A Step At A Time

Ugarov himself admits he has no clear position on the war. He describes himself and his audience as Russians who feel sympathy neither for Chechen rebel separatists nor for the government bent on destroying them.

He says his aim is to convey that the war has long spilled out of Chechnya and is slowly breeding fear and hatred in the hearts of ordinary Russians:

"Everybody in the country pretends that there is no war, that we all live peacefully and the war is only on television. But the war penetrates everywhere, into the family, the relations with children. People become more aggressive. The war starts provoking a kind of social paranoia. We wanted to show this paranoia, when everyone is an enemy: Chinese, Vietnamese, Jews, Caucasians, Muscovites," Ugarov said.

posted by David McDuff  # 8:08 PM

The only time Putin used the first-person singular with confidence and even gusto was when he answered a question about his frequent forays into the armed services -- all those plane-flying and submarine-commanding shenanigans.The rest of the time he sounded meek, evasive and even scared. I first noticed this tendency in Putin in May 2003, when he gave an address that launched his second presidential campaign. I thought his strategy was to frighten people by conveying a picture of a country very close to being out of control. But after his telethon, I am starting to suspect something else: Maybe it is out of control.

posted by David McDuff  # 9:56 AM

In 1941, on the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth, a plaque was placed on the facade of the Dvorak House by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Among those who attended the dedication were violinist Fritz Kreisler, conductor Bruno Walter, Czechoslovak Foreign Minister-in-Exile Jan Masaryk, soprano Jarmila Novotná, Dvorak’s secretary J.J Kovarík, and the aforementioned Harry T. Burleigh, who, since his youthful association with Dvorak, had achieved eminence as a composer, pioneering arranger of spirituals (his versions were sung by Enrico Caruso, John McCormack, and Marian Anderson), a noted church and concert baritone (he was soloist at the very same St George’s Church, not missing a performance for 52 years!), founding member of ASCAP, and an editor for Ricordi.

Half a century later, in February 1991, the facade was designated a landmark on cultural grounds by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Yet, unfortunately, according to the new city charter, the City Council could overturn the landmarking, and did so under pressure from the [Beth Israel] hospital in June, 1991, ignoring thousands of letters from around the world from such musicians and music lovers as violinist Josef Suk (Dvorak’s great-grandson), Kurt Masur, Yo-Yo Ma, Rudolf Firkusny, Rafael Kubelík, myself, arts patroness Alice Tully, film director Milos Forman, President of Czechoslovakia Vaclav Havel, Mercer Ellington, critic Harold Schonberg, the Archbishop of Prague, the Czechoslovak Minister of Culture, Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, and AIDS activists, all to no avail. The hospital was intransigent, resisting efforts to save even the facade, and the house was summarily destroyed for an AIDS facility in late August-early September, 1991, within days of Dvorak’s 150th Birthday. Fortunately, I myself was out of the country, and was spared the awful reality of its demise. (However, a cellist friend had the foresight to preserve a brick from the site, which he has saved as a keepsake.) A newly elected City Council later renamed the street Dvorak Place, but it was small recompense.

posted by David McDuff  # 5:27 PM

...if a “Fourth Republic” or a post-post-communist era is to emerge and survive, it needs to go beyond history and style. For that to happen, these elections suggest it will need several things. One is a strong economy, competently and fairly run. Only a disbelief in the SLD’s economic ability (Poland’s unemployment rate currently runs at about 18 percent) and doubts about its real interests (following a string of corruption scandals) can probably explain why so many former left-wing voters voted for Civic Platform and Law and Justice or simply did not vote (turnout was a dismal 39 percent, down even on the lowly 46 percent recorded in 2001). Put bluntly, a Fourth Republic – if it emerges – means neither left nor right, but better.

But, to last, a Fourth Republic government also requires something else: it somehow needs to bridge Poland’s deep, albeit temporarily hidden cultural cleavage. Secular Poles will surely not mutely watch a social drift to the right and back a “moral revolution” if that revolution means a more intrusive Catholicism. To contain or coopt secular Poles, the liberalism that Civic Platform talks up and the solidarity that Law and Justice invokes will surely have to have a cultural dimension. A Fourth Republic, then, probably needs to be neither Catholic nor non-Catholic, and at least a little “liberal.”

On a day of such an overwhelming victory, Poland’s right can be excused for dreaming dreams. But perhaps only once a government has survived four years and only if it somehow spans the cultural divide can there really be any meaningful talk of a Fourth Republic. Something has ended, nothing wants to begin, perhaps it has already begun, the Polish poet Tadeusz Rozewicz wrote about the early transition days of Poland’s Third Republic. For the time being, it is perhaps enough to say that something has ended, something wants to begin – and perhaps it has already begun.

posted by David McDuff  # 11:39 AM

The world public, either by its indifference or its direct support for the actions of the Kremlin in Chechnya, is encouraging the Russian occupation forces to take an even more savage attitude towards the Chechen population. In response to this cruelty, the Chechen people are carrying out actions which the international community describes as "terrorist" and through the mouths of its leaders voices its support for the "fight against terrorism" which Russia is allegedly waging. The result is a vicious circle of hypocrisy, lies and increasing mutual hatred.

Chechnya sacrificed for the sake of cooperation with Russia

Of course, only an incorrigible idealist would today try to appeal to the conscience and morality of eastern or western politicians. In politics conscience and morality serve as a fig leaf which from time to time covers up a brutal and cynical pragmatism. "When it comes to the situation in Chechnya," notes Gabriel Juen of the Brussels office of Amnesty International, "we can see that some influential states, members of the European Union, have decided to take Russia's side for the sake of their own supreme strategic objectives." He could have added that all countries, and not just the countries of the European Union, are behaving in this way.

Each state or community of states has its own "pragmatic" reasons for sacrificing the Chechen people for the sake of cooperation with Russia. France relies on its alliance with Russia to create in the UN Security Council a counterweight to the Anglo-American alliance, which often ignores the political-economic interests of the west European countries. The British leaders, who are being subjected to increasing criticism from the British public for their participation in the war against Iraq, have been forced to justify their close alliance with the USA by the presence of an "international terrorist network", of which Chechnya is, allegedly, one of the cells. And that being the case, [Prime Minister] Tony Blair, in order to preserve his reputation as a "fighter against terrorism", is resolutely supporting [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's "anti-terrorist operation" (albeit artificially protracted) in Chechnya. Germany has a vested interest in Russian oil, gas and the market of investment and consumers of German goods.

The USA, having declared its "anti-terrorist alliance" with Russia, has consolidated its military presence in Central Asia and South Caucasus in two of the most important strategic and energy centres of Eurasia.Iran, which invariably blocks any, even the mildest condemnation of Russian policy in Chechnya adopted by the League of Islamic Countries is clinging with all its might in the hope of Moscow's help in gaining access to nuclear technology.

The Arab regimes are counting on the Kremlin's support in opposing the American-Israeli tandem in the region. China, India, Pakistan, and so on and so forth - all these countries are weighing up the situation on the "political scales" on which the huge nuclear power of Russia clearly outweighs tiny Chechnya.

The so-called "CIS countries" or, more broadly, the countries of post-Soviet space, the majority of whom have scarcely repulsed Russia's military blackmail and the subversive activity of its special services, not only do not support the liberation struggle of the Chechen people, but are themselves, in trying to "placate" the Kremlin, conducting a repressive policy in relation to the Chechen refugees on their territory, submissively and fully aware of their mendacity repeating after Russia's propaganda the rubber stamps of "Chechen terrorism". And all this, despite the fact that in these "young countries" the Chechens have not carried out any "terrorist acts" or serious crimes whatsoever.

