The Other Side of the Coin: Intrigues Behind the Scenes
SNA CHECHENPRESS,
1.
As the wife of President Aslan Maskhadov I saw many things from the inside which I would like to share with you – thoughts, observations, and disappointments. I would like to lay before you the unvarnished reality, despite the fact that the truth will be unpalatable to many and that I shall face a barrage of criticism. It will be said that we should not wash our dirty linen in public, but that has been done long ago and everything has been assiduously misrepresented by certain individuals. I believe the facts I have to relate were serious obstacles on our road to national independence. Indeed, I believe they were strategic errors which have prevented us from attaining that cherished goal. All the chaos, insubordination to the legitimate government, creation of independent armed units and the like brought no benefit to a Chechnya which had not yet recovered from the destruction and huge loss of life of the first war. Our opponent benefited from our disarray.
I would like to draw attention to the use certain people made of the historic opportunity vouchsafed us by the All-High. This was indeed a time given to us by Allah to test and gauge our sincerity and steadfastness. Unfortunately we proved unworthy and failed.
Have we each asked ourselves why, after centuries of bloodshed, we have been unable to create a state of our own? What is it we lack – wisdom, shrewdness, or heroism? Heroism we seem to have in plenty, but I would describe it is a wild, unbridled, over-exuberant heroism. On the basis of what I have seen I venture to suggest that audacity can be a problem if, in this wicked world, it is not teamed with shrewdness and wisdom.
I remember President Maskhadov saying to a field commander in a mountain village during the war, "I understand now one of the reasons why Chechens have been unable to set up their own state. Each time we have found ourselves at that longed-for threshold, dark forces among us have brought it all to nothing.”
I do not know what he had in mind, and did not hear the rest of the conversation, but his words made a deep impression on me and I constantly come back to them. Why indeed do things take this turn? The Chechen people has been fighting for its freedom for so many centuries. To consider only events in our own lifetimes, as we all know, leading us through the ordeal of a cruel war as if to test our sincerity, Almighty Allah gave us a chance in 1997, an opportunity to set up an independent state. That chance came with the cessation of the war after Operation Jihad to liberate Grozny from its occupiers had been carried through successfully by the fighters of the Resistance. The operation was planned and implemented under the command of the Chief of Staff, Aslan Maskhadov, a military strategist with great experience from 25 years of service in the armed forces, and theoretical knowledge acquired at military college and subsequently at the Military Academy. After the war was over numerous pretenders popped up claiming to have planned the operation, although at the time many commanders dismissed it as impractical and absurd.
For a time everything went splendidly. A legitimate government was elected and recognised internationally, even by Russia. These events were greeted with such joy and hope for a peaceful future by a people which had endured an extremely cruel war. It pains me to the depths of my soul that these hopes of our long-suffering people were dashed, and for that certain of our leaders are answerable.
One of the most important events in the history of Chechnya was the signing of a peace treaty at presidential level between Chechnya and Russia. Even if it was shaky, it was a document on which we should have built in taking further steps along the road to independence. It was a first in the history of Chechnya, a major political step forward on the road to independence. Equipped with a legitimate government and a recognised peace treaty, the next political and diplomatic moves could be made to engage international political, social, and humanitarian forces. This President Maskhadov began to do, while all the time maintaining a flexible policy towards Russia. He undertook successful trips abroad to the United Kingdom, the USA, Poland, Turkey and other states. Some of his foreign meetings took place below summit level, but even so they were what Chechnya needed at that time. Here was major progress in the making, and it enabled the president to bring home to world public opinion the brutality of the war our people had come through as it advanced to independence, and to explain the goals and tasks faced by the Chechen people in constructing their own independent state. For me, to hear about this from a president who had endured all the privations of the war equally with his fighters was a great privilege.
In the president’s entourage were some who reproached him for travelling abroad on a Russian passport. In my view the accusation was groundless, mere words, because at that time there was no alternative. In Turkey a young man told me that before the second war he had heard Yandarbiev reproach President Maskhadov for travelling on a Russian passport and, in the view of this young man, Yandarbiev had been right. One could agree if at that moment the Chechen Republic had been a fully independent state, recognised abroad and with all the attributes of state, including its own currency and passports. One might be more inclined to accept the argument if some of the severest of these critics and their families had not themselves abandoned Chechnya at the outbreak of the second war, travelling on Russian passports. Why did it not occur to any of them to tear up their Russian passports and stay to defend their Fatherland? There is a cassette in which Maskhadov relates that at the start of the war he wanted to entrust Yandarbiev with certain duties in Chechnya, but Yandarbiev refused and asked instead to be sent abroad.
We could, of course, have used the Chechen passports printed under Dudayev; we could have printed new ones at vast expense, but what would have been the point if they were not recognised anywhere? It would have been money down the drain, and the Republic was catastrophically short of money. There was no great rush to recognise Chechnya. You build a state with your brains, not with emotion. It is a gradual process. At that time what mattered was to gain documented recognition of our independence by the international community. That was where our energies needed to be directed, not at looking for pretexts to criticise the president.
