An Iranian blogger has posted photographs of the public execution in Mashad, eastern Iran, of two young men (one under 18) for the crime of homosexuality.
(via GVO)
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Who Killed Paul Klebnikov?
The Washington Times has an op-ed about the case of Paul Klebnikov, the American journalist who a year ago was shot dead in a premeditated killing in Moscow. The identity of the murderer(s) remains disputed, as does the motive for the killing. Russia remains very far from guaranteeing liberties, and even life, for prominent foreign reporters:
For more on Paul Klebnikov, and the murder case, see this post
Who killed Mr. Klebnikov? For starters, Mr. Klebnikov did not know the answer himself, to judge by what he said in the hours before he died. In the nexus of Russian business, politics and crime, where Mr. Klebnikov's journalism probed, any number of potential villains could have emerged. The evidentiary trail apparently leads in many different directions: In a phone interview with The Washington Times, Richard Behar, head of Project Klebnikov, a team of investigative reporters and writers looking to unravel the murder and the stories Mr. Klebnikov was pursuing when he was murdered, tells us his team is investigating at least five major theories, one in Moscow, one based in London, one centering on the Chechen Nukhayev about whom Mr. Klebnikov wrote "Conversation with a Barbarian" and two which he cannot discuss. Project Klebnikov is awaiting evidence before reaching conclusions about any of the theories.(Hat tip: Marius)
The same cannot be said about Russian authorities. Last month, Russian investigators closed the case and claimed they had solved it, but declined to provide the evidence. They pinned the murder on the Chechen Nukhayev, concluding that Nukhayev ordered the killing because Mr. Klebnikov's book "negatively spoke about [him] and criticized his statements." Nukhayev is a fugitive; two suspects are already in custody. Many doubt that the Russians have solid evidence, however, and think the case was rushed for political reasons.
The Putin government could clear the air with a simple move: Order the police to release the evidence. The facts will speak for themselves. If the evidence is flimsy, of course, the case will need to be reopened.
Mr. Putin should take a personal interest in solving the Klebnikov murder to the satisfaction of Westerners. It's clear enough from his crackdown on the Russian press that Mr. Putin isn't serious about Western-style freedoms for Russians. But the Klebnikov case tests his attitude toward the West. Mr. Putin may well think Russia can enjoy economic freedoms while rejecting political freedoms. If he does, he is likely to let the Klebnikov case rest. Fortunately, Mr. Behar and Project Klebnikov will not.
Insofar as Russia wants to sit -- as a democracy -- at the table with Western democracies, it needs to get powerful and ruthless people in Russia to behave as though they live in a place where the rule of law prevails. That will be an ongoing effort. The West stands prepared to help battle Russia's plague of corruption and organized crime. But if Russia stalls and dissembles even in cases where Western government are watching closely, its commitment to democracy and openness will be cast in doubt.
For more on Paul Klebnikov, and the murder case, see this post
Time For Concern
Losing the Steppes
By VLADIMIR SOCOR
At their summit this week, Russia, China, and four Central Asian countries asked the United States and its allies in the antiterrorist coalition to set a date for withdrawal of their forces from Central Asia. It is the first such request from any party in the region since the American-led forces established a presence at air bases and other facilities in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in late 2001.
Those forces and assets in Central Asia are key to U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan now and into the foreseeable future. They are also a long-term necessity given the wide array of possible contingencies in this strategically vital and unstable region, from the energy-rich Caspian basin --- key to Europe's energy security in the years ahead --- and Iran through Afghanistan and Pakistan and all all the way to western China.
Rightly aghast at the force-withdrawal request, U.S. diplomats are rushing to repair the damage in Central Asian capitals. The Pentagon had been telling the rest of Washington for months that this was coming, but its warnings were scarcely heeded. The Russian and Chinese presidents, Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao, were the prime movers behind the "time to go home" call issued July 5 at the six countries' summit in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital. It was the first major statement issued by the SCO since Moscow and Beijing created it in 2001 to offset the growing American influence in Central Asia. At that time, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan joined the organization pro-forma and with varying degrees of reluctance.
In fact, since then Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and even Tajikistan (which still hosts Russian troops) have mostly sought to cast their lot with the United States and have allowed American-led coalition forces on their territories. Kazakhstan even offered such an arrangement on its own initiative, though it was not taken up by Washington. Their governments shared America's perceptions of the threats posed by international terrorism and radical Islam; they counted on effective U.S. security assistance to ensure and consolidate their stability; and they expected an infusion of foreign aid to reward the basing and transit arrangements.
Now, however, they seem to be lining up behind Russia and China in asking those forces to leave. The main argument is that the situation in Afghanistan is basically stable and that the main phase of the coalition's operations has been completed -- an assertion that represents a stark about-face by Russia and other SCO members. Until most recently, the official position in Moscow and other capitals acknowledged that Afghanistan remained a source of threats to the region and indeed to Russia, implicitly justifying the U.S.-led military presence in Central Asia.
In fact, the security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated. Active operations by American and allied forces have recently intensified in response to Taliban attacks. NATO is preparing to deploy additional forces there to provide security for parliamentary elections in September, as well as to increase the number of the NATO-run Provincial Reconstruction Teams. The Central Asian bases that support U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan are needed as much as ever.
U.S. diplomats in Central Asian capitals are now arguing that the request to set a date for withdrawal is premature. However, SCO's assessment is not meant to reflect the security situation in Afghanistan or around it. Rather, Moscow and Beijing want to nudge the U.S. and allied forces from Central Asia. China does not want an American military presence near its western borders, and Mr. Putin is bent on reclaiming Russian leadership in the region.
Diplomats at the summit stopped short of phrasing the request as an ultimatum or naming specific dates for the withdrawal. Nevertheless, Mr. Putin's top foreign policy aide, Sergei Prikhodko, suggested that process might take from several months to a year and a half. Off the record, Russian officials were telling the press -- in fact, signaling to Washington -- that they want "precise and clear answers" about withdrawal timelines.
Timetable or not, some Central Asian governments have already begun placing limits on U.S. activities in their countries and sidling up to Moscow. Last month, Uzbek President Islam Karimov suspended the landing of C-17 heavy transport planes, as well as nighttime flights, at the U.S. base Karshi-Khanabad. And in a meeting two weeks ago with Mr. Putin, President Karimov signaled that he is poised to rely more heavily on Russia as his country's main security partner. Russia is now planning a ground-force joint exercise in Uzbekistan for the first time since the end of the Soviet era.
Some months ago, Kyrgyzstan's then-president Askar Akayev bowed to Moscow and forbade AWACS reconnaissance flights out of Manas, the U.S.-led airbase in Kyrgyzstan. Then in April, Mr. Akayev was ousted by a putative democratic revolution that has brought political confusion and social anarchy. Last month, new prime minister Felix Kulov, a Soviet-era police general and would-be strongman, called for a second Russian military base in Kyrgyzstan. (The first one was established in 2003, only a few miles from the American base, and potentially capable of interfering with its operations). Mr.Kulov, while pro-Russian, at least is not anti-American. But the postrevolution government's presumably pro-American minister of foreign affairs, Roza Otunbayeva, hastened to endorse SCO's call for a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. This could not have been the U.S. game plan in supporting regime change in Kyrgyzstan.
Sadly, U.S. credibility in the region has eroded since 2002-2003. Three recent developments have accelerated that erosion. First, the Taliban has reemerged as a fighting force in Afghanistan, against the backdrop of a booming Afghan drug trade that affects Central Asia and much of Eurasia. Partly contradicting its own assessment regarding Afghanistan, the SCO summit described the narcotics trade originating there as a major security challenge. Unfortunately, the U.S.-led coalition has tolerated this narcotics boom, undermining its own political and economic reconstruction efforts for the sake of expedient arrangements with drug- and war-lords.
The second eroding factor was the misfired democratic revolution in Kyrgyzstan -- an event seen as destabilizing in the short term at least. And third, the confused and uncoordinated U.S. response to the May 13 rebellion and crackdown in Andijan has left Uzbekistan isolated from the West and once again dependent on Russia for security assistance and diplomatic support.
Once it weathers -- as it should -- the call for withdrawal of its forces, the U.S. needs to move beyond emergency-handling, to a thorough review of its long-term policy on Central Asia. In a region so strategically vital to the U.S. and to energy-hungry Europe, diplomacy needs to find the right balance between the requirements of military access and those of revolutionary reforms. Policy must be geared to ensuring a long-term presence, and not be clouded by short-term political considerations in Washington or splendid isolation by the European Union.
Mr. Socor is a senior fellow of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, publishers of the Eurasia Daily Monitor.
(via global-geopolitics)
By VLADIMIR SOCOR
At their summit this week, Russia, China, and four Central Asian countries asked the United States and its allies in the antiterrorist coalition to set a date for withdrawal of their forces from Central Asia. It is the first such request from any party in the region since the American-led forces established a presence at air bases and other facilities in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in late 2001.
Those forces and assets in Central Asia are key to U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan now and into the foreseeable future. They are also a long-term necessity given the wide array of possible contingencies in this strategically vital and unstable region, from the energy-rich Caspian basin --- key to Europe's energy security in the years ahead --- and Iran through Afghanistan and Pakistan and all all the way to western China.
Rightly aghast at the force-withdrawal request, U.S. diplomats are rushing to repair the damage in Central Asian capitals. The Pentagon had been telling the rest of Washington for months that this was coming, but its warnings were scarcely heeded. The Russian and Chinese presidents, Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao, were the prime movers behind the "time to go home" call issued July 5 at the six countries' summit in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital. It was the first major statement issued by the SCO since Moscow and Beijing created it in 2001 to offset the growing American influence in Central Asia. At that time, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan joined the organization pro-forma and with varying degrees of reluctance.
In fact, since then Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and even Tajikistan (which still hosts Russian troops) have mostly sought to cast their lot with the United States and have allowed American-led coalition forces on their territories. Kazakhstan even offered such an arrangement on its own initiative, though it was not taken up by Washington. Their governments shared America's perceptions of the threats posed by international terrorism and radical Islam; they counted on effective U.S. security assistance to ensure and consolidate their stability; and they expected an infusion of foreign aid to reward the basing and transit arrangements.
Now, however, they seem to be lining up behind Russia and China in asking those forces to leave. The main argument is that the situation in Afghanistan is basically stable and that the main phase of the coalition's operations has been completed -- an assertion that represents a stark about-face by Russia and other SCO members. Until most recently, the official position in Moscow and other capitals acknowledged that Afghanistan remained a source of threats to the region and indeed to Russia, implicitly justifying the U.S.-led military presence in Central Asia.
In fact, the security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated. Active operations by American and allied forces have recently intensified in response to Taliban attacks. NATO is preparing to deploy additional forces there to provide security for parliamentary elections in September, as well as to increase the number of the NATO-run Provincial Reconstruction Teams. The Central Asian bases that support U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan are needed as much as ever.
U.S. diplomats in Central Asian capitals are now arguing that the request to set a date for withdrawal is premature. However, SCO's assessment is not meant to reflect the security situation in Afghanistan or around it. Rather, Moscow and Beijing want to nudge the U.S. and allied forces from Central Asia. China does not want an American military presence near its western borders, and Mr. Putin is bent on reclaiming Russian leadership in the region.
Diplomats at the summit stopped short of phrasing the request as an ultimatum or naming specific dates for the withdrawal. Nevertheless, Mr. Putin's top foreign policy aide, Sergei Prikhodko, suggested that process might take from several months to a year and a half. Off the record, Russian officials were telling the press -- in fact, signaling to Washington -- that they want "precise and clear answers" about withdrawal timelines.
Timetable or not, some Central Asian governments have already begun placing limits on U.S. activities in their countries and sidling up to Moscow. Last month, Uzbek President Islam Karimov suspended the landing of C-17 heavy transport planes, as well as nighttime flights, at the U.S. base Karshi-Khanabad. And in a meeting two weeks ago with Mr. Putin, President Karimov signaled that he is poised to rely more heavily on Russia as his country's main security partner. Russia is now planning a ground-force joint exercise in Uzbekistan for the first time since the end of the Soviet era.
Some months ago, Kyrgyzstan's then-president Askar Akayev bowed to Moscow and forbade AWACS reconnaissance flights out of Manas, the U.S.-led airbase in Kyrgyzstan. Then in April, Mr. Akayev was ousted by a putative democratic revolution that has brought political confusion and social anarchy. Last month, new prime minister Felix Kulov, a Soviet-era police general and would-be strongman, called for a second Russian military base in Kyrgyzstan. (The first one was established in 2003, only a few miles from the American base, and potentially capable of interfering with its operations). Mr.Kulov, while pro-Russian, at least is not anti-American. But the postrevolution government's presumably pro-American minister of foreign affairs, Roza Otunbayeva, hastened to endorse SCO's call for a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. This could not have been the U.S. game plan in supporting regime change in Kyrgyzstan.