Humanitarian principles or support for Russia

As we can see, the reason for the world community's support for Moscow in the Russian-Chechen confrontation has nothing to do with "Chechen terrorism"; on the contrary, this notorious "Chechen terrorism" is a means of escape which enables the democratic countries to violate those very principles, to protect which, allegedly, all these structures were established: the UN, OSCE, NATO, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, EU and so on and so forth. And one can easily understand that faint touch of relief, with which the New York Times newspaper states: "At the same time, the restrictions imposed by Russia on the work of foreign journalists in Chechnya have led to a reduction in the amount of video footage shown in Europe depicting the suffering of the Chechen people."

But, paradoxical as it may sound, it is precisely those "pragmatic considerations", for the sake of which the West turns a blind eye to the methodical annihilation of the Chechen people, declaring it to be "Russia's internal affair", which already make the Chechen tragedy one of the world's most acute international problems.

In the first place, given the whole scarcity of information reaching the West from Chechnya, Western politicians are invariably faced with a dilemma: humanitarian principles or support for Russia. Chechnya has become the touchstone on which the whole reputation of Western civilization is subjected to a fierce examination, and it will not succeed in putting off the ultimate verdict year after year.

Secondly, it is precisely because of the monstrous terror unleashed by the Kremlin against the Chechen people that the hopes for Russia's integral incorporation into the system of Western democracies are becoming more and more illusory. There cannot be a democratic whole, if part of it is anti-democratic and totalitarian. Totalitarianism is so called precisely because it is all-embracing in the social and political aspects.

The genocide of the Chechens, the torture, the bloody activities of the "death squadrons", the extra-judicial executions and the system of hostage-taking and collective responsibility cannot be legalized by means of democratic laws. What is more, these crimes cannot be committed if there is a free and democratic press in the country. Therefore, the crimes of the Russian military in Chechnya inevitably introduce into domestic political life the true elements of totalitarianism. And totalitarianism, in turn, can be based only on a corresponding ideology. Such ideologies can be of only three types: "class", nationalistic and radically religious. For historical reasons (the discrediting of the ideas of communism and the weak religious nature of Russian society), totalitarian trends in the evolution of the Kremlin regime can only be backed up by a nationalist ideology, of which the state-owned church and marginal communist cells have become servants. It is precisely nationalistic ideology, as all independent political scientific research both in the West and in Russia itself proves, that has today become the dominating world outlook of Russian society.

And third and finally, nationalistic ideology, which is the natural outcome of the long years of the war in Chechnya, cannot for long be preserved within the framework of the Chechenophobia established by the Kremlin. Nationalism always generalizes its "enemies", forms them up, as Hitler recommended, "into one line", so as not to complicate propaganda and to concentrate the hatred of the "popular masses" in one direction.

West driving Russia into "bloody swamp of totalitarianism"

Who will be Russia's "enemy" after Chechnya? The answer to this question is obvious: the Islamic peoples, since the Chechens are Muslims, and the West, since it is precisely the West which will absorb the spaces which for a long time were Russia's imperial possessions. But the best "fuel" for nationalism is, as we know, hurt pride and thirst for revenge. Thus, if the East (the "Islamic world") and the West condemn the Chechens to destruction, trying to justify this genocide by "pragmatism", then one has to accept that this "pragmatism" amounts to nurturing and setting a
fascist monster in the shape of Russia armed with a nuclear bludgeon against oneself.

Nationalism, unlike the West's "rational democracy", is an emotional ideology, which does not recognize "pragmatic" restrictions. This means that a nationalistically minded society easily starts a war if even a "pragmatic calculation" shows the suicidal nature of such a war. Germany and Japan in World War II proved this formula by their own fate. Therefore, if the lack of morality of Western politicians and leaders in relation to the Chechen tragedy is absolutely beyond question, then it is time to ask the question: are these politicians and leaders so pragmatic from the point of view of really following their interests? After all, by gaining geo-strategic and economic benefit in supporting the carnage in Chechnya, the West by this support is driving Russia more and more into a bloody swamp of totalitarianism in its nationalistic version. Consequently, Western politicians are thinking in terms of tactical advantages, sacrificing for the sake of these the strategic future of democratic freedoms - the very foundations of Western civilization. And in politics this is called not "pragmatism", but dilettantism, shortsightedness and failure.

posted by David McDuff  # 7:12 PM

Here is the other face of the modern world as we know it. Following the new humanism of Lazarillo de Tormes, Cervantes brings up the complex issues arising from self-consciousness, the dimension of irony, even self-deprecation. In the person of Don Quixote himself, this self-consciousness shows as melancholy, the mood in which the ingenioso hidalgo approaches his end.

Yet Cervantes rescues us from a potential and terrible pit of cynicism through finding his characters' redemption as individuals. Neither Don Quixote nor Sancho Panza is truly mad, but they are human, noble, absurd, caring, confused, often mistaken, like ourselves, in a real world governed by the facts of life. This year we celebrate the 400th anniversary of that literary redemption of humanity.

posted by David McDuff  # 6:40 PM

[Shebarshin] I believe the Al-Qaeda terrorist acts in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 were a provocation by American special services. Moreover on such a colossal scale that it is mind-boggling. Can one believe, for example, that Bin-Laden, hiding somewhere in Afghan mountains and without electronic means of communication, organized the simultaneous seizure of five aircraft? Yes, you try and organize a meeting of 10 people in Moscow, without using the telephone.

The provocation of 11 September was so crude that, at one of the airports, "hot on the trail" the FBI allegedly found a parked car in which there were Arab passports, the Koran and manuals for flying a Boeing, written in Arabic . The whole absurdity was that, firstly, there are no manuals in any other language but English, secondly, can one fly a Boeing after just reading the manuals and, thirdly, how can one board an aircraft without a passport?

It seems, having realized the whole stupidity of its "find", the USA never mentioned it again. Only one thing is clear: we shall never know the whole truth about 11 September.

The USA stood to gain from 11 September

[Question] Who needed such an enormous provocation?

[Shebarshin] In order to find who is behind it, one can use the method used in Ancient Rome and ask oneself a question: who stands to gain from it? And the belligerent group of neoconservatives in the US leadership stood to gain from 11 September. They used it as an excuse for occupying Afghanistan and searching for terrorist gangs there that Afghanistan never had. But Afghanistan is a bridgehead for establishing control over Central Asia with its oil and gas deposits and the routes of their transportation.

Besides, Afghanistan and Central Asian countries are a bridgehead for a possible war with China.

Furthermore, on an excuse of fighting terrorism, the USA occupied Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein, although it is known that Saddam could not stand terrorists and did not let them into Iraq. Thus, "thanks" to 11 September, the USA established control over the world's largest oil deposits located in Iraq. In addition, Pentagon, whose budget reached astronomical figures, and agencies dealing with domestic security gained as a result. That was the price the 3,000 people, who were killed in the terrorist acts of 11 September 2001, had to pay.

If a person is in conflict with his management or in conflict with his environment, if a person cannot express himself, this is where we, intelligence employees, step in. One can talk to us like to a doctor about anything. We shall always understand, support and... [newspaper parenthesis] recruit.

posted by David McDuff  # 3:05 PM

We, members of the North Ossetian public organization Association of the Victims of Terror Acts, The Mothers of Beslan, appeal to public opinion and to the entire world community apropos of the recent events connected with the visit of the leadership of our organization to the so-called healer – but in reality, charlatan - Grigory Grabovoy.

