Review
Chechens pay price of Bush's coalition with butcher Putin
A Dirty War, by Anna Politkovskaya, Harvill Press, £12
Reviewed by Sheila Malone
Russian president Vladimir Putin has always called his present war against independence fighters in Chechnya a " war against international terrorism". His stated pretext for this was an incursion into neighbouring Dagestan by some Chechen separatists claiming adherence to Wahhabite Islam, and a series of bombings in Moscow which killed over 200 people.
These bombings were blamed on "Chechen terrorists" said to be linked to none other than Osama bin Laden –although they are widely thought in Russia to be the work of Putin’s own secret police, the FSB.
And the fighters in Dagestan turned out to have been financed by Kremlin insider, millionaire businessman and alleged arms dealer Boris Berezovski.
Nevertheless, a government-led media campaign whipped up anti-Chechen feeling throughout Russia and in October 1999 Federal troops were sent to the Caucasus. The brutality of the occupying forces and the imposition of a Moscow-friendly regime in Chechnya answerable to the FSB have met with sustained resistance.
Anna Politkovskaya is one of the few courageous Russian reporters who went herself to discover the truth about the war. Her book, A Dirty War gathers together the articles she wrote for the Russian Newspaper Novaya Gazeta between the summer of 1999 and autumn 2000.
The book does not give answers or overall solutions to the war . Instead Politkovskaya offers us damning criticism and passionate condemnation of its realities, both in her own commentaries and through the voices of its heroes and villains, victors and victims, as they speak here for themselves.
During the build-up to the war, Politkovskaya writes scathingly of the cynicism and corruption of much of the Russian military already damaged and demoralised by the previous war, together with compassion for the frightened, unwilling conscripts about to be sent wholly unprepared into combat.
Then there are the Soldiers Mothers Committees – women in Russia who are not prepared to see their sons killed and maimed in a cruel, unwinnable war. Instead they take direct action and travel themselves to the battle zones and forcibly bring them back home.
Sometimes these are mothers who have already had sons lost or disabled in the previous war, like Lydia Burmistrova:
"I brought my sons up by myself. The state gave me nothing, not a kopek. But when they needed someone to die for them, then they were at the door, in a flash.
"The regime couldn’t resolve the conflict itself, so they decided to go to war. Now we must hand over our children to correct other people’s mistakes. Never."
Nothing has really prepared Politkovskaya for the suffering she witnesses when she arrives in Chechnya. Grozny, the capital has been called "the Hiroshima of the Caucuses".
The centre is completely flattened, a wasteland of rubble, peppered with lethal or horribly maiming landmines. Here the remaining population survive in cellars or on the town’s outskirts.
Until recently no water, heating, sewerage or communications systems remained intact, although efforts have been made to restore some gas and water supplies. Besides this destruction, people also live in fear of constant Russian sniping .
Then there are the "zachistki"or "clean-ups" – arbitrary arrests and detentions, usually involving beatings and sometimes deaths of anyone accused of supporting the guerrillas. And in the night come the looters, allegedly from both sides, who have found no other way to survive in this chaos.
Given similar conditions in other towns and villages up to 250,000 – nearly one quarter of the population – have fled the country during fighting and live in appalling conditions of hunger, cold and disease in refugee camps in neighbouring Ingushetia.
One of the most shocking and saddening stories in the book concerns the refused evacuation of the Grozny Old Peoples Home – leaving up to 100 old, sick and infirm people to endure the bombardment of the city.
Politkovskaya’s anger boils over when she discovers this is not due merely to cold inhumanity, but is because a local bureaucrat fears his previous embezzlement of funds will be discovered in the home’s files.
Yet his official explanation is that such evacuations could be highly dangerous because "terrorists might thereby enter Russian territory from Chechnya" – presumably disguised as busloads of pensioners.
Politkovskaya has a splendid nose for ferreting out those who are simply profiting from the economic chaos and social breakdown caused by the war.
