posted by circassiankama on July, 2009 as CHECHNYA
July 29, 2009 A Never-Ending War By Roland Oliphant Russia Profile
Violence in Chechnya is Getting Worse and Negotiating with Exiled Rebels Will Not Stop It
A
suicide bomb attack in the capital of Chechnya on Sunday seems to have
been aimed at undermining Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov’s claims to
have brought the insurgency under control. Desperate to convince Moscow
that he can be a conciliator as well as a fighter, Kadyrov has opened
talks with exiled rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev. But the insurgents in
the mountains appear determined to keep fighting.
On
Sunday a suicide bomber – a relatively rare species of terrorist in the
Caucasus, but increasingly visible as of late – blew himself up outside
a theater in Grozny. The theater was packed, but he had not made it
into the building. He detonated his bomb when suspicious policemen
stopped him outside (according to accounts in the mainstream press
sourced from the statements of the Chechen authorities. The Islamist
rebel Web site Kavkaz Center claimed the explosion occurred “at some
distance” from the theatre and suggested that the bomber’s real target
was Kadyrov himself, who was apparently in the area). The blast killed
six people – four senior police officers and two builders – and injured
nine others.
That
the insurgency in Chechnya continues is not news. Despite Chechen
president Ramzan Kadyrov’s regular declarations of “victory” and the
ending this April of the counter-terrorist regime that had been in
place for the best part of a decade, the separatist campaign has
smoldered on. So have the security forces’ clumsy attempts to stamp it
out. In April the Memorial human rights group told Radio Liberty that
since the beginning of the year, 34 Chechens had been abducted by
unidentified armed men believed to belong to security forces. The
murder of Memorial representative Natalya Estemirova two weeks ago was
almost certainly connected to her work reporting house burnings
targeted at families of suspected terrorists.
In fact, said Alexei Mukhin, director of the Moscw-based center for political
information, “the war between illegal armed formations and Kadyrov’s team is intensifying.”
Unraveling
the chain of cause-and-effect in the Caucasus is never an exact
science, but one school of thought traces the start of the current
spate of violence to the deportation in June from Egypt of Maskhud
Abdullaev, the 22-year-old son of Supyan Abdullaev, an associate of
rebel leader Dokka Umarov. This caused a brief stir in the press –
Amnesty International and other human rights groups condemned the
decision to return Abdullaev to Russia though he has previously been
granted asylum in Azerbaijan. He then disappeared from view, only to
resurface on Chechen television to condemn his father’s activities and
insist that his statements are “absolutely free” and he is under “no
pressure.”
“This situation of the ‘kidnapped’ student, in my
opinion, provoked the assassination attempt on Yekurov. And this in
turn provoked an escalation of the relationship between Chechnya and
Ingushetia in Dagestan, which led to the mass shooting of the members
of the security forces,” said Mukhin. “So out of a fairly small
incident grew a full-on terrorist war.”
Whatever
the cause of the escalation in violence, it is bad news for Kadyrov.
Senior figures in the security services were said to be unhappy with
the end of the counter terrorist regime in the first place, and the
Chechen president is trying his best to prove to Moscow that the move
was not a mistake. Sunday’s bomb seems to be a deliberate attempt to
sabotage those efforts.
On Friday – two days before the attack
in Grozny – it was revealed that senior representatives of Kadyrov’s
administration had met with in Oslo with Akhmed Zakayev, the rebel
spokesman who since 2002 has been exiled in London. The talks centered
on “political issues being solved not by force but by political means,”
according to Zakayev’s comments carried by Reuters. Although no
concrete agreements were reached – or at least none that were made
public – the rhetoric on both sides seemed to be upbeat.
Analysts
were quick to draw a link between the Oslo meeting and the subsequent
attack in Grozny, the hypothesis being that escalating violence would
discredit Kadyrov’s attempts to play the negotiator by talking to
Zakayev.
It is no secret, of course, that Zakayev has little
influence on the insurgents on the ground. “The Republic of Ichkeria
that Zakayev claims to represent is a myth, and the insurgents on the
ground understand this very well” said Mukhin. Indeed, the rebel leader
who seems to run the campaign in Chechnya and who Kadyrov singled out
for condemnation after Sunday’s bombing is Umarov. Kavkaz Center, which
backs Umarov, disparagingly refers to Zakayev as the “the head of a
‘telephone government.’”
A cynic – especially a Russian cynic – would
point to Zakayev’s close ties to Boris Berezovsky, and the (reputed)
fact that the oligarch’s funds have depleted rapidly with the onset of
the economic crisis. Talking to Kadyrov keeps Zakayev in the public
eye, and by appearing to surrender to his former brother-in-arms and
fellow Chechen, rather than Moscow, saves some kind of face. This makes
the prospect of an understanding between the two men far from
impossible.
But if a deal does materialize, it will not quell
the current spate of violence. In June Kavkaz Center claimed that a
squad of 20 suicide bombers had been formed in Chechnya. Since then
there seem to have been two suicide attacks – on Yevkurov on June 22
and in Grozny on Sunday. If the rebel Web site is telling the truth,
that means there are 18 attacks still to come.
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