We categorically declare that this visit was a provocation, the purpose of which is to discredit and, as a result, to neutralize our movement. It is just one more plan devised by the authorities and special services in order to liquidate our organization by means of psychological action and pressure on the leadership of the committee headed by Susanna Dudiyeva. However, our public organization has many more members than the 10 people whom it was possible to brainwash [zombirovat’ = “turn into zombies, zombify”].

The overwhelming majority of the victims have remained in possession of their senses. We do not intend to reject our purposes and tasks in the reaching of the truth. We also declare: those who organized this provocation did not attain and will not attain a split in our ranks. Despite the fact that Susannah Dudiyeva took this step, she and all those who participated in the sectarian’s seances will remain with us.

We condemn the openly criminal and cynical repression of women who have survived terrible grief - the death of their children - and are fighting for justice.

We appeal to the Attorney General of the Russian Federation to give a legal opinion and to take appropriate legal measures with regard to the criminal activity of the charlatan Grigory Grabovoy.

22 September 2005

posted by David McDuff  # 11:55 AM

"We know evil exists. We have established that fact beyond all doubt. The important question is: `Is there reason to hope?" Then Camus quoted the words of Dr. Rieux in The Plague:

Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death without raising our eyes toward the heaven where He sits in silence.

"You know these lines of The Plague.... I have quoted them to you before, but do you know what I had in mind when I wrote them?"

"My impression was that you were concentrating on the suffering of the innocent. One would expect fear and terror in Oran in the face of the plague, but instead we find only longing for loved ones. As you said, `Reunion is only the exception and happiness only an accident that has lasted.'"

Camus seemed amused by my interpretation. I wondered if I had perhaps given the wrong answer, so I asked, "How would you describe what you were trying to say?"

"I was trying to say that there are at least three responses humanity can make to the plagues of human experience. First, a man may commit philosophical or physical suicide. That is, a person may simply yield to the sheer impossibility of the situation. Second, he may develop a nihilistic posture, characterized by the asthmatic old Spaniard who spends his days transferring dried beans from one pot to the other. (That alternative doesn't make life any better or any worse.) Last, and possibly most important, I tried to present the alternative of revolt, represented by the sanitation squads who go out and bury the dead bodies. Even around the collective funeral pyres, man responds to the inner flame of comradeship in the service of human survival.

"To me this is all there is – simply going on living. The only hope that I can offer is simply to live. Repetition, grilling each day with the pure act of living. Starting over again until death, that is all there is. Yet, Howard, I sense deep within that something is missing. Is there more?"

posted by David McDuff  # 11:38 AM

The work of a political journalist in Moscow increasingly resembles the work of the Western kremlinologists of Soviet days. It was built on the fact that not even the Soviet propaganda apparatus was able to falsify the entire flow of information about the country. The kremlinologist’s task consisted in endlessly correlating data and restoring the truth by following indirect signs… In this connection I highly recommend www.kremlin.ru (the official presidential site). Its editors do not rest at allowing themselves to correct the speeches of the American resident. They also boldly correct the interviews given by Vladimir Putin himself. To take just one recent example – the interview given to the American television company Fox News. The American journalists were trying to put what for them was the most important question in such a way that Putin would have to give a perfectly straight answer. Presenter Chris Wallace reminded Putin of the American President Sherman, who said that if he was nominated for the presidency he would not take part in the election campaign, and that if he was elected then he would refuse to work.

"Can you say the same thing about your presidency in 2008?", asks the presenter.

"You want me to give a blood oath and repeat for the hundredth time what I’ve already said 99 times. I think I formulated my answer to the previous question rather clearly. That is enough," says Putin, trying to avoid answering, and showing irritation.

"So you won’t run for election?" - says Wallace, trying to make the most of this.

And in reply gets what he wants: “I’ve already given you my answer. I will not.”

But now, take note. The presidential site gives a completely adequate translation of the interview. With the exception of one moment. Putin answers "I will not" to a question which Wallace did not put. "So you won’t run for election for the next term?" – this is how the question appears in the Kremlin transcript.

You must agree, this correction, if it was made consciously, may tell us many things. For example, about Putin’s intention of Putin return to power with the aid of some trick. Let us say, to let someone else be elected, and then find (or create) a pretext for holding elections and to be elected himself - and formally that will not be for the next term. After all,Vladimir Vladimirovich is so very fond of holding on to the literal meaning of words. For example, he promised not to bankrupt YUKOS - and did not make it bankrupt. But not to sell the company’s most profitable asset to a certain one-day firm: that he promised no one.

In any other country the liberties which the editors of the presidential site permit themselves would not pass unnoticed – there would be a scandal. The President would be forced to state unambiguously, once and for all, whether he was going to remain in power (whether in the post of the President or in some other capacity, it doesn’t matter) or not. Only not in Russia. One additional similarity between Russian journalists and Western kremlinologists consists in the fact that no matter what sensational facts they reveal, it will in no way change public opinion in the country.

[Putin’s] reputation in the foreign press (with one or two exceptions) cannot be damaged any further. Everyone is certain that he is an authoritarian leader. But Putin is safe in the knowledge that this has absolutely no effect on the ceremonial side of his relations with Western leaders. They haven’t kicked him out of the G8, they will go on buying the oil and gas. Well, and they will wash their hands immediately after the handshake – but we are not that proud. At spy school we were taught all kinds of things.

posted by David McDuff  # 5:24 PM

RUSSIAN AIR FORCE PLANES MISBEHAVE OVER LITHUANIA, ESTONIA

At 15:20 local time in good flying weather on September 15, a Russian air force Su-27 fighter jet crashed into a field in western Lithuania. The plane was part of a convoy of seven fighter jets (Mig-29 and Su-27) and an A-50 radar plane en route over neutral waters of the Baltic Sea from Russia's Leningrad region to the Chernyakhovsk air base in Kaliningrad region. Earlier in the day, the convoy had crossed Estonia's flight information area with signals switched off, thus jeopardizing flight safety there.

The plane strayed almost 200 kilometers from the prescribed route, which passed approximately 20 kilometers off Lithuania's Baltic shore (just over the 12-mile limit of territorial waters). The crash site is located approximately 170 kilometers inland. The pilot, Major Valery Troyanov, ejected safely and is being held for questioning by the Lithuanian Prosecutor-General's Office in for the duration of investigations into the incident.

For two days, Russia's ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs were claiming -- as did the pilot initially -- that the plane was unarmed. On September 17, however, the Lithuanians found that the plane was armed as if for a wartime operation. They recovered the flight recorder (black box) as well as two air-to-air missiles and the machine gun with its ammunition box from the plane's wreckage. They are looking for the other two missiles that the Russian side now admits the plane was carrying and might possibly have dropped elsewhere before crashing. Most of the plane's fuselage is buried 4 to 5 meters deep in the ground and must be recovered manually for fear of explosives inside.

The pilot and Moscow blame the incident on a malfunction of the plane's navigation equipment, which caused the pilot to lose orientation and eventually to crash land when his fuel ran out. The plane's identification friend-or-foe (IFF) system self-destroyed while in flight, as it is programmed to do in the event of a failure of navigation equipment. Further, according to this version, the Russian pilot could not contact Lithuanian civilian air control or NATO's radar in Lithuania because he does not speak English.

Questioning this version, experts note that the plane, if disoriented, was not assisted by the other Russian planes in the convoy; ran out of fuel too soon if at all; it did not contact Kaliningrad air control on the Su-27's emergency radio with emergency frequencies; and could have contacted Lithuanian air controllers, both for civil aviation and with NATO's radar in Lithuania, who are fluent in Russian as well as English. Lithuania's ace pilot, Colonel (ret.) Stasys Murza, is among those asking such questions.

