Russia retreats into repression

By Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde diplomatique, October 2004

THE hostage stand-off in Beslan, North Ossetia, was called Russia's 9/11 and the comparison is valid in an important way: Russia can now see the world in terms of pre-Beslan and post-Beslan, just as the United States divides time into pre-and post-9/11, 2001. The mass hostage-taking on 3 September became a nightmare with at least 370 people dead, some 160 of them children. The world looked on mortified as this slaughter of the innocents happened before its eyes; it was also horrified by the Russian special forces' brutal and blundering intervention.

Beslan marks a turning point in the continuing wars of the Caucasus (see The Caucasian melting-pot heats up). The hostage takers had a frightening capacity for violence, but the security services' failure to prevent the tragedy was equally shocking. Beslan is the biggest crisis Vladimir Putin has faced since becoming Russia's president. It is not clear that he fully understands why this is so. “We must admit that we had not grasped the complexity and the severity of the processes under way in our own country and elsewhere in the world,” said Putin the day after the siege ended in disaster. This statement was meant to reinforce the idea that Russia shares an adversary in common with other nations—international terrorism, a euphemism for radical Islam, or what some call the worldwide Islamic jihad.

This is the same tragic mistake that President George Bush made when he decided to attack Iraq in March 2003 as a way to combat al-Qaida. Like the Bush administration, Russia's government is now declaring a war and talking about the need for a strong state. This means sweeping and largely anti-democratic changes to Russia's political system (1), increased resources for the armed forces and increased powers to deploy them in pre-emptive strikes. “We will take all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world,” said Colonel General Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of the military's general staff (2).

What Putin and his government refuse to admit is that the rise of terrorism and radical Islam in Russia's territories in the Caucasus are both the symptoms of discontent and means of expression for primarily nationalist concerns. And history shows that nationalism is an exceptionally resilient and powerful source of political energy, as the Palestinians have demonstrated.

Nationalism is probably the single most important force in modern history: colonialism, imperialism and totalitarianism failed to stamp it out. Nationalism makes any alliances necessary to further its cause. We are seeing this now in Afghanistan and Iraq, where nationalism and radical Islam are coming together in national liberation struggles that have created horrible forms of terrorism.

The same thing is happening in Chechnya. From the start the Chechens were the strongest fighters against Russia's conquest of the Caucasus. They bravely resisted Russian occupation as early as 1918 and then declared independence in 1991 as soon as the Soviet Union disintegrated. This led to the first Russo-Chechen war, which ended in August 1996 with the Chechens victorious—but Chechnya had been all but destroyed by the years of conflict.

The Russian army invaded Chechnya again in 1999 after a wave of terrorist attacks. This second war completed the destruction interrupted in 1996. Russia then held local elections in Chechnya, making sure that all key positions were filled by people who would obey the Moscow line. But the Chechen resistance did not disarm. It continued to attack and the Russians continued their policy of violent repression (3).

In the geopolitical context there are no easy solutions to the Chechen problem. The Russian authorities are less than pleased about the new economic and military ties between the US and Georgia and Azerbaijan, two independent countries just south of Chechnya. Moscow is beginning to feel like a superpower under siege, given Bush's recent decision to move German-based US forces closer to Russia—into Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Hungary.

Putin's response has been to maintain the Russian bases in Georgia and Azerbaijan, despite the opposition of their governments, and to reinforce Russia's alliance with Armenia, which is still illegally occupying part of Azerbaijan. He is also supporting separatist movements in the Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Unable to defeat the Chechen resistance on the ground, the Russians intend to prove their continuing power in the greater Caucasus. They are haunted by their humiliation in Afghanistan, but losing to Chechnya's radical Islamists would be even more humiliating, since the total Chechen population is less than a million. Moreover it could easily trigger a chain reaction across the region, leading to further territorial losses for Russia. This is why Moscow so bluntly refuses to negotiate or to recognise a right to self-rule. But the brutal repression that goes with this policy is creating terrorist monsters prepared to commit terrible crimes.

Notes

(1) Putin has announced that the 89 regional governors of the Russian federation will no longer be elected by universal suffrage, but chosen by local parliaments from candidates put forward by the federal presidency.

(2) International Herald Tribune, Paris, 9 September 2004.

(3) See Anna Politkovskaya, A Small Corner of Hell: dispatches from Chechnya, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2003.