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Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 01:22:50 GMT
Sender: Activists Mailing List <ACTIV-L@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
From: Rich Winkel <rich@pencil.math.missouri.edu>
Subject: PAX CHRISTI REPORT ON CHECHNYA (3/5)
To: Multiple recipients of list ACTIV-L <ACTIV-L@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>

Pax Christi report on Chechnya (3/5)

Pax Christi, 25 January 1996

Publisher's note: What parts of this series I have marked up are located in other sections of the history of Chechnya.

26. In April 1995, the war moved to the mountainous regions in the South and East of Chechnya as well as to the villages on the border with Ingushetia. The Russian Government ignored international criticism of the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of violence. A typical attack on a village would develop along the following lines:

27. The OMON and MVD contract soldiers more regularly indulged in atrocities than the regular army did. In a standard attack on a village, regular army units would attack first, followed by OMON forces and other professional soldier units who did the mopping up. Most Russian casualties were young conscripts, who were often sent into the firing lines without apparent concern about losses.

28. Relations between the different Russian units were often strained. The mission heard a number of unconfirmed stories about federal Army units attacking OMON posts. Federal Army soldiers accused the OMON of cruel behaviour against the population, which they claimed provoked retaliatory assaults by Chechen fighters and irregulars. Witnesses from Bamut told the mission how OMON troops fired at federal soldiers to force them to continue an unsuccessful attack on Bamut in April 1995.

29. After a lull in the fighting during the first two weeks of May, on 13 May the Defence Minister of Russia, Pavel Grachev, announced that the federal forces would start ‘vigorous actions to eliminate the bandit formations' in Chechnya. The operations would primarily be carried out by Internal Ministry forces, ‘with the active support of the artillery and aviation of the armed forces'. The Russian tactics were aimed at driving the Chechens into the highlands and preventing them from reaching the plains. Attempts to advance on the foothill villages met with fierce resistance. The numbers killed ran into hundreds on both sides, not counting civilian casualties.

30. On 13 May 1995, federal forces started bombing villages at the foothills in the South of Chechnya in preparation for an advance on the main Chechen strongholds Vedeno and Shatoy, high up in the mountains. On 18 May, Serzhen-Yurt was heavily bombed. The village lies at the entry to one of the main valleys in the South-west highlands. The battle for Serzhen-Yurt, started in the beginning of April, would continue for almost two months. Due to the heavy bombardments, the village was completely destroyed. The number of civilian casualties is unknown. By the end of May, only 13 out of the more than 1,200 houses of Serzhen-Yurt were still habitable.

31. In March, April and May 1995, heavy fighting also occurred near the Western Chechen village of Bamut and in the forests South of Shali. Here the Russian troops did not advance significantly. Bamut was entered by the federal forces after 2 weeks of heavy shelling on 16 March, when the fighters had already retreated to the surrounding hills. By the end of 1995, Chechen fighters still hold the heavily fortified former strategic missile basis near Bamut.

32. During the whole month of May, small guerilla units and irregulars staged attacks on federal troops in Grozny and other places that had officially been cleansed of Chechen fighters, killing several servicemen each day.

33. On 4 June the strategic village of Vedeno was captured. Russian troops heavily bombarded the surrounding forests and ravines. On 13 June 1995, Russian troops took full control of Shatoy and Nozhay-Yurt, the last Chechen strongholds.

34. Since the destruction of Serzhen-Yurt, the Chechen forces limited themselves to taking up defensive positions outside villages rather than defending the villages themselves. The last mountainous villages in their hands were packed with refugees from all over Chechnya who had nowhere to go. Furthermore, both the Chechen and the federal forces wanted these villages to remain inhabited. The former for logistical reasons, the latter to be able to dissuade the Chechen from attacking their vulnerable posts in the mountains. Therefore, destruction in the higher mountains remained limited to the effects of earlier random bombardments by Russian aircraft and occasional shelling.

35. Villages like Vedeno, Shatoy, Machkheti and Nozhay-Yurt were never put under Russian control. When the federal troops laid siege, the Chechen units retreated into the surrounding forests. Russian units only entered these villages to check on the Chechens' retreat. No pro-Russian administrations were imposed.

36. The Russian tactics appeared to serve other purposes besides military victory. They turned out to be aimed at achieving the displacement of as many Chechens as possible, and at impeding a return to normal life. The bombard ments, the atrocities, the killing of cattle and the deliberate damage done to local industries, forced half of the population to flee their homes for a longer or shorter time. Many of them have nothing left to return to. The water supply system, sewerage and sanitation system of Grozny have been destroyed beyond repair, schools are closed and the medical structures are destitute. Unless these public services are rebuilt and the federal and pro-Russian Chechen forces are made to observe the law, a part of Chechnya's refugees and IDP's will not be able to return to their places of origin.

