Verdicts and Veracity

At chechnya-sl, Jeremy Putley has a review of a recently published book of essays on Chechnya. The review consists of more than just an appraisal of the volume, and I want to quote from its later part:

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.

See also Terror-99