Sadly, U.S. credibility in the region has eroded since 2002-2003. Three recent developments have accelerated that erosion. First, the Taliban has reemerged as a fighting force in Afghanistan, against the backdrop of a booming Afghan drug trade that affects Central Asia and much of Eurasia. Partly contradicting its own assessment regarding Afghanistan, the SCO summit described the narcotics trade originating there as a major security challenge. Unfortunately, the U.S.-led coalition has tolerated this narcotics boom, undermining its own political and economic reconstruction efforts for the sake of expedient arrangements with drug- and war-lords.
The second eroding factor was the misfired democratic revolution in Kyrgyzstan -- an event seen as destabilizing in the short term at least. And third, the confused and uncoordinated U.S. response to the May 13 rebellion and crackdown in Andijan has left Uzbekistan isolated from the West and once again dependent on Russia for security assistance and diplomatic support.
Once it weathers -- as it should -- the call for withdrawal of its forces, the U.S. needs to move beyond emergency-handling, to a thorough review of its long-term policy on Central Asia. In a region so strategically vital to the U.S. and to energy-hungry Europe, diplomacy needs to find the right balance between the requirements of military access and those of revolutionary reforms. Policy must be geared to ensuring a long-term presence, and not be clouded by short-term political considerations in Washington or splendid isolation by the European Union.
Mr. Socor is a senior fellow of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, publishers of the Eurasia Daily Monitor.
(via global-geopolitics)
The Disinformation Tragedy
In trying to appeal to centrist liberals, American apologists for communist regimes and movements deliberately downplayed the aspects of Marxism-Leninism that liberals found repugnant - one-party dictatorship, class genocide, censorship, and the repression of intellectual and religious dissent. Instead, the pro-communist left emphasized truths, and untruths, that would appeal to American liberal values. Thus liberal opposition to European imperialism was enlisted in the service of Soviet and Chinese imperalism; liberal rejection of authoritarian dictatorship was enlisted in the service of totalitarian dictatorship; and liberal loathing of the horrors of war and conscription was enlisted in the service of the most militarized and regimented societies in the world. The tragedy of liberal perfectionism lay in the ease with which all too many sincere liberals were deceived and manipulated by a totalitarian left whose ultimate goal was the eradication of liberalism both as a philosophy and as a way of life.
Michael Lind, in Vietnam: The Necessary War
Michael Lind, in Vietnam: The Necessary War
Strategy Game
Earlier this year, observers in the West heaved a sigh of relief when Moscow agreed to withdraw Russian military bases from Georgia. Now, however, the real strategy behind this apparent concession is becoming clear. In EDM, Zaal Anjaparidze writes that Moscow appears to be using the bases to impede Tbilisi's efforts to bring stability to the country:
On July 15, the Georgian military intercepted two T-72 tanks from the Russian military base in Batumi (Ajaria). According to the Georgian side, the tanks were heading to the Gonio training ground near Batumi to participate in military exercises. The Russian tanks were released later that same day. Symptomatically, the incident occurred on the eve of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's scheduled visit to Ajaria, where he will meet with local leaders to review preparations for the holiday season and ways to attract more tourists to the region.
The Russian military command said that Georgia's actions ran counter to the agreement reached between the Russian and Georgian foreign ministers whereby Russia has the right to fully use the Gonio training ground until September 1, 2005 (RBK TV, July 15).
Colonel Vladimir Kuparadze, deputy commander of the Group of Russian Forces in the Trans-Caucasus, claimed that there was neither a formal nor an informal agreement between the Georgian and Russian sides prohibiting military exercises at the Gonio firing range during the holiday season. He also denied that Russia planned any military exercise in Gonio. Kuparadze said that the tanks were being moved for a maintenance inspection only, but for some reason the Georgian side considered this relocation to be "maneuvers" and detained the tanks. Kuparadze described the decision by the base command to suspend equipment transfers as a "goodwill gesture," as if the Russians were ready to retaliate (Civil Georgia, Rosbalt, Media News, TV Rustavi-2, July 15).
The Georgian side seemed to view the issue in both a military and a political context. Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili, known for his stubborn attitude toward Russia, said, "Everyone must get used to one fact: this is a state and they must obey the laws of this state. The holiday season is underway in Ajaria, and we will not put up with what has been happening for years when tanks have been firing 500 meters from the people relaxing on beaches," he stressed (Caucasus Press, TV Rustavi-2, July 15). Okruashvili's statement that this type of behavior by the Russian military is absolutely unacceptable emphasized that the days of smooth-tongued relations with Russia have passed.
The Georgian side charged that the command of the military base did not clear its plans for military exercises in Gonio with the Georgian authorities. The Georgian side also claimed that any military training in Gonio was prohibited from July 15 to September 15, when Ajaria's beaches receive the largest inflow of tourists. The Georgian Defense Ministry claimed that it had informed the command of the Russian troops in Georgia about this in advance. Moreover, the Georgian defense officials said that, instead of Gonio, they had suggested that the Russian military conduct exercises in Simoneti (near Kutaisi -- Georgia's second largest city), which is 150 kilometers away from Batumi. The Ministry said that the Russian side had ignored its request to not conduct military exercises during the holiday season in Ajaria.
Russia Twists the Terminology
MOSCOW TO BALTICS: ANNEXATION WAS LEGAL, RESISTANCE CRIMINAL
by Vladimir Socor
In a news conference for Baltic journalists on July 18 in Moscow, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Chizhov added an innovative nuance to Russia's official thesis that the 50-year occupation of the Baltic states had been legal. While rejecting the term "occupation," Chizhov asked the three Baltic states to distinguish between the concept of occupation and that of annexation.
As successor to the Soviet Union, he said, Russia "does not dispute" the fact that the Baltic states were annexed, but "annexation and occupation are two different things." The annexation was legal, Chizhov claimed, and therefore the ensuing period cannot be called an occupation. In carrying out the annexation, "All the formalities of international law that were in effect during the Second World War were observed." Thus, he concluded, the annexation of the Baltic states "legitimized the entry of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia into the Soviet Union."
Chizhov went on to pronounce the 1920 peace treaties between Soviet Russia (from 1922 on the Soviet Union) and the Baltic states as "void," on the grounds that the Baltic states had "joined" the Soviet Union in the "legal" way he described. While familiar, this assertion directly bears on the ongoing controversy caused by Moscow's refusal to ratify the border agreements that it recently signed (after a decade's delay) with Estonia and Latvia. Interpretative statements, made by those two countries in the course of their internal ratification procedures, cite the 1920 peace treaties and their uninterrupted validity in international law during the occupation period. Those treaties are cornerstones to the Baltic states' title to legal continuity and their 1991 restoration of sovereignty.
Moscow, however, avoids recognizing the Baltic states' title as continuation states, so as to disclaim responsibility for the Soviet Union's actions on the Baltic states' territories during the occupation era. Chizhov's remarks portrayed those actions as a Soviet internal affair: "The history of the Soviet Union is a common property of all the peoples that were part of it."
The thesis that anti-Soviet armed resistance was criminal seems a logical corollary to the claim that the annexation was legal. On July 19, Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement condemning the annual commemorative gathering in Tartu, Estonia, of veterans of the armed resistance as "extremist" and "fascist." While assailing the Estonian division that fought alongside German forces against the Red Army in 1944, the MFA statement also denounced the Forest Brothers -- who resisted unaided for years after the war -- as "bandit formations." The July 16 event in Tartu actually brought together some of the surviving Estonian veterans from Estonia itself, Finland, and Sweden, as well as members of the Memento Society of victims of Soviet repression.
On July 19, the Russian Federation Council's International Affairs Committee chairman, Mikhail Margelov, held another news conference for Baltic journalists. While calling for improved relations between Russia and the Baltic states, Margelov seemed to undermine his own case somewhat by diagnosing Baltic governments with "political schizophrenia." Flanking him, the head of Russia's Foreign and Defense Policy Council, Sergei Karaganov, termed the occupation question a "trivial issue" (BNS, July 19).
In Vilnius, the chairman of the International Commission to Evaluate the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes, Emanuelis Zingeris, issued a statement in response to Chizhov's assertions. Zingeris observes that those assertions contravene international law as well as casting doubt on the repudiation of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact by the Soviet Union in 1989. (That resolution, by the USSR Congress of People's Deputies, stopped short of questioning the annexation of the Baltic states as a consequence of the pact). Zingeris, who is also one of the leaders of Lithuania's Jewish community, announced in the same statement that Lithuania would shortly host a large-scale international conference to evaluate the consequences of the Yalta system of division of Europe 1945-91.
(BNS, Interfax, July 16-19)
(via EDM)
by Vladimir Socor
In a news conference for Baltic journalists on July 18 in Moscow, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Chizhov added an innovative nuance to Russia's official thesis that the 50-year occupation of the Baltic states had been legal. While rejecting the term "occupation," Chizhov asked the three Baltic states to distinguish between the concept of occupation and that of annexation.
As successor to the Soviet Union, he said, Russia "does not dispute" the fact that the Baltic states were annexed, but "annexation and occupation are two different things." The annexation was legal, Chizhov claimed, and therefore the ensuing period cannot be called an occupation. In carrying out the annexation, "All the formalities of international law that were in effect during the Second World War were observed." Thus, he concluded, the annexation of the Baltic states "legitimized the entry of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia into the Soviet Union."
Chizhov went on to pronounce the 1920 peace treaties between Soviet Russia (from 1922 on the Soviet Union) and the Baltic states as "void," on the grounds that the Baltic states had "joined" the Soviet Union in the "legal" way he described. While familiar, this assertion directly bears on the ongoing controversy caused by Moscow's refusal to ratify the border agreements that it recently signed (after a decade's delay) with Estonia and Latvia. Interpretative statements, made by those two countries in the course of their internal ratification procedures, cite the 1920 peace treaties and their uninterrupted validity in international law during the occupation period. Those treaties are cornerstones to the Baltic states' title to legal continuity and their 1991 restoration of sovereignty.
Moscow, however, avoids recognizing the Baltic states' title as continuation states, so as to disclaim responsibility for the Soviet Union's actions on the Baltic states' territories during the occupation era. Chizhov's remarks portrayed those actions as a Soviet internal affair: "The history of the Soviet Union is a common property of all the peoples that were part of it."
The thesis that anti-Soviet armed resistance was criminal seems a logical corollary to the claim that the annexation was legal. On July 19, Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement condemning the annual commemorative gathering in Tartu, Estonia, of veterans of the armed resistance as "extremist" and "fascist." While assailing the Estonian division that fought alongside German forces against the Red Army in 1944, the MFA statement also denounced the Forest Brothers -- who resisted unaided for years after the war -- as "bandit formations." The July 16 event in Tartu actually brought together some of the surviving Estonian veterans from Estonia itself, Finland, and Sweden, as well as members of the Memento Society of victims of Soviet repression.
On July 19, the Russian Federation Council's International Affairs Committee chairman, Mikhail Margelov, held another news conference for Baltic journalists. While calling for improved relations between Russia and the Baltic states, Margelov seemed to undermine his own case somewhat by diagnosing Baltic governments with "political schizophrenia." Flanking him, the head of Russia's Foreign and Defense Policy Council, Sergei Karaganov, termed the occupation question a "trivial issue" (BNS, July 19).
In Vilnius, the chairman of the International Commission to Evaluate the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes, Emanuelis Zingeris, issued a statement in response to Chizhov's assertions. Zingeris observes that those assertions contravene international law as well as casting doubt on the repudiation of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact by the Soviet Union in 1989. (That resolution, by the USSR Congress of People's Deputies, stopped short of questioning the annexation of the Baltic states as a consequence of the pact). Zingeris, who is also one of the leaders of Lithuania's Jewish community, announced in the same statement that Lithuania would shortly host a large-scale international conference to evaluate the consequences of the Yalta system of division of Europe 1945-91.
(BNS, Interfax, July 16-19)
(via EDM)
The Silence of the Siloviki
THE SILENCE OF THE SILOVIKI: HAVE THEY LOST PUTIN'S TRUST?
By Pavel K. Baev
Monday, July 18, 2005
By mid-July, the political season in Russia should be over, but the intensity of expert commentary is so high now that one might think that parliamentary elections are just half a year away. In fact, they are not due until December 2007, which, by Russian standards, is far beyond the category of "foreseeable future." The presidential administration keeps the show running, and the most visible figure in this extremely closed body has been its deputy head, Vladislav Surkov. For most of his career, he preferred to stay in the shadows, and this new public profile appears so out of character that some commentators are speculating about possible presidential ambitions (Gazeta.ru, July 13).