37. On 14 June, a group of over one hundred Chechen fighters, led by Shamil Basayev, attacked the Southern Russian town of Budennovsk, about 120 km Northwest of Chechnya. According to Shamil Basayev, his group decided to take action after they had been forced to retreat from their base near Vedeno on June 3. At least 40 Russian policemen and soldiers and 14 Chechens were killed during the storming of Budennovsk.

38. The Chechen group then took hold of the local hospital, taking 1,500-odd people hostage. When their demands for an end to the war in Chechnya and the retreat of the federal troops were not met, they summarily executed eight hostages.

39. On 18 June 1995, after Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin of Russia had promised their safe return to Chechnya and the beginning of peace negotiations, the 73 remaining Chechen fighters retreated. In all, the hostage crisis ended with 120 dead, including tens of hostages who died during an ill conceived assault on the hospital by federal troops on 15 June. As a direct result of the event the Russian side declared a cease-fire as of 18 June 1995 and peace talks started in Grozny on 19 June 1995.

40. According to Colonel General Alexander Galkin, during the first seven months of the conflict, Russia lost 307 armed vehicles and almost 1,500 men.

6.3 Second Phase of the War, August 1995—December 1995

41. On 3 July, 1995, a military agreement was signed by the Russian and Chechen sides to the conflict. The agreement provided for the cessation of military activities, an exchange of military maps concerning the location of mines and troops, an ‘all for all’ prisoner exchange, the disarmament of Chechen fighters—starting with the organized units and followed by the irregulars and ending with private individuals—and the withdrawal of the federal troops from the republic except for two brigades. Self-defence detach ments of maximum 30 soldiers each would be formed in all villages. A general cease-fire was ordered by both sides from the night of 1 and 2 August 1995. A joint commission would monitor the implementation of the accord. Both sides agreed to take ’the most severe measures' against any breaches of the ceasefire. Negotiations on the future status of Chechnya would not take place until after elections in November 1995.

42. Within the Russian Government, opinions on the agreement varied. Defence Minister Pavel Grachev argued that the presence of scattered bands waging terrorist warfare made it impossible to disengage forces. But President Boris Yeltsin pledged to back any agreement that was within the terms of the Russian Constitution and would result in local elections by November 1995. The divisions within the Russian leadership were reflected in the activities of the federal forces on the ground. On the one hand, occasional bombing and shelling of villages continued, on the other hand, the federal forces retreated from most villages South of Grozny, where power was gradually taken over by “self-defence” units that were loyal to President Dzhokhar Dudayev.

43. The Chechen side complied only partially with the agreement. Arms were turned in piecemeal and nightly attacks on federal positions continued unabated. During the months of August and September 1995, OMON troops alone officially lost over 100 men.

44. After the military agreement, there were well attended pro-Dudayev rallies in a great number of villages, demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops and full independence for Chechnya. Addressing a rally on 9 August in Shali, the Chechen chief of staff and co-chairman of the Russian-Chechen armistice control committee, Aslan Maskhadov, pledged to make no concession regarding Chechen independence. He also explained that although civilians must hand over their weapons to the committee, they would be stored and distributed again in the event that Russia breaks the military agreement.

45. The Chechens' military position was less desperate than it seemed after their last strongholds had been taken. They controlled many areas that were nominally ‘liberated’ by the federal forces. Up till the present day, even in Grozny Russian troops have not dared to leave their compounds at night.

46. Mutual terrorist operations and occasional open clashes continued to occur. On 25 August 1995, a group of Chechens clashed with federal border troops in Daghestan, killing at least five, and on 21 August 1995, federal troops chased a group of 100 to 250 Chechen militants from Argun, reportedly killing 60 to 80.

47. During the third week of August, Russian planes bombed several villages, reportedly in response to attacks by Chechen militants. One of the villages bombed was Achkhoy-Martan, where the residents had refused to hand in their weapons unless the federal forces retreated to a distance of two to four km from the village and security guarantees were given. In retaliation for this demand, the village was shelled with artillery and aircraft. After mediation, the residents of Achkhoy-Martan agreed to hand over their weapons. Some weapons were handed over, but a representative of the centre for arms reception stated that most residents ‘are scared of handing in weapons', because ’they do not see any security guarantees'.

48. On 15 August 1995, President Boris Yeltsin gave the following comment on the situation: ‘Bands in Chechnya are slowly coming back to life, becoming more active, and we can not allow them to crawl into the lowlands and into Grozny and resume their bandit operations'. Earlier, the President had stated that he considered it unrealistic to expect elections could be held in Chechnya in November.

49. By the end of August 1995, the Chechen side had handed over less than 1,000 weapons, most of which were immediately redistributed to the selfdefence units consisting mainly of demobilized Chechen fighters who had just handed over their weapons.

50. On 29 August 1995, President Boris Yeltsin appointed the Secretary of the Security Council, Oleg Lobov, his plenipotentiary representative in Chechnya with the rank of first deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation. He was given full authority over the territorial directorate of federal executive authorities in Chechnya and the command of the temporary joint forces in Chechnya, as far as operational matters were concerned. He was also put in charge of all delegations from the federal authorities at the peace negotiations.

