Russia’s savage military campaign to suppress the Chechens is being ratcheted up still further, while the Kremlin uses international distaste for terrorism to bring about the arrest of a leading Chechen envoy attending a conference in Denmark.
Moscow’s troops have sealed off six refugee camps with some 100,000 occupants in the Russian-run Republic of Ingushetia on Chechnya’s Western border. There are reports that snatch squads have begun to enter the camps, seizing young men of military age, who are being taken away apparently for interrogation. Meanwhile, Danish authorities were convinced by the Russians to arrest and detain Chechen diplomat Akhmed Zakayev on suspicion of his involvement in last week’s seizure of a Moscow theater. At a news conference yesterday, the Russians displayed weaponry they said was found in the theater after its fatal storming. They also claimed to have telephone taps that proved that Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov was directly behind the terror attack. The fur of the Russian bear has long been matted with Chechen blood. Tragically, world opinion may not be too bothered that these latest moves against the Chechen are but the continuation of a struggle that Vladimir Putin himself restarted in 1998.
Ignoring renewed Russian aggression against Chechnya will be a bad mistake, not just for the long-suffering Chechens but also for the Russians themselves. Russia cannot crush Chechen resistance once and for all. The nature of the terrain, coupled with the no less rugged nature of the people it is fighting there, ma The only way the Russians can regain anything from this struggle, even if it is only their dignity, will be through negotiation. Yet the Kremlin refuses to talk, claiming in its defense that there is no one with whom it can talk. Russian loathing for Maskhadov may be considerable. It may be part of their strategy to cast the Chechen president as the evil hand behind all Chechen terror groups, in much the way that the Israelis seek to present Yasser Arafat as the direct instigator of Hamas and Abu Jihad onslaughts.
But the Russians are wrong to believe that there are no Chechen moderates and no preliminary grounds on which negotiations could at least begin. The Chechens as a whole may be a proud and stubborn people, but few of them can really relish the continuation of a struggle that has devastated their country to an awesome degree. Some form of autonomy under Russian rule might now be acceptable, at least in the medium term. Such a deal which would probably have to be underwritten by outside powers, include substantial international aid flows to rebuild the shattered infrastructure, and include a date on which Chechens might have the opportunity to vote on their future relationship with Russia.
The tragedy is that with every further assault on the Chechen people as a whole, whether within or without the country’s borders, the moderate position is becoming increasingly hard to sustain. Though Chechens must ache for peace and justice with the same intensity as Palestinians, their fury at their continued treatment can make any form of moderation seem to be a form of betrayal. It will be a brave Chechen in the current time who will put forward the arguments of compromise.
