#6590 #6591
#10 - JRL 6589
Moscow News
December 4-10, 2002
Dubrovka Wasn't Enough
Sergei Roy
Last week Vremya MN published an article by Yevgeny Satanovsky, "The Lessons of Dubrovka," a most intelligent analysis of the recent hostage-taking in Moscow and its outcome. The author, a specialist on the Middle East, demonstrates that the situations in Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinians and in Russia vis-a-vis Chechnya are basically similar in that their respective wars cannot be brought to an end by the will of presidents, the United Nations or God Almighty; that they can only be either won or lost.
I fully concur with Mr. Satanovsky on most of what he says, especially his thesis that society can only win or lose the war with terrorism along with the state. Defeat will mean the destruction of both society and the state, for "in the state of victorious terrorism there is no future for anyone" - as Afghanistan under the Taliban has shown.
However, I cannot accept the author's bold assertion that "the Barayev raid means that the war is becoming a people's war." This, to me, clearly falls in the wishful thinking category. "Must become," "will probably become" is more like it. For the present, the sad truth is that, at least in Moscow, the majority is "for a peaceful settlement" in Chechnya, if we are to believe a VTsIOM poll (Vremya MN, Nov. 20, 2002). True, VTsIOM director Yuri Levada is such a fierce stop-the-warrior himself that one tends to doubt his figures, but it is best to believe the worst. And this "Stop the war" nonsense is about as bad as it can get.
Who is fighting the war in Checnya? Who lays mines, shoots down planes and helicopters, kills Chechens, "Feds," innocent bystanders in night-time raids and ambushes? Not the federal army or police. All the "separatists" have to do to stop the war is stop these activities. But do our stop-the-war artists appeal to Maskhadov or Basayev? No sir, they prefer to denounce someone who is closer at hand and not so likely to make slaves or hostages of them, or cut their heads off, as "freedom-fighters" are prone to do to their own supporters, should they stray near their camps.
What does the "Stop the war" demand mean when addressed to Russia's ruling authority? In this context, one thing only: negotiate with Basayev, then withdraw from Chechnya, leave Chechnya alone, give it independence - and all will be ship-shape, no more raids, no more bombings, peace on earth and goodwill in men.
This is idiotic and cowardly to the point of pathology. It has been tried, and not several generations but just a few years ago, in 1996-1999. It ended in total, unspeakable breakdown of all civilization norms, health, education and social security systems in Chechnya, public executions for marital infidelity, public beatings, with the territory ruled by warlords recognizing no law but that of the jungle and engaged exclusively in criminal activities like stealing oil from pipelines, drug trafficking, gun-running, hostage taking, slave trade, etc. As this could not go on indefinitely without the whole area going up in the flames of war of all against all, internal aggression had to be externalized - and it was. Result, assault on Dagestan and all that that entailed. As Mr. Satanovsky rightly points out, just like the Palestinians, the Chechens proved unable to build a state of their own. And why should they? Bin Laden gave them the only ideology that suited their "values" and habits, that of permanent war against infidels with the ultimate objective of building a World Islamic Caliphate or, as the first step, a Chechen-dominated caliphate from the Caspian to the Black Sea. Have Basayev and Maskhadov given up these objectives? Go ask them. If you haven't heard some whopping lies lately, that is.
Have our stop-the-warriors forgotten all this? Don't they realize that they are pushing Russia toward another Khasavyurt-like capitulation, which is not just shameful but above all senseless, as it will merely start another cycle of internal and external aggression? I don't know. It seems incredible, and still, there it is.
The only explanation that appears credible to me is this: considerable portions of Russia's population are still stuck in the rut of Soviet-times apathy and alienation from the state: whatever the state does is none of our business, as it invariably does something to bring us grief. The state fights the Chechen terrorists, fine; only we'll do everything to help our son dodge the draft - let someone else go fight there. The state makes peace with the Chechens, better still; but if Chechens in peace time blow up apartment blocks in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk, the state had better beware, we'll blame the bombings on Putin - either for failure to prevent the bombings or for arranging them himself, for doesn't Berezovsky say so, and even show it on film?