But she also recounts many tales of self-sacrifice, solidarity and courage – like that of the most popular doctor in Chechnya, Salman Yandarov, who gave up his wealthy practice in St Petersburg to return to his homeland, and now daily risks his life working in hospitals lacking basic medicines and equipment.
She describes the many teachers carrying on their lessons in bombed out building and the workers who take it in turns round the clock to guard their ruined factories from looters, while they wait for rebuilding material to arrive from Moscow – which never comes.
One reason behind Chechen separatists bid for independence as the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 was that oil and gas reserves and a skilled workforce would help ensure viability as a separate state.
In reality, lack of recognition and therefore of aid and investment from Russia and the rest of the world prevented the new Republic from rebuilding itself.
But Politkovskaya also sees the weakness of Chechnya’s own leaders as partly responsible. She argues that both former presidents Dudayev and Maskhadov handed out oil wells as booty to their fellow fighters. In fact it is more likely that neither of them were able to control growing lawlessness and corruption caused by the war.
Chechnya’s own oil deposits are now much depleted, but syphoning off from the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline is widespread and lucrative. Local Chechen and Russian gangs simply bore holes in the pipe, drain the oil into pits in the ground and burn off the unwanted fuel oil before selling off the remaining prize. There are hundreds of such "barns" with their smoking "samovars" in Chechnya, – and plenty of buyers in the illegal trade.
The federal troops turn a blind eye – maybe in exchange for Chechen silence over the astonishingly corrupt but also widespread and lucrative practice by the Russians in Chechnya of selling off their own weaponry to the guerrillas they are fighting.
As one Chechen dealer boasted after stocking up on automatic weapons, grenades and ammunition, "I could have bought a tank from them if I’d wanted to". Who knows, he was probably right.
What is clear is that the majority of people in Chechnya do not benefit at all from the thousands of tons of oil illegally shipped out of the country, nor from the endless proliferation of arms.
At the same time it is proved by the involvement of people like Berezovski that the corruption trail goes right to the top. It is people in Moscow itself who are profiting most from this very dirty war.
In recent weeks Putin has mouthed some words about a ceasefire and talks with ousted president Aslan Maskhadov. But his real message, and the one delivered to the US and world leaders after September 11 has been clear:
"I have been fighting terrorism for years in Chechnya. Now you in the West must keep quiet about alleged killing, atrocities and human rights abuses down there. Then I will, of course let you use my old military bases in Uzbekhistan and Tajikistan to do whatever you want in Afghanistan in pursuit of your own recently proclaimed ‘war on terrorism’".
The human tragedy behind this cynical horse-trading is not only that Soviet troops also entered Afghanistan in 1979 from Uzbekhistan, and were bogged down for 10 years in a war renowned for its savagery on both sides. Tens of thousands died, the country was torn apart and ruined and the Soviet Union forced eventually to withdraw.
It is also the case that over the last 10 years Russia has been caught up in and bogged down in two equally brutal and unwinnable wars in Chechnya. Up to 50,000 died in the 1994-6 invasion and an estimated 50 Russian soldiers a week and many more – mostly civilian – Chechens are dying in Putin’s so-called "war against international terrorism" of today.
Yet this has always been a war largely ignored by world leaders and unreported in the world’s press. The Council of Europe did suspend (and then restored) Russian voting rights for a brief period of a few months, and anti-war and human rights organisations continue to campaign for an end to the conflict.
But the US and UK and Blair in particular have always seen Putin as a good man to do business with – a favoured ally. Now that his support for their war coalition is absolutely vital the carte blanche demanded over Chechnya will easily be granted, and the likely consequence, as with all hidden wars will be an escalation.
Meanwhile Politkovskaya’s book is a moving and valuable testament to the people who actually suffer from its cruelty and injustice.
The most common graffiti on the walls of Russian conscripts’ quarters are simply "I want to go home"; the most common plea of the Chechens "Please leave us alone". Their voices are the strongest arguments for an immediate withdrawal of federal troops and the granting of Chechen independence.