Fast ride to hell
How many times this pathetic scenario has to be repeated
to realize that wars such as
the one in Chechnya are not winnable?
September 17, 2004
iranian.com
The brutal war of attrition in Chechnya in the past 10 years has
been mostly observed in North America from a distance. Even after
9/11 when all kinds of unsavory states jumped on the bandwagon
of the 'global war on terror' in order to suppress
internal insurrections, the savage conflict in Chechnya was registered
in the media only when spectacular actions such as the hostage
taking at the Moscow theater took place.
The recent school hostage
taking in Beslan and its bloody aftermath though has been everywhere
on the American media. Personal accounts and interviews with the
survivors and countless analyses are splashed on CNN and other
networks. The fact that this time children were the main targets
and the majority of the victims no doubt has played a role in the
intensity of media coverage. But the cynic in me tends to think
that election year politics in the US may have played even a bigger
role.
The American presidential election is being contested mostly
on the security issue and the Beslan school tragedy provides
all the elements of a made to order cautionary tale, from the horrible
pictures of terrorized semi naked children to the black shrouded,
demonic images of seemingly inhuman Moslem terrorists ready to
unleash apocalypse. The message is clear. Do you want this to happen
in your backyard? If no, then vote George Bush; vote Vladimir Putin;
vote Ariel Sharon; keep the military junta in Algeria in power.
The Beslan tragedy has indeed made strange bed fellows of the Russians
and the Israelis, traditionally not the best of friends on account
of hundreds of years of anti-Semitism and countless pogroms.
But
such is the state of the world right now. Fifteen years ago, when
the Cold War was still the dominant geopolitical fact of life in
the world, the conflict in Chechnya would have been viewed very
differently. The same so-called black widows who held the triggers
to the bombs in the Belsan school would have been valorized in
the Western media as heroines, their personal histories revealed
in glossy specials by Christian Amanpour & Co.
But the Chechens
have the bad fortune of being on the wrong side of history now
- much like the Kurds were 20 years ago - for the Russians do not
have any more right to be in Chechnya than they did in Georgia,
Lithuania or Ukraine.
The fact that Stalin did not bestow upon
the Chechens the status of a distinct soviet republic does not
make them any less a nation than Estonia or Latvia. The Chechens
are an ethnically distinct group of people with a distinct territory
and religion who were occupied and forced into the Russian empire
through conquest and oppression.
The real question, the one no
one seems to want to ask is this: why doesn't Russia get
the hell out of Chechnya? How many times this pathetic scenario
has to be repeated to former empires for likes of Putin to realize
that wars such as the one in Chechnya or the one his predecessors
fought in Afghanistan (as well the one the French fought in Indochina
and Algeria and the Americans in Vietnam and increasingly now
in Iraq) is not winnable? Unless you're willing to wipe out
the entire population or are committed to an ongoing savage war
of peace (as are the Israelis)?
On the surface, Putin's
tough talking posturing seems to be aiming at a bankrupt country
(morally, economically, socially) nostalgic for a time when 'they
were great'; a has-been nation now practically run by a ruthless
organized crime under a form of gangster capitalism where dog-eat-dog
is the national mantra; a country incapable of paying its miners,
one whose most impressive export is tall, elegant female tennis
players.  But scratch the surface of Putin's demagogic populism
and the old mammon may be at play again. Money, in the form of
Chechnya's precious oil and mineral deposits and its strategic
importance for Russia to control the Caucuses and the access to
Caspian Sea oil; specifically, a major oil pipeline which carries
oil from fields in Baku on the Caspian Sea and Chechnya toward
the Ukraine. Grozny has a major oil refinery along this pipeline.
For Russia it is important that the oil pipelines and routes they
take to the Western markets also meet their needs. However, there
are various other pipelines in discussion that does not involve
Russia. As long as Chechnya remains part of Russia, Moscow will
have a role in determining the future of oil in Eurasia. But what
price must the poor destitute Russians in Beslan and the brutalized
and devastated Chechens in Grozny pay for the riches of Russian
oil oligarchy?
None of this is to condone what happened in Beslan, far from it.
No doubt the Chechens, much as the Kosovars did before them in
former Yugoslavia, have been hitting their heads against the wall
in their struggle for independence. The Russian response has been
extremely brutal in Chechnya. The accounts of gross violations
of human rights by Russian military are a matter of record. When
it came to Chechnya the Russians seemed to draw the line. No talk
of autonomy or sharing of powers was acceptable, notwithstanding
Mr. Putin's recent rhetoric.
Throughout the first years
of the Chechyn war the outside world looked on with ambivalence.
Moscow pointed fingers at 'external forces' (Western)
accusing them of promoting destability of the region, to ensure
a split from Russia. Supposedly this would allow the Western powers
to benefit from a smaller, weaker nation (if Chechnya is successful)
that will also make it easier for the West to ensure the resources
they want can be further controlled.
But after 9/11 with Russia
claiming to fight its own war on terrorism, it seems as though
western leaders, especially Americans, have given tacit support
to Putin. This marginalization by the outside world and Russia's
unbending approach has no doubt played a role in pushing a certain
segment of Chechen population into Islamic militancy and increasingly
desperate and brutal tactics against Russian civilians.
But is
the Chechen maximalists' dream of a total independence worth
the price the population has been asked to pay? Would their precious
independent Chechnya justify the atrocities committed against Russian
civilians? Have the Chechen militants bothered asking their people
if they are willing to be partners in this horrific campaign? Is
Chechen independence worth selling its soul to fundamentalism?
And what if the Chechens forced the Russia's hand and Mr.
Putin blinked first? What would they achieve?
 A terrorized population
traumatized for decades in a ruined country bereft of any democratic
institutions and most likely run by despots and gangsters. So
let's shed a tear for the up to 80,000 Chechen civilians killed
in the
past 10 years along with the innocents in Beslan and hope the
parties can put the brakes on their fast ride to hell and find
room for
compromise.
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