Anyway, this is an excellent piece of journalism.
Simon
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The San Francisco Chronicle
Helping the North Caucasus Robert Bruce Ware
Thursday, September 9, 2004
The United States can help alleviate the horrors in the North Caucasus, and it is crucial that we do so because we have important interests in the region. We can begin by debunking the misconceptions that prevent Americans from offering genuine assistance. For example:
"The wars in Chechnya have been separatist conflicts." Russia withdrew and granted Chechnya de facto independence in 1992 and again in 1997. Each time Chechnya sank into chaos, human-rights abuses and unspeakable horrors. Thousands of Russian citizens were kidnapped, tortured and enslaved. Thousands of Chechens suffered similar fates at the hands of their compatriots. In 1999, terrorists from Chechnya invaded the Russian Republic of Dagestan, murdering dozens and displacing 32,000 people. No power can tolerate a twice-failed state such as Chechnya on its border. Hence, Russia intervened, much as America did in Mexico in 1916.
"Chechens want to be independent of Russia." Eighty percent of the people in Chechnya want to be part of the Russian federation, according to a July survey by the Russian Institute of Social Marketing. Most Chechens are simply exhausted and want nothing to do with the isolated bands of criminals and terrorists that are operating in the region. Some of the latter are fighting for the money, or for reasons of personal retribution, but many are bent upon the forceful imposition of a radical Islamic caliphate upon people who want no part of it.
"There are moderate Chechen leaders, such as Aslan Maskhadov, with whom Moscow should negotiate" Aslan Maskhadov was a radical Islamist by the time that he imposed sharia law upon an unwilling Chechen population in 1999. He was implicated in the Moscow hostage crisis in 2002. He claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack upon civilians and police officials in Ingushetia in 2004. The best that can be said of Maskhadov is that he controls few fighters. There are no militant leaders with sufficient authority to guarantee any agreements that might be reached with Moscow.
The fact is that Moscow is fighting to protect the moderate Muslim people of the North Caucasus from internationally sponsored Islamist terrorism. There are six major ways the United States can help:
-- First, offer Russia full U.S. military support, minus American troops. Foreign troops would be seriously destabilizing for the North Caucasus and would soon become hostages themselves.
-- Second, link American military support to improvements in Russian command and control. Corrupt, undisciplined, demoralized Russian troops are a major source of instability in the region.
-- Third, persuade Russian officials that economic development and democracy are critical to security in the North Caucasus. Through electoral machinations, Moscow has foisted loyalist leaders upon local populations that are politically alienated and tired of corruption. If Moscow would guarantee democratic procedures, it would ensure the gratitude of the local people.
-- Fourth, help Russia to fund assistance for small businesses in the region, while eliminating bureaucratic obstacles. The North Caucasus needs a microloan program. Based on my field research in the region, if there is one single, simple thing that would help the North Caucasus, it is the construction of highland fruit-processing plants. The highland villages have no economies. People live by subsistence farming, and they grow excellent fruit and vegetables. The problem is that they have no local markets for their produce, and little transportation. By the time they get their fruit to market, over perhaps 50 miles of bad roads, much of it is damaged and lost. Highland fruit-processing plants would create local jobs, provide local markets, increase local production, stimulate local economies and thereby reduce radicalism and militancy.
-- Fifth, fund health-care clinics in the North Caucasus.
-- Sixth, bring North Caucasian students, doctors, journalists, law enforcers and government officials for education and training programs in the United States. Start partnership programs that link universities, medical schools, hospitals, newspapers, police departments and cities in the North Caucasus and the United States.
These initiatives will help the people of the North Caucasus; criticizing Russian officials will not. On the contrary, Westerners have indulged in so much Russia-bashing that it will now be difficult to persuade Russian officials that we are seriously interested in helping. U.S. officials must make the North Caucasus a priority, because growing instability in the North Caucasus threatens the flow of energy resources from the region.
But more important, the source of this instability is radical Islamism. During the cold war, Americans competed with our ideological adversaries by fostering economic development and democracy in far-flung parts of the globe, no matter how unsavory we found the local regimes. Now we are engaged in another ideological struggle with Islamist extremism, which for years has been the only foreign ideological influence in the North Caucasus. In our struggle with Islamist extremism, it is time to join with Russia to promote economic development and democracy in the North Caucasus.
Robert Bruce Ware is an associate professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville who conducts field research in the North Caucasus.
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