The latest sensation was the text of Surkov's "secret" speech at the May 15 meeting of Business Russia published on Radio Liberty's website (www.svoboda.org) and duly denounced as inaccurate by officials of this association of entrepreneurs (Lenta.ru, July 12). The main message of the address was a call to the business elite not to be "squeamish" and to join the Kremlin-backed United Russia party. The same appeal figured prominently in Surkov's earlier presentations as well as in his boss Dmitry Medvedev's interview with Ekspert (April 4).
Putin's closest aides try to convince various audiences, including even rock musicians, to unite around the Kremlin, which is portrayed as the only guarantor of the country's sovereignty and even survival (Ezhednevny zhurnal, July 15). The risks are not elaborated upon but the hints on chaos and dissolution are dark indeed and the fears come out quite clearly; Surkov's phrase "We are just afraid" certainly rings true (Ekho Moskvy, July 14). The specter of "color revolutions" has not disappeared since the May massacre in Andijan, Uzbekistan, which Russia justifies as legitimate use of force against "terrorists."
The main tone of this PR-campaign is, nevertheless, reassuringly positive with pronounced liberal-democratic overtones. What is particularly striking is that the same tone has dominated Putin's recent public speeches, starting with his April address to parliament. Meeting with potential Western investors in St. Petersburg, or with journalists in Gleneagles, or paying a "surprise" visit to Komsomolskaya pravda (May 24) Russia's president confirms his adherence to democratic values and market reforms. Even when gathering his "power ministers" in Dagestan, a republic torn by civil strife and terrorism, he refrained from any emotional rhetoric resembling his post-Beslan speech and merely criticized the heavy boots designed for new mountain brigades (Newsru.com, July 15).
This Western-liberal drift certainly goes against the preferences of the powerful interest group in Putin's innermost circle known as siloviki and consisting mostly of former mid-rank KGB officers from St. Petersburg. They are believed to be behind the attack on and dismemberment of the oil giant Yukos, a poorly planned and clumsily executed "special operation" that has caused Putin plenty of embarrassment in the international arena. Now experts venture opinions, informed mostly by rumors but elaborated in full-blown analytical reports, that Medvedev and Surkov are gathering support from business elites in order to push siloviki into the back rows of Putin's court and eventually expel them from the Kremlin (Vedomosti, June 24; Ekho Moskvy, July 14). These speculations might be entirely off target, but they are encouraged by the silence in that camp that is supposed to be led by Igor Sechin and Viktor Ivanov in the presidential administration and Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB.
Some commentators suggest that siloviki are just busy digesting the "juicy morsels" of Yukos and quarrelling between themselves about the non-merger of Gazprom and Rosneft (Gazeta.ru, July 15). It appears possible, nevertheless, that they are momentarily outplayed in the big political game, since Medvedev and Surkov are able to propose a solution for the "problem of 2008" -- a codename for the transition of power at the end of Putin's second presidential term. Their persistent appeal for unity in the political class could signify careful preparation for shifting the parliamentary elections to 2006, a preemptive strike that would catch the opposition unprepared and secure a stable environment for the choice of a "reasonable" successor (Gazeta.ru, July 14). Putin then would face the need to make the same choice that Yeltsin did in early 1996 when he fired his all-powerful personal bodyguard and drinking partner Alexander Korzhakov and embraced Anatoly Chubais and a team of skilled managers who secured his reelection.
The siloviki, however, might simply wait, knowing that Yeltsin was a natural leader with keen political instincts -- but Putin is not. He is just a bureaucrat who by chance was propelled way above his level of incompetence and so cannot admit any mistake, blaming instead insidious "enemies" (Ezhednevny zhurnal, June 22). Until recently, it was Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was appointed the "main enemy" and punished accordingly; now this role is assigned to Leonid Nevzlin, who dared to speak against Putin before the U.S. Congress (Kommersant, July 15). Mikhail Kasyanov, the former prime minister who appeals to many in the political elite as a presidential candidate, is identified as another "enemy." A very timely analysis by Alfa bank argues that possible business support for Kasyanov is a highly destabilizing factor, while the preferable option would be a continuation of Putin's term beyond 2008 (Vedomosti, July 15). Siloviki do not argue with the enemies -- an investigation has been launched against Kasyanov who allegedly "privatized" a comfortable dacha, an issue that is certain to touch a raw nerve with every urban dweller in Russia (Vremya novostei, July 12).
Surkov and Medvedev may pin their hopes on the assumption that Putin would not want to spoil his long-awaited chairmanship of the G-8, but Sechin and Ivanov are certain that when the going gets tough Putin would forget his superficial "liberalism" and fall back on his trusted comrades. And the only thing that is foreseeable about Russia's future is that another crisis will strike and the Kremlin will be paralyzed again by the fear of responsibility for any decision.
(via EDM)
By Pavel K. Baev
Monday, July 18, 2005
By mid-July, the political season in Russia should be over, but the intensity of expert commentary is so high now that one might think that parliamentary elections are just half a year away. In fact, they are not due until December 2007, which, by Russian standards, is far beyond the category of "foreseeable future." The presidential administration keeps the show running, and the most visible figure in this extremely closed body has been its deputy head, Vladislav Surkov. For most of his career, he preferred to stay in the shadows, and this new public profile appears so out of character that some commentators are speculating about possible presidential ambitions (Gazeta.ru, July 13).
The latest sensation was the text of Surkov's "secret" speech at the May 15 meeting of Business Russia published on Radio Liberty's website (www.svoboda.org) and duly denounced as inaccurate by officials of this association of entrepreneurs (Lenta.ru, July 12). The main message of the address was a call to the business elite not to be "squeamish" and to join the Kremlin-backed United Russia party. The same appeal figured prominently in Surkov's earlier presentations as well as in his boss Dmitry Medvedev's interview with Ekspert (April 4).
Putin's closest aides try to convince various audiences, including even rock musicians, to unite around the Kremlin, which is portrayed as the only guarantor of the country's sovereignty and even survival (Ezhednevny zhurnal, July 15). The risks are not elaborated upon but the hints on chaos and dissolution are dark indeed and the fears come out quite clearly; Surkov's phrase "We are just afraid" certainly rings true (Ekho Moskvy, July 14). The specter of "color revolutions" has not disappeared since the May massacre in Andijan, Uzbekistan, which Russia justifies as legitimate use of force against "terrorists."
The main tone of this PR-campaign is, nevertheless, reassuringly positive with pronounced liberal-democratic overtones. What is particularly striking is that the same tone has dominated Putin's recent public speeches, starting with his April address to parliament. Meeting with potential Western investors in St. Petersburg, or with journalists in Gleneagles, or paying a "surprise" visit to Komsomolskaya pravda (May 24) Russia's president confirms his adherence to democratic values and market reforms. Even when gathering his "power ministers" in Dagestan, a republic torn by civil strife and terrorism, he refrained from any emotional rhetoric resembling his post-Beslan speech and merely criticized the heavy boots designed for new mountain brigades (Newsru.com, July 15).
This Western-liberal drift certainly goes against the preferences of the powerful interest group in Putin's innermost circle known as siloviki and consisting mostly of former mid-rank KGB officers from St. Petersburg. They are believed to be behind the attack on and dismemberment of the oil giant Yukos, a poorly planned and clumsily executed "special operation" that has caused Putin plenty of embarrassment in the international arena. Now experts venture opinions, informed mostly by rumors but elaborated in full-blown analytical reports, that Medvedev and Surkov are gathering support from business elites in order to push siloviki into the back rows of Putin's court and eventually expel them from the Kremlin (Vedomosti, June 24; Ekho Moskvy, July 14). These speculations might be entirely off target, but they are encouraged by the silence in that camp that is supposed to be led by Igor Sechin and Viktor Ivanov in the presidential administration and Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB.
Some commentators suggest that siloviki are just busy digesting the "juicy morsels" of Yukos and quarrelling between themselves about the non-merger of Gazprom and Rosneft (Gazeta.ru, July 15). It appears possible, nevertheless, that they are momentarily outplayed in the big political game, since Medvedev and Surkov are able to propose a solution for the "problem of 2008" -- a codename for the transition of power at the end of Putin's second presidential term. Their persistent appeal for unity in the political class could signify careful preparation for shifting the parliamentary elections to 2006, a preemptive strike that would catch the opposition unprepared and secure a stable environment for the choice of a "reasonable" successor (Gazeta.ru, July 14). Putin then would face the need to make the same choice that Yeltsin did in early 1996 when he fired his all-powerful personal bodyguard and drinking partner Alexander Korzhakov and embraced Anatoly Chubais and a team of skilled managers who secured his reelection.
The siloviki, however, might simply wait, knowing that Yeltsin was a natural leader with keen political instincts -- but Putin is not. He is just a bureaucrat who by chance was propelled way above his level of incompetence and so cannot admit any mistake, blaming instead insidious "enemies" (Ezhednevny zhurnal, June 22). Until recently, it was Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was appointed the "main enemy" and punished accordingly; now this role is assigned to Leonid Nevzlin, who dared to speak against Putin before the U.S. Congress (Kommersant, July 15). Mikhail Kasyanov, the former prime minister who appeals to many in the political elite as a presidential candidate, is identified as another "enemy." A very timely analysis by Alfa bank argues that possible business support for Kasyanov is a highly destabilizing factor, while the preferable option would be a continuation of Putin's term beyond 2008 (Vedomosti, July 15). Siloviki do not argue with the enemies -- an investigation has been launched against Kasyanov who allegedly "privatized" a comfortable dacha, an issue that is certain to touch a raw nerve with every urban dweller in Russia (Vremya novostei, July 12).
Surkov and Medvedev may pin their hopes on the assumption that Putin would not want to spoil his long-awaited chairmanship of the G-8, but Sechin and Ivanov are certain that when the going gets tough Putin would forget his superficial "liberalism" and fall back on his trusted comrades. And the only thing that is foreseeable about Russia's future is that another crisis will strike and the Kremlin will be paralyzed again by the fear of responsibility for any decision.
(via EDM)
Uniting Against Terror
Those who visit here with any degree of regularity will be aware that in general I try to keep a low profile where personal opinion and commentary are concerned. Over the fourteen months of this blog’s existence, I’ve often preferred to let events and reports speak for themselves, rather than intervene with my own ideas on what has happened. It’s seemed to me on the whole, looking at world events in the post 9/11 global political climate, that what can be observed – vis-Ã -vis Iraq, the war on terror, the Middle East, the growing Sino-Russian entente, the “axis of evil” – is a tendency, a direction that continues to reinforce itself. Just as in the Cold War, the democracies of the Western world, led by the United States, are coming under sustained pressure and attack from forces antithetical to democracy and liberty. The London bombings of 7/7 merely confirm and further intensify that global trend.
It’s perhaps in the attempt to pinpoint and identify the anti-democratic forces that the perceptions of this weblog tend to differ somewhat from those to be found in a number of other sources. A great deal of commentary in the blogosphere and the Web in general is now devoted to the discussion of Islamism, which is seen as the new threat and enemy, analogous to the threat of Nazism and Communism in the 20th century. In such discussion, the historical defeat of Nazism and Communism is very often taken as a given, a set of facts that can’t be denied or argued with. In particular, the notion that in the late 1980s the West definitively “won” the Cold War is in many quarters accepted as an incontrovertible truth. The liberation of the former Soviet Union’s satellite states in Eastern Europe is pointed to as a living example of this new world order. Yet, while they are happy to acknowledge the new and democratic face of Europe, those who take this line of argument are frequently hesitant or silent when it comes to the matter of what has taken place in the neighbouring Russian Federation since the supposed Western victory.
As the Russian author and journalist Masha Gessen has commented, fifteen years after the collapse of Communism, Russia is restoring many of the old regime’s symbols and some of its repressive ways. She talks of a climate of “stagnant fear” , and of the impossibility of cleansing Russia’s collective memory and conscience (its “national soul”) because of the fact that the victims of Communist tyranny and terror were also its perpetrators, mostly willing ones, and because “we who did not spend eighteen years or even a day in that hell… we have no right to sit in judgment on our grandparents.” This is a machination by the structures of power that not even Hitler was able to achieve. In addition to blocking the nation’s memory and its ability to come to terms with its past, the Russian leadership has for more than ten years embroiled the country in a brutal and savage war in the North Caucasus, a war waged against a small people that tried to establish a form of independence along the lines of that which was regained by the Baltic states in the aftermath of the collapse of Communism. This “war” – which has really amounted to a sustained pogrom carried out by Russian forces with the help of local quislings – has served as a rationale for abandoning the faint beginnings of democracy that were beginning to be observed in Russia in the early 1990s. It has also demonstrated that the Russian authorities have links to terrorist organizations and are involved in the practice of state terror, for the participation of Russian special forces in terrorist acts both in Chechnya and within Russia itself is now beyond question. Under the authoritarian rule of Putin, Russia is steering a course towards a form of fascism which derives its energies and its symbolism from both Stalinist and Nazi traditions. As they move closer together, Russia and China are establishing close co-operation with rogue states like North Korea and Syria, supplying nuclear technology to Iran, destabilizing the countries of Central Asia, and working globally to oppose the U.S. in every field. The existence of shadowy organizations calling themselves “Al Qaeda”, “Islamic Jihad”, and the rest should not make us forget the recent past, when Moscow employed the weapon of Islamic and international terrorism against the West for its own political purposes, just as it used the conflict in South East Asia to confound the U.S. and its allies. The Soviet Union may not formally exist – but those who sustained and guided it are still in power.
