More sword than samovar, as Yeltsin lays waste to Chechnya
Sixty people die when bombs hit a crowded marketplace, forty as a passenger bus is hit, another twenty five as they flee in a refugee convoy. Roads are jammed as 200,000 are driven from their homes and forced to survive in desperate conditions in border camps.
Such scenes remind us of NATO’s indiscriminate bombings and their aftermath in its war in the Balkans. The invader this time is Russia, whose air and land forces have been battering the small Chechen republic of Ichkeria (Chechnya in Russian) for the past three months.
With the same savagery as NATO in the Balkans, Russia is now waging its war in the Caucacus, aimed at inflicting the maximum damage to the area’s infrastructure and therefore to civilian life whilst minimising Russian casualties. Thousands of men, women and children have been killed or injured and hospitals, schools, roads, bridges and water and power supplies destroyed.
A Russian resident of Chechnya ( actually a Cossak) interviewed during Russia’s last war there in 1994-5, in which an estimated 50,000 people died, complained: " God knows why the army came here. To protect Boris Yeltsin, to keep the (oil) pipeline from the Caspian, to line someone’s pocket – only not for us, that’s clear."
The mountainous region of the North Caucasus has always been of vital geopolitical and strategic importance to Tsarist and Soviet – and now post-Soviet – Russia. In seeking to subdue it, Russia has used the "sword and the samovar" tactic to divide and rule and play off one people against another.
The brutality and cynicism with which this was carried out has led to centuries of oppression and resistance.
Perhaps the most savage episode was the mass deportations of the Chechens and other nationalities - the Ingush, the Karchai, the Balkars, the Kalmyks, the Meskhetians and the Tartars - after the Second World War. Fearing opposition and the exposure of his own criminal role during the war, Stalin simply wiped these entire peoples off the map.
Though tens of thousands died of cold, starvation and disease during the exodus it is a tribute to the Chechens that when Kruschev allowed them to return in 1957, they were able to rebuild their nation. Never the less, a bitter legacy remains from this and other oppressions.
Chechnya was incorporated into the Soviet Union in the 1920’s and in 1936 given the status of an autonomous Republic within the Russian Federation. i.e. not full regional status as were, for example, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The "thaw" under Kruschev and the later growing economic difficulties of the Soviet Union led, by the 1970s and 80s, first to demands for greater autonomy and later to the formation of movements such as the Popular Front of Chechnya and Ingushetia.
By 1991, influence by events in the Baltic States and in response to Yeltsin’s mishandling of the situation more radical Chechen dissidents – among them the later President Wzhokhar Dudayev – had seized power and declare independence.
No serious attempt was made by Moscow to put down the revolt in Chechnya for another three years. But when invasion did come, it led to a humiliating defeat for Russia.
Much of the reason for this was the continuing collapse of the Russian state itself and the decay and demoralisation within the military. But Moscow also decided to concede a (temporary at least) Chechen victory because the revolt did not lead to further destabilisation in the North Caucasus, despite the rebels pleas for support from neighbouring Republics.
A peace treaty was therefore agreed to which stated that Chechnya should have a special status that would not contradict two conditions – the integrity of the Russian Federation and the principle of self-determination. However, as most Chechens wanted by now to use self-determination to leave the Federation, these two principles contradicted each other in practice.
The immediate publicised causes of the present Russian invasion in August this year were firstly a series of bombings in apartment blocs in Moscow in which 300 people died and secondly the incursion of some Chechen fighters, led by Shamil Basayev, into neighbouring Dagestan.
The Kremlin immediately blamed "Chechen terrorists" and Islamic fundamentalists." The Chechens have denied any involvement in the bombings and the Dagestan episode seems mainly to have been a handful of previous independence fighters backed by some arms and rhetoric from the Middle East. However, the fear and racism that Moscow whipped around both gave the excuse to intervene.
Thus the contradictions of the 95 peace agreement have been blown apart, with the Kremlin reclaiming Chechnya as an " internal matter" for the Russian Federation. In doing so, Russia has reasserted its traditional foreign policy vis-à-vis the Caucasus. What was blurred last spring by Moscow’s marginalisation during NATO’s war for influence in the Balkans has now become clear in Russia’s claimed right to intervene in its own sphere of influence in the Caucasus – with the West’s tacit endorsement.
Besides being a natural southern border to Russia, the geopolitical importance of the Caucasus lies in its rich natural resources of oil and gas. The Chechen capital of Grozny was once the second biggest oil centre of the Soviet Union – the second largest country in the world. Chechnya’s own oil reserves are now almost exhausted but its importance still in the Baku-Novorosiisk pipeline ( from Azerbaijan to Russia) which flows straight through it.
With the recent discovery of vast new oil reserves under Azerbaijan, both East and West have their eyes on this very valuable prize but its exploitation and export is of very vital interest to Russia. It sees its role as preserving stability in the region by opposing Chechen independence and preventing the spread of the "Chechen disease" to neighbouring Republics.
Western leaders, equally interested in this stability are giving Boris Yeltsin the green light for this policing role by their refusal to give anything but a friendly reprimand over the present war.
Though some European leaders, seeing a role for the OSCE which met in Turkey in November have ventured a stronger criticism, the fervent moral crusading over oppression in Kosova used to justify the West’s own war against Serbia has been conspicuously absent over Russian oppression in Chechnya.
The geopolitics of oil play a big part on both sides in the interdependency of Russia and the Caucasus Republics.
Throughout Chechnya’s bid for either greater autonomy or independence, Russia has used economic sanctions or withdrawal of state subsidies as well as military intervention to try to bring it to heel.
However the political elites in both Moscow and Grozny have manipulated the situation in their own interests. In this the dealings of the Russian Mafia dwarf those of the Chechen, but it is nevertheless true that the corruption and gangsterism has played its part in growing problems and popular disillusionment with the Grozny regime. As an example of Mafia collaboration during the presidency of Dadyev despite a supposed blockade, Chechnya was able to continue importing Russian oil for refining and export and at the same time a blind eye was turned to the Chechens systematic siphoning off of oil from the pipeline. In fact an estimated $1 billion went to the Chechen government from oil in the first three years of the blockade but, as in Russia, it is unclear into whose pockets the money actually went.
What is clear is that Chechnya embarked on the same neo-liberal economic project as Russia itself. Public Services decayed, jobs were lost and wages unpaid. Again as in Russia, unless people have been prepared to engage in the parallel black economy their living standards have plummeted.
This summer prolonged talks between Russia and Chechnya on the future of the Baku-Novorosiisk pipeline broke down. Although one of the less publicised, this is certainly a factor in Russia’s decision to invade.
Much is at stake both for the Kremlin politicians and the previously humiliated armed forces, who this time are claiming they can win the war.
But whatever the aims and machinations of the political and military elites , this is a war to subdue a small resilient nation and bring it once more under Russian domination.
The brutal bombardment should be stopped immediately, Russian troops withdrawn and the Chechen people given the right to determine their own future.
Economic sanctions must be lifted, neighbouring borders opened to refugees and massive aid given to alleviate their terrible plight as winter approaches.