Our new new pal Putin, the great anti-terrorist of Chechnya

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Remember Chechnya

By Anna Politkovskaya


Three years ago Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power by launching
a war in Chechnya that is still referred to in Russia as an anti-terrorist
operation. The war continues, with almost 4,000 Russian soldiers having been
killed and more than 13,000 wounded. Why?

In Russia, the disjunction between official statistics and real life is as
great as that between Putin and democratic freedoms, an issue President Bush
should raise in his discussions with Putin this week. This disjunction is
evident to all who seek to answer the question: What is the reality in
Chechnya today?

The answer is that Chechnya is an isolated enclave within Russia, a 21st
century ghetto. No one may freely enter or freely leave -- neither men nor
women; neither children, nor the old. Military checkpoints are everywhere.
In order to pass these checkpoints, civilians must place a "Form #10" (a
10-ruble bribe) in their passports. Without such bribes, soldiers might
shoot you in the back or simply detain you, the consequences of which are
also usually fatal.

The most characteristic feature of life in Chechnya today is the
uncontrolled blizzard of bullets and shells all around you. No one is safe.
Any discussion of human rights is silly: Such rights simply do not exist. As
Sultan Khadzhiev, one of the few surgeons remaining in Chechnya, stated,
Chechnya is a place where some people can do anything they like, while the
rest have to put up with it.

In this drama, the leading roles are played by the military and the
supporting roles by the civilian population. As for the fighters and other
militants, they are nothing more than extras, providing the necessary
background and scenery for a dirty little war.

A brief look at events on a typical day this month illustrate the point.
Nov. 4: Federal troops at a checkpoint open fire on a passing tractor.
Fifty-two-year old tractor driver Sultan Suleimanov and his assistant,
42-year-old Akhmed Sadullayev, are lucky. They are in intensive care, but
they are alive. While proceeding along a road bordering the town of
Akhchoi-Martan, a military column opens fire on a roadside cafe. A
19-year-old waitress, Larisa Bugaeva, a refugee from Grozny, is killed
immediately; another waitress, 30-year-old Larisa Khatimova, is seriously
wounded and is taken to the intensive care unit. The column, meanwhile,
continues toward the mountains without even slowing down.

There has been no criminal investigation of these incidents, either on the
day they occurred or since. This is reality in a military-bandit zone: The
procurator's office is helpless to prevent the federal troops' excesses and,
more often than not, prefers not to become involved. Even when it takes
action, as it did in early July after the troops conducted a viciously
thorough sweep in the villages of Sernovodsk and Assinovskaya, nothing comes
of its efforts. Federal troops in that instance gave the procurators no
information, and the civilians simply disappeared. Almost 2,000 civilians
have disappeared in Chechnya in this way: Picked up during a sweep, they are
never seen again, dead or alive.

The courts -- which exist in name only -- do nothing. The police act as
badly as the military. In fact, the worst torture chambers in Grozny are in
the offices of the Interior Ministry -- i.e., in the police stations. Add to
all this the barely functioning pro-Moscow governmental organs established
during the war, wrecked schools and hospitals, an economy in a collapse and
a nonexistent banking system, and the overall picture of the Chechen ghetto
is not just grim, it is incomprehensible.

What does Putin want in Chechnya? In place of Chechnya? From the Chechens?
What, in view of the fact that not one of the goals of the anti-terrorist
operation has been realized? Civilians do not feel even relatively safe. The
terrorist leaders are still at large. And the resistance easily replenishes
its ranks with new recruits seeking revenge for the suffering and deaths of
family members.

Putin constantly sounds the theme of Russia's great-power status in his
public speeches, and the Russian public eats it up. In what, specifically,
does Russia's status as a great power manifest itself? What aspects of
Russian life demonstrate that we have or should be proud of something today?

Putin's Russia has no positive aspects. The economy is still in the hands of
oligarchs. Corruption is still rampant. Our social safety net is
nonexistent. In fact, there is nothing on which to build a domestic policy.
Nevertheless, the Russian people want to feel that they live in a big and
important state.

Chechnya provides the yeast for the growth of the great-power mentality, the
basis of Putin's state morality. For that reason, Putin forgives the army
for committing daily crimes and atrocities. In fact, by providing the
ideological basis for its active struggle with Islamic extremists, Putin
encourages the military's addiction to criminal irresponsibility in
Chechnya. Putinism is equally appealing to those in Europe and America who
have warmed to the Russian president because of his genuine ability to keep
Russia under control. Among Western premiers and presidents, no one is
willing to disturb the Russian beehive by raising the question of the
catastrophic situation in Chechnya.

So here we are, America, Europe and Putin, all happy with one another, mired
in compromises that look like betrayal. This betrayal will deepen as Putin
and Bush solidify their support for their respective campaigns against
international terrorism. Bush should be aware that in his meetings with
Putin, continued compromises will only reinforce Putinism and further entrap
those Chechens living in this 21st century ghetto.

<em>Anna Politkovskaya is a special correspondent for the Russian newspaper
Novaia Gazeta and the author of: "A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in
Chechnya."</em>

  





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