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From: Central
Asia and the Caucasus, no. 4, 2000.Copyright: the author
& Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Joint Conference organized by the Swedish Institute of International
Affairs and the Journal Central Asia and the Caucasus, Stockholm, 27-28 April 2000.
By M�rta-Lisa
Magnusson
Although Emil Pain presents a more credible diagnosis of the Russian-Chechen conflict
than most mainstream Russian analysts, he avoids getting to the point of the matter. As a
well informed specialist on Chechnia, Pain repudiates the simplistic approach to the
conflict, expressed in official Kremlin discource. Russia’s adversary in Chechnia
cannot, he suggests, be comprehended in purely criminal terms. Russia is confronting a
population, increasingly hostile to Russian domination and attempts to maintain the
Chechen Republic in the Federation. But notwithstanding this understanding of the
conflict, Pain avoids its logical conclusions. The conflict between Russia and Chechnia
should, in my mind, be regarded as a decolonization conflict. Had Pain, in line with
he’s own arguments, defined it in this way too, his proposals for a solution, most
likely, would have been different.
Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials insist, that what is going
on in Chechnia is a campaign against “international terrorism”. It is not, as
Pain also suggests by identifying the gradual alterations in the officially stated goals
of the new intervention. Already when the bombings of Chechen territory started in the
wake of the August 1999 Wahhabi-led riots in Daghestan, the purpose was obvious. It was
not to combat “international terrorism”. Neither was it to fight Chechen
terrorists. The aim of the military operations in Chechnia was to quell Chechen
separatism. If the objective had been to
combat terrorism - international or Chechen alike - the most rational strategy would have
been to cooperate with the Chechen president, Aslan Maskhadov, who had offered Moscow
assistance in fighting terrorism, which posed a serious threat to himself. The extremist
Chechen field-commanders, who meddled in the Daghestan riots, were Maskhadov’s ardent
opponents, even enemies.
Pain rightly accuses the federal authorities for not differentiating
between groups, deserving the name of terrorists, and ordinary Chechens. But at the same
time Pain, just like the federal authorities, fails to clarify exactly who are to be
considered “real” terrorists. In his paper he even puts the popularly elected,
and thus legitimate, Chechen president on an equal footing with famous
“terriorists”, denoting them all as “leaders of Chechnia”. Among those
mentioned one even finds Basaev, who lead the Chechen-based militants who intervened in
the Daghestan riots. But Basaev had no position in the Chechen government at the time,
when these riots started. He, as well as the other Chechen field-commanders, who
contributed to the Daghestani disturbances, did not represent official Chechnia. They
became Maskhadov’s allied after the Russian assault, due to his tactical
considerations.
It is this blurring of the distinction between “terrorists”
and non-terrorists, and the identification of nongovernmental groups with legitimate
Chechen organs of power, that makes the Russian claims of fighting terrorism dubious. Seen
from the Kremlin’s point of view - and apparently of Pain’s as well - Maskhadov
is a terrorist. But he is the legitimate president of Chechnia, elected by the Chechen
population in January 1997, in an election organized by the assistance of OSCE and
confirmed as “free and fair” by approximately 200 international observers.
Shortly before the military operations in Chechnia were stepped up in
mid September 1999, Prime Minister Putin denounced the legitimacy of the Chechen president
and unilaterally abrogated the August 1996 Khasaviurt Agreement, bringing the previous
Russian-Chechen war to an end. By de-legitimizing Maskhadov, Putin also dismissed the will
of the Chechen people, expressed in free and fair elections, based on the Chechen, not the
Russian, constitution and on Chechen, not Russian, election laws. At this moment it became
clear, even to sceptics, that the real goal of the renewed Russian “operations”
in Chechnia was fighting separatism, not terrorism. Why else dismiss Maskhadov’s
legitimacy and denounce the Khasaviurt Agreement?
Pain does not fall into the trap of the theory of “ethnic
entrepreneurship”, as many Russian - and western, analysts do - explaining the
Chechen resistance as a result of manipulations by corrupt political leaders,
instrumentalizing the nationalistic card for selfish reasons. These analysts fail to
explain why people follow such leaders. Yet he does disassociate the Chechen population
from their “inappropriate” leaders. Hereby he (and others too) has difficulties
explaining why ordinary Chechens with such
consistency refuse to cooperate with the federal authorities and various marionette
structures established by the Russians in Groznyj. Again and again the Chechen population
has demonstrated that when confronted with external threats it rally around its own
leaders - even unpopular ones. Why is that? Because these figures are not only political
leaders. They are symbols of national liberation, national pride, national
self-determination and even national security. Even weak Chechen leaders become strong
symbols as soon as the Russians come too close.
Pain warns against using “colonial methods” against
“even small ethnic communities that are prepared to defend their interests with
weapons in their hands”. In this war, ordinary Chechens and their leaders do not only
defend their “interests”. They defend their state. That is why Pains proposal to
solve the conflict is inadequate. He
recommends the establishment of a “zone of prosperity” in the more or less
Russian controlled northern, historically more pro-Russian, regions of Chechnia. This
“zone of prosperity” would, according to Pain, influence the minds also of the
Chechens in the areas not controlled by the Russians, as they would start to compare the
standard of living in the two parts of the republic. Pain thus treats the problem as a
purely economic issue. But the Russian-Chechen relationship is fundamentally a political
problem and it can only be solved politically. A compromise must be found between the
Chechens demand for self-determination and the Russian claim of great power status and
respect for the principle of the territorial integrity of states.
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