At Beslan, there was clearly no coordination whatsoever, or no effective coordination, once again between the central special forces and the local Ossetian authorities.
Putin’s response to these failures has been to try to create yet more vertical authority yet more command from above, thereby accentuating what is already a critical
cultural failing of the Russian security forces, which is precisely their continual dependence on orders from above, their inability to make decisions on their own, and to
forge links between themselves.
Now, having said that, of course it’s never easy. We have faced severe problems of this kind with our own forces in the West when it comes to creating this kind of cooperation, so one shouldn’t be too superior, but it is worth noting.
Thirdly, and I think most strikingly, there is the failure properly to investigate these failures on the part of the security forces and to punish the officers responsible. And what that brings out is something which we once again know from our own experience, but which Russia really should have learned by now, which is that security forces are very, very bad at reforming themselves, supervising themselves, and inspecting themselves. Here, from a purely functional point of view, if not democracy, then certainly a strong element of public investigation, supervision, and transparency is extremely important simply from the point of view of efficiency of the Russian state. That also applies, of course, most notably to abuses carried out by Russian forces in Chechnya.
Now, when it comes to Chechnya itself, I would like to say very strongly that Chechnya and the Chechen conflict is a subject which does need to be studied in itself and not simply as an aspect of politics in Moscow, or pro or anti-Putin agendas, or indeed pro or anti-Russian agendas. The same is equally true of such conflicts elsewhere in the world. They have their own dynamics. They depend, of course, to a great extent on decisions made elsewhere, but decisions made elsewhere do not decide everything. Secondly, this conflict needs to be studied with careful attention to universal rules of evidence and argument,
something which I fear some Western analysts have most
notoriously failed to do in recent years. And thirdly, it needs to be studied in the context of similar conflicts elsewhere in the world, of which there are unfortunately quite a range. It is inexcusable that 13 years after the end of the Cold War, Russia and a conflict of this kind in Russia should be treated as if it was completely sui generis as if no conflict elsewhere provided any parallels, any lessons, or any common approaches.
Now, from this point of view I would say that there are three critical features no, four, of Chechnya over the
past 13 years; once again, with parallels elsewhere. The first is, of course, the determination of the Russian state to prevent the secession of one of its constituent parts, influenced, in part at least, by a fear of wider destabilization and further disintegration. The second, also with many parallels elsewhere, has been the brutality of the Russian forces and the enemies that this has created in the wider Chechen population. The third aspect has been the complete failure of Chechen society to generate not merely the institutions and habits of the
modern state and society, but also, and most interestingly perhaps, any kind of effective, united, nationalist political-military movement.
Now, the absence of such a movement can look like an asset to the central state and its presence can certainly be
extremely uncomfortable to the central state. If, however, at any point one starts talking about moves towards a settlement or negotiations, then I think one very often finds that the presence of such a movement, whether the IRA and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland or the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, actually makes it much easier to do a deal. The worst situation from this point of view is what we now face in Chechnya, where you have a multiplicity of different groups not under any one control observing no common discipline, which means that there is nobody with whom you can make a deal and nobody who can make that deal stick.
The fourth point, which flows to a very great extent from the previous three, has been of course the partial I would stress partial colonization of the Chechen armed resistance by wider forces or international Sunni Islamist extremism, something which has been increasingly apparent since 1995. Now, when it comes to the failure of Chechen society to generate a political-military movement and a state based on it, this of course applies with particular force to the period from 1996 to 1999 when Russia did pull its forces, its police, its officials, and indeed ethnic Russians to a considerable extent out of Chechnya, and
Maskhadov, who was elected in February of 1997 with 65
percent of the vote.
I have to say, though, that the legitimacy which this gave Maskhadov at the time was, I think, forfeited by the events of the following two and a half years and I think that this would be our view in similar situations of the same kind. It was not merely a question of Maskhadov’s
inability to control the situation in Chechnya or crack down on extremist and criminal forces there, it was also the composition of his own government. His vice president, Vakha Arsanov, was identified by British officials British officials involved in negotiations over the release of
British hostages in Chechnya, as the patron and protector of Arbi Baraev, his relative the leader of the most notorious Chechen kidnap gang, who also commanded a so-called Islamic battalion subsidized and supported by the international Islamist group in Chechnya.
