[nw_arizona_granny]

Mosnews: Chechnya stage set with Kadyrov's appointment

NEWS ANALYSIS; No. 07

CHECHNYA STAGE SET WITH KADYROV'S APPOINTMENT
By Anna Arutunyan The Moscow News
President Vladimir Putin appointed Chechen premier Ramzan Kadyrov as
acting president of the volatile southern republic,replacing President
Alu Alkhanov and ending months of speculations about a power struggle
between the two leaders. The move was sudden, but not unexpected,
especially considering the Kremlin's long-term policy that stakes the
future of Chechnya's stability onthe Kadyrov clan.

In a decree signed last Thursday, Putin accepted Alkhanov's
resignation and appointed Kadyrov, who has been seen as Chechnya's
de-facto ruler since the death of his father Akhmad Kadyrov in 2004,to
the post of acting president. The appointment was more of a formality,
which fortified Kadyrov's rule and recognized him as a leader who has
established Putin's trust.

He is a guarantor that Chechnya is finally on its way to order and
stability, as the Kremlin itself prepares for a transfer of power in
2008.

Launching the regional presidential campaign, Dmitri
Kozak,presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, of which
Chechnya is a part, traveled to Grozny this week to nominate
threecandidates for presidency. Besides Kadyrov, who's appointment is
a virtual certainty, Kozak named Muslim Khuchiyev, the leader of the
regional faction of the Spravedlivaya Rossiya (A Just Russia)party,
and Grozny administrative head Shaid Dzhamaldayev. Putin nowhas 14
days to choose his favored candidate, who will be then approved by the
Chechen parliament (public elections in the regions were done away
with in 2004). By as early as Friday, before the other candidates were
announced, United Russia, the pro-Kremlin majority, threw its support
behind Kadyrov. State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov told journalists that
his party was prepared to support the de-facto Chechen leader.

Alkhanov had stressed that his resignation was a personal decision.
However, the move contrasted starkly with previous stances where he
insisted that he had no intention of abandoning his post. Meanwhile,
despite his relative autonomy, Russian media viewed the Chechen
president as incapable of withstanding any pressure from Kadyrov. Talk
of Alkhanov's resignation has persisted throughout Kadyrov's tenure as
premier. In May 2006, the two leaders met with President Putin in the
Kremlin to mediate an apparent power struggle. The meeting ended with
Putin dismissing the idea of Alkhanov's resignation.

Meanwhile, Kadyrov has repeatedly dismissed his ownpresidential
ambitions.

"I have not yet adapted myself to the role of president, and I say
again that I am not ready to be president," Kadyrov reportedly said at
a Monday press conference in Grozny. He added, however,"Whatever Putin
decides is what will be."

Nevertheless, the new leader has pressed ahead with plans for the
future.

This week, he launched a round table discussion dedicated to
strategies for rebuilding the war-torn province. He also spoke out
against an agreement that would delimitate spheres of power between
Moscow and Grozny, allotting Grozny more control over its oil. The
Vremya Novostei daily speculated that Kadyrov made this statementas a
favor to the Kremlin, in return for his appointment as acting
president. Still, the new acting president persisted in his attemptsto
establish more control over the republic's oil. Another statement
interpreted as an attempt to placate Putin was Kadyrov's allegation
that the exiled business tycoon Boris Berezovsky was behind the
murders of crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former
intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko.

Despite being referred to as a "warlord" in the Western press,Kadyrov
elicits either respect or indifference from the general population. A
poll conducted days before his appointment by the All-Russian Public
Opinion Research Center (VTSIOM) suggests that about 43 percent view
Kadyrov positively, while about a third - 34percent - were indifferent.

Indeed, Sergei Markedonov, a political expert specializing inthe
Caucasus region at the Moscow-based Institute of Political and
Military Analysis, says that Alkhanov's dismissal came at a pointwhen
"he lost the information war," despite being elected as president
earlier.

But another view was that Moscow's dependence on Kadyrov forstability
was dangerous. Mikhail Remizov of the Institute of National Strategies
was quoted in the Kommersant daily as saying that Kadyrov's latest
programs, as well as his insistence on more leverage from Moscow,
point to Russia's "capitulation."

"We don't value loyal people like Alkhanov, who, unlike Kadyrov's
clan, was always on Moscow's side." Remizov speculated that Kadyrov
could well use the prospect of new military conflicts in the region as
a playing card.

Markedonov also had grim views on what Kadyrov's appointment entails
for Russia as a whole. "This appointment shows a serious dependence by
Russia's government on the situation in Chechnya," hesaid in an
interview. "I don't even see where the tail that wagsthe dog is."

"The whole point of the deal is that Kadyrov upholds order onhis own
terms, but demonstrates that he is loyal to Moscow," hesays. "This is
good for the Kremlin, which can show that there ispeace in Chechnya,
and it is good for Kadyrov, who gets to privatize power in Chechnya."
He called this kind of dangerous balance a "regional apartheid," and
went as far as to compare it to Moscow's 18th century deal with the
Crimean Tartars, who were paid not to overrun Russia's southern lands.