51. A bomb attack on 6 October 1995 gravely injured the commander of the joint group of federal forces in Chechnya, Lieutenant General Anatoli Romanov. He was replaced by Lieutenant General Nikolai Shkirko. The latter, in his first public appearances, showed a less conciliatory attitude than Anatoli Romanov.

52. The assault on Anatoli Romanov was followed by a sharp increase of violence. According to a member of the special supervisory commission representing the Chechen side, Russian artillery and aircraft shelled the Mesker Yurt and Roshni-Chu villages on 8 October 1995, killing 40 civilians. An official spokesman for the office of the commander-in-chief of the Russian Air Forces denied the bombing, while Sandor Meszaros, chief of the OSCE mission in Chechnya, went to Roshni-Chu and expressed “shock” at what he found there. Sandor Meszaros was able to confirm that the village had suffered heavy casualties. In all, he said, 28 villagers had been killed, approximately 60 had been injured, and close to 100 houses had been damaged or totally destroyed.

53. Following the bombing, on 25 October 1995, 18 Russian soldiers were killed in one ambush only.

54. Following the decision on 10 October 1995 by the special supervisory commission in Grozny to suspend the military agreement, the Chechen side decided to pull out of the peace talks until international observers and UN peacekeeping forces arrived in Chechnya and those responsible for the attacks on Mesker Yurt and Roshni-Chu were found and punished.

55. Still in October, the pro-Russian leaders in Grozny, Umar Avturkhanov and Salambek Khadzhiyev, were dismissed and replaced by Doku Zavgayev, former speaker of the Chechen-Ingush parliament. The long-dead Supreme Soviet of the former Chechen-Ingush ASSR was resurrected. The Mo scow-selected National Accord Committee named Doku Zavgayev Prime Minister of the Government of National Rebirth, renamed “Government of the Chechen Republic.” Dzhokhar Dudayev's chief negotiator, Khodzh-Akhmed Yarikha nov, denounced Doku Zavgayev as a “puppet” of “the occupation regime”, while the Interior Minister of the Russian Federation, Anatoli Kulikov, declared that the negotiatings should now be conducted with Doku Zavgayev instead of representatives of President Dzhokhar Dudayev.

56. Following the bombings of Roshni-Chu and Mesker Yurt, the negotiations in Grozny were suspended. Meanwhile, the implementation of the July agreements continued to progress slowly. By the end of the month, the federal forces retreated from Vedeno.

57. The Russian troops' withdrawal from the mountainous districts was not only a result of the July agreement. The move was officially announced on 24 November 1995—after 11 Russian soldiers had been reported killed in fighting in various parts of Chechnya the preceding day and while great difficulties were expected in supplying the soldiers in winter.

58. The Russian troops are faced with a guerrilla war in which the enemy is indistinguishable from the civilian population. The Russian tactics during the first six months of the war did not bring them any real control over the territory of Chechnya. Several days after Samashki was brutally evacuated by Interior Ministry troops, its inhabitants were allowed to return again. Afraid that some of them would be armed and stage revenge attacks, the federal forces then retreated to their initial positions outside the village, thus basically restoring the situation as it was before their assault. The same mechanism has operated elsewhere, which explains how the Russian Army could capture the same village two or three times over.

59. By adopting terrorist tactics, the Russian forces hampered their own advance. Village elders had no reason to send away fighters if this did not guarantee the security of the village. The punishment of Samashki explained the stubbornness of Bamut.

60. The federal forces have no attractive options. In a heavily forested and mountainous environment, where the main Chechen forces have retreated, their superiority in armour, airpower and artillery is no longer decisive. An offensive would cost them dearly and would not bring an end to the costly attacks on their posts any nearer. No federal offensive is expected before spring 1996, when the mountainous regions have become accessible again.

61. Total human losses of the war are unknown. The Chechen side does not give any figure of its military losses. Its declarations on civilian casualties following specific actions of the Russian forces are often reliable, but the Chechen side does not systematically gather data covering the whole war. Claims by the Chechens that the federal forces have lost about 10,000 lives are believed to be exaggerated.

62. By November 1995, the official Russian casualty list for the federal forces stood at 2,000 federal troops killed, 600 missing and 6,000 wounded. The official monthly death toll peaked at 693 in January and fell to 142 in April, since then officially recognized losses have averaged about 2-3 deaths per day. Official Russian estimates of civilian casualties amount to 10,000 dead.

63. The only organization that has made a systematic study of the civilian losses during the battle for Grozny is Memorial. They claim that from 25 December till 25 January, in Grozny alone, at least 25,000 people have perished by bombing and shelling.

64. In an interview on 22 August 1995, Russian negotiator to the Grozny peace negotiations Arkady Volsky estimated that the Chechen campaign had cost “some 30,000-35,000 lives”.

