Russia’s Gridlock in Chechnya: ‘Normalization’ or Deterioration?

 

Svante E. Cornell*

OSCE Yearbook 2004, edeited by Ursel Schlichting, Hamburg: Institute for Peace Research and Security, 2005, pp. 267-276.

 

While Russian President Vladimir Putin has been arguing for several years that the war in Chechnya is an anti-terrorist operation and that the situation in the war-torn republic is normalizing, the events of Spring and Summer 2004 provide ample evidence that the Russian official description of the situation is increasingly at variance with reality. The killing of Chechnya’s pro-Russian President in May, the subsequent attempt to assassinate his successor, and the daring rebel raid on the capital of the neighboring republic of Ingushetia are only the most obvious and spectacular illustration of the fact that Russia is failing to win the war in Chechnya. In fact, it is increasingly clear that Russia’s strategy of trying to turn the war into an intra-Chechen confrontation is not leading to the desired results. Far from it, the instability in Chechnya has become endemic as the state of war has led to a process of “Afghanization” of Chechnya with a collapse of the fabric of society, providing a fertile ground for extremism and militancy. As long as the war in Chechnya goes on and Russia seeks a solution only through military means and repression, the security situation in the North Caucasus will continue to deteriorate.

An Anti-Terror Campaign?

Since the first Chechen war began in 1994, the Russian government has portrayed the war as one against bandits and Islamic fundamentalists – increasingly, especially after September 11, 2001, referred to simply as “terrorists”. Western powers long refrained from accepting the Russian position at face value, in fact seeing the conflict primarily as an ethnic war. While recognizing Russia’s territorial integrity, both western and Islamic powers saw the Chechen rebels as more or less legitimate representatives of the Chechen people, considering that current Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov was elected in elections deemed free and fair in 1997. Moreover, the international community repeatedly condemned the Russian military’s massive human rights violations in the prosecution of the war; Russia was even briefly suspended from voting in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe over its conduct in Chechnya.

During the course of the second Chechen war, which began in October 1999 and rages to this day, there has been increasing concern of the radicalization of parts of the Chechen resistance movement and its links to extremist Islamic groups in the Middle East.  September 11 the introduced a new paradigm into world politics, and Chechnya has since been one of the areas most affected by the increased global political focus on terrorism. Immediately after the terrorist attacks on the United States, the Russian leadership began drawing comparisons between the attacks and the situation in Chechnya. Only hours after the collapse of the World Trade Centers, Russian State television broadcast a statement by President Vladimir Putin expressing solidarity with the American people, but also reminding the audience of Russia’s earlier warnings of the common threat of ‘Islamic Fundamentalism’. This marked the beginning of a strategy aiming to capitalize on the tragic attacks on America by highlighting the alleged parallels between the attacks on the U.S. and the situation in Chechnya. ‘The Russian people understand the American people better than anyone else, having experienced terrorism first-hand’, president Putin said the day after the attacks.[1]

This turned out to be the harbinger of a diplomatic campaign targeted at western countries, that was intended to shore up legitimacy, if not support, for the Russian army’s violent crackdown in Chechnya.[2] This campaign was part and parcel of a five-step strategy to reduce the negative fallout of the war in Chechnya. The first component of that strategy had been to isolate the conflict zone and prevent both Russian and international media from reporting on the conflict independently. The kidnapping of Andriy Babitzky, a reporter for Radio Liberty, early on served as a warning for journalists of the consequences of ignoring Moscow’s rules on reporting the conflict. Since then, only a few journalists have actually been able to provide independent reporting from Chechnya. Most prominent have been Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and French writer Anne Nivat.  The second prong in the strategy was to rename the conflict: instead of a ‘war’, it was an ‘anti-terrorist operation’. Third, and stemming directly from this, Russia sought to discredit the Chechen struggle and undermine its leadership by accusing them individually and collectively of involvement with terrorism. Russia’s campaign against Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov’s chief negotiator, Akhmed Zakayev, is one example of this. This nevertheless backfired as first Denmark and then Great Britain refused to extradite Zakayev to Russia, Great Britain instead providing him with political asylum. Zakayev’s freedom to travel nevertheless remains restricted as long as Russia’s Interpol warrant on him remains in place. Fourth, Russia sought to ‘Chechenize’ the conflict and turn it into an intra-Chechen confrontation by setting up a and arming a brutal but ethnically Chechen puppet regime in Grozny, under the former Mufti of the republic, Akhmad Kadyrov. This would reduce Russian casualties and enable hostilities to be depicted as a war between Chechen factions that Russia was helping to stabilize. Fifth, after branding the war as an anti-terrorist campaign, discrediting the rebel leadership, and trying to turn the war into a civil war among Chechens, Russia declared that the war is over. As will be seen below, this is increasingly difficult to argue.

Whereas European Countries and the United States have kept a moderate but noticeable level of criticism against Russia’s massive human rights violations in Chechnya during both the first war in 1994-1996 and the present one, Russia has had a limited success in convincing western observers it is not fighting a people, but terrorists.[3] The first achievement in this campaign was the statement made by German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder during Putin’s state visit to Berlin on September 25 that ‘Regarding Chechnya, there will be and must be a more differentiated evaluation in world opinion.’[4] This was followed by U.S. President Bush’s statement in which he demanded Chechen forces sever links to terrorist forces, including Bin Laden.[5] On the whole, the 11 September attacks have given Russia a possibility to reshape its relations with Europe and the U.S., as evidenced by the new climate of relations between Russia and the European Union. In an atmosphere of increased cooperation between Russia and the west, with American need for Russian intelligence and cooperation in Afghanistan, a halt to criticism on Chechnya has become the foremost price Russia has managed to extract from its cooperation with the west. Following a tacit acceptance of his anti-terrorist agenda, President Putin has since 2002 moved on to claim that the war in Chechnya is over and that a process of return to normality is under way, with the reconstruction of Chechnya. Indeed, for a time Russia managed to keep down the level of the conflict, which was gradually turning into a low-intensity confrontation. Meanwhile, in 2003, Russia tried to physically decimate the Chechen leadership by eliminating some of its leading figures, such as field commander Ruslan Gelayev, the Islamist Mujahideen commander Abu al-Walid, and exiled Chechen former interim President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who was killed by Russian agents in Qatar. However, with the increase of both suicide operations during 2003-2004 and in 2004 also an increase in hostilities inside Chechnya, the Russian argument that the war is over does not stand up to scrutiny.

The War’s Human Toll and the Roots of Extremism

The extremist-terrorist dimension of the conflict in Chechnya is a distinctively alien phenomenon, grafted upon the Chechen struggle, and is a result of the war, and not, as Moscow argues, a cause of the conflict. Foreign Islamic radicals gained ground in Chechnya only after the first war, in the anarchy that followed the total destruction of Chechnya in 1994-96. Having no natural breeding ground in Chechen society, it is the war that is making it possible for the foreign radical groups to thrive in Chechnya. Even during the chaotic period of de facto Chechen independence in 1996-99, the radicals were isolated to a small area in southeastern Chechnya. President Maskhadov in 1999 even warned Moscow of their possible intentions and asked for help from Moscow to combat them, but received no response.[6]

The “Afghanization” of Chechnya

More importantly, it is the war that is enabling the radicals to attract followers in Chechnya. However minor their following may be at present, it is clearly rising, in a process that can be termed the “Afghanization of Chechnya”. This analogy of Afghanistan in the early 1990s is illustrative as it is an example of how warfare leads to the destruction of the fabric of a society. Most civil wars shake society and endanger the lives of citizens during the wartime. Yet that does not necessarily mean that war destroys the possibility to restore peaceful conditions of life relatively rapidly after hostilities cease. The economic and psychological effects of the war may be tremendous, but a basic economy, basic education, health care, social norms of behavior, etc. remain. In sum, the social capital of the society remains in place. However, some conflicts, due to their brutality and to the length of war, do destroy the very foundations of society. Afghanistan is a prominent example. Basically the entire population of Afghanistan was affected directly by 23 years of war. Of a population of roughly 20 million, an approximate 1,5-2 million were killed; a similar number wounded or maimed; 6 million made refugees in other countries, and several million forced into internal displacement. Over 50% of the population was directly affected by death, injury, or displacement. Beyond this staggering human toll, the very infrastructure of society was destroyed. Materially, the communication systems, from roads to telecommunications, were destroyed; the health care and educational systems wiped out. Economic livelihood was made dangerous and sometimes impossible because of the 10 million landmines that were distributed; the law and order system broke down in the early 1990s, to be replaced first by anarchy and lawlessness with the “Kalashnikov culture” spreading in the country. Pillage, killings, and rape were no longer exceptional events. the very emergence of the Taliban also testified to the destruction of both traditional and modern social norms. The tribal structures of authority were undermined through the war; the traditionally tolerant Afghan society was invaded by alien, extremist ideas that gained dominance, a process that only culminated with the Taliban – a group originating in the refugee communities in Iran and especially in Pakistan, young men that never knew peace, that grew up in war and knew nothing but war. Whatever we think of the Taliban’s policies or worldview, we cannot ignore the fact that their existence and their way of thinking was a direct product of the war that had devastated their families, their lives, and put them in exile where they were taken care of by extremist militias that inculcated them with their austere and violent-prone beliefs.