Echoing other experts, Markedonov believes that Putin's stake on
Kadyrov is a crucial factor for the future of Russia itself."The idea
of a third term for Putin rests on the Chechen issue," he said. Before
Putin can decide how he transfers power, he must be certain of a
dependable strongman in Chechnya. Putin's personal pact with Kadyrov,
moreover, could play a role in keeping the president for a third term,
despite his insistence that he has no plans to run against the
constitution. "In the Kremlin they might think that everything is
worked out with Kadyrov, everything is predictable... and insist that
Putin stays to protect that status quo".

Generally, however, Markedonov feels that Chechens are weary of war,
and that there are other mechanisms of maintaining stability besides
Putin's one-on-one "pact" with Kadyrov. MN

[struwwelpeter]

Aleksandr Simakov

http://nord-ost.org/kniga-pamyati/simakov-aleksandr.html

Shura. Sashok. Aleksandr Vladimirovich.

He was born on November 12th, 1972. He would have been 30 two weeks after ‘Nord-Ost’…

Shura (Alex) was my friend. And this is not just a word. Because all that is the kindest, brightest, most trustworthy, most beautiful, all that there is in the word FRIEND – all this is what I mean when I write about Shura.

Shura had a great handshake, and nowadays this is rare. People greet each other in different ways: some will plop a flabby flipper into your hand, while others do the opposite and contrive to splinter all your bones. But a real handshake, a strong and amicable one: this is a rarity. For some reason this seems important to me.

Shura was an unusual person. Since one can write this about any person, you will just have to take me at my word, but I am nonetheless speaking the purest truth. There were a lot of ordinary young guys and gals in the company that we kept, but Shura was different from everyone else. He never drank at all. He was rather secretive. He had a tendency towards contemplation. He had not lived at home for a long time – he hid out from the draft… And there was something in him, some kind of a friendly grandeur and self-sufficiency. I felt a little out of my league next to him. I had to look up to him from down below, which is not surprising, considering his height of two meters.

Shura loved the mountains. He was an avid climber and a snow-boarder. He was always going to the mountains. He really loved them.

In the later half of the 1990s he got tired of hiding from the draft board and living with friends and counting kopecks. Shura occupied himself with the mountaineering industry, later starting his own business and gradually started to earn some decent money. In the spring of this ill-fated year he bought a car, an old Passat. We used to drive out to my village in it.

He lived, especially in his later years, how should I put this: hungrily, readily, openly, he was always trying something new, particularly when he got his financial freedom.

Shura was no angel. He had his, as they like to say nowadays, cockroaches. In general I do not believe that one has to “either speak well of the dead, or not at all”, because the most valuable is the living memory of living people with all of their peculiarities. Sometimes Shura irritated me terribly. And it was not just a matter of my irritability – he irritated on purpose, and later, with the interest of a young naturalist, he would observe how I boiled over like a teapot. I remember even now the moments of my irritation, of my anger towards Shura, with such warmth and love, as any other, perhaps happier, moments of our life. I would like to be honest, especially relative to one who can no longer object.

Shura was also in love with my daughter, and this is also the truth. My oldest daughter (she just turned 3 that year) was a normal child – sometimes happy, sometimes capricious. Shura spent hours with her. My wife and I were amazed: how many hours can one spend with someone else’s kid? A half-hour, an hour? But Shura could sit all day with Mashka, never leaving the room. After all, they had such a genuine interest in each other! We could easily leave Mashka with him like a nanny, and sometimes we even did this. They like being together.

We did not tell her what had happened right away, but after a few days she suddenly understood that Shura was no more. She figured it out from conversations at home, or from the television and radio. We only searched for him by phone. Only God knows the pain she felt.

That summer before he died, we had signed Mashka up for kindergarten and I was obligated to do some labor for the school, to dig out the supports for a huge, welded swing set. For half a day Shura and I clawed at the ground, set up the swings, straightened them out, and poured cement. The swings stood as a monument to Shura for almost four years, and kids played on them, but last summer they took them down and put something else up.

PS: I do not know if it is worth telling how Shura took a long time in getting around to going to ‘Nord-Ost’, how we planned to go together but it turned out that my wife and I went earlier. How he decided to order tickets for a Tuesday or a Wednesday. He ordered on a Tuesday but for some reason they turned out to be for Wednesday. Was the hand of fate here? I do not think so. It just turned out that way: someone went on Tuesday, and someone got Wednesday.

But it is impossible to forget, impossible not to tell you the feeling of that awful revelation, which turns out to be so simple! There once was a person – and then he is no more. Three days ago you two had been chatting, greeting each other and saying good-bye, gossiping about someone, making plans for the weekend, and then you are standing there and looking dully at his legs sticking out from under a sheet on a gurney. God, how defenseless they are!

Whose fault is it? Who brought the Chechen pot to a boil and overdid it so bad that THESE events started? Who turned the theater into a gas chamber? Who repeated the whole thing a couple years later to even greater effect in Beslan?

In my opinion, the answer is so obvious that it is not worth talking about. THEY do not know how to do anything else. THEY do not know that ANY life is priceless: not only the lives of THEIR children, but OURS as well.

And no one thought to get on their knees
And tell these kids that in a worthless country
Even the brightest achievements – they are but steps
Into eternal precipices of an inaccessible Spring...

Aquarium, ‘That, which I should say’, Album: Library of Babylon (1993)

God knows, how many years ago that was written, but nothing has changed. Yes, and why should it?


Written by Ilya Ginzburg.