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.

Translated by Gulliver Cragg