Carnegie Endowment for International Peace www.ceip.org Policy Brief # 35 March 2005 A Spreading Danger: Time for a New Policy Towards Chechnya By Fiona Hill, Anatol Lieven and Thomas de Waal
(big snip)
Summary:
Although reliable data are also hard to come by, much of the Chechen rebel movement has clearly adopted a wider
radical agenda which goes beyond only independence for
Chechnya. During and after the war of 1994-1996, a small but influential group of international jihadi fighters
based themselves in Chechnya under the leadership of an Arab with the nom de guerre of Khattab, while home-grown rebel leaders, such as Shamil Basayev, Arbi Barayev, and Movladi Udugov allied themselves with this group and began to look to Middle Eastern Islamists for support.
Arabs based in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, alongside
Chechen fighters were associated with a plot to launch a terrorist attack in London using the poison ricin. Members of the international Jihadi movement have sought to exploit the Chechen conflict for their own wider ends just as they have in Palestine, Kashmir, and many other placesand unfortunately, with considerable success. This strategy has been set out by Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Aiman al-Zawahiri, in his pamphlet “Knights Under The Prophet’s Banner.”
Although Russian claims about the importance of the international terrorist element in the Chechen conflict are often exaggerated, this factor is nonetheless a real and important one. There clearly is now an ideological and financial link between the Chechen radicals and international jihadi terrorists; and there is also a demonstration effect. Terror tactics adopted by jihadis in Chechnya have been propagated by video and the internet, and adopted elsewhereincluding in Iraq. This link with
international jihadi terror should be of direct concern to Western governments because they must face the possibility that the next “soft target” of North Caucasian terrorism could be a Western one.
President Putin has provided an opening for a more positive Western role in the region by informing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of his desire for an active Western involvement in the economic development of the
North Caucasus region. The West should exploit this opening by actively pursuing intensive talks with Russian officials on how such a program can be developed in detail.
This approach should involve both Western state aid organizations and international financial institutions
like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Western-supported programs should include restoring transport and communications links, improving social infrastructure like housing and electricity, creating new educational institutions and helping in the creation and growth of small businesses. Western help to the North Caucasus region will be good in itself, and will be good for the West because it will help to limit the spread of Islamist extremism and terrorism. It will also help to
develop a climate of trust between Russia and the West
that should give the West greater chances of positive influence in Moscow over the conflict in Chechnya and other areas of concern.
A Flawed Foreign Response
Foreign responses to the conflict in Chechnya have too
often been marked by ignorance, bad faith, and the projection of other agendas. Western politicians have repeatedly let their own political aims vis à vis Russia shape their reaction to events in Chechnya. In 1994-1996, for example, Western support for Boris Yeltsin in his purported struggles with the remnants of the Communist
Party constantly softened Western criticism of Russian
brutalities in Chechnya. More recently two other agendasthe “war on terror” and a growing campaign to try to limit Russian influence in the states of the former
Soviet Unionhave further distorted Western thinking about Chechnya.
On the other hand, much of Western public comment on Chechnya has been uninformed or biased against Russia.
Both media and policy elites disregarded the real threats to Russian security and to the stability of the North Caucasus emanating from Chechnya during its period of quasi-independence between 1997 and 1999. In these years, the Western media largely failed to report the wave of
savage kidnappings against Russian citizensincluding senior Russian officialsand the establishment in Chechnya of international Islamist extremists. Casualty figures in Chechnya have often been grossly exaggerated by Western journalists and commentators (see box). These have in fact reduced markedly in recent years.
While many Chechens complain of the very high level of
official and unofficial criminality in their republic,
there are also some modest signs of improvement in everyday life in Chechnya. Running water and electricity are more readily available, checkpoints are much reduced and travel less restricted, and mobile phone usage is now possible in the republic.
None of these improvements suggest that violence and atrocities in Chechnya are by any means over; but in portraying Chechnya as an unchanging, unmitigated horror, the West has precluded an honest discussion with Moscow about the conflict. It has also treated Chechnya in a manner very different from its treatment of similar separatist conflicts in Turkey, India and other states
aligned with the West.
