Posted on 09/09/2004 10:39:04 AM PDT by Luis Gonzalez
Nobody should excuse what happened in Beslan—but Chechnya still needs a solution.
“THEY have declared war on us,” said one Russian television anchorman as he began his report on the massacre in Beslan. And indeed, the terrorists who devastated a school and its hostages on September 3rd wrought carnage of proportions usually seen only in wartime: the death toll, in what is only a small town, may exceed 500.
Even wars are rarely this cruel. They have rules, sort of, one of which is to avoid harming civilians where possible, and especially children. The terrorists in Beslan deliberately went for the most innocent and defenceless targets; they timed their attack, on the first day of the school year, to catch the maximum number; they tortured their small captives by refusing them all food and water; and when one of the explosives they had rigged in the school gymnasium went off, apparently by accident, they shot fleeing hostages in the back before blowing the building apart. If this were war, such bestial, inhuman acts would richly deserve the name of war crimes.
The world should recognise and affirm that. Yet it is also important to draw other lessons from Beslan. One is that the Russian security forces made mistakes that may have cost many lives. They had not established how many hostages or terrorists there were, they did too little to secure the area and bring in emergency services, they even allowed armed civilians to join the siege. That may have forced their hand when the terrorist bomb exploded.
Just a week earlier, the blowing-up of two Russian airliners by suicide bombers had made little difference to government policies or to Russians' lives, besides a perfunctory increase in identity checks on passengers arriving at Moscow airports from the south of Russia. Beslan, however, has shaken the country's leadership to the core. “This is a total, cruel and full-scale war that again and again is taking the lives of our fellow citizens,” said Vladimir Putin, Russia's president.
The language of war can unify a nation. Like George Bush, who declared “war on terror” after September 11th, Mr Putin is putting his country on a war footing. He has promised “measures aimed at strengthening our country's unity”, better co-ordination of forces in the northern Caucasus, and “entirely new approaches to the way the law-enforcement agencies work.” And, as before, he has striven to link Russia's problems to America's: “What we are facing is direct intervention of international terror directed against Russia.” In effect, he wants “9/3” to be seen as Russia's 9/11.
But that is disingenuous, and may even be dangerous. The verified links between Chechen terrorists and al-Qaeda are few and tenuous. Intelligence sources doubt that the “Islambouli Brigades” that claimed responsibility for the two aircraft bombings last month actually did the deed. The Russians claim that ten of the hostage-takers in Beslan may have been Arabs, but no proof has been offered besides indistinct pictures and some sounds that just might be Arabic. All the signs are that the mastermind was Shamil Basayev, a Chechen who has organised a series of terrorist attacks, including on a hospital in Budyennovsk in 1995 and a theatre in Moscow in 2002
Governments that go to war have a duty not only to win, but also to stop future ones breaking out. And that means understanding their root causes—which is not at all to imply excusing or condoning them. Stressing the Chechens' links with al-Qaeda lets Mr Putin wriggle out of acknowledging that America's and Russia's terrorist threats are more different than they are alike. Al-Qaeda's jihad is the product of complex circumstances, in many countries, in which America's foreign policy was only one contributory factor.
Russia's conflict in Chechnya is home-grown, nurtured in a republic that has been systematically destroyed in the struggle for power. Russia has tried to wipe out Chechnya's separatists, first through direct military force, and more recently through “Chechenisation”—ie, foisting the problem on to a local strongman (the latest luckless candidate, Alu Alkhanov, was put in place in rigged elections only two weeks ago). But the result has been to breed an anarchy in which soldiers and separatists alike kidnap and murder the innocent with impunity.
Crackdowns on rebels hiding in neighbouring republics have simply spread the lawlessness. The Beslan raiders included not just Chechens but Ingush and other northern Caucasians. Their evil deeds may now revive the old conflict between mainly Christian Ossetians and mainly Muslim Ingush. “Chechenisation” was meant to contain Chechnya; now it threatens to engulf the region. Yet Mr Basayev's Islamic fundamentalism is borrowed from abroad; it would attract few sympathisers were it not for the misery created at home.
Mr Putin said after Beslan that “we showed ourselves to be weak, and the weak get beaten.” The implication is that he will now be even tougher in Chechnya. Not only is that likely to stir up more terrorism; it also ignores one of the conflict's main drivers, which is cash. It suits certain Chechens, particularly the Kadyrov clan that now in effect controls the republic, to keep the war going, in large part because they make money out of it. It suits many in Moscow who connive at and benefit from the corruption, smuggling and worse in Chechnya. And it suits some Russian commanders and law-enforcement bosses who get their cut from Chechen oil wells, arms sales and the bribes that everyone—terrorists included—pays to get through the checkpoints that dot the northern Caucasus.
Part of the solution in Chechnya must be to break today's nexus of perverse incentives that do so much to keep the war going. That means not ever-tougher controls on the whole population, in a vain attempt to root out terrorists, but starting at last to tackle the top-to-bottom corruption that makes a joke of existing controls. Mr Putin seems sometimes to recognise that his armed forces are part of the problem, but his preferred solution still seems to be to impose control, through a Chechen placeman, rather than try a new approach.