65. Paul A. Goble of the Jamestown Foundation, estimates that “the Russian military and security services have killed a minimum of 40,000 people in Chechnya, while losing almost 2,000 of their own people.” He believes that perhaps 12,000 of the dead were ethnic Russians who lost their lives during the Russian attacks on the city of Grozny.

66. These figures leave aside the tens of thousands who were wounded or maimed as a result of the war.

7 POLITICS

1. On 30 January 1995, President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree by which he installed a “Territorial Department of the Federal Executive Power” in the Republic of Chechnya. The department was headed by Nikolai Semenov, former high ranking official of the Communist Party of Chechnya. Umar Avturkhanov, leader of the Provisional Council, Bislan Gantemirov, former mayor of Grozny and military leader of the Provisional Council, and Salambek Khadzhiyev, head of the self-proclaimed “Government of National Revival”, were appinted as his deputies.

2. On 31 July 1995, a majority of the members of Russia's Constitutional Court ruled that the 9 December 1994 secret presidential decree authorizing the use of military force in Chechnya did not violate the Russian Constitution. The court also decided that it was beyond its competence to rule on two other secret decrees relating to Chechnya, including the controversial 30 November 1994 decree that initiated the war. The Court argued that the Russian president's decisions on Chechnya followed from his constitutional responsibility to maintain the integrity of the state and that this responsibility overruled other constitutional provisions.

3. The Russian Government's plans with Chechnya can be summarized as follows. A provisional administration has been installed, first headed by Boris Yeltsin's second special envoy Nikolai Semenov and since 29 August 1995 by the Secretary of the Security Council Oleg Lobov. He has been appointed ‘presidential plenipotentiary representative in Chechnya’ and holds the rank of first deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation. The territorial directorate of federal executive authorities in Chechnya is under his control, and he commands the temporary joint forces in Chechnya, as far as operational matters are concerned. He has also been put in charge of all delegations from the federal authorities at the peace negotiations.

4. The “Government of National Revival” and the Provisional Council were generally despised in Chechnya. This, and their internal squabbles, administrative lethargy and failure to guarantee even a remote resemblance of law and order, jeopardized Russia's policy to create an alternative for Dzhokhar Dudayev.

5. In October 1995, the Russian authorities replaced Umar Avturkhanov and Salambek Khadzhiyev with Doku Zavgayev, the speaker of the long-dead Supreme Soviet of the former Chechen-Ingush ASSR. A rump-Supreme Soviet was resurrected and on 1 November it elected a new chairman, Amin Osmayev, formally releasing Doku Zavgayev from that post. The session appointed Sanakii Arbiyev as first deputy Prime Minister and Grozny Mayor Bislan Gantemirov as deputy Prime Minister. The National Accord Committee then named Doku Zavgayev Head of State and Prime Minister of the “Government of National Revival”, renamed “Government of the Chechen Republic.” The Russian Minister for Nationalities and chief negotiator in Chechnya, Vyacheslav Mikhailov, urged the Supreme Soviet and the National Accord Committee to negotiate a merger.

6. The Russian Government hoped that Doku Zavgayev would build a coalition of forces, strong enough to challenge the separatists' hold on the population. He is popular among parts of the Chechen diaspora and among the elite that rose to wealth and power in the 1970s and 1980s. He is a more experienced administrator than his predecessors were.

7. However, Doku Zavgayev is faced with the same difficulties that paralysed his predecessors. The Chechen state structures are virtually non-existent and heavily dependent on the federation. He also has to deal with the apparatus established by the Russian presidential special representative in Chechnya, Oleg Lobov, which oversees all federal funding for Chechnya and maintains close relations with the federal military. His Government exercises effective power only in those regions which are fully controlled by the Russian troops, Grozny and Northern Chechnya, and the separatists can ignore its existence. But the main problem for Doku Zavgayev's authority is the fact that he is despised by the unchallenged champions of Chechnya's independence, Dzhokhar Dudayev and his circle, who regard him as a mere lackey of the Russian Government. President Dzhokhar Dudayev's negotiator, Khodzh-Akhmed Yarikhanov, denounced Zavgayev as a “puppet” of “the occupation regime”.

8. One of the first tasks of the new Prime Minister will be to discipline the para-military units that support his government, notably the units belonging to the mayor of Grozny and first deputy Prime Minister Bislan Gantemirov, and those of Ruslan Labazanov. They shot at pro-Dudayev demonstrators on several occasions, i.a. on 24 October 1995, and were responsible for the shelling of the OSCE office building. These forces are strongly opposed to the peace process.

9. Doku Zavgayev claimed that with his return, legal government was finally restored in Chechnya, as he was the political leader of the country until Dzhokhar Dudayev took power, allegedly illegally. This claim is not convincing. He officially laid down his functions in 1991, and the restored rump- Supreme Soviet that nominated him was the legislative of a country that ceased to exist on 4 June 1992, when the Russian Federation law “On the Formation of the Republic of Ingushetia” was adopted, abolishing the Chechen-Ingush ASSR. Moreover, the deputies themselves voted for self-dissolution not long after their election to office in October 1991.

