Chapter 1
Analysing the progress of the Chechen crisis, Emil Pain, director of the Centre for Ethnopolitical and Regional Studies, identifies four main stages in its development, each of which he believes to demonstrate not only the goals of the separatists but also the specific features of the federal centre's policy, as well as its typical failures. (Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn, October 2, 1998)
The First Stage (August-November 1991).
Unrest in Chechnya and Secession from Federal Control
Pain writes that at this stage the Russian authorities not only failed to timely put an end to crimes committed by armed units of the National Congress of the Chechen People (NCCP), a public organisation active in Checheno-Ingushetia, but essentially encouraged lawlessness (seizure by NCCP militants of government institutions, radio and TV broadcasting stations, assault on and dissolution of the republic's legitimate body of authority - the Supreme Soviet, etc.). Pain sees a few reasons for that.
First, the Russian authorities at the time were absorbed in the struggle against the remnants of the former USSR. Second, many influential political forces in Moscow hoped at the time to use the NCCP leader, former Soviet general Dzhokhar Dudayev in their interests, clearly underestimating his potential and willingness to play his own game. The emissaries of the Russian authorities, Burbulis, Poltoranin, and Rutskoi, returned from Grozny in September-October reassured, while as soon as at the beginning of November Burbulis described Dudayev as a person "one should not deal with, because he is not a man of his word". Ruslan Khasbulatov, speaker of the Russian parliament (a deputy from Chechnya), who according to Pain, did more than others to help Dudayev come to power in the hope of relying on him as his governor in Chechnya, also brought his goods to the wrong market and was later labeled as a "traitor of the Chechen nation". Third, even if the Russian authorities had been willing to launch a militia operation against the Chechen nationalist-revolutionaries, they would not have brought themselves to take such a step in the then prevailing atmosphere of democratic euphoria, since the leading representatives of the Moscow democratic establishment viewed General Dudayev as an unquestionable hero, leader of the national-liberation movement.
The Second Stage (December 1991-November 1994). Pain describes this stage as semi-isolation of Chechnya from Russia combined with its typical "wait-and-see" strategy.
Moscow tried to avoid the Chechnya issue throughout 1992, as if it were non-existent. In the meantime, the "independent" Chechnya began to develop along the lines of an increasingly criminalised economy and politics. Many in Moscow were quite content with the situation around the dubiously uncertain political status of Chechnya. Clearly, large-scale banking swindles with the involvement of the Chechen mafia, the re-export of Russian oil, smuggling of arms, and the use of Russian aircraft for drug-trafficking could not have been perpetrated without the involvement of high-ranking corrupt intermediaries in Moscow and other cities of Russia.
The official authorities of the Russian Federation with their hands tied by the need to preserve the alliance with the democratic forces and at the same time not to give unnecessary grounds for criticism to the national-communist opposition, proved unable either to recognise independence of the Chechen Republic, or take any effective measures against it.
It would be unfair to say that the federal authorities did not make attempts to start negotiations with Chechnya, Pain indicates. The period between November 1992 and the summer of 1994 could go down in the history of the Chechen crisis as an "era of diplomatic efforts". Negotiations were conducted both at the level of heads of government (late in 1992 when the Ossetian-Ingush conflict exacerbated, acting Prime Minister of Russia Gaidar met with Mamodayev, Vice Premier of the Chechen Republic, and mapped out ways to normalise relations between Moscow and Grozny), and at the parliamentary level (a Russian delegation headed by Abdulatipov, Chairman of the Council of Nationalities, and Vice Premier Shakhrai visited Grozny at the invitation of the Chechen parliament in January 1993 and succeeded in signing a protocol on drafting an agreement between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic on delineation and mutual delegation of powers).
However, every time the situation seemed to have been defused, the solution was torpedoed by the fierce opposition of Dudayev. First Mamodayev was accused of "treason," then, consequently, the leaders of the parliament followed. Later, Dudayev repeatedly stated that "no political agreements with Russia were possible", and as president he would never allow the signing of an agreement which fails to set forth the demands that the Chechen Republic be recognised "as a sovereign state subject to international law".
Dudayev's recalcitrant stance enabled him to maintain the electrified atmosphere of "a siege" in Chechen society where any opposing sentiment could be seen as betrayal of the nation's interests and thus rendered extremely vulnerable in the inner political struggle for power. At the same time, Moscow, too, was not striving to come to terms with Dudayev at any cost, and merely created the appearance of an active negotiating process.
As early as in March, 1994, the recently elected new Russian parliament (the State Duma) reliably blocked any attempts to resolve the Chechen crisis through direct negotiations with the Chechen leaders. The Duma passed a resolution recommending to the President and the government first to hold consultations on future negotiations with all political forces of the Chechen Republic (including the opposition), and second, to insist that the proposed Russian-Chechen agreement on delineation of powers be conditioned on holding in the Chechen Republic of elections to the republic's bodies of power and the Federal Assembly of Russia. The two conditions, particularly the latter, ruled out the possibility of productive talks with Dudayev who was not even thinking of holding elections to bodies of authority of "neighbouring Russia".
The Third Stage (November 1994-August 1996). Attempted Military Resolution of the Chechen Crisis.
Pain indicates that in a democratic society there are a number of conditions which make it admissible for the state to use force to resolve regional conflicts. Thus he particularly refers to the exhaustion of peaceful means to resolve a conflict, the agreement of society to accept sacrifices and considerable material costs inevitable in the event of hostilities, as well as the confidence of society in the armed forces' capability of effective and civilized actions. According to the author of the article, these conditions were not met before the beginning of the Chechen war. Nevertheless, President Yeltsin who had been rebuked over the preceding three years for making too many concessions to Russia's constituent republics, all of a sudden decided to launch an extremely risky military operation.
