DISCUSSION : HISTORY IN FOCUS
Chechnya in Focus - Sept 2004
What's the story?
Over 330 people, more than half of them children, were killed in the siege of School No.1 in Beslan, begun on 1st September when terrorists took control of the school buildings. Children and parents had been arriving to start a new term, and the gunmen were able to take more than 1,000 hostages. The slaughter began two days later in a sequence of events that remains confused. Special forces and policemen stormed the school after explosions and gunfire erupted from within, possibly triggered by the attempts of emergency services to recover dead bodies. Two of the 30-odd terrorists have been taken alive, the rest killed. Their exact motive and origin is still unclear, but is clearly related to Russia's bloody war in Chechnya (despite what Putin says), and possibly to Islamic fundamentalists' aspirations to create chaos in the region, from which a pan-Caucasian Muslim state could emerge.
Where?
Beslan itself is in North Ossetia, an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation. We're talking the Caucasus (south-west Russia), perhaps the most ethnically and politically complex region in the world, lying between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. It's now a patchwork of former Soviet republics. To the east of North Ossetia lies Ingushetia, mostly Muslim and ethnically similar to Chechnya: some of the terrorists are said to be Ingush. Chechnya itself is east of Ingushetia. All three are members of the Russian Federation, albeit Chechnya violently against the wishes of its majority Muslim population. Georgia, to the south, is an independent republic (and allegedly home to a Chechen guerrilla base).
The historical context
The Caucasus is one of history's turbulent meeting places of empires, religions and races. For centuries pressures came from many directions – Russians to the north, Turks from the west and Persians from the south. In 1859, after fierce resistance, the Chechens were forced to submit to Tsarist Russia. Chechnya suffered under the Bolsheviks and under Stalinism. Following World War Two Stalin accused the Chechens of collaborating with the Germans, and 500,000 were transported to Central Asia. It was 10 years before they were allowed to return.
With such an impressive catalogue of historic grievances against Russian rule, it's little surprise that as the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, Chechnya declared independence. General Dudayev became President of the new Chechen Republic, but Russia refused to recognise it. There was no immediate response though.
In 1994, Boris Yeltsin sent in troops to support the Chechen opposition to Dudayev, and re-establish the Kremlin's authority. The Russian army took the direct approach, capturing the capital Groznyy and smashing it to pieces in the process. The Chechens then launched a savage guerrilla war and the death toll on all sides rapidly mounted. Dudayev himself was killed in a Russian rocket attack, but in 1996 Yeltsin struck a deal to get out of an increasingly costly, unpopular and futile war. Chechnya became a sovereign republic within the Russian Federation. Estimated deaths vary from 20,000 to 100,000.
Recent events
In September 1999, a series of explosions destroyed apartment blocks in three Russian towns, including Moscow. More than 200 Russians were killed. Vladimir Putin, then Prime Minister and shortly to succeed Yeltsin as President, blamed Chechen separatists, and the Russian army went in again. The war continues, as do terrorist attacks on Russia and Russian targets in the northern Caucasus. Hundreds, often random civilians, have been killed by bombs. 128 Moscow theatre-goers, and 33 terrorists that took them hostage, were killed in October 2002 when Russian special forces used a nerve gas to end the siege. In August 2004 ninety people were killed when two passenger-jets were destroyed by suicide-bombers. There have been three separate suicide-bombings in Moscow in the first week of September alone.
Chechnya and many of its people have been brutalised by war. Years of conflict have shattered the country's economic infrastructure, particularly its oil fields and pipelines. Guerrilla attacks are increasingly typified by suicide attacks as Chechen resistance becomes more influenced by Muslim extremists. The helpless civilian population is subject to brutal reprisals from the occupying Russian army. Corruption and crime is rife. Presidential elections held in this climate, at the end of August 2004 to replace President Kadyrov who was assassinated in May, were never likely to be easy. As the Kremlin's man wins again amidst martial law and threats to bomb polling stations, most are dismissing them as a farce.
Who's who?