Unite Against Terror may be a good slogan for the beginning of the 21st century. But unless it includes the perception that the main practitioners, agents and promoters of terror in today’s world continue to be the forces which in the 20th century made terror into the foundation of totalitarian states – let’s recall the title of Robert Conquest’s groundbreaking study of Stalin’s Russia, The Great Terror – it will remain a shibboleth, a party or group identification that doesn’t take us much beyond a catchphrase like ‘Ban the Bomb’.
(See also: The New Cold War)
It’s perhaps in the attempt to pinpoint and identify the anti-democratic forces that the perceptions of this weblog tend to differ somewhat from those to be found in a number of other sources. A great deal of commentary in the blogosphere and the Web in general is now devoted to the discussion of Islamism, which is seen as the new threat and enemy, analogous to the threat of Nazism and Communism in the 20th century. In such discussion, the historical defeat of Nazism and Communism is very often taken as a given, a set of facts that can’t be denied or argued with. In particular, the notion that in the late 1980s the West definitively “won” the Cold War is in many quarters accepted as an incontrovertible truth. The liberation of the former Soviet Union’s satellite states in Eastern Europe is pointed to as a living example of this new world order. Yet, while they are happy to acknowledge the new and democratic face of Europe, those who take this line of argument are frequently hesitant or silent when it comes to the matter of what has taken place in the neighbouring Russian Federation since the supposed Western victory.
As the Russian author and journalist Masha Gessen has commented, fifteen years after the collapse of Communism, Russia is restoring many of the old regime’s symbols and some of its repressive ways. She talks of a climate of “stagnant fear” , and of the impossibility of cleansing Russia’s collective memory and conscience (its “national soul”) because of the fact that the victims of Communist tyranny and terror were also its perpetrators, mostly willing ones, and because “we who did not spend eighteen years or even a day in that hell… we have no right to sit in judgment on our grandparents.” This is a machination by the structures of power that not even Hitler was able to achieve. In addition to blocking the nation’s memory and its ability to come to terms with its past, the Russian leadership has for more than ten years embroiled the country in a brutal and savage war in the North Caucasus, a war waged against a small people that tried to establish a form of independence along the lines of that which was regained by the Baltic states in the aftermath of the collapse of Communism. This “war” – which has really amounted to a sustained pogrom carried out by Russian forces with the help of local quislings – has served as a rationale for abandoning the faint beginnings of democracy that were beginning to be observed in Russia in the early 1990s. It has also demonstrated that the Russian authorities have links to terrorist organizations and are involved in the practice of state terror, for the participation of Russian special forces in terrorist acts both in Chechnya and within Russia itself is now beyond question. Under the authoritarian rule of Putin, Russia is steering a course towards a form of fascism which derives its energies and its symbolism from both Stalinist and Nazi traditions. As they move closer together, Russia and China are establishing close co-operation with rogue states like North Korea and Syria, supplying nuclear technology to Iran, destabilizing the countries of Central Asia, and working globally to oppose the U.S. in every field. The existence of shadowy organizations calling themselves “Al Qaeda”, “Islamic Jihad”, and the rest should not make us forget the recent past, when Moscow employed the weapon of Islamic and international terrorism against the West for its own political purposes, just as it used the conflict in South East Asia to confound the U.S. and its allies. The Soviet Union may not formally exist – but those who sustained and guided it are still in power.
Unite Against Terror may be a good slogan for the beginning of the 21st century. But unless it includes the perception that the main practitioners, agents and promoters of terror in today’s world continue to be the forces which in the 20th century made terror into the foundation of totalitarian states – let’s recall the title of Robert Conquest’s groundbreaking study of Stalin’s Russia, The Great Terror – it will remain a shibboleth, a party or group identification that doesn’t take us much beyond a catchphrase like ‘Ban the Bomb’.
(See also: The New Cold War)
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Maskhadov's Death
Russian Prosecutor Fails to Explain Chechen President Maskhadov’s Death
The Special Working Group on the case of CRI President Aslan Maskhadov states that, in response to an inquiry from Maskhadov’s relatives, the General Prosecutor`s Office of Russia produced only a copy of the record of the death of Aslan Maskhadov, authorised by the prosecutor’s stamp.
The refusal of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to produce official medical evidence of the cause of death suggests either that they do not know how President Aslan Maskhadov died or that they are deliberately concealing this information from the public.
We would like to point out that even the copy of the record of death was drawn up with some crude violations of Russian Federation laws:
1. The form says that the record of Aslan Maskhadov’s death was drawn up on 6 June 2005, but the form was issued on 2 June 2005, four days before the record was drawn up.
2. According to Russian law, a record of death is drawn up within three days of a death, but Aslan Maskhadov’s record was drawn up three months after his demise.
3. The place of his birth has been left blank, although the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Russian law-enforcement agencies know full well where Aslan Maskhadov was born.
4. The form’s serial number is obscured by the stamp of the General Prosecutor`s Office of Russia and it is impossible to make it out.
If the law-enforcement agencies make so many mistakes (or falsifications?) in such a simple document, it is not difficult to imagine the quality of their investigation into the circumstances of Aslan Maskhadov’s death, an investigation whose results have been described by the authorities as authoritative.
The decision to set up the Special Working Group was taken after CRI President Aslan Maskhadov’s death.
http://www.unpo.org/news_detail.php?arg=14&par=2801
Treachery
If the Soviet archives are accurate, and if the statements made by Walton and Bartlett [Kennedy family friends who met with Khrushchev aides in Moscow during 1963-64] were authorized by him, then Robert Kennedy was guilty of acts of insubordination and political treachery with few if any parallels in American history. A sitting attorney general, by channels chosen to avoid drawing the attention of the president whom he served and other officials of the U.S. government, was denigrating the newly inaugurated president [Johnson] behind his back – and, worse was urging America’s Soviet enemies to stand firm until he, Robert Kennedy, could become president in 1968 and pursue a policy more to Moscow’s liking. Richard Nixon’s secret dealings with the South Vietnamese government in the election of 1968, and his later conniving with the Greek military dictatorship, were petty misdemeanors by comparison; those regimes were allies, not rivals. (The claims of Robert Dallek and other presidential historians that Lyndon Johnson’s fears of sabotage by the Kennedy circle were “paranoid” must be reevaluated, in light of the revelations from Moscow.)
- Michael Lind, in Vietnam: The Necessary War
- Michael Lind, in Vietnam: The Necessary War
Vasily Grossman
In his Writer's Choice series, Norman Geras has a feature by John Lloyd on the Soviet Jewish writer Vasily Grossman, whose great novel Zhizn' i Sud'ba (Life and Fate) caused mortal offence to Communist Party ideologist Mikhail Suslov:
Suslov, the Politburo member in charge of ideology, is reported as having said it could not be published for 200 years. However, it was smuggled out on microfilm to the west by Vladimir Voinovich, and published, first in France in 1980, then in English in 1985 - just as Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and another thaw began.For a little more about Grossman and the political context in which he lived and worked, see this post.
Why the 200 year ban? Because Life and Fate commits what was still, in a 'liberal' environment, the unthinkable sin of arguing for the moral equivalence of Nazism and Soviet communism. In a central chapter, a senior SS officer, Obersturmbahnführer Liss, and an old Bolshevik officer, Mikhail Moskovskoy, speak in the former's office in the prison camp in which Moskovskoy is held. Liss treats him kindly, and calls him 'teacher'. And he tells him that they serve the same - philosophic - master. 'Lenin', says Liss, 'considered himself a builder of internationalism while in actual fact he was creating the great nationalism of the 20th century... and we learned many things from Stalin. To build socialism in one country, one must destroy the peasants' freedom to sow what they like and sell what they like. Stalin didn't shilly-shally - he liquidated millions of peasants. Our Hitler saw that the Jews were the enemy hindering the National Socialist movement. And he liquidated millions of Jews. But Hitler's no mere student: he's a genius in his own right... you must believe me. You've kept silent while I've been talking, but I know that I'm like a mirror for you - a surgical mirror.'
Belkovsky on Putin
http://www.echo.msk.ru/guests/8025/
[Presenter S. Buntman] We have in the studio Stanislav Belkovsky -
political expert, president of the National Strategy Institute. Good
afternoon, Stanislav.
[Belkovsky] Good afternoon.
[passage omitted]
[Belkovsky] This regime is pushing us closer to a collapse of the state. So, the sooner it quits and hands power in to a new generation of politicians caring about creation of a new wealth rather than about legalization of their capitals in the West, the less likely is the country to collapse upon our heads.
[Passage omitted]
[Belkovsky] Instability is inevitable, just because processes are going on in the country which Putin can neither control nor prevent. For instance, the Kremlin cannot control the North Caucasus today de-facto. And Putin knows it. And for him it is crucial to leave office before this fact is obvious to the country and the rest of the world. The national infrastructure, which has not been renovated since
the Brezhnev era, is in a deepest crisis. And the blackout in May [in Moscow] is just the first sign [of deterioration].
[Passage omitted]
Putin understands it. And as he is not a Stalin but just an average European who dreams of being a rich rentier with an income of several hundred millions of dollars a year, of being an Abramovich.
[passage omitted]
[He wants] to head some international structure and so on. He doesn't want to resign amid tragedy and catastrophe. That is why I am sincerely sure that Putin himself doesn't want any third term - not because he is a democrat or a liberal - but because he is very afraid of responsibility. We saw it during the Kursk submarine disaster, during the Beslan crisis, during the Nord-Ost siege, during all other crises that occurred in the country. We saw anyone but him at the footlights. He crawled out only after the crisis had been resolved, and often in spite of his own actions. That is why I think he doesn't want to stay in power after 2008 and wants to resign before his term ends. And he understands that destabilisation may come due to objective reasons, not because of somebody's evil will, long before [his term expires]. That is why he and his objective allies - Abramovichs, Fridmans and so on - do anything to make this happy period of illusory stability last longer.
[passage omitted]
(via chechnya-sl)
[Presenter S. Buntman] We have in the studio Stanislav Belkovsky -
political expert, president of the National Strategy Institute. Good
afternoon, Stanislav.
[Belkovsky] Good afternoon.
[passage omitted]
[Belkovsky] This regime is pushing us closer to a collapse of the state. So, the sooner it quits and hands power in to a new generation of politicians caring about creation of a new wealth rather than about legalization of their capitals in the West, the less likely is the country to collapse upon our heads.
[Passage omitted]
[Belkovsky] Instability is inevitable, just because processes are going on in the country which Putin can neither control nor prevent. For instance, the Kremlin cannot control the North Caucasus today de-facto. And Putin knows it. And for him it is crucial to leave office before this fact is obvious to the country and the rest of the world. The national infrastructure, which has not been renovated since
the Brezhnev era, is in a deepest crisis. And the blackout in May [in Moscow] is just the first sign [of deterioration].
[Passage omitted]
Putin understands it. And as he is not a Stalin but just an average European who dreams of being a rich rentier with an income of several hundred millions of dollars a year, of being an Abramovich.
[passage omitted]
[He wants] to head some international structure and so on. He doesn't want to resign amid tragedy and catastrophe. That is why I am sincerely sure that Putin himself doesn't want any third term - not because he is a democrat or a liberal - but because he is very afraid of responsibility. We saw it during the Kursk submarine disaster, during the Beslan crisis, during the Nord-Ost siege, during all other crises that occurred in the country. We saw anyone but him at the footlights. He crawled out only after the crisis had been resolved, and often in spite of his own actions. That is why I think he doesn't want to stay in power after 2008 and wants to resign before his term ends. And he understands that destabilisation may come due to objective reasons, not because of somebody's evil will, long before [his term expires]. That is why he and his objective allies - Abramovichs, Fridmans and so on - do anything to make this happy period of illusory stability last longer.