The failure of the covert operation to seize Grozny in November only prodded further force-based solutions to the conflict with Chechnya. Pain names among the negative factors the fact that in line with the principles of "apparat" policy all key decisions were made in absolute secrecy and confined to the Security Council (SC), particularly the "power ministers". The narrower the circle of those in the know, the higher the probability of error was if only because the strategy developers did not have professional opponents. Underestimation of Dudayev's political and military potential also had its effect.
Rapid military success predicted by Defence Minister Pavel Grachev never materialised, and all newspapers, from democratic to communist, subjected the authorities to scathing criticism.
The actions undertaken by the legislative authority also proved totally ineffective. Although most deputy factions individually opposed the Chechen war, neither the Duma, nor the Federation Council passed a single resolution which could stop the hostilities.
The war was sanguinary on both sides. Eventually, bending to the public pressure, and most importantly thanks to the efforts of Aleksandr Lebed, Secretary of the Security Council, who had at the time almost unlimited powers to end the hostilities, Lebed and Aslan Maskhadov, chief of staff of the Chechen military opposition, signed the Khasavyurt agreements on August 31, 1996.
Thus, the hostilities were ended, and federal troops were withdrawn from the Chechen Republic, whereas Chechen military units survived and even grew stronger.
The signing of the Khasavyurt agreements opened the fourth stage of the Chechen crisis. Pain believes that from that moment Russia took an entirely new approach to resolving the conflict. It was new not only in comparison to the phase of military operations, but also in comparison to the international practice of dealing with such conflicts. The usual practice in situations where the central government cannot come to agreement with the separatists on the status of a given territorial unit, is that the former does not recognise the leaders of the latter as the legitimate authority on the territory in question. This does not mean that peace talks cannot be conducted with such regime. On the contrary, international experience suggests that such talks can be conducted for decades, but the other side would be viewed only as a "party to the conflict," rather than the legitimate government.
Russia opted for a different approach. It recognised the legitimacy of the authorities of the Chechen Republic as a subject of the Russian Federation, but the Chechen leaders did not recognise the legitimacy of the laws and authority of Russia in their territory. As time would tell Russia's policy of "unilateral recognition of Chechnya" did not help bring Chechnya back under Russia's jurisdiction. On the contrary, it helped strengthen the idea of Ichkeria's independence, the author of the article says.
The very fact that Aslan Maskhadov was elected President of the Chechen Republic with Moscow's consent but under the constitution of Ichkeria and with a large number of international observers in February 1997 was interpreted by the population of Chechnya as recognition of the independence of their country. Under the circumstances, none of the incumbent Chechen politicians can abandon the idea of Ichkeria's independence or ideological confrontation with Russia.
The fact that Chechen politicians received real economic and political benefits from their inclusion into the Federation without any reciprocal obligations did not prod them towards any solutions based on compromise with Moscow.
Thus, the Russian authorities had to provide the Chechen leaders with the vast possibilities for foreign contacts as were presented to the leaders of the other subjects of the Federation, Pain indicates. At the same time, the Chechen leaders did not undertake to show any loyalty towards Russia. As a result, it turns out that the federal authorities themselves created most-favoured-nation conditions for the Chechen leaders to demonstrate Chechnya's independence at an international level.
Furthermore, the "Khasavyurt status" of Chechnya largely provoked its criminalisation. Indeed, the territory having legal and broad links with all regions of the Federation and the outside world, but not abiding by Russia's laws, literally attracts the flows not only of stolen cars and fugitive criminals but all of the most dangerous types of criminal business, including money and document forgery, drug trafficking, wholesale arms trade, slave trade, etc. True, the Chechens were not the only ones to engage in such lucrative trades as hostage taking, but it is also true that the international underworld brings "live commodity" to Chechnya, realising that there is no better place in the world to store it.
The recognition of Chechnya as a standard subject of the Federation made it almost impossible to secure the administrative border with that republic. The relevant agencies did not have legal grounds or any understandable rules for exercising effective control over the flow of people and goods into and out of Chechnya.
It stands to reason that bandit raids from Chechnya into the neighbouring territories came about not only as a result of
economic reasons.
Influential Chechen politicians, like Movladi Udugov, have more than once openly announced the strategic objective of bringing Chechnya (Ichkeria) and Daghestan together into a single independent state controlling the key area of the Caspian region. The "Islamic Nation" movement was founded in the summer of 1997 under Udugov's chairmanship to re-create Shamil's imamate within its "historical borders". Copies of Magomed Tagayev's book "Our Struggle, or the Insurgent Army of the Imam" arrived in Daghestan from Chechnya. The book gives specific recommendations on the conduct of guerrilla war, training of personnel for "the imam's army", the seizure of power and political set-up of the state "liberated from the Russian-Moscow empire". Each new instance of muscle flexing by the Chechen militants in Daghestan strengthens the ranks of advocates of the unification of that republic with Chechnya.
Emil Pain's article was published in October 1998. What he defined as the fourth stage of the Chechen crisis actually ended in August 1999, when the Chechen militants headed by Basayev and Khattab invaded Daghestan in order to implement the ideological directives of the advocates of a "new imamate". A new challenge was issued to Russia as a federal state. Moscow had to meet it. The Russian leadership, particularly President Yeltsin, has made mistakes and errors. But then again, they have also accumulated experience and drawn lessons from the past. The developments ongoing in the North Caucasus will tell whether this statement is accurate.
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