Friday, Sep 10, 2004
The Chechens' American friends
By John Laughland
The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own.
AN ENORMOUS head of steam has built up behind the view that Russian President Vladimir Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger," "Harsh words for government," and "Criticism mounting against Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as the terrorists. There have been numerous editorials encouraging us to understand — to quote the Sunday Times — the "underlying causes" of Chechen terrorism (usually Russian authoritarianism), while the widespread use of the word "rebels" to describe people who shoot children shows a surprising indulgence in the face of extreme brutality.
On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called "mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum — and by its American supporters. The leading Russian critics of Mr. Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are the pro-United States politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov — men associated with the extreme neo-liberal market reforms, which so devastated the Russian economy under the West's beloved Boris Yeltsin — and the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head office, this influential think-tank — which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the U.S. restructure the "Greater Middle East" — has been quoted repeatedly in recent days blaming Mr. Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a link between the Chec
hens and the Al-Qaeda.
These people peddle essentially the same line as that expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed Zakaev, the London exile who wrote in the Guardian on September 7. Other prominent figures who use the Chechen rebellion as a stick with which to beat Mr. Putin include Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like Mr. Zakaev, was granted political asylum in the U.K., although the Russian authorities want him on numerous charges. Moscow has often accused Mr. Berezovsky of funding Chechen rebels in the past.
By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are putting it about that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only Western channels reported live, the implication being that Mr. Putin's Russia remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while watching both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels had far better information and images from Beslan than their Western competitors. This harshness towards Mr. Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the U.S., the leading group that pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusiastically support the "war on terror."
The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Mr. Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo — implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilise the situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum in the U.S., and a U.S. Government-funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen Government, and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the U.S. administration.
Although the White House issued a condemnation of the Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that the Chechen conflict must be solved politically. According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks of Johns Hopkins University, U.S. pressure will now increase on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution — in other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the U.S. resolutely rejects elsewhere.
Allegations are even being made in Russia that the West itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the purpose of such support is to weaken Russia and to drive her out of the Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighbouring Georgia, a country which aspires to join NATO, has an extremely pro-American government, and where the U.S. already has a significant military presence — only encourages such speculation. Mr. Putin himself even seemed to lend credence to the idea in his interview with foreign journalists on Monday.
Proof of any such Western involvement would be difficult to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are asking themselves such questions when the same people in Washington who demand the deployment of overwhelming military force against the U.S.'s so-called terrorist enemies also insist that Russia capitulate to hers? — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
(John Laughland is a trustee of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group [www.oscewatch.org])
Copyright © 2004, The Hindu.