This time it's personal: justice Chechen-style

Simon Tisdall
Friday April 29, 2005

Guardian
For Ramzan Kadyrov, the first deputy prime minister in Chechnya's pro-Moscow government, the hunt for the man behind last September's murderous siege at the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, is a personal affair.

The Chechen extremist Shamil Basayev admitted responsibility for Beslan and is wanted for a string of other atrocities. But Mr Kadyrov has another reason for pursuing the Caucasus' most dangerous man.

Basayev, whose terrorist exploits date back to the 1995 mass hostage-taking at Budyonnovsk hospital in southern Russia, and who is wanted for the 2002 Dubrovka theatre attack in Moscow, exploded the bomb that killed Mr Kadyrov's father, Chechnya's Kremlin-installed president, Akhmad Kadyrov.

Mr Kadyrov said last week he had no intention of bringing Basayev to justice in the conventional way for the bombing, which happened during a VE day celebration in Grozny almost a year ago. "He will live until the minute I find him," he said. "He is my personal enemy and I'm not going to risk my men's lives trying to catch him alive."

This brutal approach to law enforcement is part of the problem in Chechnya, where a vicious, low-level conflict pits separatist groups and foreign jihadis linked to al-Qaida against federal and local security forces. Fighting continues 11 years after the first Chechen war began.

It is also one of the reasons why Chechnya, and the surrounding political impasse, retains potent capacity for broader, regional destabilisation. Chechnya's unfinished battles fuel international terrorism and encourage a corrosive, Russia-wide contempt for human rights, analysts say.

"The Chechen radicals and their international allies have an agenda of undermining Russian rule across the whole north Caucasus," says an independent report, Spreading Danger, published last month by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The conflict is helping to feed the wider international jihadi movement and is endangering the west as well as Russia."

But Russia's security apparatus was also at fault for its embrace of Mr Kadyrov and his methods. The report adds: "Criminality and corruption in Chechnya and beyond are at catastrophic levels. Among the worst culprits are federal forces and the so-called Kadyrovtsy, fighters grouped around Ramzan Kadyrov. The Kadyrovtsy are responsible for extra-judicial killings, abductions and torture."

Concern about escalating conflict has been magnified by a cross-border raid into Dagestan last week involving Mr Kadyrov's paramilitaries. Dagestan has had a series of terror attacks in recent weeks.

Although violence has lessened overall, the region remains a tinderbox. Last month's killing by Russian troops of Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya's democratically elected president, who was trying to promote a dialogue, may have strengthened the militants' hand.

The claim this week of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, that Chechen elections this year would lay the basis for regional stability and democracy, looks optimistic in the absence of any locally or internationally backed peace process.

Monitors working for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe were forced out of Chechnya in 2002. And NGOs and journalists have come under attack from the Russian authorities, according to the US-based pressure group Human Rights First.

Although the Council of Europe urged Russia last week to do more to halt disappearances and military abuses, the UN's discredited human rights commission failed to express an opinion on Chechnya for a fourth consecutive year.

Western leaders have largely accepted Mr Putin's argument that Chechnya is an internal matter.

"Mr Putin's strategy of 'Chechenisation', along with the progressive restoration of full autonomy, could provide the basis for future cooperation between western governments and Moscow," the Carnegie report says.

But Moscow should offer an amnesty to all Chechen fighters and launch an inclusive political dialogue, it suggests. And instead of ducking the issue, western countries should offer financial assistance and technical expertise to help Russia curb external Islamist support for extremists like Basayev.

"While reaffirming Russia's territorial integrity and welcoming federal efforts to rebuild Chechnya, the west must speak firmly about the alarming human rights situation - and in particular, the behaviour of the Kadyrovtsy."

Western leaders will have a golden opportunity to do just that when they meet in Moscow next month. But history suggests they will look the other way.
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