Chechnya - Russia's 'War on Terror'

John Russell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134179442
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Rüstungskontrolle

The Russo-Chechen conflict has been the bloodiest war in Europe since the Second World War. It continues to drag on, despite the fact that it hits the headlines only when there is some 'terrorist spectacular'.

Providing a comprehensive overview of the war and the issues connected with it, the author examines the origins of the conflict historically and traces how both sides were dragged inexorably into war in the early 1990s. The book discusses the two wars (1994-96 and 1999 to date), the intervening truce and shows how a downward spiral of violence has led to a mutually-damaging impasse from which neither side has been able to remove itself. It applies theories of conflict, especially theories of terrorism and counter-terrorism and concludes by proposing some alternative resolutions that might lead to a just and lasting peace in the region.

1 Introduction

Today for me Chechnya is a people
who have gone through the worst of the worst,
the most bloody and sickening war,
which is devastating the planet.
This is not the only war in the world
but it is the most bloody in the sense that
there is no other people in the world
who over the last ten years have lost
between a quarter and a fifth of their population.
I know that the Chechens as a nation are not so numerous,
but if we compare the overall numbers of Chechens
with the number of those killed and wounded
and the number of children who have been killed,
then it has to be the worst thing that is happening on our planet today.
And it is horrendous that this is happening
with the silent agreement of the whole world.

(André Glucksmann, 2005)¹

Readers will be well aware that this is by no means the first book devoted to the Russo-Chechen wars. Indeed, unlike the creators of the majority of works on the first war (1994–1996), this author has no frontline experience in Chechnya (or, elsewhere for that matter!) and, for a number of reasons, he has not been able to make a first visit to the conflict zone since the beginning of the second war late in 1999, when he first began to research this topic. There would be little utility, therefore, in trying to retread ground that has already been so well covered on such aspects as the pre-history of the conflict,² a chronological examination of the events of the first and second wars,³ and detailed accounts of such terrorist ‘spectaculars’ staged by the Chechens as those at Dubrovka and Beslan.⁴

However, in order to complement this select body of existing research, new approaches and insights are always welcome. For, whatever Kremlin spokespersons might say, the problem of Chechnya has not been resolved and solutions are still urgently required to tackle what remains a major humanitarian disaster. What this author can offer is an intimate knowledge of Russian society and the Russian language, the experience of numerous earlier visits to the Caucasus and a background in the highly relevant discipline of the study of terrorism and, more recently, a reinvigorated interest in conflict resolution.

These research tools, plus an extensive and intensive reading in English, Russian and, in translation, Chechen material from a wide range of sources, speaking on the topic at home and abroad and engaging in discussions, conversations or email exchanges on this topic with a representative collection of academics, combatants, hostages, human rights activists, journalists, lawyers, medical and military personnel, ordinary citizens, politicians and students from all over the world, prompt me to offer this book as a contribution to the ongoing debate on Chechnya.

If this question was already being raised after the first Russo-Chechen War,⁵ with the international attitudes to the Russian invasion of Chechnya found wanting for being ‘weak, lax and confused’,⁶ how much more relevant is it now, after the Russians have repeated their attempt to resolve the Chechen conundrum by force and, in so doing, placed the conflict alongside those in Palestine, Kashmir and Iraq as a cause célèbre for disaffected Muslims across the world, including those within our own societies, encouraging extremist elements within those communities to employ terrorism as the means to achieve their ends? The essence of the question remains, therefore, is Russia fighting in Chechnya a war on terror or conducting a war of terror?

Moreover, have Russia’s actions, as a result of the conflict in Chechnya, set a precedent with which, by appearing to share interests with major democratic powers, authoritarian regimes such as that under Putin might feel tempted to conclude that, as long as it is conducted under the guise of the ‘war on terror’, they can employ force with impunity to crush any separatist or oppositional movements within their borders? Some of the suggested answers to these questions that I have formulated in this book may well be disturbing for readers, particularly for my generation, brought up in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and thus, perhaps, generally more inclined towards policies of peace and reconciliation than, apparently, are those of our coevals who actually wield political power (George W. Bush’s sixtieth birthday in July 2006 occurred exactly one month before my own).