These attitudes are very far from an Israeli-type "people's war." In fact, it takes something earth-shattering, an invasion like Napoleon's or Hitler's, to make the Russian people come out of their perennial apathy and squash the aggressor to a pulp. Luckily, Dubrovka wasn't in that class. Sadly, though, an earth-shattering event of this sort is not at all impossible; it is in fact becoming ever more likely.
One shudders to think and speak of these things, but speak we must. Actually, all that needed to be said has already been said - by none other than Vladimir Putin during Bush's recent visit to St. Petersburg, yet his words seemed to fall on deaf ears. As Bush was babbling happily about the need to fight international terrorism in Iraq, Putin cut in with a stern remark pointing out two all-important facts: (a) a lot of the money for terrorism came from Saudi Arabia (an important ally of the United States and specifically of the Bush clan, as we know), and (b) atom-bomb technology could come to the terrorists from an Islamic country, Pakistan.
We have here all the makings of the earth-shattering event alluded to above: nuclear technology; money with which to buy nuclear technology from fellow Islamists; suicide terrorists capable of bringing a nuclear device (the size of a football, we are told) to Moscow's Red Square, if need be.
One is loath to even speculate on the consequences of a nuclear explosion in Moscow or anywhere in Russia. One thing is certain, though - it will not be a "people's war" in the tame Israeli sense but more in the spirit of Pushkin's famous dictum about "Russian rebellion, senseless and ruthless." We'd better be silent on this score, for fear of self-fulfilling prophecies.
The question that must be discussed, though, is this: is everything being done to prevent such a scenario? The answer is a ringing no, and our hero Putin is far from blameless in this respect. Just a few facts.
1. More than a month has passed since the Dubrovka disaster. What has been done to apportion blame for the appalling lapse in security that enabled Basayev to bring arms, explosives and gunmen into the capital and mount a military operation here? We are not calling for heads to roll and blood to be spilt. We simply want the inept and corrupt officers in the FSB and MVD who have so spectacularly proved their corruptness and ineptitude to be kicked out of the services, and fresh men, with cleaner hands and better brains, to be put in, to prevent the worst case scenario referred to above.
2. What's this we hear about the "Chechenization" of the conflict in Chechnya? Isn't it some form of withdrawal of federal control from the area? We do not hear much about "Iraqization" as a means of containing the spreading of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq, do we? Educated Chechens have long taken to their heels and run away from their homeland, mostly to Moscow, where they number 100,000 officially and at least twice as many unofficially; what remained of the Chechen people in Chechnya have proved signally incapable of arranging their lives along constructive, peaceful lines. What proof is there that "Chechenization" will prevent the seizure of power by such "national heroes" as Basayev and Maskhadov? Don't we remember the jubilant crowds of Chechens greeting their hero Basayev after the Budyonnovsk raid, a one-to-one replica of which swarmed into Palestinian streets after 9/11?
3. It was reported in the press that in Kazakhstan alone about 500 kilos of weapons-grade nuclear material - enough to build 20 nuclear charges - was observed lying about without any sort of security and no one prepared to assume responsibility for it. Nukes apart, Russian helicopters are regularly brought down in Chechnya by shoulder-held rocket-launchers, and all indications are that they come from the republics of the FSU. Immediately in the wake of the Dubrovka disaster Putin said a few angry words about the new military doctrine for Russia - to hunt down terrorists and their sponsors "wherever they are"; so far we haven't seen much in the way of acting up on those words, though. Rocket-launchers still find their way to terrorist camps, and all the military do is come up with helpless communiques as to the number of dead.
Apparently we have to sit back and wait until it's nuclear devices, not rocket-launchers. Maybe then the state will do something to protect the lives of its citizens. One fears, though, that it will be quite a different state.
P.S. In a 1994 article in the Moscow Times, four years before the financial meltdown of August 1998, I predicted that only a disaster of that kind could push Russia off its reckless course. You didn't have to be a Nostradamus to do that -- a little common sense sufficed.
I'd hate to be proved right again.
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