The UN Commission on Human Rights has just condemned Russia for using excessive and indiscriminate force in its struggle against Chechens. The Kingdom was among the 22 countries which voted in support of a EU resolution, berating the Russian military for its ruthless behavior in Chechnya.
Russia’s actions in the Caucasus cannot, however, be viewed in isolation from history. This is not a new war. It is one that the Russians have been fighting on and off for the best part of 500 years, ever since Ivan the Terrible captured and destroyed the great Muslim city of Kazan on the Upper Volga. Spearheaded by its Cossacks, czarist armies reached the Caspian and regularly sought to press further south into the Caucasus.
Their superior armament and numbers often meant that they were able to occupy the plains and particularly the cities of Daghestan and Chechnya. However, beyond the towns, particularly in the mountains, an independent people was able to survive and flourish. The Chechens produced a succession of great leaders under whom they could unite. First there was Sheikh Mansour, who was finally defeated and captured in 1791, then there was Ghazi Mollah , who inflicted the first major defeat on a regular Russian army, which had come to the relief of a besieged Russian fort at Vnezapnaya. But the greatest Chechen leader, Sheik Shamyl, a pupil of Ghazi Mollah, fought a long war against the Russians which, before he was finally captured, caused the death of no less than half a million Russian soldiers.
The difference between the czarist Russians and the present leadership in the Kremlin, was that at least the former came to respect the courage and tenacity of their opponents. When Shamyl fell into their hands, he was treated with great honor and kept under luxurious house arrest, though far from his beloved homeland. He was even eventually permitted to leave Russia on Haj and he died in Madinah.
In sharp contrast, the modern Russians have little understanding of the vibrant culture and traditions of Chechnya. Their troops are frightened and angry at the losses inflicted by ambush and the hit-and-run tactics at which the Chechen fighters have always excelled. The only targets they can find to vent their frustration and fury upon are Chechen civilians, mostly the old and women and children. Hence the catalogue of gross and brutal behavior toward these luckless individuals.
Brutal, murderous behavior such as that just condemned by the UN is a classic sign of an occupying power which has run out of ideas and is at the end of its tether. Israel is another classic example. The Americans in Vietnam reached just such a point and the terrible massacre at Mai Lai was one of the results. The realization that the lightly armed enemy cannot be defeated, despite the huge weight of sophisticated weaponry that has been brought to bear against them, produces incoherent savagery.
The Russians cannot win in Chechnya. They have indeed, already been defeated; but, with their stolid stubbornness, they continue to hang on to the Chechen ruins that their devastating tactics have created. If there is no military solution, then peace can only come through negotiation. A just and honorable peace could restore Russia’s international reputation.