As to my own position, inevitably, for a Western scholar committed to facilitating an end to this appalling conflict, in the interests of both Chechen and Russian peoples, I have to admit that this study has involved overcoming a fundamental moral repugnance to the violence employed in both acts of terrorism and the war of which they formed part. My primary aim, however, is not to seek to equate, let alone justify, any of this violence; my task is rather to explain it and to place it in a context that lends itself to rational analysis. Although I am highly critical of Russian policy in Chechnya, my argument is not with Russia per se, and certainly not with the Russian people, so much as with the philosophy behind the conduct of the worldwide ‘war on terror’, which the Putin administration appears to have adopted from the outset. My approach might be categorised, therefore, as deontological, in a world in which, unfortunately in my view, consequentialist philosophies increasingly appear to dominate.

Let us not delude ourselves, however. All over the world violent conflicts happen – sometimes out of need (competition for scarce political, economic and social resources), sometimes out of creed (the incompatibility of different ways of life living side by side or within a single community) but mostly, it would seem, through greed⁷ (when private, group or even national interests are placed above any notion of the common good or ‘right’). Whereas propaganda has often been employed to justify conflicts arising out of ‘need’, just as religious and nationalist discourse has for those emanating from ‘creed’, less attention appears to have been paid to the methods by which those that wish to profit from violent conflicts (whom I have called ‘entrepreneurs of violence’)⁸ satisfy, feed and justify their ‘greed’.

Naturally, ‘entrepreneurs of violence’ are unlikely to admit to such self-serving motives as ‘greed’, tending rather to cloak their justifications in terms of ‘need’ and/or ‘creed’, and thus resorting to propaganda, religious and nationalist discourse where possible. What I would suggest distinguishes such ‘entrepreneurs of violence’ is their capacity for the ‘demonisation of the other’, dehumanising not only their opponents, but also, when deemed necessary, their critics at home, a form of structural violence that not only incites but condones all too readily the violent behaviour that has come to characterise the Russo-Chechen conflict.

So great is the demand for peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding in cleaning up the mess created by so many ‘greed-based’ violent conflicts that ‘peace’ itself, rather like both anti- and counter-terrorism,⁹ is in danger of becoming a kind of business: Should we talk already, indeed, of ‘entrepreneurs of peace’? More and more, it would seem, the parameters of what can be done in a given conflict situation lie more in the realm of what can best be wrung out of a situation, rather than what with goodwill might be possible, let alone, in the name of humanity, desirable. Chechnya remains a graphic example of this.

Rather than opting for the traditional approach of beginning with a history of the Russo-Chechen confrontation and working through it chronologically, therefore, I have commenced this study with this point of disconnection: between what may rationally be proposed by those seeking to resolve this violent conflict and what might reasonably be expected to be achieved in practice in the short, medium and long term. By applying in the second chapter Johan Galtung’s Conflict Triangle to the Russo-Chechen conflict, I seek to trace the origins of the widespread and horrific violence that has characterised the ongoing Russo-Chechen conflict, already arguably the most costly war on the European continent since the Second World War, in terms of civilian and military losses and displaced persons.

However, applying conflict resolution theory to the Russo-Chechen conflict manifestly is not in itself enough to make progress towards peace. Clearly, without the requisite goodwill of the conflicting parties, including recognition that the ability to compromise is a strength not a weakness, there is little prospect of constructing a win-win situation for both Chechens and Russians in Chechnya. Moreover, without adequate pressure from, if not leaders of the international community, then from other influential representatives of world public opinion, who are sufficiently aware of the complexities of this multi-layered conflict,¹⁰ there is little real hope of doing much more than temporarily freezing the confrontation at a level of violence ‘tolerable’ to all except those at the receiving end.

Accepting this constraint, through the analysis of cultural contradictions between the Russians and the Chechens and between each and the contemporary world, I will attempt to discover what gives rise to and sustains the attitudes on all sides that have sanctioned a scale of violent behaviour that appears to make this long-running and seemingly endless confrontation as intractable as the conflict in the Middle East.