According to the Russian side, when fuel ran out the pilot crashed the plane deliberately into the empty field to avoid damage to lives and property. The investigation, however, does not rule out the possibility that the deep intrusion may itself have been deliberate, as part of an intelligence mission or practice of an operation. This theory gained currency when Lithuanian journalists identified Troyanov in film footage aired in October 2004 by Belarus state television, about a joint training simulation of a deliberate intrusion into Belarus air space.

Officials and the public also consider the distinct possibility that the flight may have been a planned operation to test NATO's air defense system and response capability in the Baltic states. Radar in Lithuania did not register the deep intrusion because the plane was flying low. Two NATO planes based at Zokniai in north-central Lithuania -- they are German air force F-4s in the current rotation -- spotted the Russian plane just after it had nosedived and while the pilot was parachuting.

Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov apologized to his Lithuanian counterpart, Gediminas Kirkilas, by telephone on September 15 and offered compensation for any damages. Since that date, however, Russia's ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense claim that the pilot and plane are legally immune. Moscow demands that the pilot and the plane's wreckage including the black box be handed over to Russia.

Lithuania's Prosecutor-General's Office and Defense Ministry are conducting a legal and a military investigation, respectively, into the incident. Troyanov's status was changed as early as September 16 from witness to suspect of violating international flight regulations. He is being questioned in the presence of a Lithuanian lawyer and in contact with the Russian embassy in Vilnius. From September 17 on, the Lithuanians have allowed Maj.-General Sergei Baynetov, head of the Russian Defense Ministry's flight safety service, with a group of Russian officers to observe the investigations as bystanders. Lithuanian authorities rule out any parallel Russian investigation or a Lithuanian-Russian joint investigation.

Estonia was affected by the first phase of this incident. While passing through Estonia's flight information area, the Russian planes deactivated their transmitters that should provide airspace controllers with data about the flight. Inasmuch as Estonia's Defense Ministry had granted permission for the flight in advance, it was all the more justified in issuing a protest against the action of "Russian air force planes switching off the transmitters, thereby posing a threat to the safety of civil aviation." Russia's First Deputy Defense Minister, Col.-General Alexander Belousov, in a public reply, denied outright that the planes were required to send flight-path data to air controllers while over flying international waters. However, such provision should be required in order to verify that the planes adhere to the flight path. Russian air force planes sometimes deviate from it, violating Estonia's air space and over flying Estonian islands.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania form an integral part of NATO's air space. Such incidents should generate discussion at NATO headquarters on improving the alliance' air policing mission in this region.

(ELTA, BNS, Lietuvos Rytas, Interfax, Russian Television, September 16-19)

posted by David McDuff  # 3:00 PM

I like Gayle Dixon's suggestion of World Strings as a "catch-all" title for diverse non-classical genres of string playing. But I also wonder if it's good for strings to keep isolating themselves from the rest of the currents of music. After all, genres such as Folk, Fusion, Latin, Gypsy, Klezmer and so on are not exclusive to strings, though strings may often be involved. What I mean is that perhaps it isn't necessary to have a special term or category for non-classical string playing. When strings play jazz, that is precisely what they do - play jazz, along with other non-string instruments. And when they play the various kinds of folk music, they again play folk music -alongside, or in awareness of, other instruments or voices. The same is true when strings play classical music.

I think the categorisation/classification issue is an important one, because it has far-reaching implications for the role of string instruments in jazz music in particular. If string instruments are divided off as being somehow "special" or "alternative", it makes it all the harder for them to be integrated within a jazz context.

While recently listening to some of the Quartette Indigo recordings from the late 1990s, I became pleasantly aware that while several musical traditions are interwoven in this playing - jazz, classical, gospel, blues, African music, to mention just a few - Akua Dixon's music is above all a jazz expression, with plenty of scope for improvisation and "free" playing. But as music played by strings, it also has numerous points of contact with things that are usually played on other instruments. The quartet arrangements by pianist Sonelius Smith and trombonist Steve Turre, and Gayle Dixon's violin performance of a John Coltrane solo and her arrangement of Monk's Ruby My Dear are particularly interesting from this point of view.

To my ears, the music of Quartette Indigo points both inward, to the sounds and timbres and colorations of strings, and outward, to the orchestral and vocal palette of a much larger range of genres, interests and ensembles beyond the string section or quartet. Just as the classical string quartet or string orchestra constantly reminds the listener of a wider range of instrumentation, so does the jazz string chamber ensemble, when conceived in this way. And in QI, there's also a clear link to the classical and even the symphonic tradition, a link of the kind that's found in the music of Duke Ellington, for example.

I think there are lessons to be drawn from this - not least the perception that while classical music and jazz can happily co-exist, so can classical music and other genres of musical expression. It would be a shame to think that the non-classical styles and genres represent some form of rebellion against or denial of the classical ones. Instead, perhaps we need to look for forms of music-making, composition, improvisation and listening that enable all the genres to communicate with one another. That's what I hear, for example, in Tanya Kalmanovitch's experiments with Bartok improvisations (on compositions for 2 violins) and her work on South Indian music.

If strings are to make real headway in a jazz context, I submit that they need to opt in to all the richness, diversity and variety of which they have historically proven themselves to be capable, rather than opt out into some uncertain "alternative" or "contemporary" musical future. And perhaps that's a question that needs to be considered in the field of string music education.

I don't know how much sense this makes, but thought I'd say it anyway.

posted by David McDuff  # 10:17 AM

It may be that Putin aspires not to be a new Stalin but to be a new Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the flamboyant but shrewd Saudi who acted as world oil czar in the 1970s.

The United States should not encourage the Saudification of Russia by seeking to guarantee energy security while ignoring internal repression and lack of reform. The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and other events have amply demonstrated that one Saudi Arabia treated like that is more than enough.

posted by David McDuff  # 6:01 PM

On Sunday morning Trepashin himself told Interfax that his house was surrounded by some 20 police officers who had arrived there to arrest him.

On Friday, Mikhail Trepashkin, sentenced earlier to four years in prison for possessing an unregistered weapon and disclosing state secrets, was ordered by the Sverdlov regional court to remains in custody, after the prosecutor’s office protested a lower court ruling to release him on parole, his lawyer, Yelena Liptser said.

In late August, a Nizhny Tagil court ordered the release of the former FSB officer on parole.

Trepashkin and his supporters said that the charges against him were politically motivated — the former FSB agent led a lone investigation into the 1999 apartment bombings that were blamed on Chechen separatists.

Trepashkin’s supporters said his only crime was to have exposed evidence that pointed to government complicity in the killing of more than a hundred civilians during the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow. Shortly before he was due to present his evidence in court, police stopped him on the road and claimed they found a gun in the trunk of his car.

On Sunday, Trepashkin’s lawyers denounced their client’s arrest saying that by overturning an earlier sentence the higher court had not, however, sanctioned his arrest but merely ordered a retrial of his case.

Pending retrial Trepashkin was to stay at large, Yelena Liptser told Interfax.

posted by David McDuff  # 1:41 PM

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia - The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, a small human-rights organization sponsored by American taxpayers, is a rare, independent source of information about this country's war in Chechnya. The authorities here are hounding it out of existence.