What should that approach be? Ultimately, extreme autonomy, possibly leading to properly negotiated independence, should not be ruled out, if that is what most Chechens want. But right now, most just want peace. Simply making the republic independent would not only reward terror; it would not work, as Chechnya is too shattered to function on its own. Pulling the troops out would leave a bandit state, worse than the one that operated in 1996-99. Yet throughout the conflict, Mr Putin has refused to talk to moderate Chechens. Potential interlocutors have either turned extreme or lost support. Moreover, when Mr Putin calls Chechnya an “international” problem, he is right—though not in the way he claims. Ask Muslims around the world what aggrieves them, and they will mention Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, even headscarves in French schools...and Chechnya. Russia's conflict may not have started with foreign terrorists, but it has given them fodder for their own trouble-making.
That also gives western leaders an interest in helping to end it. One thing they must do is to keep telling the truth. They should offer sympathy and assistance to the Russians as victims of terrorism, not least in better training for their security forces. But even after Beslan, they should not condone Russia's human-rights abuses in Chechnya, and they should urge Mr Putin to seek out moderates with whom to talk. Perhaps after an interval, they might look for a more active involvement in the northern Caucasus. Russia has reached a dead end in Chechnya; if western offers of peacekeepers, human-rights monitors, financial or other assistance can help it to back out again, they would be well worth making.
Mr Putin will resist outside “interference”. But the Russians need help in Chechnya. And the one thing more tragic even than September 3rd would be if Budyennovsk, Moscow and now Beslan keep happening, over and over again.
It's not a "definition" issue.
It is about an uprising WITHIN Russia. Putin needs to resolve INTERNAL problems in his country.
"But even after Beslan, they should not condone Russia's human-rights abuses in Chechnya, and they should urge Mr Putin to seek out moderates with whom to talk. Perhaps after an interval, they might look for a more active involvement in the northern Caucasus. "
Putkin needs to blame himself for this one.
The primary site of the tumor is in Mecca.
Well said and true!!
Mecca has little to do with it.
You can destroy the Vatican, but destroying the Vatican will not destroy Roman Catholicism.
It would however rally every Catholic in the world against you.
You are the one talking about not fighting by the rules, but now you want to fight a symbol?
"Don't jump threads - If you get involved in an argument in one thread, it's considered poor manners to restart the previous argument in the middle of an unrelated thread."
Now, either discuss the article, or go elsewhere. Yours is a clear violation of forum rules, and an attempt to start a flame war.
That's right!
If you can't be agreeable and praaaaaise the worthy and peace-loving kidnappers, rapists, torturers and murderers, then just GET LOST!
What are you, one of those filthy Christian infidels?
Probably a steeenking American!
Allah-hu-akBARBARIAN!
If Chechen rebels are attacking police stations, and army posts, and municipal offices, then I agree with you. You have a case of nationalists fighting for their independence, or even just ordinary people fighting to get out from under the Russian boot.
If you have people murdering children by the hundreds, and focusing their attacks on civilian targets, as these people have over the last decade, if you have people supporting themselves by kidnapping and mayhem, with emphasis on mayhem, then you have a different kind of a problem.
This doesn't make Russians into saints, and I fully understand why anyone would want to get out from under Russian rule.
But the authors of Beslan, and the authors of the kinds of crimes typical of Chechen banditry, can not be given the safe haven of their own territory. They had their own territory, and they used it to launch more attacks. They did not use it to build a country, they used it to launch attacks against civilian targets in neighboring provinces.
That creates, then, a situation not unlike the West Bank, where the presence of psychos attacking civilian targets, and government troops rounding up civilians looking for the psychos, makes it impossible to live a normal life. People who want to raise their kids and live life have to leave. The people who remain are either complicit or doomed.
That's the first line of the article. Then it goes on to examine the root causes for the situation in Chechnya.
There, Putin and Russia are to blame in their failure to work toward a solution to the conflict. Instead, they've actually been profiteering from it.
Economist and Soros would LOVE to help Russia same way as they helped Serbia. And after they wreck Russia, break her into pieces, impose "open" society government in Moscow, and Islamic law in the peripheries, they hope to have Putin imprisoned in Hague.
>We are looking at the distinct possibility of having to militarily assist Russia in Chechnya, a situation created by their own brutality, in spite of the fact that Russia refused to assust us in Iraq.
You don't get it.
Russia does not want American help in Chechnya.
All she wants is for Americans to stop helping Chechen terrorists against Russia.
Just like you're trying to do here, Luis?
That's the first doggone HONEST reply I've ever seen you post!
The Economist and Soros in the same breath?
Check your facts.
"My choice is to not turn my country into a police State, that's the terrorist's goal.""My choice is to go where they live, and turn THEIR countries into a police State."
"Just like you're trying to do here, Luis?"
Now, discuss the article, or go away Willie.
Well, they did by allowing four years of independence which led to the influx of Saudi Wahabis, Sharia laws, slave trade and attacks on neighboring provinces. Now as the disease advanced during this four years, they need to be resilient and persistent for many years.
Fortunately Chechnya is 40 times smaller than Iraq, 5 times smaller than West Bank and 3 times smaller than Northern Ireland. There is no need for extreme measures as those used by Americans toward warlike Indian tribes. Patience will be enough - majority of Chechens live in Russian cities and they seem to accept civilized life style, the militant minority can be helped to emigrate to Western Europe to enjoy privileged status, those who remain can keep their tribal culture intact so long as they keep it to themselves.
The most stupid was to grant Chechnya practical independence (1996-1999) what led to chaos, to influx of the terrorists and attempts at expansion.
They've already begun rounding up people from villages...here's a clue, the terrorists are hiding in the mountains, not sleeping in town, but Russia has always been very efficient at rounding-up other than the guilty.
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