In seeking to apply theories of conflict resolution, international terrorism and counter-insurgency to the Russo-Chechen confrontation, the aim is not only to trace the stages along the road that led to the outbreak of the current conflict, which to my mind was eminently avoidable, but also to attempt to find for all parties concerned peaceful pathways out of the impasse into which the tit-for-tat violence of the confrontation has driven them.

Thus the third chapter, devoted to the historical background of the conflict, concentrates on the cultural contradictions between the Russians and Chechens, breaking up the conflict into what I regard as its components. These are identified as the clash of a ‘modernising’ with a ‘traditional’ society; a classical struggle between an ‘imperial’ power¹¹ and a ‘colonised’ people currently being fought around the competing (although not irreconcilable) claims of ‘territorial integrity’ and ‘self-determination’; violence stemming from the absence of law and order in Chechnya, which I have called ‘the black hole’ of lawlessness;¹² and, finally, issues directly related to the ‘war on terror’. This I perceive to be merely a part of the broader contradictions emanating from a US-led drive towards a new world order based upon globalisation that has gathered both pace and intensity since the tragic events of 11 September 2001.

The issue of demonisation, or the ‘politics of naming’, is highlighted in the fourth chapter, analysing Russian perceptions of the Chechens over the centuries, so many of which appear to be alive and operative in the current conflict, but concentrating on the subtle (and not so subtle!) shifts in the use and abuse of propaganda and other forms of information warfare between the Yeltsin and Putin regimes. Strictly speaking, the ‘information’ or ‘propaganda’ war might be characterised as a fifth conflict within the Russo-Chechen confrontation and thus belongs to the previous chapter. However, I take the view that it constitutes the means through which the Putin administration has highlighted the ‘war on terror’ and downplayed the other conflicts.

The fifth chapter also applies a comparative analysis; in this instance to the different wars waged by Yeltsin (1994–1996) and Putin (1999 to date) under equally euphemistic labels, respectively, the ‘restoration of constitutional order’ and a ‘counter-terrorist’ operation. This analysis focusses not so much on the detailed events of these wars, which have been covered more than adequately in other works, but on why the public support in Russia collapsed for Yeltsin when his Chechen policy left the confrontation in a dead-end, but continued to back Putin despite his Chechen policy also failing to deliver the anticipated victory in his ‘small, victorious war’. This chapter concludes with an analysis of the policy of ‘Chechenisation’, which the Putin administration seeks to pass off as a ‘political’ solution, even though it entailed the physical elimination of such ‘legitimate’ leaders of the separatist opposition as Aslan Maskhadov.

The following chapter introduces the key turning point of 9/11, with the subsequent declaration of a ‘war on terror’. Russia’s new-found common interests with the US-led coalition of the willing had a profound impact on the way that the Russo-Chechen conflict was perceived in the worldwide Islamic community, on the one hand, and much of the rest of the world, on the other. The so-called ‘Islamic factor’ has been exploited, it will be argued, not just by the Putin administration to cover a shameful list of war crimes against the Chechen population, but also by leaders of Western states who, for their own narrow interests, seek to deflect attention away from the blatant violation of elementary human rights in this corner of Europe.

This chapter also looks at the various counter-terrorist options open to the Russian leadership. While recognising that in countering insurgencies such as that in Chechnya the secret is in developing the correct mixture of approaches, involving elements of both counter-terror (‘hard’ options characterised primarily at eradication and the employment of terror against terror) and anti-terror (‘soft’ options relying more on policies of containment and which address the root causes), Russia’s performance in this confrontation will be evaluated along with that of other countries engaged in comparable conflicts. The phenomenon of ‘complexity fatigue’ is offered here as a possible explanation for the apparent unwillingness of Western civil society to engage fully with the real situation in Chechnya. Also introduced is the concept of ‘traumatised’ democracies in the wake of major terrorist attacks.