[passage omitted]
(via chechnya-sl)
Monday, July 18, 2005
Return of the Commissars
In the Moscow Times, a report on the two-week camp in Tver at which Nashi ("Ours") commissars are planning the future strategy of the pro-Putin youth movement. An excerpt:
Soviet-era songs drifted from the main stage in the center of the camp, where the commissars gathered at 8 a.m. They stood at even intervals on a enormous grid of plastic strips. Young people who had birthdays that day were called to the stage and congratulated, then most of the group left for the daily five-kilometer run. Two circles of young women performed aerobics for the eager lenses of photographers.(Hat tip: Marius)
-----
The star of the show Saturday was Kremlin adviser and political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky, who walked through the camp, trailed by dozens of young people, more than a few shirtless and suntanned. They questioned him and listened closely as he opined about the military draft and Ukraine's Orange Revolution. He was visibly pleased with the attention.
"I love talking with these young people," Pavlovsky said. "We need to prepare a politically literate generation because the lack of a developed political culture means a small number of people can make dangerously radical decisions."
Hundreds sat, notebooks in hand, during Pavlovsky's lecture that afternoon. He first warned against an obsessive search for Russia's enemies, saying it distracted from a proper focus on problems such as poverty in the regions and public education. Turning to the theme of combating fascism -- another of Nashi's stated goals -- Pavlovsky said Russia was fulfilling Western Europe's need to find a "problem" population. "Russia is the Jew of the 21st century," he said.
Commissar Alexei Gorelov, 19, said the large turnout for Pavlovsky's lecture was proof of the effect the camp was having on the young people. "Walk around the camp and listen," he said. "No one's talking about beer and girls. They're talking about politics. I've seen people transform in front of my eyes."
Endless Horizons - II
Publius Pundit has an item about the Russian youth group "Nashi" (Ours). Putin and assorted sidekicks, including the soulful Vladislav Surkov, have pledged to make the group "the heirs to the government". The blog comments:
The potential and power of a country’s motivated youth can be either a revolutionary blessing or a curse. It can be seen from the American anti-war movement of the early ’70s to the Ukrainian PORA group that helped organize the Orange Revolution. Deeply authoritarian governments realize this and use it to their benefit by creating such groups to support their regimes. Think Hitler Youth, something a liberal democratic government would never need to or be able to create.
People In Need
From the Prague Watchdog:
July 15th 2005 · Prague Watchdog
People in Need to close its North Caucasus office
By Adam Havlin
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - The renowned Czech humanitarian organization People in Need (PIN) has been forced to close its mission in the North Caucasus, which has been in operation since the beginning of 2000.
In a press release issued yesterday, the organization said its decision reflected "systematic pressure from Russian authorities, who in April 2005 denied PIN’s request to renew its accreditation for work in the Russian Federation".
The organization has been under Russian pressure for the last nine months, when according to the head of the Caucasian mission, Marek Vozka, the Russian authorities started carrying out "extensive controls at the mission, from hygiene to work safety".
In addition, disinformation appeared recently in the Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty, in which the author indirectly accused the Czech humanitarian organization of financial irregularities, collaborating with rebels, and disobeying Russian laws.
The authorities' pressure against the charity has culminated with their refusal to renew the registration required to carry out activities in Russia.
People in Need immediately reapplied for registration, an answer to which is expected within the coming three months. The organization has transferred a few of its projects to local organizations. However, a significant amount of its activities have had to be put on ice.
People in Need has so far been active in several districts of Grozny, as well as in mountainous areas of Chechnya and in Ingushetia. The charity is considered one of the leading organizations active in the North Caucasus. The organization raised some 600 million Czech crowns (24 million dollars) since 2000.
Apart from distributing food and reconstructing homes, People in Need also provided a network of schools in refugee camps located in Ingushetia, and organized after-school activities and psycho-social assistance.
www.watchdog.cz
July 15th 2005 · Prague Watchdog
People in Need to close its North Caucasus office
By Adam Havlin
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - The renowned Czech humanitarian organization People in Need (PIN) has been forced to close its mission in the North Caucasus, which has been in operation since the beginning of 2000.
In a press release issued yesterday, the organization said its decision reflected "systematic pressure from Russian authorities, who in April 2005 denied PIN’s request to renew its accreditation for work in the Russian Federation".
The organization has been under Russian pressure for the last nine months, when according to the head of the Caucasian mission, Marek Vozka, the Russian authorities started carrying out "extensive controls at the mission, from hygiene to work safety".
In addition, disinformation appeared recently in the Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty, in which the author indirectly accused the Czech humanitarian organization of financial irregularities, collaborating with rebels, and disobeying Russian laws.
The authorities' pressure against the charity has culminated with their refusal to renew the registration required to carry out activities in Russia.
People in Need immediately reapplied for registration, an answer to which is expected within the coming three months. The organization has transferred a few of its projects to local organizations. However, a significant amount of its activities have had to be put on ice.
People in Need has so far been active in several districts of Grozny, as well as in mountainous areas of Chechnya and in Ingushetia. The charity is considered one of the leading organizations active in the North Caucasus. The organization raised some 600 million Czech crowns (24 million dollars) since 2000.
Apart from distributing food and reconstructing homes, People in Need also provided a network of schools in refugee camps located in Ingushetia, and organized after-school activities and psycho-social assistance.
www.watchdog.cz
Baltic States: Joint Declaration
Brussels, July 13, 2005
Joint Declaration
on the 65th anniversary of the proclamation of the United States policy of non-recognition regarding the forcible seizure of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union
On June 22, 2005, the President of the European Parliament made a statement on behalf of the largest democratic representative body in the world, conveying his sympathy to the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian nations on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the illegal occupation of the three independent Baltic states by the Soviet Union and also expressing his satisfaction that these nations have been able to return to the family of united Europe as free and democratic member states.
In defiance of half a century of totalitarian terror, genocide and suppression of all basic human rights Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians succeeded in retaining their identity, language and hopes to regain independent statehood. Their determined fight was significantly helped by a clear and principled position taken by the United States Government almost immediately after the initial military takeover of the Baltic states by the Red Army and the toppling of their legitimate governments through foreign intervention.
On July 23, 1940, Sumner Welles, acting US Secretary of State, stated that the “devious processes whereunder the political independence and territorial integrity of the three small Baltic republics – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – were to be deliberately annihilated by one of their more powerful neighbours, have been rapidly drawn to their conclusion.” He declared that “the people of the United States are opposed to predatory activities no matter whether they are carried out by the use of force or by the threat of force.”
Referring to the Stimson doctrine, the acting Secretary of State indicated that non-recognition of illegal seizure of foreign territories would be applied to the Soviet Union as it had been applied to Japan, Germany and Italy. As a result, the diplomatic representations of the Baltic republics were allowed to continue their activities in the United States; steps were taken to protect the assets of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the United States. America also refused to turn over Baltic merchant vessels in United States ports to the Soviet Union.
Responding on August 9, 1940 to a Soviet note, the US State Department concluded that it had become “apparent that the governments and people of those countries /i.e. the Baltic states/ were being deprived of freedom of action by foreign troops which had entered their territories by force or threat of force”.
As a result of the declaration by acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles on July 23, 1940 and the ensuing steps taken by consecutive American administrations, the firm resolve of the United States to adhere to the policies of self-determination of peoples and non-recognition of forcible seizure of territory – especially with regard to Eastern Europe – was confirmed. The non-recognition policy of the largest democracy in the world, regarding the illegal annexation of the Baltic states lasted for half a century, despite immense pressures of pragmatic Realpolitik. The continued recognition by the United States of the diplomatic representatives of the Baltic states until the victorious end in August 1991 encouraged many other Western democracies not to yield to Soviet pressure and to continue to regard the Baltic states as illegally occupied.
The United States policy of non-recognition of the illegal Soviet annexation in 1940 is deeply appreciated by the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian nations. Most of us who have been living under conditions of Soviet occupation can testify that the United States´ clear position made Kremlin rulers often hesitant, especially after the death of Stalin, fully to implement the policy of Russification and suppression of national cultures and languages in the Baltic states. The Communist administration would never admit it officially, yet we could feel the difference - the occupied Baltic nations were treated on several occasions in a more flexible and cautious way because of the special attention paid to them by the Western democracies. This was immensely important in helping us to gain time and persist until the collapse of the Soviet empire. In 1991, the continuing policy of non-recognition contributed to restoring independence of the Baltic states on the basis of their legal continuity.
Representing for the first time newly free Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the European Parliament, which supported the restoration of our independence already in 1983, we would like to use this anniversary to strengthen the solidarity and intensify mutual cooperation of democratic nations on both sides of the Atlantic. The principles proclaimed by the acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles on July 23, 1940, have by no means lost their practical significance today. Unfortunately even today Russia, the legal successor to the Soviet Union, still officially claims that the occupation and subsequent annexation of the three Baltic States in 1940 was the expression of the free will of these nations. Clearly, the united stand of free democratic nations based on the principles of non-recognition of forcible seizure of any territory will be the best guarantee for the Baltic nations that the "methods of gunmen" - to quote The New York Times editorial from July 24, 1940 - will never again be used to deprive small countries of their sovereignty.
Members of the European Parliament:
Mr. Georgs Andrejevs (Latvia, ALDE)
Mrs. Laima Liucija Andrikiene (Lithuania, EPP-ED)
Mr. Valdis Dombrovskis (Latvia, EPP-ED)
Mr. Toomas-Hendrik Ilves (Estonia, PSE)
Mr. Eugenijus Gentvilas (Lithuania, ALDE)
Mr. Tunne Kelam (Estonia, EPP-ED)
Mr. Guntars Krasts (Latvia, UEN)
Mr. Girts Valdis Kristovskis (Latvia, UEN)
Mr. Aldis Kuskis (Latvia, EPP-ED)
Mr. Vytautas Landsbergis (Lithuania, EPP-ED)
Mrs. Marianne Mikko (Estonia, PSE)
Mrs. Siiri Oviir (Estonia, ALDE)
Mr. Rihards Piks (Latvia, EPP-ED)
Mr. Aloyzas Sakalas (Lithuania, PSE)
Mr. Toomas Savi (Estonia, ALDE)
Mr. Andres Tarand (Estonia, PSE)
Mrs. Inese Vaidere (Latvia, UEN)
Mr. Roberts Zile (Latvia, UEN)
(via MAK)
Joint Declaration
on the 65th anniversary of the proclamation of the United States policy of non-recognition regarding the forcible seizure of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union
On June 22, 2005, the President of the European Parliament made a statement on behalf of the largest democratic representative body in the world, conveying his sympathy to the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian nations on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the illegal occupation of the three independent Baltic states by the Soviet Union and also expressing his satisfaction that these nations have been able to return to the family of united Europe as free and democratic member states.
In defiance of half a century of totalitarian terror, genocide and suppression of all basic human rights Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians succeeded in retaining their identity, language and hopes to regain independent statehood. Their determined fight was significantly helped by a clear and principled position taken by the United States Government almost immediately after the initial military takeover of the Baltic states by the Red Army and the toppling of their legitimate governments through foreign intervention.
On July 23, 1940, Sumner Welles, acting US Secretary of State, stated that the “devious processes whereunder the political independence and territorial integrity of the three small Baltic republics – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – were to be deliberately annihilated by one of their more powerful neighbours, have been rapidly drawn to their conclusion.” He declared that “the people of the United States are opposed to predatory activities no matter whether they are carried out by the use of force or by the threat of force.”
Referring to the Stimson doctrine, the acting Secretary of State indicated that non-recognition of illegal seizure of foreign territories would be applied to the Soviet Union as it had been applied to Japan, Germany and Italy. As a result, the diplomatic representations of the Baltic republics were allowed to continue their activities in the United States; steps were taken to protect the assets of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the United States. America also refused to turn over Baltic merchant vessels in United States ports to the Soviet Union.
Responding on August 9, 1940 to a Soviet note, the US State Department concluded that it had become “apparent that the governments and people of those countries /i.e. the Baltic states/ were being deprived of freedom of action by foreign troops which had entered their territories by force or threat of force”.
As a result of the declaration by acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles on July 23, 1940 and the ensuing steps taken by consecutive American administrations, the firm resolve of the United States to adhere to the policies of self-determination of peoples and non-recognition of forcible seizure of territory – especially with regard to Eastern Europe – was confirmed. The non-recognition policy of the largest democracy in the world, regarding the illegal annexation of the Baltic states lasted for half a century, despite immense pressures of pragmatic Realpolitik. The continued recognition by the United States of the diplomatic representatives of the Baltic states until the victorious end in August 1991 encouraged many other Western democracies not to yield to Soviet pressure and to continue to regard the Baltic states as illegally occupied.