The dire picture of Afghanistan unfortunately applies to Chechnya in far too many ways. In terms of the human toll of the war, a similar share of Chechnya’s population has been killed – perhaps over 100,000 people. As in Afghanistan, over half of the Chechen population has been affected by death, injury, or displacement. Likewise, the extreme brutality of the Russian military’s campaign in Chechnya has destroyed the foundation of society in Chechnya. People are being killed, maimed, abducted, tortured and raped at will by the authorities that are supposed to uphold law and order; no one is safe at any time in Chechnya. The foundations for an economy have also been destroyed. The destruction of Chechnya’s infrastructure need no mention; the mere observation of a satellite picture of Grozny in 1994 and comparing it to one taken in 2002 illustrates the destruction. In the countryside, agriculture has been destroyed as there is a general absence of livestock and seeds; livestock has either died from war or been deliberately killed by Russian forces. The oil economy that existed has been for the most part physically eliminated.

The Destruction of a Generation

A generation of Chechens is growing up either in destroyed villages in Chechnya under the constant threat of mopping-up operations or Zachistkas, or in refugee camps in Ingushetia. This generation, much like the Afghans in refugee camps outside Quetta or Peshawar, is growing up without any conceivable hope for a normal life in the future. As Anna Politkovskaya puts it while retelling her encounter with one of the hostage takers in Moscow in October 2002,

This is a certain generation of modern Chechens. Bakar is one of those who has known nothing but a machinegun and the forest for the last decade, and before that he'd only just finished school. And so, gradually, the forest became the only life that is possible.[7]

The young generation of Chechens may already be marked beyond repair. Psychologists have noted the difference between children coming to refugee camps in Ingushetia at the beginning of the war in 1999 and those that left Chechnya during the war. Whereas ‘it was possible to protect the first group from severe traumatic situations’, the second group tends ‘to be withdrawn, irritable, quick to take offence or aggressive’.[8] A recent WHO study concluded that 86% of the Chechen population studied suffered from physical or emotional distress, and 31% from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Whether or not these figures are accurate, it is obvious that the psychological consequences of the war on the adult population, not to mention the children of Chechnya, has long since reached crisis proportions. The point is that among this generation of Chechens, the percentage that will be attracted to radical Islamic beliefs will almost certainly be considerably higher than among current fighters.

Russia’s ‘normalization’ seems to have little effect, either on the war or on the civilian population. In April 2004, four human rights groups issued a joint statement, concluding that the situation of civilians was worsening, not improving. 80 people were abducted, mainly by pro-Russian Chechen groups, during the first three months of 2004. Russian security services began explicitly targeting widows of killed Chechen resistance fighters, as they have come to be seen as potential suicide bombers.[9]

All but Normal: The Resurgence of Violence

The experience of the past few months shows that the ills affecting Chechnya seem to be intensifying and spreading. Large Chechen refugee population have been living in refugee camps in Ingushetia for several years, and increasingly subjected to pressure to return to Chechnya as a part of Russia’s policy of normalization. In simple terms, Russia needed refugees to return to Chechnya for its argument of a normalization of the situation in Chechnya to be credible. The conditions in Chechnya nevertheless led refugees to adamantly refuse to return. Moreover, repression in the republic grew in the first half of 2004, as increasing numbers of civilians were abducted or disappeared, as in Chechnya, and media censorship intensified.[10]

The Murder of Akhmad Kadyrov

On May 9, pro-Russian Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov was killed by bomb buried in the concrete under the VIP section of the Grozny stadium, as Kadyrov was attending a Victory day parade. The killing was a severe blow for President Vladimir Putin, whose policy had been to eliminate all possible rivals to Kadyrov and rely on him for Russian control over Chechnya. Simultaneously, Kadyrov’s position had become so strong that Russian analysts had begun to worry about a possible future confrontation between Kadyrov and Russia.[11] Indeed, shortly before the assassination, Kadyrov and his son, who headed the dreaded presidential guards, had talked about the need for Russian troops to leave Chechnya. After the killing, rebel attacks greatly intensified, leading Russian observers to state that the situation had reverted to that two or three years earlier.[12] Attacks were now taking place inside the capital Grozny again.[13] On July 13, rebels narrowly failed to assassinate the interim President of Chechnya, Sergei Abramov, in the capital Grozny, while killing his bodyguard.[14]

