Disengagement from Chechnya

RFE/RL reports that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has appealed the decision of a United States judge to grant political asylum to Ilyas Akhmadov, who was foreign minister of the government of Chechnya until the Russian invasion of 1999. The DHS is claiming that Akhmadov is a terrorist, in spite of his work for a negotiated settlement of the Chechen conflict.

Anne Applebaum has some thoughts on this:

Anne Applebaum is a columnist for the "The Washington Post" newspaper and has followed the Akhmadov case with interest. She says it is difficult to understand the Bush's administration's motive in seeking to force Akhmadov out of the country.

Applebaum tells RFE/RL there are three possible explanations why the United States would try to mark Akhmadov as a terrorist.

One, she says, is that no one in the Bush administration knows enough to differentiate him from "real" terrorists. But this, she says, is unlikely.

A second possibility, Applebaum says, is that the decision to go after Akhmadov was made as a result of low-level contacts between the United States and Russia. This, she says, is a bit more credible.

But most credible is a third possible explanation, she says. "The White House or the National Security Council have decided that as a favor to Putin, they will continue to show that they are trying to deport Akhmadov -- that they consider him a terrorist, that they are going along with Putin's interpretation, that they will continue to keep [Akhmadov] occupied with court cases as a favor to Putin, because that's what Putin wants them to do."

Applebaum says the Russian media are likely to see the DHS appeal as supporting Putin's Chechnya's policy. It appears to show that Washington considers the Chechen separatist movement as illegitimate, and Chechen separatists themselves to be terrorists.

"The Washington Post" columnist suggests the Bush administration has distanced itself from the Chechnya conflict, and may be acting on the Akhmadov case only in order to please Putin.

"I think [the Americans are] very disengaged in Chechnya. In effect, they don't have a policy anymore in Chechnya. This decision to appeal the Akhmadov case may reflect that disengagement, or, again, as I say, it could reflect the fact that they're deliberately disengaged because Putin doesn't want them involved," h court cases as a favor to Putin, because that's what Putin wants them to do," Applebaum said.

As to the further question of why the Bush administration would go out of its way to give support to Putin on Chechnya after Putin refused to support Bush's Iraq policy, the defence analyst Charles Pena of the Cato Institute in Washington gives the following answer:

the atomic bombs left over from the Cold War arms race.

"Russia still has a very large strategic nuclear arsenal that we are working together to reduce -- both their [arsenal] and our [arsenal] -- and certainly it's not in the interest of the United States to jeopardize that process. As well as concerns of a resurgence of a harder-line and militaristic element politically within Russia. And certainly that would not be a welcome development after all the progress we've made in this post-Soviet era," Pena said.

Many observers have expressed concern about Putin's autocratic style of leadership. But Pena credits the Russian president with building a stronger economy and creating warmer ties with the West -- something that the United States and other Western countries should welcome.

"At some point, Putin is not going to be in power, and the idea is, hopefully, under his rule, he puts in place the kinds of policies and reforms that whoever succeeds him continues. And so you want to make sure that the country keeps moving in that direction," Pena said.

Meanwhile, the article reflects,"in the midst of this global balancing act, however, hangs the fate of Ilyas Akhmadov."