10. The fact that Doku Zavgayev has been nominated by the Russian Government is no recommendation in Chechnya, nor is his declared intention to fully respect federal legislation, including the federal constitution. During his first public appearance as Prime Minister, Doku Zavgayev stated that the supporters of Dzhokhar Dudayev are no real force capable of seriously affecting the situation in the republic, which raises doubts about his political judgement, as well as his intention to find common ground with the separatists.

11. Initially, Doku Zavgayev rejected early local elections in Chechnya, saying it would be “immoral” to hold them while people continued to live in bombed-out buildings lacking heat, electricity, or water. But he quickly changed his position when by the end of November it became apparent that President Boris Yeltsin would not accept postponement of the elections and presented his candidacy for Head of the Republic.

12. Another contender for power in Chechnya is Ruslan Khasbulatov, former Speaker of the State Duma. He was called in by the Russian Government in September to play a reconciliatory role. The decision to ask him stemmed from the Security Council's resolution on “expanding the circle of political figures capable of stabilizing the political situation in the republic” of 30 August 1995. Ruslan Khasbulatov believes that only if Chechnya is granted a high degree of autonomy, far higher than currently enjoyed by Tatarstan, a peaceful settlement can be reached. On 30 November he presented a plan that includes Russian citizenship and the ruble to remain valid in Chechnya; demilitarization of the republic; Chechnya's borders to be guarded jointly by Russian and Chechen units; Russia to pay compensation to Chechnya for the “material, moral, and ecological damages inflicted”; Chechnya to establish consulates in foreign countries, and to enjoy the right of representation in international organizations separately from Russia. This plan goes much further than the Tatarstan-like treaty that Doku Zavgayev, and the Russian leadership, advocate. Ruslan Khasbulatov favours direct negotiations with Dzhokhar Dudayev. Like Doku Zavgayev, he initially objected to the holding of elections this year, but once President Boris Yeltsin had made clear that he would not accept any postponement, Khasbulatov presented his candidacy for Head of the Republic.

13. The decisions to replace the pro-Russian leaders in Chechnya reflected the federal authorities' frustration with the isolation, ineptitude, and factiousness of Umar Avturkhanov's and Salambek Khadzhiyev's groups, whom Moscow had grossly overestimated when selecting them for collaboration. Now, the federal authorities appear to equally overestimate Zavgayev and Khasbulatov's potential. They do not have any new argument to explain to the mass of the population of Chechnya why Russian rule should be respected. Their main arguments—Russia is determined and suffering will continue until Chechnya subsides—are already quite evident to the population, but have so far failed to stifle the resolve for independence.

14. Negotiations on the future status of Chechnya have failed to produce any conclusive results. Both sides accuse the other of violations of earlier agreements. The Russian side insists that Chechnya should be a full-fledged member of the Russian Federation, while the Chechen side demands independence. In November, the Chechens left the talks protesting that the Russian authorities failed to take appropriate measures against the culprits of the Roshni-Chu bombardment. They argued that the incident had confirmed that the Russian side was not seriously seraching for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

15. Meanwhile, Dzhokhar Dudayev has strengthened his position in the South and West. In most settlements in the mountains and even in places like Shali and Samashki, troops loyal to him have taken over former Russian checkpoints. Chechen fighters have massively returned to their homes and their commanders have set up administrative offices and are the only effective authority on the spot.

16. Prime Minister Doku Zavgayev has adopted the line, first formulated by the Prime Minister of Russia, Viktor Chernomyrdin, that the negotiation process in Chechnya should shift to an “internal political track.” Other Russian officials, including Minister of Nationalities Vyacheslav Mikhailov, have also suggested that a political settlement should emerge from talks among different Chechen factions rather than from negotiations between representatives of President Dzhokhar Dudayev and federal government officials.

17. The failure of the talks reflect serious differences within the Russian Government. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin is presently the most outspoken advocate of the official, reconciliatory line, verbally supported by President Boris Yeltsin. Defence Minister Pavel Grachev personifies the “Party of the War”. In October 1995, he called for suspension of the peace talks until Dzhokhar Dudayev's forces had been completely disarmed. He accused Chechen forces of preparing to wage a winter campaign.

18. Pavel Grachev is supported by high ranking officials like Interior Minister and former Commander of the federal forces in Chechnya, Colonel General Anatoli Kulikov, Presidential special envoy to Chechnya Oleg Lobov, Presidential advisor Sergey Shakray, and the present Commander of the federal forces in Chechnya, Colonel General Shkirko. They believe that the Chechen drive for independence can only be neutralized by force and that the military agreement of July failed to take into account that by compromising, the Russian side grants legitimacy to the separatists and strengthens their resolve. They notably oppose the setting up of Chechen “self-defence units”, because they form a de facto return to power of Dzhokhar Dudayev loyalists in these villages. The Chechens on their side stress that these units are an indispensable guarantee against continued abuses of the population by the Russian troops.

