#14 - JRL 7286
Washington Post
August 12, 2003
Editorial
Kidnapped in Russia
ONE YEAR AGO today a Dutch humanitarian worker, Arjan Erkel, was forcibly abducted in the Caucasus region of Russia, reportedly while two Russian law enforcement officers looked on. Recent videotapes suggest that Mr. Erkel, 33, a regional director of Doctors Without Borders, is alive and still being held against his will, either in the breakaway region of Chechnya or in neighboring Dagestan, where the abduction took place. His continued detention reflects poorly on Russian President Vladimir Putin most of all but also on U.S. and European leaders, each of whom for his own reasons seems to have been less than zealous in efforts to win Mr. Erkel's release. The ultimate victims of this neglect, in addition to Mr. Erkel and his family, are the long-suffering civilian victims of Russia's war in Chechnya and civilians elsewhere who depend on the free passage of aid workers.
Chechnya is a mostly Muslim province that always has chafed at its inclusion into Russia. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it sought independence. Russia's first armed effort to bring Chechnya back into the fold was launched in 1994 and ended in failure in 1996. But the province remained a source of crime and instability, and in 1999 then-Prime Minister Putin launched a second war, which was initially so popular that it helped him win election as president but which has met with little more success than the first war. Much of Chechnya is in ruins, hundreds of thousands of Chechens have been forced from their homes, Russian soldiers continue to be killed and Chechen terrorists -- including, in a new phenomenon, suicide bombers -- have begun to target Russian civilians even in Moscow.
Because of pressures from Mr. Putin's government and dangers in the field, few journalists dare report on the war, and Doctors Without Borders (often known by its French name, Medicins Sans Frontiers) is one of the last humanitarian organizationsen civilians and bear witness to their suffering. That suggests one possible motivation for the reported complicity of parts of Russia's security bureaucracy in the kidnapping. It also may explain why the government has not been more active in seeking Mr. Erkel's release: As long as the region is so dangerous to outsiders, none can testify to the rapes, torture and disappearances that Chechens continue to suffer at the hands of Russian forces. Just recently, Russian officials have been pressuring displaced civilians to return from refugee camps to unsafe zones of Chechnya, a violation of international law but a way of hiding what has become an embarrassment for Mr. Putin.
The war itself has deteriorated to a point where many outsiders hardly know any longer what to recommend. Negotiating with Chechen terrorists is out of the question; but Russia's military tactics seem more likely to eradicate the Chechen people than to produce a lasting peace. President Bush and European leaders, eager for Mr. Putin's cooperation in other spheres, barely mention the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Russia's south. When he meets Mr. Putin in late September, Mr. Bush should rectify that, both on behalf of Chechen civilians and on the more specific question of Mr. Erkel. Russia, like every state, has an obligation to protect the humanitarian workers on its soil.
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