#11
Moscow Times
January 16, 2003
What Point in Referendum?
By Pavel Felgenhauer

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the deadly truck-bomb attack in Grozny on Dec. 27 that virtually leveled the pro-Moscow Chechen government building, killing or wounding almost 200 people, has not led to a change in Moscow's policies in the region. The Kremlin is continuing to press forward with a referendum in March to adopt a new Chechen constitution, to make the republic a "normal" province of the Russia Federation with limited autonomy.

An official spokesman at the main federal military base in Khankala near Grozny announced that the truck-bombing is an indication that "the rebels are now attacking their own people." The Kremlin's propaganda machine tried its best to portray the separatist movement as a spent, isolated force and the truck-bombing as a final act of desperation.

Chechnya's territory is not large -- 160 kilometers from north to south and 80 from east to west. During the wars and with the constant lawlessness of the 1990s, virtually all the Russians that settled in Chechnya during tsarist and Soviet times left -- together with a sizable portion of the Chechen population -- to become refugees inside Russia proper.

The remaining population is very close-knit. One would think that Chechens well know the true organizers of the truck-bombing in Grozny.

But there have been no arrests and the Russian authorities seem to be clueless as to who organized the attack and how. The Russian military has instead been pointing the finger in the general direction of Chechen separatist President Aslan Maskhadov and the notorious warlord Shamil Basayev.

Maskhadov and Basayev have been accused of other vicious crimes for many years. Yet they are still free to move and operate within Chechnya, which is occupied by some 80,000 Russian servicemen. The protection enjoyed by the separatist leaders under conditions of very harsh military occupation seems to indicate that the rebels are not isolated. It is the Russian "victors" and their Chechen lackeys that are under siege.

There were no mass protests after the truck-bombing either in Grozny or in the Chechen refugee camps in neighboring Ingushetia, although Chechens have often in the past protested publicly against Russian military zachistki of villages and other such outrages.

The so-called Chechen government is in fact run by Russians appointed by Moscow, with ethnic Chechens acting as figureheads. This week the Kremlin-appointed head of the Chechen administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, attempted to appoint a new finance minister when the previous one -- an ethnic Russian -- resigned. Chechnya's Prime Minister Mikhail Babich (also Russian) resisted the appointment, accusing Kadyrov of overstepping his authority.

The prosecutor general of Chechnya (again, a Russian) publicly supported Babich, acknowledging the existence of a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin that all appointments in Chechnya are to be made only by the Kremlin.

In 1995, Babich took part in the war in Chechnya as a military officer. At the time of his appointment as prime minister, he was under investigation on two counts of embezzling federal budget funds. This is in fact typical: Many Russian military, security and police officers (and civil administrators) are "induced" to go and risk their lives serving in Chechnya in order to make good for previous wrong-doings and, in some cases, to avoid prosecution or imprisonment.

Today, all Chechens -- including the pro-Moscow ones -- are indiscriminately considered to be potential terrorists by the Russian authorities. A close friend of mine, a high-ranking businessman in a prominent Russian company, recently wanted to employ an ethnic Chechen business-school graduate. The young man and his qualifications fitted the job, but his nationality did not.

The CEO of the company where my friend works explained that if you employ an ethnic Chechen in Moscow, you have to report to the security authorities each month about his activities, and if a Chechen employee does something wrong, the Moscow authorities will hold the company responsible.

The referendum to link Chechnya forever to Russia is a pointless exercise, if Chechens are in any case treated as unwanted foreigners. Their situation, in many respects, is worse than that of Jews in Soviet times. The government building in Grozny is being rebuilt after the bombing with new fortifications, including reinforced concrete gun positions. It seems that Russians and Chechens are settling in for the long haul.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.

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