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Wall Street Journal
October 30, 2002
Chechen Congress Struggles To Dispel Terrorism Image
By SCOTT MILLER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
COPENHAGEN -- For a man trying to rally world opinion on behalf of the Chechens, it was a difficult weekend.
Mohammad Shishani, president of the World Chechen Congress, stands at a podium here, nodding approvingly as delegates -- 100 or so rebel envoys, Russian human-rights activists and lawmakers from Russia and other European countries -- take the stage to denounce the war in Chechnya. In the past three years, Russian forces have leveled Grozny, the capital, killing 13,500 rebels and losing 4,500 of their own troops.
But their Chechen story can't compete with the one in Moscow, where a group of Chechens took hundreds of Russian theatergoers hostage. In a post-Sept. 11 world, anything that smacks of terrorism is a hard sell. The cause wasn't helped when the Qatar-based television channel al-Jazeera, where Osama bin Laden's pronouncements usually have their first showing, carried footage of Chechens with Arabic writing on their clothes.
"That was a tough one," Mr. Shishani says, shaking his head. "I really wish they hadn't done that."
He and others believe any association with militant Islam will set back their efforts for years. Unable to reach the mass media as much as they like, Chechen supporters rely on small meetings or public displays to get attention, events that the public is likely to shun if they think it dangerous or a front for terrorism.
"We condemn the terrorist act in Moscow, we condemn all kinds of terrorism," the conference says in a letter to be sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The letter also called Russian military action in Chechnya "state-sponsored terrorism." Similar letters were sent to U.S. President George W. Bush, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and European Commission chief Romano Prodi, according to organizers. The delegates at the two-day congress also called on the international community to help end the fighting in the republic in southern Russia.
The congress is one of the biggest gatherings for those who back a peaceful solution and the first for the Chechen diaspora. One planned for Turkey last year had to be canceled because of Turkish worries about terrorist links.
The diminutive Mr. Shishani's grandfather left Chechnya in 1902 for Jordan. His tales of Russian mistreatment were part of what Mr. Shishani brought with him when he emigrated to the U.S. at age 18. He eventually became an associate engineering professor at Pennsylvania State University, and passed the stories on to his own children. They've had their effect: His 18-year-old son has been telling his father for three years that he wants to leave the family home in suburban Pittsburgh and fight Russians.
"He bugs the heck out of me," Mr. Shishani says. "But I tell him to become a successful businessman; he'll have more influence that way."
Fueled by the stories himself, Mr. Shishani has devoted himself to raising public awareness about the Chechens in the U.S., protesting at the United Nations and meeting members of the U.S. Congress. With many American Chechens living around New Jersey, he soon gained a reputation and was elected to head the Chechen congress.
For some, including the Russian government, that group is little more than a band of terrorist supporters, assembled to raise money to buy weapons. Russian President Vladimir Putin formally complained to the Danish government for allowing the event and refused to attend a Russia-European Union summit planned for Copenhagen next month. After Denmark refused to ban the congress, the EU agreed to host Mr. Putin in Brussels. The Danish police say there are no known terrorists attending.
No Known Terrorists
The delegates, some wearing tall fur hats and black leather boots, others in elegant European fashion, argue they are the victims of guilt by association. On the surface, the congress passes almost as a think-tank speech fest. Delegates calmly deliver lectures with such titles as "The Russian-Chechen War in the Context of World Politics" or "Legal Aspects of the Russia-Chechen War." They claim to represent more than half a million Chechens who have been forced out of the country by two wars since the mid 1990s; most have fled elsewhere in the former Soviet Union; maybe 10,000 to 20,000 live in Western Europe.
The delegates come from 24 countries and many appear to have little in common other than an interest in Chechnya. There is a newspaper publisher from Finland, a former politician from Norway, a linguistics teacher from Denmark. Some couldn't afford to pay their own way and had to rely on the generosity of those who could. (The conference room itself, at a Radisson SAS hotel, was paid for by people of Chechen ancestry living mostly in the West.) Some have never been to Chechnya. Some have only tenuous connections to the region. Representing Norway was Ingvald Godal, a parliamentarian for 16 years. He first became sympathetic to the Chechens in 1997 when the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe sent him there as an election monitor. The mountains, he says, reminded him of his home in Telemark, Norway, and he was instinctively drawn to an occupied people.
His own father had fought in the resistance during World War II, and he recalls the partisans who attacked Germany's nuclear-bomb projects sitting around the family kitchen table late one evening. "The Chechens are an impressive people," he says. "You have to feel some sympathy for what they have been through."
