From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 4/1/2005 2:02 PM
9.3.2005 19:14 MSK
Nothing now left to threaten the war
In the Kremlin, feelings are running high, as if celebrating victory. President Maskhadov is dead: the most consistent, if not the only, supporter of a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Chechnya. Nothing is now left to threaten the war; now it may proceed unhindered.

Aslan Maskhadov remained up to the end the Kremlin’s biggest problem in Chechnya – even bigger than those rebel commanders who embraced the tactics of terror. First of all, he was a legitimately elected president, as known throughout the world. Secondly, he was a public supporter of the peace process: this quite contrary to the Kremlin’s own plans. Maskhadov’s last initiative, a one-month unilateral ceasefire, placed the Kremlin in a quandary – the requirement to somehow react to the Chechen resistance’s peace gesture was not only unbearable to the Moscow hawks, but contradicted their strategic aim of maintaining the hotbed of tension in the North Caucasus.

Quite possibly, fears had been growing in the Kremlin concerning the campaign to resolve the conflict under the auspices of the United Nations, which had been gaining in strength. Known as the Akhmadov Plan, it provides for the separation of Chechen and Russian armed forces by United Nations peace-keepers. Naturally, this would require preliminary negotiations, and the Chechen side could well have been represented by president Maskhadov. Now, the chance of the plan being realized is as good as none.

The Russian powers resolve their problems in true Chekist style: Net cheloveka – net problemy (“No person – no problem”). It is said that wise tyrants do not make martyrs out of their enemies. But this refers to those tyrants who thirst for victory. Our reborn tyranny, which has made Maskhadov a martyr of the Chechen struggle for independence, is not that stupid. It simply needs war, not victory. The danger of peace is what they fear, for they cannot achieve their aims in peace. War is their credo, their political way of life, and the only way they can stay in the political arena. President Maskhadov was a handicap to them.

The price Russia will have to pay for the murder of the Chechen president does not bother Vladimir Putin and his entourage. The more brutal the reply from the separatists, the better: the Kremlin no doubt surmises. The more justification there will thus be in continuing the endless war.

Something terrible awaits Moscow. The Nord-Ost theatre and Beslan school hostage dramas will pale in comparison to the reply from the radical wing of the Chechen opposition. Barely anyone is left on the territory of Maskhadov’s Chechen Republic Ichkeria who would entertain the idea of talks with Russia, as Maskhadov himself had been willing to do. The Kremlin has demonstrated its willingness to hold talks by killing precisely the most influential and constructive Chechen politician there was. The result can only be a radicalization in the conduct of war in Chechnya, and an escalation of terror in Russia. And again, it will be national servicemen and ordinary civilians who pay the ultimate price for the murder of Aslan Maskhadov, not those who carry the true responsibility for his death.

However, it is precisely ordinary Russian civilians who voted for Putin in the presidential elections. It is time they grasp that voting for the president means voting for his policies, and accepting responsibility for them.

Alexander PODRABINEK
Translated by Michael Garrood
http://www.prima-news.ru/eng/news/articles/2005/3/9/31416.html