The United States policy of non-recognition of the illegal Soviet annexation in 1940 is deeply appreciated by the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian nations. Most of us who have been living under conditions of Soviet occupation can testify that the United States´ clear position made Kremlin rulers often hesitant, especially after the death of Stalin, fully to implement the policy of Russification and suppression of national cultures and languages in the Baltic states. The Communist administration would never admit it officially, yet we could feel the difference - the occupied Baltic nations were treated on several occasions in a more flexible and cautious way because of the special attention paid to them by the Western democracies. This was immensely important in helping us to gain time and persist until the collapse of the Soviet empire. In 1991, the continuing policy of non-recognition contributed to restoring independence of the Baltic states on the basis of their legal continuity.
Representing for the first time newly free Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the European Parliament, which supported the restoration of our independence already in 1983, we would like to use this anniversary to strengthen the solidarity and intensify mutual cooperation of democratic nations on both sides of the Atlantic. The principles proclaimed by the acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles on July 23, 1940, have by no means lost their practical significance today. Unfortunately even today Russia, the legal successor to the Soviet Union, still officially claims that the occupation and subsequent annexation of the three Baltic States in 1940 was the expression of the free will of these nations. Clearly, the united stand of free democratic nations based on the principles of non-recognition of forcible seizure of any territory will be the best guarantee for the Baltic nations that the "methods of gunmen" - to quote The New York Times editorial from July 24, 1940 - will never again be used to deprive small countries of their sovereignty.
Members of the European Parliament:
Mr. Georgs Andrejevs (Latvia, ALDE)
Mrs. Laima Liucija Andrikiene (Lithuania, EPP-ED)
Mr. Valdis Dombrovskis (Latvia, EPP-ED)
Mr. Toomas-Hendrik Ilves (Estonia, PSE)
Mr. Eugenijus Gentvilas (Lithuania, ALDE)
Mr. Tunne Kelam (Estonia, EPP-ED)
Mr. Guntars Krasts (Latvia, UEN)
Mr. Girts Valdis Kristovskis (Latvia, UEN)
Mr. Aldis Kuskis (Latvia, EPP-ED)
Mr. Vytautas Landsbergis (Lithuania, EPP-ED)
Mrs. Marianne Mikko (Estonia, PSE)
Mrs. Siiri Oviir (Estonia, ALDE)
Mr. Rihards Piks (Latvia, EPP-ED)
Mr. Aloyzas Sakalas (Lithuania, PSE)
Mr. Toomas Savi (Estonia, ALDE)
Mr. Andres Tarand (Estonia, PSE)
Mrs. Inese Vaidere (Latvia, UEN)
Mr. Roberts Zile (Latvia, UEN)
(via MAK)
Chronology of Terror
Hamzat Akaev, writing at Chechenpress, has a question:
Has anybody thought, why the chronology of the beginning of the modern version of terrorism begins since the 11th of September, 2001? Why is this date practically always present in statements of George Bush, Blair and their other colleagues by the "antiterrorist" struggle?
And whether there were no autumn explosions in Moscow and other cities of Russia in 1999? Why not to begin the tragic chronology, for example, since September, 9, 1999 , when there was an explosion in the apartment house,in the Guryanov Street in Moscow as the result of which 94 people were lost and more than 200 were wounded? How can such strange forgetfulness be explained? Or are not the lost Russians already considered to be people?
Let's try to answer at least some "whys". Speaking about September explosions in the cities of Russia , it is necessary to note, that there the Russian special services worked, as they say, brilliantly, but till a certain moment.
We do not know, in how many Russian cities there still would be explosions and how many hundreds of “dear Russians” would be blown up, if it had not been for vigilance of the citizens of Ryazan. Thanks to Ryazan inhabitants, the demolition men were seized by their hands, and terrorists turned out to be … employees of the FSB – the special service, which should protect Russians and Russia from especially dangerous crimes, such as terrorism. But it turned out; employees of the Russian special services blew up their citizens. And it happened, when earlier these special services had been headed by the president of Russia Putin! Do they blow up their citizens following the instruction of the president?! However these facts took place and they became known because of the failure, which happened in Ryazan. Thus, there is a fat terrorist stain on president Putin and the whole management of Russia, which till now is not washed off, and it hardly will, as the Kremlin and Lubyanka oppose to carrying out of the objective investigations of the acts of terrorism, witnesses are pursued, and people named to be the suspected, are simply shot. There is no need to hope for objectivity of the courts at the authority of Putin, there can be no speech about it. Thus, Putin with his special services remain to be the main suspected in the Russian acts of terrorism.
Here, probably, there is the answer to the question - why the struggle against “international terrorism” officially begins not since the date of explosions of the houses in September, 1999. If the demolition men from Putin's FSB in Ryazan were not got, there is a great probability that the harmonious annals of international terror would begin since the date of the Russian explosions.
On the other hand, if it had not been for the Ryazan failure, and the special operation against others, planned to be sacrificed for the sake of the territorial integrity, Russians, had passed successfully, it is not known, how much worse the destiny of the population of the Chechen Republic would be. As a matter of fact, Putin has not received an unequivocal "green traffic light" for his actions in the Chechen Republic from his western partners. And even today, in spite of the fact that Putin admits to be a partner in the “Great antiterrorist” one, and leaders of this coalition do not hasten to reproach the Russian partner with genocide in the Caucasus , they do not include the event in Russia in the autumn of 1999 in the list of attacks of the international terror. Why? In fact, to present Russia as the first victim of the international terrorists would be favorable for its logic joining the world fight against terror. If the explosions in the Russian cities are excluded from the list of terrorist attacks, to what category do they correlate? Whether the silence of the "Eight" concerning the explosions in the Russian cities specifies, that president Putin arranged a “Black September” in Russia?
In turn, concealing of the Russian explosions only strengthens suspicions that members of the "Eight" perfectly know the high-ranking terrorist by sight. And now this person is in their around, and at the following summit in Moscow he will be in the role of a hospitable host.
If the silence about so perspective theme for the common antiterrorist business about the explosions in Russia, is the result of doubt of the western leaders in Putin's versions – it means, there is a hope for presence of conscience in them. It is only a pity that the level of conscience and honor in them, almost as according to Marx, depends on the price level of oil and gas.
Carnival of the Revolutions
The Carnival of the Revolutions is up at Boxing Alcibiades, with a wide and varied menu of pro-democracy fare.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
André Glucksmann on Chechnya - II
On July 3, Timur Aliyev's Chechen Society Newspaper published the first part of an interview with the French philosopher and publicist André Glucksmann. Now the paper has published the second part of the interview, in which among other things Glucksmann talks about his own personal experience of Chechnya.
Chechen Society newspaper, # 14(52), July 19, 2005
André Glucksmann:
“Russia is digging itself a grave in Chechnya”
Part 2
The French philosopher and fighter of totalitarianism Andre Gluksmann talks about his vision for the future of Russia, the Caucasus and Chechnya, as a whole and separately, in an exclusive interview for the “Chechen Society” newspaper.
Interview by Alan Tskhurbaev
-What is your forecast for the future of Russian-Chechen relations?
- Russia is digging a grave for itself in Chechnya. Not just because it is behaving badly from the point of view of morality and humanity, but also because it is destroying its own future. Over the last 10 years around a million Russian soldiers have gone to fight in Chechnya. All of them are morally ruined. They have learnt to kill, to sell corpses, to torture and to have no respect for ordinary civilians. If you have learnt to do this then you will reproduce [this behaviour] upon your return to your own country. This has now become a threat to peace in Russia. What will these soldiers do now they are sick from what they have been doing, from the torture and violence? They will continue to do the same thing when they become members of the security structures, gangsters or policemen.
Russia is already familiar with this concept after Afghanistan. There are statistics, official questionnaires.
What's more Putin is using the war in Chechnya in order to restrict human rights, which are already all too rare in Russia. For example, after Beslan, he changed open elections for regional heads and tightened his grip around the throat of the mass media. Chechnya is an opportunity to re-assert a dictatorship in the country, one which is not communist, because those ideas are dead, but one which is Stalinist in its essence and in its actions.
- With the latest reforms in Russia it is beginning to seem like Russia is practically a macro-Chechnya. What is your attitude towards these Kremlin "reforms"?
- I am convinced that for the last 300 years the war in Chechnya has not just been colonial in character, it is not just a war about tiny reserves of oil, no. First and foremost it is a pedagogical war. That means that the Kremlin, whether it is Tsarist, Stalinist or "Putinist", has wanted to show an example, but not to Chechens but to Russians. It has wanted to show simple Russian citizens what it means not to obey the Kremlin. "If you don't obey my orders", the Tsar, Stalin or Putin is saying, "Your fate will be that of the Chechens". So it is in fact an enormous pedagogical experience.
I am not the first to say this because Ermolov, the Tsarist general (who founded Grozny by the way) said that the Chechen was a terrible example of relcalcitrance and impertinence, who showed a bad example to all his Majesty's subjects.
And Tolstoy wrote about exactly the same thing in his last novel. "The Tsar could not countenance the Chechen warriors who loved freedom and had a feeling of pride". And the whole of great Russian literature, whilst not always in agreement with this, still always delights in the beauty of women from the Caucasus, in the dignity, love of freedom and the pride of the men. But it is natural, that when you loose freedom and become a slave you lose your beauty. Beauty is the beauty of freedom. That is what people delight in in the Caucasus, that is what becomes a torture in all the Chechen wars. Chechnya is an example of freedom, of dignity and an example for the whole Russian population.
- Recently in the Duma there have been voices calling for the abolition of autonomies in the Caucasus, calling them unnecessary relics of the past.
- I think that it is the Duma, which is an unnecessary relic of the past. It is just a chamber for registration. Whenever it proposes something, Putin speaks as though it is proposing this to Putin. I think that it would be possible to economise on the Duma and make it so that Putin just talked to himself on the television. But the Duma has other great ideas like the restriction of all rights and it has been discussing this for two or three months now. When the Duma speaks it is Putin scratching his own head and coming up with ideas.
Even the ancient Greeks during the time of Herodotus spoke of the Caucasus and about its numerous nationalities. We should not forget that Prometheus, the demigod who snatched fire from Zeus, was shackled to one of the rock faces of the Caucasus. As a civilisation it is a lot more ancient, more multicultural and multi-national, a lot more valuable and ancient than ….. the Duma.
- Why then can these ancient peoples not find a common language?
- That isn't how it is at all. Let's take Dagestan. Of course there is tension there, but there are between 40 and 80 different peoples there depending on whether you count them according to ethnicity or origin, but in any case there is a huge number of languages there. Despite this Dagestan has not exploded in military hatred. Quite the opposite in fact, I would say that the Caucasus show us an example of the co-existence of cultures, languages, very different traditions. It is a great example.
Naturally the great powers, Russia first and foremost, have always tried to divide and rule these peoples. This was the position of the Tsars and then of Stalin. Because of this there does exist a very real source of conflict in Dagestan, and between the Ossetians and the Ingush, as a consequence of the repressions of 1944. A huge number of peoples were deported, especially Chechens. To this day there are disputes, not only territorial but also civil.
I know Chechens who still take their children to show them the house, which no longer belongs to them because of Stalin's repressions. This shows how this situation of tension has been provoked either by today's Kremlin or by Stalin's and I think it is admirable that in spite of it all, Putin has not yet succeeded in kindling the fire and spilling blood across the whole of the Caucasus.
- What are your memories of the Caucasus?
- My memories of the Caucasus and of Chechnya come from June-July 2000 when I managed to get there illegally. And my memories aren't about the start of the war but my admiration for the civilisation which was coping with all of this. I saw Chechens who were tending their gardens as much as they could allow themselves, and everything was growing there: berries, fruits….
If we left those from the Caucasus in peace I think that they would have a much more civilized way of life than the Russians. They can engage in commerce anywhere, build houses, tend to their gardens. It was after all Chechen men who built houses in Siberia, whilst the women in Brezhnev's time engaged in commerce in Korea, Czechoslovakia, the Emirates. At first it was the women and then the men when they were allowed to leave.
I think that this is a region with a very high level of civilization, it is the Mediterranean of Russia. At the end of the day it is thanks to the Caucasus that Moscow has been able to eat fruits. There is the inventiveness and insight of an ancient civilization here, one which I find admirable, as I do the heroism of the Chechen people. It is after all a people which is opposing the third campaign to destroy it in 300 years, and which is opposing an enemy which outnumbers it 150 times.
I can only say one thing at this point and that is to wish a quick end to the Putin regime for the Chechen people. And Putin will fall because he is bringing revolution on himself, as happened in 1953 when Berlin revolted against the Soviet army, as in 1956 when the workers of Poland revolted and in 1968 in Prague...
We are observing a fundamental phenomenon in the 21st Century - a movement, which tries to oppose despots, both big despots like Putin, and little ones like Kadyrov, and little by little this movement will win.
