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Butchery in Chechnya

Overseeing the aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia, Tony Blair justified NATO's actions in the name of a "new internationalism where the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will no longer be tolerated." Those of us who condemned this "military humanism" (as Noam Chomsky has dryly termed it) as the same old imperialism in post-Cold War guise were denounced by the state department socialists of today. The slaughter of thousands of Chechens by a resurgent Russian military, though, has roused neither the ire of the NATO "internationalists" nor their "humanitarian" cheerleaders. Beyond token condemnation of the "excesses" of the Russian military, the butchery in the Caucasus has become an "internal" matter for Yeltsin and his generals to deal with as they see fit.

Moscow's ultimate aim, as in its ill-fated 1994-6 war, is to install a puppet regime in Chechnya. The government-in-waiting consists of the 48 members of the previous pro-Moscow parliament, in exile since 1996, "loyal to the Russian constitution and Russian laws". The likely leader of the new government is a convicted fraudster released from gaol to head the imposed regime.

In the run up to the 2000 presidential elections, a war in Chechnya is a useful distraction from the economic chaos and corruption of daily life in Russia. Anatoly Chubais, a key Kremlin insider, has remarked that "the Russian army is being revived in Chechnya and any politician who doesn't think so is not fit to be seen as a Russian politician." Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin's preferred candidate and the man who calls the shots (literally) whenever Yeltsin is "unwell" (and Yeltsin is more often than not "unwell" in the way Jeffrey Bernard was "unwell"), clearly relishes the opportunity to use a popular war to underwrite his claim to the presidency. It should be remembered that the pretext for the invasion of Chechnya was the battle against "terrorism" in response to the recent apartment block bombings which killed 300, and which Moscow blamed on Chechen militants. Not a scrap of evidence has been produced to demonstrate a Chechen connection to the bombs and given Putin's KGB links and the level of premeditation involved in the Chechen invasion, we should be cynical as to the real source of the bombings.

In 1994-96, Russian soldiers were slaughtered in their thousands in combat in the region, culminating in the April 1996 humiliation when an armoured regiment was ambushed in a mountain pass near Yarysh-Mardy. The Chechen triumph was videotaped and broadcast in Chechnya and Afghanistan as a recruitment aid to the multi-ethnic Islamist guerrillas. This time, inspired by the NATO campaign in Yugoslavia, the Russians have decided to raze the region through aerial bombardment before risking engagement on the ground. Thousands of refugees have attempted to flee the region, only to be held in camps at the Ingushetian border, where they freeze or starve. Over 300,000 have been displaced by the Russian onslaught.

Russia has fired tank shells at teenage boys in Novy Sharoy, pummelled the village of Samashki with aircraft, rocket-launchers and tanks even though they know the village is empty of rebels, and signalled its intention to destroy the city of Grozny. "The city of Grozny cannot be restored", Nikolai Koshman, Russia's viceroy in Chechnya announced. "Grozny must be blocked from all sides and its civilians should leave. Following Grozny's destruction, the city of Gudermes would become the new Chechen capital. Russian bombers are flying more than 100 sorties a day over Grozny. The mayor of the City, Lecha Dudayev, reported that over 500 died in the capital over the weekend of 27th-28th November.

It has been suggested that the West's apathy in the face of the slaughter of the Chechen people (in greater numbers and with greater force than Milosevic's forces used against the Kosovars) is a result of its having no strategic interest at stake. In fact, the opposite is true. As Fergal Keane has observed, "Having long ago decided that Mr Yeltsin was the Russian with whom we could do business, we have turned a blind eye to his drunkenness, to the corruption of his state and now to the brutality being inflicted on the Chechens. It is all part of the implicit bargain of keeping Yeltsin on our side." The Russian elite and the politicians of the West have a common agenda, the looting of the wreckage of the USSR. Since 1991, over $200 billion has left Russia, with both legal and illegal currency finding its way to Western banks. On August 19th the New York Times reported that up to $10 billion may have been laundered through the Bank of New York since 1998. The asset stripping of the USSR has been cheered on by the IMF, the World Bank and the US Treasury.

Meanwhile, some 70% of Russians now live below the poverty line, and capital investment is one-tenth what it was a decade ago. Those denounced as "corruptionalists" when they're caught out are the liberal reformers Washington, Bonn and London have kept in power. They remain the West's first choice, and the impoverishment of the Russian people, and the massacre of the Chechens cannot be allowed to stand in the way of business as usual.

At some point the Russians will have to engage with Chechen fighters on the ground. Faced with a prospect of a repeat of the 1994-6 humiliation and with a long winter ahead, the Russians may yet lose face. Certainly the ease with which the rebel forces of Khattab and Shamil Basayev occupied a number of Daghestani villages in August 1999 suggests that the Russians have no stomach for a prolonged engagement in the region. Whatever happens, though, the "new internationalism" suggested by Blair has proved itself quite content to watch while Moscow seeks to drown in blood the Chechens' right to independence. Yeltsin, Putin and "reformers" like Anatoly Chubais (who supervised the give-away of the USSR's oil, metal and telecommunications assets) are worth money tot he West. Chechen lives have no value at all. The rules of war in the era of "military humanism" seem clear enough. As Umar Vitayev, a Chechen refugee, observed; "Everything has been destroyed; our factories, our industry. We're going to have to remain dependent on someone, because we don't have anything left.