The [Russian] federal tax service accused the nonprofit society of evading taxes, though its financing from foreign grants is supposed to be tax-free, and billed it for $35,000 in back taxes and fines. In late August, the service froze the organization's bank accounts. The Justice Ministry has scheduled a hearing in late September to nullify its registration on the ground that by law it cannot use "Russian" in its name.

On Sept. 2, the society's director, Stanislav M. Dmitriyevsky, was charged with inciting ethnic and religious animosity by publishing commentaries by two Chechen separatist leaders in the group's newspaper more than a year and a half ago.

One passage cited as evidence in the indictment said, "So far it is not too late to come to an understanding, but for that the Russian people should get rid of those for whom peace means the loss of power."

Russia has long been wary of organizations that highlight the kidnappings and killings that blight Chechnya, but the fate of the society has repercussions that reach far beyond this city on the Volga River, where it has offices, threatening foreign support for groups like it and confronting the United States with a diplomatic quandary.

President Vladimir V. Putin warned this summer that Russia would not tolerate "foreign financing of political activities" by private organizations.

The legal assault here appears to be the first to make good on that threat, which echoed one he made a year earlier.

Putin did not single out the society or the United States, but the State Department, through the National Endowment for Democracy, has given the group $170,000 since 2001 - money that was not supposed to be taxed under a 1992 agreement between the United States and Russia, but is now part of the tax-evasion case.

Officials in the U.S. Embassy and at the State Department declined to discuss the matter for the record. But John E. Squire, who oversees grants to Russia and Ukraine for the National Endowment for Democracy, said he feared this would not be an isolated case.

"The range of stuff you can do in criticizing the government is getting more and more narrow," he said in a telephone interview from Washington.

Dmitriyevsky, who remains free pending trial but is under orders not to leave Nizhny Novgorod, said the authorities were bent on stifling organizations like his, just as Putin's government has reined in news organizations, businesses and the political opposition.

Officials here denied that the government actions had been coordinated.

posted by David McDuff  # 11:23 AM

Nine months after the Beslan school siege, pro-Russian Chechen soldiers staged a raid on this tiny village on the border with Dagestan, populated mostly by ethnic Dagestanis.

It was one of the most public abuses committed by the increasing number of Chechen militants serving under the pro-Moscow local government's banner.

They are broadly known as "Kadyrovtsi", after their leader, strongman and vice prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov. The raid resulted in 11 men being led away. They have not been heard of since.

One was Izaket Umarova's son, Murtuz, 18. "Six soldiers came into our home," she said. "They asked me what republic I was from. I said 'Chechnya', and they let me go. Murtuz ran to the mosque, but they got him. If my son is dead, will they please give me the body so I can bury him."

posted by David McDuff  # 12:15 PM

The delight of the Kremlin and near-Kremlin technologists concerning the political crisis in Ukraine is so frank ("The revolution is at an end!"), so childishly direct (I imagine they were drunk with joy in the Kremlin offices), that one sincerely wants to warn the comrades, so that their subsequent disappointments will not prove to be as painfully unexpected as was the case with candidate Yanukovich. No, it’s not the end, but only the beginning of the transformation of the regime. No, the "Orange Revolution" - as a rejection of the previous system of government – has not died, but has merely passed from the phase of street demonstrations to a phase that is fundamentally more important (although no less problematic) - the phase of the institutional building of the new state and the new country. The risks are enormous, but there is hope that the deadlock can be overcome.

First, both Timoshenko and Yushchenko – for the present, at any rate - adhere to a common aim: entry to the European Union and the formation of a democratic regime in Ukraine. Rejection of this aim for Timoshenko will indicate an unequal romance with the Kremlin, which for a whole series reasons, including personal ones, is not without its dangers for her. To say nothing of the fact that Maidan, which for the most part still supports Timoshenko, will not forgive her for it: the memory of the fact that it was the street that did not permit the falsification of the elections – that memory will not quickly be erased.

In the second place, having obtained a parliamentary majority and become prime minister, her populism will subside a little: among other things, the state of the energy market will not permit it. What we are seeing just now are victories for her, and defeats for Yushchenko. In a parliamentary republic the responsibility rests on the prime minister, and a decrease in economic growth accompanied by inflation are the inevitable consequences of populism.

Thirdly, no matter who wins the election, the Ukraine will in any event win, since after losing, both Yushchenko and Timoshenko will be able to form a strong opposition, which - for the sake of victory in future elections - will check each step of the bureaucracy and each kopeck of state expenditure. Evidence for this is the experience of the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe, above all Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic, where governments have been changed like gloves, something which, with the obvious risks, has finally contributed to shaping a consolidated democracy in those countries. While in those countries where approximately the same officials have remained in authority - and so it has been in many countries of the CIS, including Russia – everything has moved and is moving in the opposite direction.

posted by David McDuff  # 11:13 AM

He made them an offer they couldn't refuse. And that is the end of the story about joint European interests, about new and old Europe, about Putin's authoritarian regime and the young democracies. The whole of that story fits into the folder containing the contract for the building of a gas pipeline that goes along the bottom of Baltic Sea and bypasses young Europe. It goes to good old Germany.

Of course, the profit won. It's nothing personal - just business. However, it's well known that there is no business without politics and vice versa. Russia not only struck a profitable agreement, but also punished its former republics, which are oriented to the West. You boys wanted to make plans about how to survive without Russian energy resources? Did you discuss different projects? Did you want to connect the Baltic Sea with the Caspian Sea? Well, now you can live without us. Let your West help you. But it is doubtful that it will. You have revolutions, and they're pragmatic folk in the West. All they care about is debit, credit and profit margin. Alternative gas pipes that bypass unruly countries and lead directly to the West will allow Russia to turn the gas into a tool of direct pressure on the post-Soviet space. This gas can be shut down any time -- depending on the political situation and without the risk of interrupting the supply to old Europe. I have no doubts that Russia, in actuality, has started a geopolitical project that will increase its influence on the post-Soviet space. If another Asian project were to be added to the European one, providing oil to China through the above-ground pipe, that would lessen China's dependence on the U.S. If that were to happen, then the idea of restoring Russian power would cease to be a pipedream.

The Kremlin has made a gamble on energy resources as an instrument of influence. Of course, it's not a nuclear threat, like it used to be during the Soviet Union. However, is there a risk of Europe becoming an energy junky from the Russian pipe? While the Kremlin is being and will continue to be controlled by former officers of the Soviet intelligence service, such risk exists. The gas project signed by Germany it is a project of the current regime, which hardly could be called a democratic one. And this is the risk. If the Kremlin were to have another regime, this agreement would not be signed - the relationship in the post-Soviet space would be built in a different manner.

I personally think that by entering into the project of "gas bypassing Baltic countries and Poland," Germany has lost any right to criticize the Kremlin, even if Putin were to be elected for five more terms. Gas and oil pipelines always end up with politics. Thus, Germany made with Russia not only economical, but a political agreement as well. And reaping economic benefits, Berlin helped Putin gain political points. He also won over the part of Europe which still cannot forget "Big Brother."

posted by David McDuff  # 8:13 PM

The three-judge panel at the Moscow City Court eventually ruled to reconvene the hearing Monday. Their decision came after hours of stop-start proceedings in which the judges tried to figure out where Khodorkovsky's defense team was and mulled the delicate question of whether they could proceed without any defense counsel in the biggest trial in post-Soviet history.

State prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin accused Khodorkovsky of stalling for time, and asked the judges to go ahead with appeal after the jailed tycoon's sole defense counsel, Genrikh Padva, failed to show up. "This is a banal attempt to drag out the court hearing," Shokhin told the judges in the well-appointed courtroom in the new Moscow City Court in northeast Moscow.

