#9 - RW 274
Moscow Times
September 18, 2003
How to Manage Chechnya
By Pavel Felgenhauer

Over the past few years, the Kremlin has been extremely successful in creating a system of "managed democracy" throughout Russia. Now the same tactic is being applied to Chechnya in an attempt to stabilize the rebel republic where federal forces have been fighting an unsuccessful anti-guerrilla campaign.

After assuming supreme power in 2000, President Vladimir Putin recreated a Soviet-style "executive vertical," although elections were not abandoned. In the Soviet Union, there were also regular "elections" in which the candidates, chosen by the Communist Party, were elected with 99 to 100 percent majorities.

Now we have a multiparty system, but since 2000 seriously contested elections have become extremely rare. By and large, Kremlin-selected favorites get elected. Candidates who threaten this corrupt election process are either "persuaded" to leave the race or simply get disqualified.

Kremlin-controlled television is the main source of information for the majority of citizens and is used to promote favored candidates and parties. Shameless propaganda and brainwashing has replaced journalistic news reporting, comment and analysis.

A typical Russian television news program begins with several reports on Putin, the great leader, meeting dignitaries, bureaucrats or the working masses and uttering some words of eternal wisdom.

The present Kremlin is divided between two clans (the chekists and siloviki vs. the Yeltsin Family) that are clinched in a bitter power struggle. But the populace of the country is not involved and is not very interested in it. The termination of the democratic experiment in post-Soviet Russia has been more or less accepted by the entire nation.

The authoritarian and corrupt "vertical of power" has stabilized Russian politics. Kremlin insiders like to state that the dullness of the political scene is a sign that Russia is maturing into a "normal country." Only Chechnya stands out. The rebels, supported by the population, continue to fight with complete disregard for television propaganda and the results of rigged elections.

In the spring, the Kremlin organized a referendum in Chechnya in which some 95 percent of the population voted for a Kremlin-written constitution in what the authorities claimed was a popular rejection of separatist aspirations. Next month, the Kremlin plans to have its pet Chechen, Akhmad Kadyrov, "elected" president. Kadyrov is extremely unpopular in Chechnya, so other, better-liked candidates have been crudely forced out of the race.

Kadyrov has a well-equipped private army of several thousand thugs. He is the main supplier of vodka to Russian soldiers -- known to the troops as "kadyrovka," it is bottled in Kadyrov's home village of Tsentoroi.

The Russian occupation force is mostly young, and many men prefer to take heroin or amphetamines instead of, or together with, vodka. People who have served there say the drug supply network in Chechnya is well established.

To pay for drugs and vodka, Russian soldiers and officers maraud, extract bribes at checkpoints, sell arms to the rebels, and provide protection for the trade in illicit oil products.

In some respects, the situation in Chechnya is indeed stable. Various armies and groups receive their cut of misappropriated reconstruction funds from the budget or in other rackets. The rebels also play an important role: If they weren't killing federal soldiers, the number of checkpoints would have been reduced, the occupation force cut in size and the corrupt status quo have become unbalanced.

If the rebels were more pragmatic, allowing Russian soldiers high on drugs and vodka to kill their own in friendly fire incidents, Chechnya could eventually turn into just another Russian region, where the police pretend to fight "bandits," while in fact all benefit from the status quo. But instead of appreciating Putin's political stability and corrupt "managed democracy," the rebels employ truck bombs, shoot down helicopters and kill people -- including generals, colonels and FSB officers.

It's clear that after the upcoming "election" of Kadyrov the population will give the rebels even more support and more innocent blood will be spilled. More bombs will go off and there will be more Russian reprisals. Maybe the Kremlin should spend a fraction of what it is already squandering in Chechnya on providing each family with a television set and brainwashing them along with the rest of the nation.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.

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