The ‘entrepreneurs of violence’ on all sides form the focus of attention in the seventh chapter. However, the very nature of the secretive, behind-the-scenes manoeuverings on the Russian side does not lend itself easily to analysis. By way of contrast the intriguing individual characters on the Chechen side offer a topic for research that is hard to resist. Thus, while the figure at the apex of Russia’s vertikal’ of power – President Vladimir Putin – could be analysed as an individual, Russian ‘entrepreneurs of violence’, more often than not, can only be viewed as a collective. Putin’s ‘dirty work’ – including the neutralisation and even physical elimination of the opponents to his Chechnya policy – is carried out, with or without his knowledge, by nameless and faceless minions. However, the leaders of the competing factions among the Chechens can hardly be accused of hiding their lights under a bushel, allowing plenty of scope for an examination of the degree to which such prominent personalities as the late Shamil Basaev from the ‘irreconcilables’ and Ramzan Kadyrov from the pro-Kremlin forces may be categorised as prime examples of ‘entrepreneurs of violence’.

Having concluded that ‘Chechenisation’ does not represent the basis of a genuine long-term political settlement, I will examine in the eighth chapter the failure of the Russian side to reach a political solution that not only is acceptable to all sides concerned but also is capable of moving the Russo-Chechen conflict away from violent politics and onto the path of peacemaking and peacebuilding. This chapter considers the position of Akhmed Zakaev, whose extradition trial in London in 2003, in which I was called as an expert witness by his defence team, served in so many ways not just as an example of the differing values and structures of Russian and Western society, but also as an intriguing case study with which to analyse the ‘terrorist versus freedom fighter’ debate. Although a strong case could have been made for studying in this context instead the position of the late Aslan Maskhadov, former President of Chechnya-Ichkeria, he was never given the opportunity, unlike Zakaev, of having his role in the conflict examined by an independent court. As may be said equally of Basaev, Maskhadov’s story provides material enough for a separate book.

The ninth chapter examines the international dimension of the conflict, analysing a selection of those factors contributing to violence identified in Chapter 2 and seeking to explain why no peace proposal offered from without has so far met with the approval of the Kremlin. Although this reluctance to engage seriously in talks about talks about peace in Chechnya has led to a degree of impatience in Western countries with Putin’s inability to reach a political solution acceptable to all sides, significantly, it has not been allowed thus far to damage bilateral relations between Russia and her Western partners, as is demonstrated by a case study of the Russo-British relationship. On the other hand, this failure has encouraged those representing the evident, albeit all too often latent, public interest that exists in Western societies to demand answers from their political leaders as to what exactly is happening in the North Caucasus, why more is not being done to stop the misery and what might be the consequences if nothing is done.

The tenth and concluding chapter will seek to summarise the answers to the array of complex questions posed in this Introduction. First and foremost of these is why a conflict of this scale and intensity has been ‘swept under the carpet’ and what are the consequences for all of us of such indifference to suffering and violence? In other words, in which ways might what continues to occur in Chechnya and the rest of Russia affect the way we live outside this wartorn region? For example, to what extent might Western passivity over successive post-Communist Russian regimes’ penchant for the à la carte removal of perceived political opponents¹³ be perceived as a contributory factor in the selective killing of such critics as Anna Politkovskaya,¹⁴ one of the bravest and most highly-principled professional journalists that I have ever had the honour to meet?

For just one of the many paradoxes of the Russo-Chechen conflict is that, although it is rarely, nowadays, raised as an issue at summit meetings involving President Putin, it continues to inspire numerous attempts, of which this book is one, at explaining just what is going on in and around Chechnya. Although views expressed on Chechen terrorism range from thinly-disguised support to outright condemnation, the overwhelming majority of t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Glossary of Chechen and Russian Terms
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Roots of Violence in the Russo-Chechen Conflict
• 3 A Tragic History
• 4 Of Wolves and Werewolves
• 5 Wars by Any Other Name
• 6 9/11, Chechnya and the War on Terror
• 7 Entrepreneurs of Violence
• 8 The Paths Not Taken
• 9 The International Dimension
• 10 Conclusion
• Notes
• Select Bibliography