19. By violently closing the OSCE mission in Grozny in October, the pro- Russian mayor of the town, Bislan Gantemirov, has expressed his anger that the pro-Russian opposition had been left out of the negotiation process. If the negotiations succeed, his role and that of all other pro-Russian Chechens will be over. Dzhokhar Dudayev's faction has always categorically rejected any cooperation with people they consider collaborators.

20. President Boris Yeltsin's position is ambiguous. While verbally supporting the peace negotiations, he does not take any measures against commanders who violate the agreements, nor does he reprimand ministers who publicly denounce the peace process. Furthermore, many of the latest nominations concern hardliners. Boris Yeltsin's insistence on the holding of elections in December is meant to legitimize Doku Zavgayev and to create an illusion of normalcy. It also serves the purpose of helping his Western partners to close their eyes for the reality in Chechnya.

21. If elections are held on 17 December, they will be a farce. The separatists vehemently oppose them. Russian and Russian installed authorities in Grozny announced on 26 November 1995 that Russian troops (estimated at nearly 50,000) would vote on a par with Chechnya's residents in the elections. With just 300,000 voters in Chechnya, Russian soldiers could make up 25 percent of the electorate, the proportion needed to validate the elections in Chechnya.

22. The pro-independence Assembly of Chechen Parties and Movements has announced that its members, and the authorities in 283 localities, have formed public committees for prevention of the elections. With 150,000 to 200,000 refugees outside the country unable to vote, no free press, no candidates except a handful of Russian proteges, a virtual state of war, and at least half of the land controlled by the separatists, the elections can only be inordinately unfree and utterly unfair. If pushed through, elections are likely to provoke a new round of violence.

23. Boris Yeltsin's own men on the scene are not happy about the prospect of elections being held. “Elections are impossible to hold, and would only be a farce if held,” said Lieutenant General Sergey Kovun, Deputy Commander in Chief of Russia's Internal Affairs Ministry troops in Chechnya. Russia's deputy chief negotiator in Chechnya, Arkady Volsky, described Yeltsin's decision as “unreasonable” as it could lead to “armed clashes at polling stations”. At a session of the Russian-promoted Round Table of Chechen political parties, attended also by top Russian officials, most parties opposed the holding of elections, arguing that this should follow the determination of Chechnya's political status and withdrawal of Russian troops. Most parties also charged that the decision to hold elections was meant to push Chechens into fighting each other. A council of Chechen field commanders at the same time announced that any cooperation with Moscow's plan to hold the elections would be punished as national treason.

24. Moscow's decision to hold elections in Chechnya means a complete disruption of the talks with Dudayev envoys, and thus an interruption of the truce. Hence, the elections will not bring peace, but lead to the resumption of military action.

25. Soviet-era practice seems to be returning with the creation of a Mo scow-controlled Internal Affairs Ministry of Chechnya. The figurehead Chechen Minister will be flanked, in the tradition of ex-Soviet republics, by a Russian first deputy minister controlling the Ministry in practice and reporting directly to Moscow. The appointee, Yury Plugin, said that he would create a security service as part of the Ministry, using his experience of four years in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan where he “helped them create their Ministry of Internal Affairs.”

26. The legality of the regime of Dzhokhar Dudayev is greatly in doubt. In violation of the constitution of Chechnya, he dismissed the Chechen parliament in 1993, and has since ruled without any effective form of democratic control. His attempts to legitimize his authority through meetings of councils of elders are invalid as these councils have not been established according to transparent democratic procedures themselves. They represent a limited number of communities, mainly from the South and West of the country. Non-ethnic citizens of Chechnya are excluded from the councils of elders.

8 RUSSIA'S LEGAL OBLIGATIONS IN THE FIELD OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIAN LAW

1. Article 15, paragraph 4 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation reads:

“Generally recognized principles and norms of international law and the international treaties of the Russian Federation are a constituent part of its legal system. If an international treaty of the Russian Federation establishes rules other than those provided by a law, the rules of the international treaty apply.”

2. Russia is party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their 1977 Protocols.

Article 3 of the Conventions reads:

1) Persons taking no active part in hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any ad- verse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above mentioned persons:

a. violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

b. taking of hostages;

c. outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;

d. the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention reads:

No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Pillage is prohibited

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

The Geneva Conventions oblige all sides to a conflict to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. They also establish the idea of proportional use of force as an obligatory principle in all forms of armed conflict.