"Chechen Society" newspaper, #14, 19 July 2005
http://www.chechensociety.net/
Andre Glucksmann:
«Si Poutine a un allie actuellement, c’est Bassaev»
2 partie
Interview par Alan TSKHURRBAEV
- Quel est votre pronostic concernant les relations russo-tchetchenes ?
- La Russie creuse sa propre tombe en Tchetchenie. Pas seulement parce qu'elle se conduit mal, de facon immorale et inhumaine, mais aussi parce qu'elle detruit son propre avenir. Il y a probablement un million de soldats russes qui sont alles en Tchetchenie au cours des dix dernieres annees. Ils sont tous ete pourris. Ils ont appris a tuer, ils ont appris a vendre des cadavres, a torturer, a ne jamais respecter les civils. Quand on apprend des choses comme ca, on les reproduit quand on retourne dans son propre pays. C'est donc une menace pour la paix civile en Russie Que feront ces soldats qui sont malades de ce qu'ils font, malades de torturer, malades de violer, ils continueront d'une facon ou d'une autre en se faisant agent de securite, bandits ou policiers. On a vu cela deja en Russie, il y a eu des statistiques, des enquetes officielles, avec les soldats qui revenaient d'Afghanistan. La, c'est la meme chose. En plus, Poutine utilise la guerre en Tchetchenie pour restreindre les libertes deja assez rares en Russie. Par exemple apres Beslan il a supprime l'election des gouverneurs mais pas seulement, il a resserre sa poigne autour des mass medias. La Tchetchenie c'est l'occasion de retablir une dictature qui n'est communiste parce que les idees communistes sont mortes, mais qui est stalinienne dans sa pratique, dans ses operations.
- Les dernieres transformations, comme la suppression des elections font apparaitre la Russie comme un macro-Tchetchenie. Que pensez-vous de ces reformes du Kremlin ?
- Je pense effectivement que depuis 300 ans, la Tchetchenie, ce n'est pas seulement une guerre coloniale, ce n'est pas seulement une guerre pour un tout petit peu de petrole, ce n'est meme pas du tout ca. C'est d'abord une guerre pedagogique. C'est-a-dire que le Kremlin, que ce soit le Kremlin des tsars, de Staline, de Beria ou de Poutine, veut faire un exemple, mais pas pour les Tchetchenes, pour les Russes. Il veut apprendre aux simples citoyens russes ce qu'il en coute quand on desobeit au Kremlin. " Si vous n'obeissez pas a mes oukases, dit le tsar, dit Staline, dit Poutine, le sort qui vous est reserve, c'est celui des Tchetchenes ". Donc c'est une grande experience pedagogique. Et je ne suis pas original en le disant, puisque Iermolov, qui fut le general du tsar qui a d'ailleurs cree Groznyi, a explique que le Tchetchene est un exemple epouvantable d'indocilite, d'insolence, qui risque de montrer le mauvais exemple a tous les sujets de Sa Majeste. Et Tolstoi, dans sa derniere nouvelle, a explique exactement la meme chose : le tsar ne pouvait pas supporter d'avoir en face de lui des guerriers tchetchenes qui etaient libres, qui avaient le sens de la dignite. Et toute la grande litterature russe, n'est pas toujours d'accord, mais admire au Caucase la beaute des femmes et la dignite, la liberte, des hommes. Mais c'est la meme chose, quand on perd sa liberte, quand on devient esclave, on n'est pas belle. La beaute, c'est la beaute de la liberte. C'est ca qui est admire au Caucase, et c'est ca qui est martyrise dans toutes les guerres de Tchetchenie. Le Tchetchene c'est l'exemple de liberte, de dignite, un exemple pour l'ensemble de la population russe.
- Ces derniers temps, a la Douma, on propose de supprimer les autonomie dans le Caucase russe. On les considere comme des sequelles inutiles du passe.
- Je pense que c'est la Douma qui est une sequelle inutile du passe. C'est une chambre d'enregistrement. Quand elle propose quelque chose, c'est Poutine qui parle, et comme elle le propose a Poutine… Je pense qu'on pourrait economiser la Douma et faire que Poutine se parle a lui-meme a la television. Mais la Douma a aussi d'autres grandes idees, en particulier celle de restreindre toutes les libertes, ca la prend comme ca tous les deux ou trois mois.
Quand la Douma parle, c'est Poutine qui se gratte la tete et lance une idee.
Deja les Grecs antiques au temps d'Herodote parlaient du Caucase et de la multiplicite de ses peuples. Il ne faut pas oublier que Promethee, le demi-dieu qui arracha le feu a Zeus fut supplicie dans une montagne du Caucase. C'est une civilisation beaucoup plus vieille, une civilisation multiculturelle, multi populaire, multiethnique, c'est une civilisation beaucoup plus precieuse beaucoup plus ancienne que… que la Douma.
- Pourquoi ces cultures si anciennes ne peuvent pas se comprendre ?
- Ce n'est pas vrai. Si on regarde le Daghestan, il y a bien sur beaucoup de tensions, mais enfin quand meme il y a entre 40 et 80, ca depend comment on les compte, ethnies ou origines differentes, en tout cas enormement de langues. Mais jusqu'a maintenant le Daghestan n'a pas eclate en haines militaires. Donc au contraire, moi j'aurais plutot tendance a dire que le Caucase montre un exemple de coexistence entre des cultures, des langues, des traditions tres differentes, que c'est un exemple admirable. Alors bien sur les grandes puissances, en premier lieu la Russie, essaient de diviser pour regner. Ca, on n'a pas attendu Poutine, c'etait deja la position des tsars, c'etait encore la position de Staline. Donc il y a une veritable source de conflit, au Daghestan, entre l'Ossetie et les Ingouches il y a des exactions qui datent de 1944. On a deporte beaucoup de peuples, et en particulier les Tchetchenes. Depuis ce temps-la il y a des litiges territoriaux mais aussi civils. Je connais des Tchetchenes qui vont encore montrer a leurs enfants la ferme de leurs grands-parents qui ne leur appartient plus, a cause de la deportation stalinienne, donc, il a ete entretenu et organise par le Kremlin d'aujourd'hui ou par Staline un etat de tension et je trouve d'autant plus admirable le fait que, malgre tout, Poutine ne soit pas encore arrive a mettre a feu et a sang l'ensemble du Caucase.
- Quelle est votre souvenir du Caucase ?
- Moi mon souvenir du Caucase ou de la Tchetchenie ou je suis alle illegalement en juin-juillet de l'an 2000. Et la mon souvenir ce n'est pas du tout le reveil du conflit, mais l'admirable civilisation que ca comporte. J'ai vu chaque Tchetchene des qu'il le pouvait, cultiver un jardin ou tout fleurissait en meme temps : les potirons, les fruits, tout. Si on laisse les Caucasiens tranquilles, je pense qu'ils sont beaucoup plus civilises que le mode de vie russe. Ils sont capables de faire du commerce partout, d'entretenir les jardins, de construire des maisons partout, ce sont quand meme les macons tchetchenes qui ont construits beaucoup beaucoup maisons en Siberie et ce sont aussi des femmes tchetchenes qui allees faire du commerce en Coree, en Tchecoslovaquie du temps de Brejnev et dans les Emirats des qu'elles ont pu, etc., les femmes d'abord et ensuite les hommes quand ils ont pus sortir. Je trouve que c'est une region extremement civilisee, c'est la mediterranee de la Russie. Apres tout si Moscou a pu manger des fruits pendant stalinienne ou brejnevienne, c'est parce que le Caucase apportait des fruits. . Il y a la une ingeniosite, la subtilite d'une civilisation ancienne que je trouve totalement admirable, comme je trouve admirable l'heroisme des Tchetchenes. C'est quand meme un peuple qui a resiste a trois campagnes d'extermination et qui depuis 300 ans lutte contre un ennemi 150 fois plus grand. . Et la je n'ai qu'in chose a dire c'est que je m'incline devant tant de grandeur et j'espere qu'ils arriveront a attendre que Poutine tombe. Et Poutine tombera par ce qu'il appelle lui-meme une revolution permanente et qui est due au courant de liberte qui travaille le peuple et qui dure depuis 1953 quand Berlin s'est revolte contre l'armee russe, depuis 1956 quand les ouvriers et la population polonaise se sont revoltes, depuis 68 quand Prague s'et revoltee. Il y a un phenomene fondamental pour le XXIe siecle, contre lequel les despotes, les grands comme Poutine ou les petits comme Kadirov, essaient de resister, mais petit a petit, ce mouvement gagne.
"Chechen Society" newspaper, #14, 19 July 2005
http://www.chechensociety.net/
Chechen Society newspaper, # 14(52), July 19, 2005
André Glucksmann:
“Russia is digging itself a grave in Chechnya”
Part 2
The French philosopher and fighter of totalitarianism Andre Gluksmann talks about his vision for the future of Russia, the Caucasus and Chechnya, as a whole and separately, in an exclusive interview for the “Chechen Society” newspaper.
Interview by Alan Tskhurbaev
-What is your forecast for the future of Russian-Chechen relations?
- Russia is digging a grave for itself in Chechnya. Not just because it is behaving badly from the point of view of morality and humanity, but also because it is destroying its own future. Over the last 10 years around a million Russian soldiers have gone to fight in Chechnya. All of them are morally ruined. They have learnt to kill, to sell corpses, to torture and to have no respect for ordinary civilians. If you have learnt to do this then you will reproduce [this behaviour] upon your return to your own country. This has now become a threat to peace in Russia. What will these soldiers do now they are sick from what they have been doing, from the torture and violence? They will continue to do the same thing when they become members of the security structures, gangsters or policemen.
Russia is already familiar with this concept after Afghanistan. There are statistics, official questionnaires.
What's more Putin is using the war in Chechnya in order to restrict human rights, which are already all too rare in Russia. For example, after Beslan, he changed open elections for regional heads and tightened his grip around the throat of the mass media. Chechnya is an opportunity to re-assert a dictatorship in the country, one which is not communist, because those ideas are dead, but one which is Stalinist in its essence and in its actions.
- With the latest reforms in Russia it is beginning to seem like Russia is practically a macro-Chechnya. What is your attitude towards these Kremlin "reforms"?
- I am convinced that for the last 300 years the war in Chechnya has not just been colonial in character, it is not just a war about tiny reserves of oil, no. First and foremost it is a pedagogical war. That means that the Kremlin, whether it is Tsarist, Stalinist or "Putinist", has wanted to show an example, but not to Chechens but to Russians. It has wanted to show simple Russian citizens what it means not to obey the Kremlin. "If you don't obey my orders", the Tsar, Stalin or Putin is saying, "Your fate will be that of the Chechens". So it is in fact an enormous pedagogical experience.
I am not the first to say this because Ermolov, the Tsarist general (who founded Grozny by the way) said that the Chechen was a terrible example of relcalcitrance and impertinence, who showed a bad example to all his Majesty's subjects.
And Tolstoy wrote about exactly the same thing in his last novel. "The Tsar could not countenance the Chechen warriors who loved freedom and had a feeling of pride". And the whole of great Russian literature, whilst not always in agreement with this, still always delights in the beauty of women from the Caucasus, in the dignity, love of freedom and the pride of the men. But it is natural, that when you loose freedom and become a slave you lose your beauty. Beauty is the beauty of freedom. That is what people delight in in the Caucasus, that is what becomes a torture in all the Chechen wars. Chechnya is an example of freedom, of dignity and an example for the whole Russian population.
- Recently in the Duma there have been voices calling for the abolition of autonomies in the Caucasus, calling them unnecessary relics of the past.
- I think that it is the Duma, which is an unnecessary relic of the past. It is just a chamber for registration. Whenever it proposes something, Putin speaks as though it is proposing this to Putin. I think that it would be possible to economise on the Duma and make it so that Putin just talked to himself on the television. But the Duma has other great ideas like the restriction of all rights and it has been discussing this for two or three months now. When the Duma speaks it is Putin scratching his own head and coming up with ideas.
Even the ancient Greeks during the time of Herodotus spoke of the Caucasus and about its numerous nationalities. We should not forget that Prometheus, the demigod who snatched fire from Zeus, was shackled to one of the rock faces of the Caucasus. As a civilisation it is a lot more ancient, more multicultural and multi-national, a lot more valuable and ancient than ….. the Duma.
- Why then can these ancient peoples not find a common language?
- That isn't how it is at all. Let's take Dagestan. Of course there is tension there, but there are between 40 and 80 different peoples there depending on whether you count them according to ethnicity or origin, but in any case there is a huge number of languages there. Despite this Dagestan has not exploded in military hatred. Quite the opposite in fact, I would say that the Caucasus show us an example of the co-existence of cultures, languages, very different traditions. It is a great example.