In these circumstances, the suggestions that you hear again and again that Russia should have strengthened the Maskhadov regime from ’97 to ’99 should have poured aid into that regime take on a slightly problematical error. Not dissimilar to the suggestions that America should have helped the Taliban and recognized it in the years leading to before 9/11 on the grounds that if we’d done that the Taliban might then have helped us to get rid of al Qaeda or hand it over to us. Well, maybe they would, but maybe they wouldn’t and then we would, of course, have had to invade Afghanistan in any case and would have been shot at by Taliban forces with equipment paid for by American taxpayers.
I do think that this episode illustrates once again the need to display a certain degree of perspective and comparative ability when addressing the Chechen conflict. Certainly, in my view, it is criminally irresponsible to suggest that Russia should simply pull out of Chechnya and allow the situation which existed between 1997 and 1999 to repeat itself, or that we should base an approach to a
settlement of this conflict on statements like those of Maskhadov’s representative, who stated that if Russia were willing to sit down and negotiate with us, I would Maskhadov’s followers, all the problems of Chechnya could be solved in 30 minutes. Once again, this is not an approach that anybody sensible takes to other conflicts of this kind.
The extremists in Chechnya, as represented by Baraev and his allies, will go on fighting whatever happens, as they did, indeed, after 1996. Therefore, one is not talking
about a solution to this conflict an end to this conflict; one is talking about ways of waging this conflict more
effectively, of minimizing its violence, and of getting, above all, more Chechens to support a political process which will exclude the extremists and the terrorists.
Now, in these circumstances, I and some other leading experts on Chechnya are thinking in terms of a possible Western strategy concerning the Chechen conflict which
would focus on process rather than solution. Not on an
unreal search for a silver bullet or an answer which will somehow end the conflict immediately or very rapidly, but on a process which will create a Chechnya over time in
which violence both by the Russian state, but also by the terrorists, can be greatly reduced.
This, in my view, has two closely this process should have two interconnected components: democracy and state-building. It should take its point of departure from the Chechen autonomous republic of the Russian Federation, which is at present the official position of the Russian state. However, we should back a process based on this
foundation or starting point not because or not first of all because this is the only acceptable starting point for the Russian state as with the Indian state and others, but also because as I think the past has demonstrated, this is in fact the only context in which a Chechen state can in fact be developed.
Now, from this point of view I think it needs to be stated very strongly that there is no disgrace for an independence movement to accept autonomy as an interim
measure as a stepping stone towards ultimate independence. The Indian National Congress, if I remember rightly, declared its aim of independence from Britain (audio break, tape change) there was another 50 years before independence was achieved. During those intervening years the Congress built itself up as a state-forming party which was capable of inheriting and taking over the Indian state of independence. And of course India itself developed in ways which made the exercise of independent statehood possible.
People who aim at Chechen independence should not be excluded from this process by no means as long as they
accept a political process and renounce violence and also renounce the aim of total independence as a short-term
goal. From this point of view, Putin’s strategy of Chechenization within the Chechen autonomous republic, and his plan will be gradually restored to Chechen rule if the violence can be contained, is not in itself a bad approach. The problem is the fact that this has not been accompanied, in Putin’s strategy, by any element of real democracy. There has been no opportunity for competition, even between those Chechen leaders who support Russia’s basic agenda in Chechnya, who categorically oppose the
extremists and who support Chechnya remaining within the Russian Federation. That is show by the rigging of the
presidential elections in Chechnya, the exclusion of leading candidates once again, candidates who basically support Russia’s position, and the refusal so far to establish a Chechen parliament.
In my view this is the process that the West should be
supporting in Chechnya, and we should bring both pressure but also serious incentives on the various sides of this conflict to get them to support such a process.
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo