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Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 16:37:03 CDT
Sender: Activists Mailing List <ACTIV-L@MIZZOU1.MISSOURI.EDU>
From: NY Transfer News Collective <nyt@blythe.org>
Subject: Russia's "Party of War" is Reborn/GL Weekly
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Russia's ‘party of war’ is reborn
By Renfrey Clarke, Green Left Weekly, Nr.240, 31 July
1996
MOSCOW - On July 9 Russian forces launched a huge new offensive in the
republic of Chechnya, putting an end to a shaky six-week cease-fire. With
lulls due to bad flying weather, the Russian military has continued pouring
bombs and rockets onto villages in southern Chechnya that it claims are
"heavily fortified insurgent bases".
Political temperatures in the Chechen capital, Grozny, have been high since
a particularly shocking episode on July 15. Witnesses described Russian
troops going on a rampage in two armoured personnel carriers, shooting at
vehicles, stabbing wounded people to death, soaking their bodies in petrol
and then setting them on fire. At least 13 people were killed.
Ironically, Russian opponents of the war had been rejoicing only a few weeks
earlier at what seemed an important advance along the road to peace. After
gaining only a narrow plurality in first-round presidential elections on
June 16, incumbent Boris Yeltsin sacked a string of unpopular officials
known for urging tough military action in Chechnya. The "party of war"
within the Kremlin appeared to have suffered an irreversible defeat.
The Moscow authorities had signed a cease-fire agreement on May 27, and a
tentative peace accord had been concluded on June 10. "The war has ended",
Yeltsin declared during his campaign, pledging that the Russian forces would
respect the agreements.
Other promising signs seemed to include the president's decision to make
former general Alexander Lebed his chief security adviser. A bitter critic
of the Chechnya war, Lebed during his own presidential election campaign had
called for the withdrawal of all Russian forces, and for a referendum in
Chechnya on independence.
But by mid-July, the hopes of earlier days had turned to dust. "It can now
be said with certainty that the peace accords ... have suffered a total
collapse", the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta stated on July 23.
Since the second-round elections on July 3 put Yeltsin back in office, the
"party of war" has returned to life. The president, as before, functions
as its patron. Ironically, its central figure is now Lebed, who has more say
than anyone but Yeltsin in deciding policy in Chechnya. To consolidate his
position, Lebed performed a swift backflip and began voicing positions
directly opposed to those he had proclaimed a few weeks earlier.
Now that the elections are past, there is no reason for administration
"hawks" to conceal their thinking on Chechnya. On July 16 it was the turn
of interior minister Anatoly Kulikov. "These diehard groups of mercenaries
and criminals must be wiped out", Kulikov reportedly said of the Chechen
fighters.
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, in the past often presented as a
"dove" on Chechnya, also endorsed the offensive. Chernomyrdin blamed the
situation on the rebels, who he claimed were "provoking federal forces to
launch massive new military actions".
Authoritative reports contradict Chernomyrdin's assessment. The
English-language Moscow Times, which is generally sympathetic to the Yeltsin
administration, stated on July 12: "... evidence on the ground suggests
that it is the Russian side that has contributed most to the escalation of
violence over the past week ..."
The paper quoted Charles Blandy, a consultant to the Conflict Studies
Research Centre at Sandhurst Military Academy in Britain. In his view, the
efforts by the Yeltsin administration in May and June to obtain a cease-fire
were never more than a vote-winning stunt.
In the decision to resume large-scale hostilities, security chief Lebed
emerges as having played a key role. Lebed has close, long-standing ties
with Lieutenant-General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, the commander of Russian
troops in Chechnya, and the two conferred in Moscow immediately before the
new offensive was launched.
Throughout the war, Yeltsin has bluntly rejected the Chechen fighters' key
demand: for their republic's right to self-determination. When Lebed
demanded and won broad control over security issues in Russia, he also
accepted responsibility for defending Yeltsin's line in Chechnya, with all
its brutal implications.
Yeltsin is thus managing to shift much of the political burden of the war
onto his security chief, at the same time as preventing Lebed's power from
getting out of bounds.
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