Naturally the great powers, Russia first and foremost, have always tried to divide and rule these peoples. This was the position of the Tsars and then of Stalin. Because of this there does exist a very real source of conflict in Dagestan, and between the Ossetians and the Ingush, as a consequence of the repressions of 1944. A huge number of peoples were deported, especially Chechens. To this day there are disputes, not only territorial but also civil.
I know Chechens who still take their children to show them the house, which no longer belongs to them because of Stalin's repressions. This shows how this situation of tension has been provoked either by today's Kremlin or by Stalin's and I think it is admirable that in spite of it all, Putin has not yet succeeded in kindling the fire and spilling blood across the whole of the Caucasus.
- What are your memories of the Caucasus?
- My memories of the Caucasus and of Chechnya come from June-July 2000 when I managed to get there illegally. And my memories aren't about the start of the war but my admiration for the civilisation which was coping with all of this. I saw Chechens who were tending their gardens as much as they could allow themselves, and everything was growing there: berries, fruits….
If we left those from the Caucasus in peace I think that they would have a much more civilized way of life than the Russians. They can engage in commerce anywhere, build houses, tend to their gardens. It was after all Chechen men who built houses in Siberia, whilst the women in Brezhnev's time engaged in commerce in Korea, Czechoslovakia, the Emirates. At first it was the women and then the men when they were allowed to leave.
I think that this is a region with a very high level of civilization, it is the Mediterranean of Russia. At the end of the day it is thanks to the Caucasus that Moscow has been able to eat fruits. There is the inventiveness and insight of an ancient civilization here, one which I find admirable, as I do the heroism of the Chechen people. It is after all a people which is opposing the third campaign to destroy it in 300 years, and which is opposing an enemy which outnumbers it 150 times.
I can only say one thing at this point and that is to wish a quick end to the Putin regime for the Chechen people. And Putin will fall because he is bringing revolution on himself, as happened in 1953 when Berlin revolted against the Soviet army, as in 1956 when the workers of Poland revolted and in 1968 in Prague...
We are observing a fundamental phenomenon in the 21st Century - a movement, which tries to oppose despots, both big despots like Putin, and little ones like Kadyrov, and little by little this movement will win.
"Chechen Society" newspaper, #14, 19 July 2005
http://www.chechensociety.net/
Andre Glucksmann:
«Si Poutine a un allie actuellement, c’est Bassaev»
2 partie
Interview par Alan TSKHURRBAEV
- Quel est votre pronostic concernant les relations russo-tchetchenes ?
- La Russie creuse sa propre tombe en Tchetchenie. Pas seulement parce qu'elle se conduit mal, de facon immorale et inhumaine, mais aussi parce qu'elle detruit son propre avenir. Il y a probablement un million de soldats russes qui sont alles en Tchetchenie au cours des dix dernieres annees. Ils sont tous ete pourris. Ils ont appris a tuer, ils ont appris a vendre des cadavres, a torturer, a ne jamais respecter les civils. Quand on apprend des choses comme ca, on les reproduit quand on retourne dans son propre pays. C'est donc une menace pour la paix civile en Russie Que feront ces soldats qui sont malades de ce qu'ils font, malades de torturer, malades de violer, ils continueront d'une facon ou d'une autre en se faisant agent de securite, bandits ou policiers. On a vu cela deja en Russie, il y a eu des statistiques, des enquetes officielles, avec les soldats qui revenaient d'Afghanistan. La, c'est la meme chose. En plus, Poutine utilise la guerre en Tchetchenie pour restreindre les libertes deja assez rares en Russie. Par exemple apres Beslan il a supprime l'election des gouverneurs mais pas seulement, il a resserre sa poigne autour des mass medias. La Tchetchenie c'est l'occasion de retablir une dictature qui n'est communiste parce que les idees communistes sont mortes, mais qui est stalinienne dans sa pratique, dans ses operations.
- Les dernieres transformations, comme la suppression des elections font apparaitre la Russie comme un macro-Tchetchenie. Que pensez-vous de ces reformes du Kremlin ?
- Je pense effectivement que depuis 300 ans, la Tchetchenie, ce n'est pas seulement une guerre coloniale, ce n'est pas seulement une guerre pour un tout petit peu de petrole, ce n'est meme pas du tout ca. C'est d'abord une guerre pedagogique. C'est-a-dire que le Kremlin, que ce soit le Kremlin des tsars, de Staline, de Beria ou de Poutine, veut faire un exemple, mais pas pour les Tchetchenes, pour les Russes. Il veut apprendre aux simples citoyens russes ce qu'il en coute quand on desobeit au Kremlin. " Si vous n'obeissez pas a mes oukases, dit le tsar, dit Staline, dit Poutine, le sort qui vous est reserve, c'est celui des Tchetchenes ". Donc c'est une grande experience pedagogique. Et je ne suis pas original en le disant, puisque Iermolov, qui fut le general du tsar qui a d'ailleurs cree Groznyi, a explique que le Tchetchene est un exemple epouvantable d'indocilite, d'insolence, qui risque de montrer le mauvais exemple a tous les sujets de Sa Majeste. Et Tolstoi, dans sa derniere nouvelle, a explique exactement la meme chose : le tsar ne pouvait pas supporter d'avoir en face de lui des guerriers tchetchenes qui etaient libres, qui avaient le sens de la dignite. Et toute la grande litterature russe, n'est pas toujours d'accord, mais admire au Caucase la beaute des femmes et la dignite, la liberte, des hommes. Mais c'est la meme chose, quand on perd sa liberte, quand on devient esclave, on n'est pas belle. La beaute, c'est la beaute de la liberte. C'est ca qui est admire au Caucase, et c'est ca qui est martyrise dans toutes les guerres de Tchetchenie. Le Tchetchene c'est l'exemple de liberte, de dignite, un exemple pour l'ensemble de la population russe.
- Ces derniers temps, a la Douma, on propose de supprimer les autonomie dans le Caucase russe. On les considere comme des sequelles inutiles du passe.
- Je pense que c'est la Douma qui est une sequelle inutile du passe. C'est une chambre d'enregistrement. Quand elle propose quelque chose, c'est Poutine qui parle, et comme elle le propose a Poutine… Je pense qu'on pourrait economiser la Douma et faire que Poutine se parle a lui-meme a la television. Mais la Douma a aussi d'autres grandes idees, en particulier celle de restreindre toutes les libertes, ca la prend comme ca tous les deux ou trois mois.
Quand la Douma parle, c'est Poutine qui se gratte la tete et lance une idee.
Deja les Grecs antiques au temps d'Herodote parlaient du Caucase et de la multiplicite de ses peuples. Il ne faut pas oublier que Promethee, le demi-dieu qui arracha le feu a Zeus fut supplicie dans une montagne du Caucase. C'est une civilisation beaucoup plus vieille, une civilisation multiculturelle, multi populaire, multiethnique, c'est une civilisation beaucoup plus precieuse beaucoup plus ancienne que… que la Douma.
- Pourquoi ces cultures si anciennes ne peuvent pas se comprendre ?
- Ce n'est pas vrai. Si on regarde le Daghestan, il y a bien sur beaucoup de tensions, mais enfin quand meme il y a entre 40 et 80, ca depend comment on les compte, ethnies ou origines differentes, en tout cas enormement de langues. Mais jusqu'a maintenant le Daghestan n'a pas eclate en haines militaires. Donc au contraire, moi j'aurais plutot tendance a dire que le Caucase montre un exemple de coexistence entre des cultures, des langues, des traditions tres differentes, que c'est un exemple admirable. Alors bien sur les grandes puissances, en premier lieu la Russie, essaient de diviser pour regner. Ca, on n'a pas attendu Poutine, c'etait deja la position des tsars, c'etait encore la position de Staline. Donc il y a une veritable source de conflit, au Daghestan, entre l'Ossetie et les Ingouches il y a des exactions qui datent de 1944. On a deporte beaucoup de peuples, et en particulier les Tchetchenes. Depuis ce temps-la il y a des litiges territoriaux mais aussi civils. Je connais des Tchetchenes qui vont encore montrer a leurs enfants la ferme de leurs grands-parents qui ne leur appartient plus, a cause de la deportation stalinienne, donc, il a ete entretenu et organise par le Kremlin d'aujourd'hui ou par Staline un etat de tension et je trouve d'autant plus admirable le fait que, malgre tout, Poutine ne soit pas encore arrive a mettre a feu et a sang l'ensemble du Caucase.
- Quelle est votre souvenir du Caucase ?
- Moi mon souvenir du Caucase ou de la Tchetchenie ou je suis alle illegalement en juin-juillet de l'an 2000. Et la mon souvenir ce n'est pas du tout le reveil du conflit, mais l'admirable civilisation que ca comporte. J'ai vu chaque Tchetchene des qu'il le pouvait, cultiver un jardin ou tout fleurissait en meme temps : les potirons, les fruits, tout. Si on laisse les Caucasiens tranquilles, je pense qu'ils sont beaucoup plus civilises que le mode de vie russe. Ils sont capables de faire du commerce partout, d'entretenir les jardins, de construire des maisons partout, ce sont quand meme les macons tchetchenes qui ont construits beaucoup beaucoup maisons en Siberie et ce sont aussi des femmes tchetchenes qui allees faire du commerce en Coree, en Tchecoslovaquie du temps de Brejnev et dans les Emirats des qu'elles ont pu, etc., les femmes d'abord et ensuite les hommes quand ils ont pus sortir. Je trouve que c'est une region extremement civilisee, c'est la mediterranee de la Russie. Apres tout si Moscou a pu manger des fruits pendant stalinienne ou brejnevienne, c'est parce que le Caucase apportait des fruits. . Il y a la une ingeniosite, la subtilite d'une civilisation ancienne que je trouve totalement admirable, comme je trouve admirable l'heroisme des Tchetchenes. C'est quand meme un peuple qui a resiste a trois campagnes d'extermination et qui depuis 300 ans lutte contre un ennemi 150 fois plus grand. . Et la je n'ai qu'in chose a dire c'est que je m'incline devant tant de grandeur et j'espere qu'ils arriveront a attendre que Poutine tombe. Et Poutine tombera par ce qu'il appelle lui-meme une revolution permanente et qui est due au courant de liberte qui travaille le peuple et qui dure depuis 1953 quand Berlin s'est revolte contre l'armee russe, depuis 1956 quand les ouvriers et la population polonaise se sont revoltes, depuis 68 quand Prague s'et revoltee. Il y a un phenomene fondamental pour le XXIe siecle, contre lequel les despotes, les grands comme Poutine ou les petits comme Kadirov, essaient de resister, mais petit a petit, ce mouvement gagne.
"Chechen Society" newspaper, #14, 19 July 2005
http://www.chechensociety.net/
Suicide Bombers - III
A new monograph entitled The Hijacked Caravan - Refuting Suicide Bombings as Martyrdom Operations in Contemporary Jihad Strategy is available for download (pdf format) at the Ihsanic Intelligence website. The introduction to the monograph states that
- The Hijacked Caravan is the first and only Islamic legal ruling which unequivocally condemns suicide bombing in all circumstances.(via global-geopolitics)
- Suicide terrorism has no precedent in fourteen centuries of Sunni Islamic tradition
- Islamist terrorist groups like al-Qa’eda have adopted the use of suicide bombings from the Hindu-Marxist terrorist groups like the Tamil Tigers and kamikaze pilots from Japan
- Islamist terrorists killing Muslims are considered to be in the tradition of the khawarij, an ancient Islamic heretical sect which also assassinated Prophet Muhammad’s cousin, Imam Ali
- Suicide bombings invoked under the rubric of Islamist terrorism, outside Israel and the Palestinian Territories, grew three-fold within the space of three years after 9/11, killing twice as many people as had been killed over two decades.
- Within the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, a case often given global exception by some scholars for using this tactic, suicide bombings doubled as did the number of people killed in the three years after 9/11 compared to the previous seven years of suicide terrorism. Worldwide, in merely three years after 9/11, the number of suicide bombings had increased three-fold than it had over two decades, whilst the number of people killed had doubled.
- Worldwide, for every person who undertook a suicide bombing prior to 9/11, 18 people were likely to be killed. After 9/11, this figure fell to killing of 14 people on average, which was only as a result of the disproportionate rise in the “export” of this practice to groups worldwide.
- Suicide bombing in the name of Islam has occurred in more than 20 countries: Lebanon [1981], Kuwait [1983], Argentina [1992], Panama, Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories [1994], Pakistan, Croatia [1995], Saudi Arabia [1996], Tanzania, Kenya [1998], Yemen, Chechnya [2000], USA, Kashmir, Afghanistan [2001], Tunisia, Indonesia, Algeria [2002], Morocco, Russia, India, Iraq, Turkey [2003], Uzbekistan and Spain [2004] - and possibly United Kingdom [2005].
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