The congress had hoped to bring the world's attention to the Chechens' plight. But it was upstaged by the tragic drama at the Moscow theater, where 50 rebels held more than 700 people hostage. Russian special-forces troops piped in a gas that knocked out the hostage-takers but also killed more than 100 of the captives.
Upstaged by Moscow
Before the weekend tragedy, the congress's star attraction was supposed to be Vanessa Redgrave and a film she produced on Chechen children. But the British actress was all but overlooked by the media attending the event. "There have been Chechens who have done terrible things," she says of the hostage-taking. "But the leaders of the Chechens and the people of Chechnya are no terrorists."
Though the delegates denounced terrorism -- including that in Moscow -- they don't distance themselves from it in a way that might please President Putin. What happened in the theater, they say, was the inevitable result of years of harsh Russian rule.
"Only a stupid person would condone terrorism, but you have to understand the causes," says Ousman Ferzaouli, Chechnya's unofficial delegate to Denmark, one of six such representatives that Chechnya maintains.
Some delegates, Mr. Godal included, argue that the hostage-taking will end up helping the cause, even if it does paint the Chechens as terrorists. One of the main problems Chechnya faces, they say, is a lack of attention from the media, with what coverage they do get slanted toward the Russian side. Anything that gets people asking questions will only help the cause, Mr. Godal says.
Still, the congress is struggling to keep clear of terrorism and radical Islam. Delegates estimate there may be 10 to 20 Arab fighters in Chechnya at the moment, some receiving financial help from the Gulf states. In the fight against the Russians, nobody was going to turn away help, one delegate says, stressing that Arabs had no say in Chechen policy.
But the hostage drama could affect the ability of peaceful Chechen separatists to raise money in the West. Xavier Rousselin, a French labor-union activist who works on refugee relief in the region, says his group condemned the hostage-takers for their "barbaric methods."
Tougher Line Possible
"We share a cause, but we don't share the means, which are unjustifiable," he says. His organization, Convoi Syndical, is a group of French labor-union members who seek to help refugees in conflict zones, including the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. Its condemnation isn't something the delegates like to hear -- western Europe is a major source of funds for events like this week's congress.
Asked whether he thought the hostage-takers' more aggressively Islamic stance would impair his organization's fund-raising for Chechen causes, Mr. Rousselin says, "I hope it won't have a negative effect, but I fear that it will."
At the same time, the separatist movement was handed a public-relations weapon when Russian police storming the theater killed with a gas meant to pacify the terrorists. "This shows what kind of people we are dealing with," Mr. Shishani says.
For some European elites, it's a message that plays well. French philosopher and author Andre Glucksmann says he believes that Mr. Putin's ruthless handling of the hostage crisis would push European governments to take a tougher line on urging Moscow to find a political solution for Chechnya. "Up until now, European leaders have not dared criticize Russia's handling of Chechnya. But now they're seeing that if 50 commandoes can get into a theater in Moscow with explosives and guns, they could do something much worse, such as attack a nuclear plant. Not to make peace in Chechnya is dangerous and immoral," he says in a telephone interview.
"What happened in the Moscow theater is the same, but on a smaller scale, as what happened to the 400,000 people bombarded in Grozny," Mr. Glucksmann, who has written and spoken extensively against Russia's handling of Chechnya, said Tuesday. Mr. Putin is willing to burn a haystack to find a needle, he said. "There's a brutality in his willingness to gas and kill Russian civilians which horrifies a European public."
Dominique Moisi, a political analyst at the French Institute for International Relations, took a similar view. "This is going to change the way we look at Russia," he says. "Mr. Putin has been looking Westward in his diplomatic strategy and Eastward in his domestic policy, and now the Eastern view has prevailed. That means a drift toward despotism and a conception of power that doesn't take into account the Russian citizen."
But others are less optimistic. Born near Grozny in 1964, congress-goer Magomed Magomador has seen plenty of war. In January 1995, one of his brothers was killed fighting the Russians; the other, taken prisoner, has not been heard from since. Mr. Magomador would have fought himself, he says, but as the last brother, his family needed him. And having taken law courses by correspondence, he felt he could play a more useful role working as an observer in prisoner exchanges.
Now living in Moscow where he tries to determine the fate of prisoners like his brother, he says the hostage-taking will make only a momentary blip on the world media agenda. "A week from now, the only people who will remember what happened in Moscow will be relatives of the dead," he says.
Mr. Shishani is even less optimistic. A naturalized American, he well understands the impact that Sept. 11, 2001 had on his adopted country. And he also believes that Russia will never leave Chechnya alone unless President Bush puts the screws to him -- something that is highly unlikely now.
"It's all geopolitics," he says wistfully. "We can try and educate people, but people right now see a stereotype for terror. It's going to be very hard." --Charles Fleming contributed to this article.
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