Death of a Patriot

COMMENTARY

The Wall Street Journal
March 10, 2005
Page A16

By THOMAS DE WAAL

Some nine years ago I interviewed Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen
separatist leader who was killed on Tuesday, in the middle of a beech
forest in southern Chechnya. He was brimming with confidence and looking
forward to swapping the woods for the halls of the Kremlin. The volatile
rebel leader Dzhokhar Dudayev had been assassinated and now Maskhadov,
his natural successor, was being invited for talks in Moscow by
President Boris Yeltsin. In retrospect, that was the high watermark of
Maskhadov’s authority as both successful warrior and peacemaker. Those
talks in the Kremlin helped lead to a peace settlement that ended the
first Chechen war of 1994-96. Maskhadov then went on to be elected
president of Chechnya in 1997 in a vote that was recognized by Russia
and the world.

At that time there were hopes that Maskhadov could become a latter-day
Chechen Ataturk, a martial leader who had turned to politics and would
build up some kind of statehood in his unfortunate republic. Announcing
his death this week, the Russian authorities called him a “bandit” and
“terrorist.” Neither description was true. Maskhadov was a tragic
figure, a guerrilla leader who could not transcend his own limitations
as a politician and the appalling situation around him.

Everyone has failed in Chechnya. Maskhadov failed in his attempts to
lead his republic from 1997-99, not managing to confront a rising tide
of radical Islam and criminality. That anarchy was the prelude to the
Russian government’s second military intervention in Chechnya in 1999.
And although he repeatedly called for negotiations with Moscow over the
last five years, Maskhadov failed to rein in the radicals who have
turned from partisan war to acts of terrorism, like the one in Beslan
last September.

The most colossal failure in Chechnya has been that of the Russian
government. Its soldiers have done everything in their power to make
Chechens feel an alienated people and a conquered nation. No one knows
exactly how many civilians have died there since 1994 but the number
runs into the tens of thousands and is a catastrophe for this small
republic. The city of Grozny, its only urban and professional center,
still lies in ruins more than a decade after the fighting started.
President Putin’s latest policy of “Chechenization” — delegating
political and economic power to a loyal pro-Moscow government — has put
an end to full-scale fighting; but in practice it has empowered a brutal
and criminalized group that is implicated in daily abductions and
killings. Little wonder that terrorism still sprouts in the cracks left
by this cataclysm.

Killing Maskhadov risks being a Pyrrhic victory for Moscow. His standing
had declined in recent years, but his election still made him an
important political symbol for many ordinary Chechens. Now that that
symbol has been killed, a whole constituency will feel disenfranchised.
Maskhadov’s death will strengthen the radical Shamil Basayev, who has
claimed responsibility for the death of more than 330 people in Beslan,
half of them children.

The West has failed, too, in Chechnya and has never given it the
attention it deserves. All too often the subject has been pushed down
the list of topics under discussion. In 1994, a more forthright stand
against the bombing of Grozny might have made Boris Yeltsin think again,
but Western politicians hesitated to pick up their telephones. Other
Westerners have lectured Russia without taking into account its real
security concerns, or offering any practical assistance.

Much Western categorization of Chechnya has been misleading and
superficial. To call the conflict a front in the “international war on
terror” obscures more than it reveals. The number of international
jihadis in Chechnya is tiny and it remains essentially a homegrown
problem. Terror is now one part of the equation but simply killing
terrorists will not solve the problem. But nor is this “deliberate
genocide.” Moscow still promises the Chechens high levels of autonomy
and pours money into Chechnya. The problem is that the executors on the
ground of whatever policy there is — Russian soldiers and their Chechen
cronies — tend to be brutal, xenophobic or highly corrupt. It is not
even very helpful to think of this as a colonial war: Most Chechens now
probably reject independence and accept that they should be part of
Russia — if only Russia would respect their elementary rights.

Is there a way forward? Clearly the time for polemic is past and the
Western institutions making a difference on this issue are those that
seek to engage on as practical level as possible. The European Court of
Human Rights delivered an important verdict on Feb. 24, upholding the
claims of a group of Chechen civilians who had lost relatives to Russian
violence and demanding the Russian government pay damages. The money is
less important than the signal that sends to ordinary Chechens that the
outside world cares about their rights and to Russian soldiers that
their behavior is under scrutiny.

Above all, Chechnya needs reconstruction. President Putin himself
pronounced himself shocked when he flew over the ruins of Grozny last
year and saw himself that a Russian city in the early 21st century still
resembles the hulk of Stalingrad in 1945. Unemployment is nearly
universal. But, as ever, economic rehabilitation falls foul of the
perennial problem of systemic corruption, both in Moscow and Grozny.
Western governments have enormous experience of bringing reconstruction
and aid to war-shattered regions in the Balkans. To help rebuild Grozny
and its destroyed university, oil institute, factories and schools would
be to offer a real pledge in the future of Chechnya.

This, of course, needs the consent of the Russian authorities — and a
very real obstacle remains in the form of the pro-Moscow Chechen
government, which monopolizes power and rewards only its friends and
business-partners. Parliamentary elections are due later this year in
Chechnya and a positive step from Western governments would be to offer
support and recognition for them — on condition that they are as
democratic as the situation in Chechnya allows and include a wide range
of Chechens who have been hitherto shut out from the political process.

The Chechens are Europeans too, if very distant and alienated ones. The
death of Maskhadov should be a moment to try to lure these unfortunate
people with the promise of practical assistance, not push them further
into the embrace of revenge and terror.

Mr. de Waal is Caucasus Editor at the Institute for War and Peace
Reporting, in London. He is co-author, with Fiona Hill and Anatol
Lieven, of a recent Carnegie Endowment for Peace policy brief, “A
Spreading Danger: Time for a New Policy Toward Chechnya.”

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