Why the West allows Russia to butcher Chechens
By Norm Dixon
"Troops descended on the town ... and detained at least a dozen men and 20 cars ... Villagers had a similar wake-up call two days earlier when ... troops swept in and beat or harassed dozens of unarmed residents. Nearly 60 people were detained ... Nearly all male refugees in town were arrested ... The images remain: the 40-foot crater in the middle of a food market, laughing children who went out for water and came back screaming ... The greatest evil: the countless deaths and wounding of soldiers and civilians every day ... there is no one to count or verify the casualties" — a report from Pristina, Kosova, last year? No, from Grozny in Chechnya, in January.
Since September, unchallenged by anti-aircraft defence systems, Russian warplanes and helicopter gun ships have been making up to 100 bombing sorties a day over Grozny and Chechnya's southern mountains. Artillery shells, bombs and missiles have rained down on Grozny without let-up since Christmas Day. The sickening dull thud of exploding Scud and Grad missiles reverberate through the apartment buildings of Grozny.
Beneath the buildings, up to 40,000 residents — mainly old people, many ethnic Russians — shelter in basements hoping that the next thud they hear won't be their last. As many as 250,000 refugees have streamed into the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia since September.
While graphic descriptions of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic's terror against the Kosovans were used by the US to justify a vicious NATO air-war against Belgrade in the name of "humanitarianism" and "respect for human rights", Washington's reaction to the Russian military's brutal campaign to obliterate the independence of Chechnya — and its people — cannot have been more different.
Russia's lightning invasion of Chechnya was met with virtual silence from the West. Then, as the conflict dragged on, Washington began to issue diplomatic rebukes of Moscow's "excessive" and "disproportionate" use of force.
US criticisms have recently become louder and more insistent — partly due to pressure from international public concern at scale of Russia's violence and the public's growing recognition of the obvious hypocrisy of the West's inaction when compared to its reaction to Kosova.
However, Western leaders have bent over backwards to reassure Russia's leaders that no specific action will be taken to end the carnage against the Chechens. Criticism of Moscow's military tactics is routinely tempered with a defence of Russia's right to fight and defeat "international terrorism".
Washington's real concern
Acting US secretary of state Strobe Talbot stated on October 22 that Washington's main concern was that the "increasing loss of civilian life further jeopardises the security and stability of the region" and raises concern "in the US and elsewhere about the prospects for a peaceful settlement of the conflict".
Talbot said that Russia's last war in Chechnya in 1994-96 demonstrated that there cannot be a "purely military solution to the problem and that there must be a vigorous and conscientious effort to engage in a serious political dialogue ... We call on the Russian government and responsible Chechen leaders to open a political dialogue urgently in the interests of the right of the Chechen people to a normal, peaceful life, in the interest of regional peace and security and in the interest of Russia's continuing reform."
Talbot's message was that while Washington supports Moscow's efforts to crush the Chechen people's attempt to exercise their right to national self-determination, it is concerned that the way Moscow is going about it cannot succeed.
More worrying for Washington is the likelihood that Moscow's brutal sledgehammer tactics will result — and probably already has — in the most militant Islamic elements within the Chechen liberation movement winning the allegiance of a large number of Chechens and taking control of the independence movement. Washington fears that "responsible" Chechen leaders, such as President Maskhadov, who might be prepared to compromise with Moscow, will be sidelined.
Not only would a militant Islamic leadership be beyond the control of both the US and Russia — perhaps turning to "rogue" states like Iran and Afghanistan for political, military and economic support — but Washington is afraid that its intransigent fight for independence will win adherents among the masses of the oil-rich newly independent Caucasus and Central Asian republics.
But Washington's overriding concern is, in the words of Talbot, Russia's "continuing reform" (translation: restoration and entrenchment of capitalism).
Another defeat in Chechnya like that in 1994-96 could result in the serious destabilising of the Russian political establishment. At a minimum, acting president Vladimir Putin may be defeated — or fail to win convincingly — at the March presidential election, leaving Russia without a viable successor to Boris Yeltsin. A military defeat could trigger mass social unrest.
