Caucasus Conundrum

Chechnya is a sickness for Russia.

We may pretend to be happy at times, pretend that our economy is not stagnant. We may choose to be glad that we do not have to line up for sausages and eggs anymore. But it all seems irrelevant when you realize that it is the war in the North Caucasus that controls life in Russia, a war that has been going on intermittently for eight years, a war that has claimed the lives of thousands of our citizens. And no one even knows for sure how many victims there are because no one has counted.

The war enthrones the Kremlin leadership. It fires and appoints top-ranking officials. It cripples the judiciary to such an extent that, instead of being a democratic mechanism to ensure adversarial contests, courts turn into a doormat used by the authorities for their own convenience. The free press is being destroyed by this war. And on top of all this, today, after the October terrorist act in Moscow, we also have to live in a fear that does not let us go even for a minute.

An old acquaintance of mine called once and said: “Weird. There were lots of people out in the streets over the weekend, and no terrorist act. Do you happen to know why not?”

An hour later, another friend called, with almost the same words and the same feeling: “I have been waiting for a terrorist act, but they will probably again get us where we least expect it.”

This is exactly the fear that has become hard-wired into our genetic code: The war that to John Q. Public had seemed rather remote has now crept into every household. For the thinking majority, life after the mass hostage-taking at a Moscow theater is a feeling of being up in the air around the clock: Will a new act of terror occur? And where? And how can all this be stopped?

Even President Vladimir V. Putin -- he who tries to prove to the world that he is such a strong and dashing guy -- has publicly hushed and rebuked everybody and raised his voice to say no, do not hold your breath. That it will not stop, there will be no peace talks because we are fighting “international terrorism.”

So is peace in Chechnya possible at all? And what kind of peace is possible now, after Putin’s statements that there will be no peace until all terrorists are crushed and all those who even dare to breathe a word about it will be reckoned among international terrorists?

All wars end in peace. History has failed to come up with any other outcome. Moreover, peace, as history teaches us again, always starts with the same thing: The warring sides, although they have killed lots of people, sit down at the negotiating table and face each other. This is what will happen in Russia too. Yet it is unclear when, exactly. And it is this “when” that is the rub.

Some in Russia say, “There will be peace when the military wants it.” Others say, “When Putin needs it.” I support a different point of view.

Putin is indeed the pragmatist that the West believes him to be. However, the naive West thinks that Putin’s pragmatism is for the sake of the country he leads. Instead, Putin’s pragmatism is, first and foremost, for his own sake.

Today’s regime in Russia, as personified first and foremost by Putin, is interested only in power -- to keep it, consolidate and augment it, and do it in such a way that opponents would not even be able to raise their heads.

As far as the current Chechnya war is concerned, Putin practices exactly this pragmatism of personal power to the highest degree, which in fact is barefaced cynicism. Putin does not care about civilian casualties (in more than three years of the war he has not once expressed condolences to the families of the killed Chechens) or even the thousands of victims among the military who perish in Chechnya or die of wounds in hospitals. All that interests him in the war is deriving the benefit that will guarantee his reelection for a second term.

What do I mean by this? It is common knowledge that the Russian people are irrational by nature. The majority of them do not require candidates running for offices to provide clear-cut economic programs. In fact, the people are even slightly irritated, as opinion polls show, when a candidate is too intelligent -- or at least more intelligent than the mass. At the same time, Russian people love macho -- they love brutality, demonstrations of strong-handed policies and tough moves made for show.

I am sure Putin and the new team of spin doctors being knocked together to run the 2004 presidential campaign are saving “peace in Chechnya” as a tidbit for that campaign. A “strong Putin” will again be shown as a person who had the guts to launch the war even before he became president, as the president who allegedly broke international terrorism in the North Caucasus and, finally, as someone who managed to “make peace,” no matter how hard it was to initiate peace talks.

In this scenario, one can expect first a sharp deterioration of the situation in Chechnya in 2003. It will be Putin crushing the “backbone of international terrorism.” It means even more large-scale and severe “mopping-up” operations, bombing, shelling, looting, people abducted and disappearing without a trace, jackbooted pressure on the civilian population. The ideological foundation for this cruelty will be presented as a “hard-edged war against international terrorism.”

For journalists, covering the current Chechnya war was bad even before now, with the authorities harshly and illegally limiting journalists’ capabilities. Now the authorities will do the same thing with the help of the law.

Recently, both chambers of parliament almost unanimously passed amendments to the federal law on the “fight against terrorism” that ban any criticism of the Kremlin leadership’s policies in Chechnya, under the threat of criminal liability and imprisonment.

The amendments strip journalists of the right to cover the war the way they see it. The administration brackets almost the entire Chechen people as bandits and terrorists, without sparing even children. And if “mopping-up” operations in Chechnya are described in the media as what they really are -- punitive military operations to kill and torture people -- such reporting, according to the new legislation, can be interpreted as “resistance to the counter-terrorist operation, propaganda and/or justification of the terrorist cause.”

The essence of the new amendments is that the actions of the elected authorities are removed from the control of the public. This is something that we saw in Soviet times, and we know the consequences perfectly well. The examples are the war in Afghanistan and the ruined and ineffective Soviet economy that is still felt in the total poverty of half of the population.

But Putin needs to get reelected.

This is the sad background against which in 2004 Putin will be presented to the Russian public as the “peacemaker.” And the people will believe it. Heartily acclaiming him, they will reelect him. But will the real situation in Chechnya change? Of course not.

Putin’s creed doesn’t change. The war will continue to reproduce terrorism, pushing the younger generation in Chechnya to become more and more radical. What awaits us is the Israeli option, where every Palestinian sitting next to you on a bus is feared.

This is exactly the “peace” that the “pragmatic” Putin regime has got in store for us, no earlier than 2004.