In the case of Turkey, the EU took a harder line on human rights than the US, but both were careful always to stress their support for the basic aims of the Turkish campaign and for Turkish territorial integrity. Unlike in the case of Chechnya, they were also careful to recognize and praise any progress made in terms of respect for human
rights, and in the case of the EU, to offer incentives for such progress in terms of greater integration into Europe.
Finally, while Western officials and commentators have
continued to press the need for a “political solution” to the Chechen conflict, with very rare exceptions they have not suggested what this political solution should or could bebeyond a call for Moscow to negotiate directly with former Chechen President and separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov. Nor have they suggested in any detail how the West might support a political solution.
In fact, hopes of long-term amelioration of the situation in Chechnya depend not on a solution, but a process, involving growing political participation, economic development, and the gradual creation of a modern society in Chechnya. This needs to be set in the wider context of development for the region as a whole. Although Aslan Maskhadov maintains an important symbolic value for one segment of the Chechen people as the legitimately elected former president, simply talking to Maskhadov is no solution. He is the face most familiar to Western observers, but he does not represent the only political force in Chechnya and does not control all of the Chechens fighting against Russia. Maskhadov’s ability to “solve” the Chechen conflict and “provide peace” has dramatically declined over the years. Although he retains standing in the Chechen population, he has lost the potential to unify broader groups of Chechens. Maskhadov should be part of a future process, but he cannot be the sole element.
The Need for New Perceptions
The first step that the West needs to take is to change the nature of the conversation that its representatives have with Moscow about Chechnya and the North Caucasus. Their approach needs to be more sophisticated, more detailed and more focused on offering practical solutions to a range of problems that affect other countries as well as Russia.
Russia should rightly be reminded of the commitments it made to defend human rights when it joined institutions like the Council of Europe. But these reminders should be accompanied by a recognition that progress has been made; and assurances that the West is not just interested in
berating Russia, but is genuinely ready to offer practical help in dealing with the problems in the North Caucasus.
There will be no single solution to the Chechen conflict, in the sense of a “quick fix”an agreement or treaty that will end the violence. A very large numberperhaps a majorityof the fighters in Chechnya and those carrying out terrorist attacks in Russia will continue to do so irrespective of any settlement, whether for ideological or personal reasons; just as they did after the Russian withdrawal from Chechnya in 1996.
It should be remembered that leading Chechen commanders and their Islamist allies revolted against the authority of President Aslan Maskhadov after the conclusion of the Khasavyurt Accord and the establishment of quasi-independence in 1996. They did so in the name of the creation of an Islamist republic and the continuation of jihad against Russia, and despite the fact that Maskhadov had been elected President by an overwhelming majority of Chechens in January 1997.
One of the weaknesses of the Khasavyurt documents was that they stipulated a decision on the final status of Chechnya within the relatively short period of five years. The clock was set ticking on Chechnya’s possible formal independence from the very beginning. This heightened the inevitable tensions between Grozny and Moscow in the post-war period, and meant that Russian-Chechen official meetings, instead of concentrating on vital immediate issues like reconstruction, crime, and extremism, were
constantly diverted into fruitless bickering over the question of formal independence.
Today, after a decade of war and devastation, and against a backdrop of similar conflicts in the international arena, it should be clear that, for a very long time to come, the development of a Chechen state and of a new Chechen political society will have to take place within the Russian Federation and that independence for Chechnya is off the agenda for many years. This now seems to be
accepted by the great majority of Chechens, including officials of Aslan Maskhadov’s “government” in exile.
Recovery from the physical and socio-economic devastation of the past decade, and the struggle against Islamist extremism, are far greater priorities. Moreover the periods of de facto independence in 1991-1994, and still more in 1997-1999, proved disastrous experiences. The wide realization of this fact marks an evolution from views on independence held both in Chechnya and the West in 1996.
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Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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