Since September, Russian officials have sought to maintain the Russian people's support for the war by whipping up Russian nationalism and anti-Chechen racism, exploiting outrage over a series of "terrorist" bombings in Moscow (immediately blamed on Chechen forces, but widely believed to have been masterminded by Russia's own security establishment), systematically concealing the number of Russian troop casualties and promising a quick victory.
But as the Chechen war has dragged on, it has become increasingly difficult to hide the truth. Soldiers have openly contradicted the official count and more families are learning of the deaths of their sons and fathers.
Russian officials, after months of stonewalling, admitted on January 26 that 1055 troops had been killed and 3000 injured in close-contact fire-fights with small bands of highly motivated Chechen guerillas. Unofficial estimates put the true toll at around twice that. On February 1, a presidential decree calling up 20,000 military reservists came into effect, bolstering doubts about the military's official casualty figures.
No change
While press coverage of US secretary of state Madeleine Albright's most recent forthright criticism of Russia's slaughter in Chechnya may have given the impression that Washington has changed its position on the war, a speech she delivered at the Diplomatic Academy in Moscow on February 2 shows that this is not the case.
"No one questions Russia's responsibility, even obligation, to combat insurgency and terror within its borders", Albright reassured the Russian elite.
"But the world increasingly has questioned doing so at such a high cost in innocent human lives and suffering, and such high cost to Russia's international standing. These tactics will not set the stage for building a peaceful, prosperous Chechnya within the Russian Federation. Only a political resolution of the conflict will do that. As long as fighting continues, it will serve as a magnet for extremism that could one day risk the stability of the entire region."
Some on the left, pointing to Washington's vigorous attempts to detach the oil-rich Caucasus and Central Asian republics from Russia's sphere of influence as evidence, claim that the US supports Chechnya's attempts at independence, and that the Chechen independence movement is a "puppet" of Washington. Reality does not bear this out.
Since Chechnya won its de facto independence in 1996, the West has continued to recognise the republic as part of Russia. The US and Europe have been complicit in Russia's blockade against the rebel territory. The move in August by some militant Chechen fighters to spread the struggle to neighbouring Dagestan — the action that Moscow seized upon to relaunch its war against Chechnya — was motivated by the need gain access to the Caspian Sea to break this crippling blockade.
US imperialism is not so much attempting to "Balkanise" Russia as to convince its capitalist leaders to accept the reality of the post-Cold War, US-dominated new world order and Russia's place within it.
Recognising Russia's enormous diplomatic and military weight, the US is offering Russia a role as junior partner in the region, with certain policing responsibilities. When Yeltsin announced a Russian version of the "Monroe Doctrine" in 1994, Washington did not object; when Moscow put this into effect in Chechnya in 1994-96 and again last September, the West gave the nod. Russia's participation, albeit with caveats and disagreements, in US imperialism's operations in Bosnia and Kosova bears this out.
In her February 2 speech in Moscow, Albright renewed Washington's offer: "America and Russia have enough major interests in common to surmount our disagreements and work together in dealing with the biggest dangers and opportunities we face in the new century ... In the Balkans, the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia ... the sources [of potential instability] are similar: ethnic hatred, fanaticism, economic hopelessness and too little democracy. And the tensions they spawn create fertile breeding grounds for many forms of organised thuggery ...
"In avoiding such developments, [the] US and Russia both have a clear stake in stability in Kosovo, in a Middle East transformed by peace, and in a lasting settlement of the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh. In each of these areas, Russia and the United States have worked together to seek sound solutions ... In Kosovo, we had very strong disagreements but our nations knew they had an interest in ending conflict and ushering in an era of stability in the Balkans. Today, our soldiers serve alongside one another to give peace the best possible chance ...
"Such cooperation illustrates how the United States and Russia can also work together with the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia. These sovereign states face the quadruple challenge of protecting their independence, creating modern political institutions, building prosperity, and maintaining stability. The fact that many of them border on a region to the south that has been an exporter of extremism and terror adds to the challenges they face.
"Russia and the United States have much to gain, and nothing to lose, from the success of the strategies that these states have chosen. These countries believe they need access to international markets for their exports, especially energy and natural resources; they want to be part of international institutions; and they seek normal, mutually beneficial relations with their neighbours.
"In each of the vital policy areas that I have just discussed, Russia and the United States have common interests. This means that there is a basis for true cooperation in each, even if differences seem at times to occupy centre stage."