Outside on Bogorodsky Val, riot police with nightsticks formed a cordon around the building as small groups of demonstrators, for and against Khodorkovsky, held banners and tooted horns.

. . . .


Wednesday's adjournment means that the appeal process is likely to drag on for several weeks, rather than be wrapped up and rejected in a period of a few days, as his lawyers feared.

Khodorkovsky's lawyers have claimed the appeal process has been deliberately speeded up to prevent him from running for a seat in the State Duma in a Moscow by-election scheduled for Dec. 4. If the court rejects his appeal, he will not be allowed to run. Khodorkovsky has until Oct. 29 to register as a candidate.

Khodorkovsky said Wednesday that the rush to set the appeal in motion meant that Padva had been the only one out of nine lawyers on his defense team who was fully briefed, while the others had had time to study only part of the trial record. The defense team has filed a motion calling for the proceedings to be postponed, on the grounds that the appeal was improperly scheduled and that the trial record supplied to the defense by the court was incomplete and shot through with discrepancies.

posted by David McDuff  # 9:37 AM

Just across the heavily fortified Ingush-N. Ossetian border thousands of Ingush refugees forced from their homes in N. Ossetia in 1992 live in a sprawling, squalid refugee camp. Here the hatred is palpable. "The Ossetians are like Nazis. They drove us from our homes (in 1992) like cattle, showing no humanity," says Umar Khadziyev, unemployed, who lives in a small hut with his wife and three children.

Mr. Khadziyev says he condemns the Beslan attack, with its terrible death toll of children. But then he adds: "Do you know why the fighters drove past two Ossetian schools before taking School No. 1 in Beslan? It's because the Ossetians used that very school as a prison for our people in 1992. Yes, our women and children were held there, in that same gym, beaten up and denied food and water. Nobody talks about that, do they?"

For Moscow, the spreading unrest, fuelled by Islamic extremists in some republics and ancient ethnic antagonisms in others, poses an almost nightmarish challenge. After Beslan, President Vladimir Putin warned that the cost of failure could be "the destruction of Russia." Says Khadziyev, the Ingush refugee: "Our grandfathers told us the USSR would collapse one day. I'm sure that Russia is going to fall apart too."

posted by David McDuff  # 7:17 PM

In 1997 the war ended and Liza's family came back to Grozny but in 1999 they decided to move to Moscow despite of the fact lots of chechens emigrated to Germany or Norway but Liza had refused.
Liza Umarova's songs are about tragedies the war had brought to chechens and russians. She's real patriot of Motherland more than generals and politicians. She considers combatants should negotiate and stop war.

... Grozny, you're hero-city today
and all the chechens are proud of you
although your streets are broken down
and our childhood's under ruins
but we're proud of you, capital,
Grozny's hero-city ...

posted by David McDuff  # 9:35 AM

Gazprom is not just an energy giant: it is Russia's most important foreign policy tool.Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder are slated to sign an agreement significantly increasing the amount of natural gas Germany will eventually purchase from Russia. The existing pipeline delivering gas to the German market is expected to reach full capacity sometime in 2006. As recently as last week, Germany's Economy Minister Wolfgang Clement stated that the energy relationship between the countries was of critical importance and needed to be expanded.

The North European Pipeline project is not without controversy. It was originally mulled years ago and many German politicians have since then expressed concern of being overly dependent on Russian gas exports. The Baltic states and Poland also expressed concerns over the prospective route of the pipeline, designed to bypass both. The Poles and Balts have lobbied German politicians to have the pipeline re-routed for reasons of energy security and transit fees.

The pipeline is also a political issue, with German voters going to the polls to elect a new parliament on September 18. Schroeder's main challenger, Christian Democrat Angela Merkel, leads in the polls and has said that she will support the requests by Poland and the Baltic States to have the new gas pipeline routed across their territory. Depending on the election outcome, the pipeline's route could be changed, though it will probably make little difference to Gazprom, as Germany needs additional gas supplies as soon as possible.

posted by David McDuff  # 7:37 PM

Window on Eurasia

Putin’s Post-Beslan Moves Deepen Divide Between Power, People

Paul Goble

Tartu, September 7 – In the wake of the Beslan tragedy,President Vladimir Putin announced a series of measures – including the appointment rather than election of governors and a set of new Duma electoral rules designed to boost larger political parties at the expense of smaller ones. -- intended to strengthen the state and enhance its ability to fight terrorism.

But now, twelve months later, some Moscow analysts are suggesting that Putin’s moves then especially when viewed in conjunction with his unwillingness or inability to impose order within his own regime since then have done relatively little to reduce the threat of terrorism but have deepened the divide between the Kremlin and the Russian people.

In an essay provocatively entitled „Beslan Consolidated Power Against Society,” Tat’yana Stanovaya, a senior analyst at the MoscowPolitical Technology Center, suggested that Putin’s actions over the pastyear were „directed at the defense of power not only from anti-government actions but also from society itself” (http://www.politcom.ru/, September 2). The concentration of power that Putin promoted has had the effect of creating a force which „is being used for the defense of power itself” rather than for any other purpose, she writes. And that in turn means that Putin’s reforms have reduced rather than increased both the dependence of government agencies on and their responsibility toward the population. Indeed, Stanovaya concludes, „the political consequences of the tragedy in Beslan made the power much more alienated from society and at the same time much less effective.” But Putin and his team do not appear to care about that. For them, the most important things is „to make the organs of power controllable and loyal to the maximum extent possible.”

Stanovaya’s argument were extended by Vitaliy Leibin in an essay posted online on Monday. Looking back over the past year, he concludes thatPutin has failed to find a common language with the Russian people, at least in part because he views them as a greater threat to his power than are the terrorists. (http://www.polit.ru/author/2005/09/05/sept.html).

Putin’s inability to connect with the people was very much on display at the end of last week, Leibin suggests. On the one hand, while he was in the northern Caucasus on September 1 for the opening of the Kuban Agrarian State University, he did not visit Beslan, the site of one of Russia’s greatest national tragedies.

And on the other, his meeting with a group of women who had lost children and other relatives in the Beslan massacre was by all accounts not a comfortable one for him or for them, with Putin conceding general responsibility but indicating by his comments how little he actually knew –or was prepared to admit he knew – about what had happened there.

But more disturbing than this failure to communicate, Leibin continues, is Putin’s continuing failure to do what he has promised to do. On the first anniversary of Beslan, the Russian president said that that tragedy was precisely the occasion for putting the country’s law enforcement agencies in order.

But he has not done so, either at the lower levels where the militia appears to be acting with ever less regard for the law nor at the upper reaches were he has failed to fire any of the leaders of the force structures, officials who might have been expected to be dismissed after the disastrous outcome of the Beslan school siege.

„The pictures of moral dissolution in the force structures are connected with the political and nomenklatura-like sense of untouchabilityand independence of their leadership,” Leibin writes. However, government security agencies „without political control are not the genuine article but rather [simply] marauders.”

Indeed, Leibin writes, the situation is so dangerous that Putin stands before „a simple choice: either he can build with his friends the next [super-profitable corporation] or he can get involved with the country.” If he choses the latter, then he will have to face up to the fact that he won’t be able to do so „without the citizens, that is, without massive political support.” Today, the commentator concludes, it is not clear which choicePutin will make, but the commentator suggests that as the Georgian and Ukrainian situations show, force structures which do not enjoy theconfidence of the people may not save a country’s president however much confidence he may repose in them.