Everything seemed to have worked out splendidly: the war had been stopped, a treaty signed on terms which, for a start, were not at all bad. Nobody was ever going to hand us freedom on a plate, even after a war like that. It is gained not only by waging war but by persevering at a long, tedious political process. We needed the support of international public opinion, we needed to employ all our ingenuity and intelligence. The leaders of world powers conduct their policy, even towards those hostile to them, with an unfailing false smile on their lips, conceding one point in order to gain something more important. That is why politics is said to be a dirty business.
The geographical location of Chechnya works against us. In the Caucasus the interests of other nations intersect. People have fought over the Caucasus, are fighting, and doubtless will continue to fight, and have occasionally even exploited us. If Chechnya was located on the Yamal Peninsula or on Chukotka, Russia might have set us free long ago. If we really wanted to create our own independent state, we needed to be more united and ingenious and not engage in some of the things which went on in the period between the two wars: kidnappings with videos showing brutal executions to the whole world, and defiance of the legitimate authorities elected by the people. As a result of all this a people which had shown unprecedented political activivism in electing a president for itself (it doesn't matter who that was), was constantly under strain, which was the last thing it deserved. Ignoring the opinion of the people is manifestly disrespectful.
Instead of rallying round the president and making further diplomatic and political progress on the road to independence, every conceivable and inconceivable thing was done to hinder the setting up of a state. Deeds began to be done in the Republic which aroused the wrath of even Allah against us, and he has punished us with a second, protracted war. In this war we no longer have international support because of the actions, why deny it, of certain of our leaders in the inter-war period.
Whenever the president took a step forwards, or was well received on a visit abroad, he could be sure of a nasty surprise back home, like the showing of severed heads to the rest of the world, the abduction of journalists, and much else besides. All Maskhadov’s attempts to persuade the world that we were not gangsters but only a people fighting for its right to an independent state were in vain. He would be asked reproachfully, is this your way of establishing a state? Immense efforts were made, in part by Chechen leaders, to ensure that the world formed a negative opinion of us.
Yes, it all began with the election of the president. Allah knows how hard Maskhadov’s elder brother and I tried to dissuade him from standing for the presidency. That was what we wanted, but the Almighty ordained as he saw fit. I was particularly concerned when the campaign began. Judging by the behaviour of some of the participants I could already see that, no matter who was elected, the president’s authority would not be accepted. I remembered only too well Basayev trying to persuade Maskhadov before the first war to join his faction in forcibly deposing Dudayev. Maskhadov replied that he would not engage in foul play against Dudayev, the more so since, even in the Soviet army, among Russians, he had not countenanced unworthy behaviour. That is why the day Maskhadov was elected president was the beginning of a time of anxiety for me. I could see that the sordid battle for domination, begun in the election campaign, would not come to an end when it was over.
The outcome of the election was completely unacceptable to certain of Maskhadov’s opponents. A powerful opposition to the president was created and an extensive ideological campaign to discredit him was conducted among the people at large and among his former comrades-in-arms, people with whom Maskhadov had fought the war shoulder to shoulder. In addition, a murderous campaign to hunt the president down was initiated, ignoring all those generals who had murdered our women and children. How many times the presidential motorcade was bombed! How many of the president’s bodyguard died or were crippled in the process, lads who had been through the war! If a day passed without an explosion that meant almost certainly that an explosive device had been discovered on the route of the motorcade and been disarmed by the presidential security service. It was a fight to the death. Passions were inflamed even more than during the first war. They tried every trick to kill or discredit the president in the eyes of the people, even claiming that his wife was running the state and not he. They called him a "weak president incapable of governing the country”. Maskhadov was doing everything he could to avoid internal conflict, which the Kremlin regime was doggedly trying to stir up. No less doggedly, certain comrades on our side were helping the Russians. If Maskhadov did not take the harsh repressive measures Russia was hoping for in order to have a pretext to invade and "rescue the people of Chechnya”, that did not by any means signify that he was soft. His outward imperturbability was the mask of a valiant, strong-willed, and very wise man. I was amazed myself at the extraordinary calmness Allah bestowed upon him in later years. By nature he was an excitable, emotional person.
A permanent political demonstration against the president was organised in the centre of Grozny which had its own pair of clowns, Raduyev and Dati. It played into the hands of Moscow and did a lot of harm in an already precarious situation. The organisers of this demonstration paid agents to spread disaffection with the government among the population. This standing demonstration was supported and financed by many of our own well-known leaders. What on earth did they think they were doing? Had Chechen people really shed their blood to earn the right to this clownish performance? The demonstration continued right up until the start of the second war, at which point its participants and organisers, instead of rising to the defence of Chechnya, returned to their homes with a sense of having done their duty. The task they had been allotted by unseen forces had been accomplished. They had spread sedition among the people and facilitated the outbreak of a new war.
Kusama Maskhadova
http://www.chechenpress.co.uk/content/2010/04/19/main01.shtml
