- An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view
that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in
North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger",
"Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against
Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan
have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much
as the terrorists. There have been numerous editorials encouraging us to
understand - to quote the Sunday Times - the "underlying causes"
of Chechen terrorism (usually Russian authoritarianism), while the widespread
use of the word "rebels" to describe people who shoot children
shows a surprising indulgence in the face of extreme brutality.
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- On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called
"mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a specific group
in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American supporters. The
leading Russian critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are the
pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov - men associated
with the extreme neoliberal market reforms which so devastated the Russian
economy under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the Carnegie Endowment's
Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head office, this influential thinktank
- which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation,
for instance in producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the
US restructure the "Greater Middle East" - has been quoted repeatedly
in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has
also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow's claims
that there is a link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.
-
- These people peddle essentially the same line as that
expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed Zakaev, the London
exile who wrote in these pages yesterday. Other prominent figures who use
the Chechen rebellion as a stick with which to beat Putin include Boris
Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like Zakaev, was granted political
asylum in this country, although the Russian authorities want him on numerous
charges. Moscow has often accused Berezovsky of funding Chechen rebels
in the past.
-
- By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are
putting it about that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only
western channels reported live, the implication being that Putin's Russia
remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian
media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while watching
both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels had far
better information and images from Beslan than their western competitors.
This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in
the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American
Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished
Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent
neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".
-
- They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser;
Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador
to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a
cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director
of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre
for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer
and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US
Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute,
a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime
change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one
of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the
Muslim world along pro-US lines.
-
- The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion
shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support
for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights violations
in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those
other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo - implying
that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilise the
situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum
in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign
minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow describes
as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent
the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are
indeed those of the US administration.
-
- Although the White House issued a condemnation of the
Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that the Chechen conflict
must be solved politically. According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks
of Johns Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase on Moscow to
achieve a political, rather than military, solution - in other words to
negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects elsewhere.
-
- Allegations are even being made in Russia that the west
itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the purpose of
such support is to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the Caucasus.
The fact that the Chechens are believed to use as a base the Pankisi gorge
in neighbouring Georgia - a country which aspires to join Nato, has an
extremely pro-American government, and where the US already has a significant
military presence - only encourages such speculation. Putin himself even
seemed to lend credence to the idea in his interview with foreign journalists
on Monday.
-
- Proof of any such western involvement would be difficult
to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are asking themselves such questions
when the same people in Washington who demand the deployment of overwhelming
military force against the US's so-called terrorist enemies also insist
that Russia capitulate to hers?
-
- - John Laughland is a trustee of the British Helsinki
Human Rights Group www.oscewatch.org
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1299318,00.html
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