(via MAK)

posted by David McDuff  # 7:19 PM

RUSSIA, Moscow. On 9 September former Guantanamo inmates Airat Vakhitov and Rustam Akhmyarov revealed that they had been detained by 2 policemen from Tatarstan on 27 August. The policemen burst into the flat of the President of the Russian Islamic Committee Geidar Dzhemal and, without presenting any form of identification, handcuffed Vakhitov and Akhmyarov – who were present at the time – and took them away.

Airat Vakhitov and Rustam Akhmyarov, appearing at a press conference at the offices of the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty, described how police had first taken them to Sheremetevo airport – however no tickets were available on flights to Kazan. Then they were taken to Domodedovo airport and from there were flown to Kazan the capital of Tatarstan.

There, accompanied by members of the Special Rapid Response Branch, they were taken to the Department for the Fight against Organised Crime before being placed in temporary remand cells. Following this Vakhitov and Akhmyarov were taken to Haberezhnye Chelny, where two days following their arrest a court in their absence placed them in custody on charges of terrorism.

Journalists located Airat Vakhitov and Rustam Akhmyarov following which the organisation Amnesty International organised a campaign to provide immediate help. Sergei Nikitin, the head of the Moscow branch of the organisation, said that a list of officials involved in the detention of Vakhitov and Akhmyarov with their addresses had been sent out to 75 thousand activists from the organisation in various countries in order to invite questions. The information was also placed on Amnesty International’s internet site. According to Nikitin this lead to an international scandal.

Airat Vakhitov and Rustam Akhyarov were freed on the morning of 2 September. Before being released an investigator from the prosecutor’s office visited them and asked them not to talk about what had happened. According to the investigator the order to detain the men came from a general in the Federal Security Service (FSB) and a general in the Interior Ministry.

The President of the Russian Islamic Committee Gaidar Dzhemal said that according to information in his possession the decision to kidnap Bakhitov and Akhmyarov was taken by Tatarstani officials as result of meetings with members of the Interior Ministry and the FSB during the visit of Vladimir Putin to Kazan in August.

Airat Vakhitov confirmed that according to a US military intelligence investigator he had been freed from Guantanamo and sent to Russia on specific conditions namely that Vakhitov would be sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and that the CIA and FBI would have round-the-clock access to him. Vakhitov announced that an investigator from the General Prosecutor’s office had confirmed what the American officer had said.

Participants in the press conference announced that Amnesty International in conjunction with the English human rights organisation Justice in Exile are preparing to create a Russian fund for Guantanamo prisoners to provide them with legal and humanitarian aid.

News Agency PRIMA-News [2005-09-09-Rus-22]

posted by David McDuff  # 5:46 PM

A Chechen pop singer-songwriter and her son have been beaten in Moscow in what prosecutors are saying was a racially motivated attack.

Liza Umarova and her son Murad, 15, were attacked on their way to the metro by a group of four drunken men, aged between 25 and 30, on Filyovskaya Ulitsa at about 8:15 p.m. last Tuesday, an unidentified official at the City Prosecutor's Office said, RIA-Novosti reported.

Umarova and her son sustained numerous contusions in the attack but initially decided against reporting the incident to the police, RIA-Novosti said.

The City Prosecutor's Office said Friday that it was treating the attack as racially motivated.

The police are sometimes reluctant to investigate racially motivated attacks or attacks against Russian citizens of non-Slavic descent, with officers siding with assailants rather than with the victims of attacks. Calls to the City Prosecutor's Office went unanswered Friday.

"You will not live in this country," one of the attackers told Umarova, she said in an interview with Gazeta newspaper. She said the attacker gave her "the word of an officer."

Umarova is a popular singer-songwriter whose repertoire includes Chechen songs calling for peace and reconciliation in the North Caucasus. She moved to Moscow from Chechnya six years ago. Umarova makes a living in Moscow as a bookseller and rarely gives concerts, Gazeta reported.

posted by David McDuff  # 10:14 AM

The attacked is always the last to know. Americans, who generally—sometimes with good reason—smugly believe that they know all they need to know are, perhaps for the first time, feeling what it is to be in the middle of a story they do not understand. How humiliating it is to be reduced to feeding on rumor, hearsay and mythologized interpretations of real and imaginary clues: was the date—9-11—coincidental? could the choice of American Airlines as the murder weapon have been symbolic? How frightening it is suddenly to feel unable to distinguish the credible from the impossible—now that the unimaginable has happened. How enervating it is to know that someone, somewhere knows exactly what happened, how it was done, and what will happen next—while droves of competent journalists and officials are scrambling to count the casualties and gather clues from the possible apprehension of a van filled with explosives on the George Washington Bridge or a supposed car bomb outside the State Department.

This is familiar, as are many other things I see in New York on September 11: the mobbed stores, the suddenly unreliable phone lines, the streets eerily still after dark, the harried waitresses at cafes filled with people in a state of enforced idleness that, for lack of a frame of reference, appears festive. This is all familiar, but it is not the universal experience of war. Nor is the loss of loved ones or of property or of a measure of freedom. The universal experience of war is losing one’s sense of security—usually for good. When I hear that the twin towers have collapsed, I catch myself thinking that now New Yorkers—like the residents of Belgrade, Beirut or Baghdad—will have a daily reminder, a broken tooth in the skyline saying, “It has happened here. It could happen again. To you.” New Yorkers, and perhaps Americans in general, have lost their sense of security, their innocence, their belief in seatbelts. This is a tragedy. But there is a little gloating voice inside me saying, “Now you know.” Well, I have a grudge.

posted by David McDuff  # 10:01 AM

The main problem, it is clear, is the criminal conduct of the Russian state in Chechnya. The solution to this problem, then, is for Russia to cease its criminal conduct. All the rest is for later. Russian crimes in Chechnya are far too numerous for me to list here. They commenced in September1999 when Russia unilaterally, after careful forward planning and in breach of the peace treaty freely signed by Presidents Yeltsin and Maskhadov on 12 May 1997 (reproduced as the book's second appendix), commenced its second Chechnya war under the direction of then prime minister Vladimir Putin. The crimes that then occurred have been documented as war crimes and crimes against humanity, as the civilian population was massacred and terrorised by the Russian military. The crimes that came next can best be described as state terrorism of the most extreme kind, since they involved complete abandonment of the rule of law, the use of zachistki, filtration camps, rapes and murders, torture of suspects, abductions and kidnapping, targeted assassinations, and demanding of ransoms for live or dead captives, while efforts were made with considerable (though partial) success to keep these crimes hidden from the Russian people and the world at large. It was this conduct by Russia - for which its current president, a truly callous man, must carry the principal responsibility - that destroyed the moral boundaries of civilisation, boundaries that normally would prevent such depraved acts as the Beslan school siege. It was the destruction of these moral boundaries (exacerbated by endemic, society-wide corruption) that led directly to the terrorist attacks against the Russian people in the years 2002 to 2004 including, of course, the Nord-Ost theatre siege when the rescuers managed to kill some 200 (almost 20 per cent) of the hostages.

The crimes being carried out in Chechnya by the Russian military and secret services, and by their local proxies under the villainous Ramzan Kadyrov, are continuing to this day. Putin has brought lasting dishonour to the Hero of Russia medal by bestowing it on Kadyrov (the only Chechen ever to have received it while still alive) and on the war criminal Vladimir Shamanov. Putin's Chechnya policy may be deduced from the evidence of it. It is to resolve the issue of Chechnya by eliminating all dissent, using targeted assassination and state terrorism, and to impose a fake democracy. In March 2005 HRW published its 57 page document "Worse than a War: `Disappearances' in Chechnya - a Crime Against Humanity." In June of this year it was disclosed that 52 mass graves have been found in Chechnya, containing the bodies of Chechen men and women who have been tortured and murdered during Putin's reign of terror.