3. The Russian Government has never declared the state of emergency in Chechnya. The Russian Constitution requires that the Army can only be engaged internally after the state of emergency has been declared. The decision to attack Chechnya was based on two presidential decrees, “On measures for the Restoration of the Constitutional Order and Enforcement of Laws in the Chechen Republic” of 30 November 1994. The official task of the federal forces in Chechnya is to “eliminate illegal armed formations” in the republic. All this serves as ample ground to class the federal forces in Chechnya as law enforcement agents, bound by the UN basic principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, to which Russia is a party.

Article 4 of the UN basic principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials reads as follows:

Law enforcement officials, in carrying out their duty, shall, as far as possible, apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force and firearms. They may use force and firearms only if other means remain ineffective or without any promise of achieving the intended result.

Article 5.1 reads:

[Law enforcement officials shall] Minimize damage and injury, and respect and preserve human life.

Article 7 reads:

Governments shall ensure that arbitrary or abusive use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials is punished as a criminal offense under their law.

4. Russia is bound by the 6 December 1994 OSCE Code of Conduct on PoliticoMilitary Aspects of Security.

Paragraph 31 reads:

The participating states will ensure that armed forces personnel vested with command authority will exercise in accordance with relevant national as well as international law and are made aware that they can be held individually accountable under those laws for the unlawful exercise of such authority and that orders contrary to national and international law must not be given. The responsibility of superiors does not exempt subordinates from any of their individual responsibilities.

5. Russia is bound by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution No. 2444 (1968). The resolution obliges all members of the United nations to distinguish between combatants and civilians.

6. Russia is bound by the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, of 21 December 1965.

Article 2 reads:

a) Each state undertakes to engage in no act or practice of racist discrimination against persons, groups of persons or institutions and to ensure that all public authorities and public institutions, national and local, shall act in conformity with this obligation.

7. Russia is further bound by

8. Russia started the Chechen war in order to restore the constitutional order. By doing so it violated that same constitutional order in the following ways:

9 HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, AN OVERVIEW OF EXISTING SOURCES

9.1 Findings by NGOs and international organizations

1. According to Thierry Meyrat, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation in Moscow, the Russian authorities hampered the work of the ICRC in the Chechen conflict zone during the first month of the fighting. The ICRC holds that the articles 3 and 4 as well as the second protocol of the Geneva Conventions were violated by the Russian armed forces. The organization noted the shelling of housing estates and hospitals, obstacles to the evacuation of wounded civilians from the fighting zone, obstacles for humanitarian goods to enter Chechnya. The indifference on the part of the Russian Army was manifest in its unwillingness to give information on prisoners taken, and, during the initial stages of the war, its refusal of admittance to any prisoners taken by the federal forces.

2. In January, February and May 1995, Human Rights Watch published a series of well documented reports on human rights violations in Chechnya, accusing the federal forces of systematic violations of the rules of war, notably—massive indiscriminate and disproportionate use of violence

3. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly expressed concern that very few Chechen fighters have been taken prisoner by the federal forces.

4. Human Rights Watch equally accused the Chechen forces of violations of the rules of war, notably indiscriminate, but not intentional use of small arms fire, and taking up defensive positions in civilian inhabited environments.

5. On 30 June 1995, a report prepared by Council of Europe experts stated that Russian troops had engaged in widespread beatings, looting, and destruction of property and, in isolated cases, massacres, tortures, and rape. The report described these criminal acts as part of a deliberate policy of the federal Russian command. The report singled out the interior troops as the worst offenders; it also noted that the Chechen forces had on occasion violated human rights standards, but found that such violations were the exception rather than the rule.

6. In March 1995, the OSCE Human Rights Assistance Group to the Russian Federation mentioned the following human rights concerns:

The Assistance Group complained that the federal authorities had denied the Group full access to places and persons that it wanted to see; for instance, the mission was only allowed to see Grozny for one hour through the gun scope of an ABC.

7. On 16 June 1995, The OSCE's special envoy to Chechnya, Istvan Gyarmati, praised Russia's improved human rights record in Chechnya. Istvan Gyarmati said: “It is not true that Russia is wiping out democracy in Chechnya. There are now eight or nine political parties, including separatists, operating freely and I am confident Chechnya will have a democracy as good or better than it is anywhere in Russia.” The Hungarian diplomate said Russian commanders had improved discipline in the ranks and violence against civilians was decreasing.

8. On 27 June 1995, the European Union, having been informed about the 16 June OSCE appraisal of the situation, released a statement authorizing the deferred signing of an interim trade accord, arguing that ‘progress had been made with regard to the situation in Chechnya.’

9. In June 1995, the Moscow based human rights organization Memorial Society published two detailed studies on civilian casualties. One gives a detailed description and analysis of the 25 November 1994—25 January 1995 events in Grozny and the surrounding area, that concluded that 25,000 civilians had died during this period. Most of them were unarmed civilians, including 3,700 children under the age of 15. In the another study, Memorial published a list with 107 names of civilians from Samashki who were murdered by Russian forces. The list includes mainly women, children and elderly people.

