#6 - RW 275
Moscow Times
September 26, 2003
The Buzz in U.S. Is All About Chechnya
By Matt Bivens
Special to The Moscow Times

WASHINGTON -- Toward the end of a conference here in which speaker after speaker had laid out pessimistic, ghoulish takes on Chechnya, Georgetown University professor Peter Reddaway rose to ask: Are there no Russian government representatives present who might care to comment?

There were, of course. A trio of dark suits had arrived together, stood conspicuously apart clutching Styrofoam cups of bad coffee during the conference registration, and provoked knowing remarks about KGB surveillance. In the silence following Reddaway's suggestion, a stage whisper could be heard: "Paging the three SVRovtsy in the third row!" (The SVR is Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service.)

Down in that row, the three men sat unmoved. Lawrence Uzzell, the editor of the Washington-based Chechnya Weekly and like Reddaway a long-time gimlet-eyed observer of Russian politics, was talking to them. Taunting them? Encouraging them?

As the conference moderator shrugged and began to move on, Uzzell jumped to his feet. Indicating the three with a game show host's theatrical flourish, he proposed that "the record show" there were indeed Russian government representatives in the hall and they were indeed declining the opportunity to comment. Laughter all around.

It has been that way for two weeks now. Chechnya was long a nonissue in Washington. Now it is suddenly -- and, for the Kremlin, embarrassingly -- relevant. Film festivals, photo exhibits, full-page newspaper advertisements and protests revolving around the war will dog President Vladimir Putin's heels as he visits New York and Washington this week.

Hard-core Chechnya-watchers have seen their ranks swelled overnight by movie stars, senators and big-name human rights groups. Putin's ally-turned-enemy, political intriguer Boris Berezovsky, is also stirring things up from his London exile. Even the U.S. State Department, for the first time in more than a year, has offered a stark eve-of-summit reiteration of its harshest criticisms of the war -- one that brought an immediate and angry response from Moscow.

It's hard to say what all this noise means for this weekend's summit.

Neither Putin nor George W. Bush have proven easily swayed by high-brow photo exhibitions or a few small anti-war vigils. So the grim situation in Chechnya seems likely to remain a footnote to an agenda focused squarely on the Middle East, from America's occupation of Iraq to Russia's cooperation with Iran in building a nuclear plant.

In particular it's hard to judge the significance of the State Department's critique. In this White House, Russia policy is concentrated in the hands of Condoleezza Rice and the National Security Council she heads.

"This [concentration of Russia policy in the NSC] is a big, big change from the Clinton days, when despite the common view that [Deputy Secretary of State] Strobe [Talbott] did everything, there were actually lots of political appointees in all of these places that 'played' on Russia," said Michael McFaul, an associate professor at Stanford University.

McFaul, who has co-authored a book about U.S. policy toward post-Soviet Russia that comes out next month, listed some of the Clinton-era officials who influenced Russia policy: Cabinet-level members like Defense Secretaries William Perry and William Cohen, Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, National Security Advisers Samuel Berger and Anthony Lake, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright -- and also their various deputies focused more exclusively on the former Soviet Union, including David Lipton at Treasury, Talbott of course at State but also Stephen Sestanovich, Ashton Carter at the Pentagon and others.

These days, decision-making about Russia is far more narrowly focused, McFaul said. "[Rice] and [her deputy at the NSC] Thomas Graham are the only political appointees working on Russia that I can think of off-hand," he said, adding that Secretary of State Colin Powell has never had much influence on Bush's Russia policies.

Rice, a Russian-speaker and scholar of Soviet history, entered office decidedly cool toward the Kremlin and critical of its war in Chechnya. But after al-Qaida's kamikaze attacks two years ago on New York and Washington, the White House softened its criticism of Putin's war.

So when the State Department comes out with a blast -- as it did last week, when Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Steven Pifer testified before Congress -- it's hard to know whether this reflects new thinking, or simply State Department thinking.

"The daily reality for the people of Chechnya has been bleak and deteriorating," Pifer testified. He laid much of this at the door of Chechen terrorist groups. But he also insisted not all of the Chechen resistance could be considered terrorists, and he slammed Russia's conduct of the war.

"Credible human rights organizations" continue to report "atrocities, disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings committed by Russian federal forces. ... Chechens picked up in raids disappear, most often permanently; in some cases corpses are later found. ... Disappearances continue on virtually a daily basis."

Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a senator from Colorado, called this "the picture the Kremlin does not want us to see ... a wasteland dotted with mass graves, villages depopulated of men -- young and old -- and unspeakable crimes committed against civilians."

The Foreign Ministry rejected Pifer's testimony as "thoroughly biased and tendentious." Even Putin himself was roused to dismiss Pifer as a "mid-level diplomat" in need of reprimand.

Full-page ads about Chechnya have run over the past two weeks in The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, with other ads in New York's Village Voice and Washington's City Paper.

Some were bought by Berezovsky and signed by him, human rights activist Yelena Bonner and others, and questioned Putin's commitment to democracy and rule of law. Others referred to a three-day roaming film festival about Chechnya held last week in Washington, this week in New York and next week in Moscow.

The festival itself has been a surprise hot event, with evening showings rapidly selling out, leaving disappointed crowds out front.

In Washington, one evening's showing was held at, and in cooperation with, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Jerry Fowler, staff director of the museum-affiliated Committee on Conscience, said his committee had for three years now listed Chechnya as a region with the potential to sink into genocide.

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