It is a moral outrage that Putin is now to chair the G8. Regrettably President George W Bush is blind to such matters, guided as he is in his thinking by a religious belief that evidently enables him to overlook any crime that does not inhibit his own political agenda.

Any approach to the study of Chechnya that does not come with a proper understanding of the true nature of the problem is going to be unsatisfactory, and this applies to a lot of what is in this collection of essays. I do not intend to examine all of them in this review - such a task would be impossibly tedious. There are a couple
of points however that I cannot ignore.

The presence of Al Qaeda in Chechnya is briefly examined by Dr Michael Bowker, a lecturer in politics at the University of East Anglia. Now this is a very sensitive point. It has been Putin's contention since he entered politics that it is "international terrorists" who make the running in Chechnya. This contention was, by way of an example, the supposed justification for killing the late Aslan Maskhadov, a former Soviet army officer. We saw on television the unedifying spectacle of Nikolai Patrushev reporting to his master that the "international terrorist" Maskhadov had been killed. I happen to agree with those experts who argue that the presence of a few Arabs in Chechnya does not support the essentially mendacious case made by the Russian leadership. Dr Bowker writes, "Nevertheless, there is evidence of al-Qaeda activity in Chechnya. How much and how significant that activity is remains the only question." If Dr Bowker has evidence of Al Qaeda activity in Chechnya, it is very important to state what it is. If, as I suspect, he has no such evidence, he is irresponsible in stating that such evidence exists. His observation that "Basaev, Khattab and Walid have all trained in al-Qaeda camps . . . along with several hundred other Chechens" does not, if true, amount to evidence of present Al Qaeda activity. But regrettably, I suspect that such statements regarding several hundred Chechens are lies originating with the notorious Rohan Gunaratna, who is quoted by Bowker as being an expert on Al Qaeda. Any writer on Al Qaeda generally, and Chechnya in particular, who relies on statements promulgated by Gunaratna (who is NOT actually an expert, as he has admitted to me) deserves to have his academic credentials examined.

It is particularly harmful to the cause of justice for the Chechen people to spread the rumour - for that is fundamentally all it is - that Al Qaeda is active in Chechnya. Such statements tend to support the shocking moral abdication by Tony Blair and George W Bush in the face of Russian criminality towards the Chechens. Dr Bowker quotes Blair's notorious statement in the House of Commons in June 2003: "Some of the people offering resistance [to the coalition forces in Iraq] were from Chechnya." Blair has been challenged to substantiate this extraordinary allegation, and has utterly failed to do so. It is now recognised that the allegation was untrue, and it is disconcerting to find it being repeated by an academic who ought to know better.

The other matter on which I would like to touch is the 1999 apartment block bombings, and the case made by the energetic professor of philosophy from Southern Illinois, Dr Robert Bruce Ware. Dr Ware is a noted expert on Chechnya whose views on the subject might in general be described, I hope with fairness, as contrarian. I would not care to offend Dr Ware who is undoubtedly much cleverer than me, lest he attack me with all the cogency, fluency and command of facts for which he is justly famed.

One topic discussed by Dr Ware is the bomb blasts which, in 1999, immediately preceded the commencement of the Russian aerial bombardment of Chechnya and the ensuing war. The case he makes is that it was neither the Chechens nor the Russian security services who were responsible for the blasts that killed, in total, more than 300 people. Instead it was Islamist extremists from elsewhere in the North Caucasus "who were seeking retribution for federal military attacks upon the Islamist enclave in [three] central Dagestani villages.." He adduces a collection of evidence and argument that make a good case, and students of the subject ought to read and take serious note of it.

I have to disagree with Dr Ware's case as a consequence of points of significance omitted from his discussion, namely the evidence that there was advance planning of the bomb blasts at the highest reaches of the government of the Russian Federation. In a presentation three years ago, Professor John Dunlop drew attention to press reports that were suggestive. Here is the first: "On 6 June 1999 - a full three months before the terror bombings in Moscow - a Swedish journalist, Jan Blomgren, reported in the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet that one option being considered by the Kremlin leadership and its associates was a series of `terror bombings' in Moscow which could be blamed on the Chechens. (See The Independent [London], 29 January 2000)."

Here is the second: "The well-known Russian journalist Alexandr Zhilin reported in the 22 July 1999 issue of Moskovskaya Pravda, more than a month before the bombings, that the administration of President Yeltsin had worked out and confirmed a broad plan for discrediting the candidacy of Mayor Yurii Luzhkov - a major candidate for Russian president in the upcoming year 2000 elections - involving a series of provocations designed to destabilize the socio-psychological situation in Moscow. President Yeltsin was said to have approved individual points of the program, and in circles close to Yeltsin's influential daughter, Tatyana Dyachanko, the plan was being called `Storm in Moscow'. Loud terrorist acts or attempts at such acts were to be part of the plan, according to Zhilin."

Finally there is the curious incident of the Duma speaker who announced to the lower house of the Russian parliament, on 13 September 1999, that the Volgodonsk apartment-building explosion had occurred three days in advance of the actual event. The official shorthand record of the proceedings of the State Duma on 13 September 1999 gives the following exchange:

Seleznev G.N. [speaker] - Here is another statement. It is reported from Rostov on Don that tonight a residential house was bombed in the town of Volgodonsk.

Zhirinovsky V.V. [deputy speaker] - And there is a nuclear power station in Volgodonsk.

If the speaker of the State Duma was able to announce on 13 September 1999 an explosion that did not happen until 16 September 1999, he must have received, and accidentally published, an advance notification of an event planned by a person of some rank in official circles. No investigation of this matter was ever carried out.

These points of which Dr Ware is presumably fully cognisant are convincing evidence, to me, that his argument concerning Islamist extremists is not valid. The verdict of history may however depend on the results of the struggle for supremacy between those who for one reason or another are Putin's supporters, on the one hand, and those who prefer the truth about his crimes, and the misery he has brought upon his people, and his dishonesty, on the other.

posted by David McDuff  # 12:57 PM

Hi. This is pretty silly, but please note that this text, published under my byline in the Moscow Times, has little in common with the copy I actually submitted. The paper has since apologized and re-posted the original column as written by me (the point of it is quite different). Please see it at themoscowtimes.com or at livejournal.com/users/gessen. I would appreciate it if you could remove this copy from your site, as I didn't write anything of the sort. Thank you.

09.11.05 - 7:00 am

posted by David McDuff  # 10:59 AM

A white blossoming fear, foam seethes
and breaks to nothing,
                drops burn –
but it is not magic, not alchemy
or domino game of stars.
It is liquid,
       a clear fluid, that fastens on
any skin at all,
                  light, dark or wrong…
An angel flaps its wings
in order to tear itself free from the railings
around the playground,
                  which tomorrow is the world’s arena.
There children spray petrol
in a sudden flicker of light.
There children drench a springtime
one pouring light green day, where sparrows
chirrup tropically in the hedge.
There they are setting fire to a playmate,
                                          shouting for help,
as flames with a breath
                           leap black-tongued up.
as the skin melts,
as body and shadow are one
and can no longer be separated –
as the silence disfigured screams in several languages
as the child is embalmed alive in shock and raincoat.

(my translation from Danish)

posted by David McDuff  # 10:44 AM