10. All along the war, Memorial has maintained a multiple presence in the conflict zone and the organization has collected evidence that Russian forces have been engaged in murder, looting, illegal detention, mistreatment of detainees and violation of their legal rights, torture, extortion, deliberate destruction, and the use of illegal weapons (ball-bearing and needle bombs).

11. Most outspoken critic of the Russian policy in Chechnya is Sergey Kovalev, Chairman of the Russian President's Human Rights Committee and Russia's High Commissioner for Human Rights until his removal from that position by the State Duma on 10 March 1995, censuring him for his denouncements of human rights abuses during the war in Chechnya. On 31 July 1995, President Boris Yeltsin downgraded the presidential human rights commission by transferring it to the section of the presidential administration that deals with citizen correspondence. It was suggested that the move was aimed against Sergey Kovalev.

12. In February, the presidential human rights commissioner Sergey Kovalev presented substantial evidence that OMON troops had been responsible for looting and for killing of civilians at the first sign of protest, and that large amounts of corpses of Russian military had not been buried or sent to relatives but instead dumped in silo pits or thrown into inaccessible ravines.

13. On 30 May 1995, Sergey Kovalev presented a report on detention and filtration camps in and around Chechnya, in which he accused the Russian troops of systematic and severe torture of detainees. Most detainees were civilians, as was illustrated by the fact that while thousands of Chechens passed through the camps, by then charges had been brought against only 20 to 30.

9.2 Official Russian sources

14. On 4 February 1995, the pro-Russian Interim Council of Chechnya accused the Russian forces of being engaged in “looting, robbery, unmotivated killings of civilian population.” It expected this would go unpunished because none of the Russian commanders had so far acknowledged their guilt. The Interim Council also expressed its indignation about “the barbaric and senselessly cruel bombardment and shelling of residential areas, inhabited by peaceful citizens who are unable to leave the city.”

15. Mid-February 1995, the Military Council of the Internal Forces of the Interior Ministry (MVD) distributed a pamphlet to its troops in Chechnya, denouncing “looting and outrages towards the civilian population” of Chechnya.

16. On 7 March, Interfax news agency reported that, according to a representative of the joint command of the federal forces, the Russian Air Force had been dropping mines on various Chechen regions controlled by supporters of President Dzhokhar Dudayev. The mines were reportedly of a delayed-action type. Mines delivered by aircraft are considered to be particularly dangerous long term because no accurate record can be made of their location.

17. The OSCE report of March 1995 mentioned that federal officials acknowledged the occurrence of human rights abuses.

10 HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

10.1 Disproportionate and Indiscriminate Use of Violence

1. The bombing and shelling of Grozny in December 1994 and January 1995 has been extensively reported on by a variety of NGOs and international organizations. It is beyond doubt that the use of fire power was excessive, and has caused the life of approximately 25,000 civilians.

2. As from December 1994, Russian aircraft launched indiscriminate attacks on civil targets all over the republic. All inhabitants and refugees from villages in Western and Southern Chechnya that were interviewed by the mission told stories about random attacks on civilian targets by Russian fighter bombers and helicopters.

3. Not only during the battle for Grozny, but in all stages of the war, the federal forces have made little or no attempt to distinguish unarmed civilians from armed opponents. The mission collected many testimonies from civilians who had been fired upon.

4. On 28 February, a French correspondent reported that Russian aircraft on their way back from bombing villages in the South of Chechnya routinely dropped their remaining bombs on the city of Shali, killing and maiming civilians on almost a daily basis. On 21 March 1995, the marketplace was attacked by daylight, leaving no doubts that the Russian pilots knew what they were firing at. Over 120 people were killed. The mission witnessed the damage done by the bombardments of Shali and, interviewing survivors of the attack, found confirmation that there had been no military targets in the market's vicinity.

5. On 6 March, we left Bamut for Grozny on a tractor. When we arrived at the bridge between Bamut and Arshty we were shot at by two helicopters. There were no fighters there. Seven of our children were wounded and my daughter of 14 was killed. Some of my children have not recovered yet. They have all become anxious and have difficulty sleeping at night. My mother also died during the attack. Later, when we returned to bury her, we had to pay the Russian soldiers for allowing us to do so. (Ms. Elayev, interviewed in Sleptsovskaya on 4 July 1995).

6. On 21 March at about 11.30 AM, I was in the yard talking with some neighbours, when a grenade exploded nearby. Two men died and another two were wounded. I was lucky and only got some shrapnel in my upper legs. In March, they were shelling the village all the time. I know about 40 people in Bamut who have been killed that way. (Interview with Movald Girey, 58 year old farmer from Bamut, on 6 April 1995)

7. At least 11 people were killed and 60 injured on 4 December 1995, when a powerful car bomb exploded in the center of Grozny, just outside the regional administration building. No one has claimed the attack, but it is likely that separatist groups were responsible for the attack. It was the third large bomb blast in Grozny since the summer, in which bystanders have been killed.