Vladimir Putin
Former KGB man and Boris Yeltsin's Prime Minister, Putin became President of Russia in 2000. His military response to the Chechen problem was initially very popular, reflecting the nation's desire for revenge against mass-murderers who blew up blocks of flats. He has since come in for criticism for the clumsy security response to recent acts of terrorism, and for the intractable, barbarous nature of the Chechen war. Currently Putin's prime concern is to make the West accept his view that Chechen and Ingush terrorists are part of the same fundamentalist Islamic threat that blows up trains in Madrid and skyscrapers in Manhattan. The horrific events at Beslan might help him in this aim, although the Whitehouse has maintained the position that Chechnya requires a political solution, not military intervention. The hypocrisy is evident to many.
Dzhokar Dudayev
First president of an independent Chechen Republic. A former Soviet air force general (the first Chechen to reach that rank), his Chechen background nevertheless gave him a certain sympathy for those fighting Moscow's control. In 1990 he ignored Soviet instructions to clamp down on Estonian nationalists. Becoming President of Chechnya in 1991, the growing reality of Chechen independence triggered a Russian invasion in 1994. In April 1996, after some international confusion, Chechen fighters confirmed that Dudayev had been killed in a Russian rocket attack.
Aslan Maskhadov
President of the 'rebel' Chechen government, the one elected in 1997 during Chechnya's brief hiatus from Russian military occupation. It was largely due to Maskhadov's ability as a chief of staff that the Russians were forced back. But in his subsequent presidency he was able to achieve neither unity nor law and order. His generalship and politics are marked by calm pragmatism. He opposes fundamental Muslims who want to establish an Islamic state in the Caucasus, which he sees as threatening many more years of war. Currently in hiding and wanted dead or alive by the Russians, they bracket him with terrorism enthusiast Basayev. This is Putin attempting to tar all his Chechen enemies with the brush of Beslan, but the reality is Maskhadov and Basayev have different aims and methods.
Shamil Basayev
A fighting man who has encouraged Chechen links to extremist Muslim groups. Initially part of Maskhadov's government, Basayev became a warlord largely independent of Maskhadov. Not for him a desk job in Groznyy: leading Islamic guerrillas into neighbouring Dagestan to ethnically cleanse it of Russians was much more his style. Claimed responsibility for the theatre attack in Moscow in October 2002. Very much top of Putin's hit list, there are long odds on Basayev dying peacefully in bed.
Ahmed Zakaev
Currently enjoying asylum in England and writing columns for the Guardian newspaper, Zakaev was the deputy prime minister in the 'rebel' government of Chechnya (elected in 1997). The Russians regard him as a spokesperson for Chechen terrorists and would like to get hold of him.
Alu Alkhanov
The Kremlin-backed candidate for President of Chechnya, overwhelmingly 'elected' to power in August 2004 after the last one was blown up in May. It's his job to try to restore law and order to Chechnya, in the face of abductions, murders, terrorism and the brutality of a Russian army over which he has little authority. The Chechen resistance will obviously want him dead pronto. A job with real challenges.
Casually drop into conversation
- Leo Tolstoy, famous for writing the sizeable 'War and Peace' and having a very low opinion of Shakespeare, served as a young officer in the Russian army. He campaigned in the Caucasus in the period when Chechnya was first conquered, in the 1850s. He wrote a short story based on his experiences, 'The Raid'. It's quite good, but there's not much action.
- Chechnya, like much of the Caucasus, is full of oil. But when the Russians flattened Groznyy in 1994, they destroyed much of the industry's infrastructure. Then they came back again in 1999 and flattened what was left. Mineral wealth and strategic position are some of the reasons Russia would like to keep its hands on Chechnya.
- Following World War Two, Stalin accused the Chechens and Ingush of collaborating with the Germans, who had occupied the region in 1942. (The Germans were after the oil, but what they got was Stalingrad.) Stalin's punishment was typically Soviet in its scale - the entire population (about half a million people) was deported to Kazakhstan to work on collective farms. Many Chechen leaders grew up in Kazakhstan, including Basayev and Maskhadov.