The War Spreads: A Daring Raid in Ingushetia

Finally, on June 21, armed guerrillas attacked the headquarters of the Interior Ministry in Ingushetia and several other government buildings and official structures in several towns. This was the first large-scale rebel infantry attack in several years, and the first on a territory outside Chechnya since 1999. 62 policemen and officials were killed, with numerous civilians. Moreover, by being a direct assault rather than a hit-and-run action of a bombing, the attack proved that the rebel forces possess planning and coordination capabilities that many observers thought they were now incapable of. Worse for the Kremlin, investigations into the raid showed that it was in all likelihood an operation with a majority of Ingush, not Chechen participants.[15] While the details of the raid remain murky, the most plausible evidence suggest that most participants were Ingush that had left to fight in Chechnya, combined with a growing number of young Ingush who had turned to Islamic militancy as a result of the poverty, corruption, and increasingly harsh repression in the republic since the presidency of Ingushetia was taken over by a former Federal Security Service officer, Murat Zyazikov. Following the raid, the Ingush authorities continuous neglect of rising Islamic militancy in the republic has been aired, including by Ingush mufti Magomed-Hadji Albogachiev, who resigned shortly after the events. A Chechen website later reported that Ingush rebels had declared a Jihad against the republican authorities, implying that the war in Chechnya, far from normalizing, may be turning into a larger Chechen-Ingush war.[16]

Conclusion

The longer the war goes on, the longer the Russian brutality continues, the more recruits the Islamic radicals will find in the future. Russia would argue that precisely because Chechnya is becoming a hotbed of extremism, it needs to destroy the “terrorists” and restore order in Chechnya. But for over three years, Russia has been fighting this war, and is no closer to victory than it was at the outset. And as long as Moscow does not win the war, it will continue to lose the war. It is by now clear, after the Russian defeat in 1996 and the current stalemate, that Russia is unable to win the war, which risks spreading outside Chechnya due to the heavy-handed policies of the Russian government in the North Caucasus. The increase in fighting in 2004 and the increasingly daring raids and attacks that the rebels are able to mount indicates that the war in Chechnya is no sense about to abate. As long as the war goes on, the spiral of violence will continue, and the Chechen population –and perhaps other North Caucasian populations – will become increasingly radicalized.

The obvious conclusion of an analysis of the situation in Chechnya is that the war taking place is not an anti-terrorist operation but a brutal war against an entire people, which generates anarchy and chaos in which the criminalization of all fighting forces can take place. In turn, the war allows for Islamic extremists alien to Chechnya to find a base there and in the North Caucasus in general, and to gradually influence a generation growing up with little or no hope for their future. Russia’s war in Chechnya cannot fail to create extremism and sow the seeds of terrorism. The war that Russia is portraying as a war on ‘Islamic terrorism’ is hence based on allegations that do not stand up to scrutiny. Evidence presented by Human Rights organizations make it abundantly clear that Russia is pursuing a war in Chechnya that is exacting a high toll on the local population. The indiscriminate bombings of Chechen villages, the use of non-conventional weapons such as vacuum bombs, the systematic use of concentration camps, and the brutality of the “Zachistkas” all indicate that this is not an anti-terrorist operation but a war against an entire people.

Moscow’s response to the crisis in Summer 2004 indicates little acceptance of this reality. It is continuing the same policy of seeking to Chechenize the conflict and support Chechen formations that are to take over the fighting with the rebels. As such, the Kremlin is seeking simply to replace Kadyrov with the current Interior Minister of Chechnya, Alu Alkhanov. Credible and more neutral candidates are being taken of the ballot by a variety of administrative measures, and it was hence clear long before the August 29 elections that the elections would be anything but free and fair, implying an appointment by Moscow of the next Chechen leader. As a result, Russia will once again have a puppet in Chechnya that may say the right things to Moscow, but it is equally clear that this leadership will not be seen as legitimate by the Chechen population. As long as that is the case, there is no prospect for true normalization in Chechnya.