Human Rights The Russian War Against Chechnya example essay topic

On September 1, 2004, the world was shocked and horrified by the terrorist attack of Chechen rebels on a Middle school in the Russian town of Beslan. Nearly 1,200 children, teachers, and parents were taken hostage on the first day of school, and held captive for 53 hours. In the aftermath of the explosions and gunfire, over 360 people were killed, and hundreds more were left injured (Kaplan, 2004). The siege of the school was the latest of a dozen bloody attacks - on targets such as airliners, trains, government buildings, hospitals, and a movie theatre - that have claimed nearly 1,000 lives in Russia over the past two years, and yet another chilling reminder of the festering tensions between Russia and Chechnya (Kaplan, 2004). The nature of the conflict between Chechnya and Russia is a result of many factors; a tumultuous history between the two neighbours, Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism, Russia's attempts to dominate the Caucacus regions, oil exploitation, human rights, and international attitudes. The following discussion aims to explain the background and reasons for the perpetuation of the trouble in Chechnya, and explore the reasons for Russia's military intervention in the region.

As well, the discussion will attempt to forecast what the future may hold for Chechnya, and Russia's relations with it. "The Chechens are an ethnically distinct, traditionally clan-based group with a long history of resisting Russian expansion in the Northern Caucasus" (Yasin, 2002). The hostility existing between the Chechen people and Russia, however, predates both the Russian republic and the Soviet Union, going back to the late 18th Century, when Russia's drive to the South, initiated by Peter the Great in 1722, "led to the incorporation first of the Trans caucasus and only later of the rebellious North Caucasus" (Cornell, 1999). Forced relocations of the Chechens and other peoples have been undertaken at several points in history by the Russian rulers.

The deportation of the Chechen, In gush, Karachi, and Balker peoples took place in three waves between November 1943 and February 1944, during World War II. "The 'pacification' was to be final... and the nationalities involved were struck out of all Soviet official documents" (Lieven, 1998, p. 319). This deportation to Central Asia and Siberia, which was ordered by Stalin personally on the pretext of alleged collaboration with the invading German armies, led to immeasurable violations of the human rights of the peoples involved (Cornell, 1999): "They (Chechens) were the largest ethnic group in the Caucasus to be deported en masse by Stalin. Tens of thousands died on the way and Chechnya was abolished and erased from the map. The Chechens were allowed to return home only in 1957 after Nikita Krushchev's Secret Speech denouncing Stalin, but even then were still second-class citizens in their own republic, subordinate to ethnic Russians" (Politkovskaya, 2001, p. 21) "For the Chechens, the years of exile from 1944 to 1957 tempered in them that steely national discipline... the memory of the deportation became the central defining event in modern Chechen history" (Lieven, 1998, p. 321).

The deportation and exile of the Chechens from their homeland is important both because it explains, to some degree, the deep hatred for Russia and everything Russian among the Chechens, and because it sets the stage for the armed conflicts that would arise in the 1990's (Cornell, 1999). In 1991 the Soviet Union was crumbling. Following the attempted coup in Moscow that year, demands for full Chechen independence from Russia were increasing, and the Russian government began to react by threatening the use of force. However, "the Soviet armed forces at that time were effectively leaderless and in a state of complete confusion, with Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the different republican leaders all vying for support" (Lieven, 1998, p. 61).

By September of 1991, Chechen nationalists has gained control over their ethnic homeland, and effectively threw out the Soviet leader in Chechnya (Bennett, 2001, p. 17). One year later, "on November 2 (1992) the Chechen parliament proclaimed full independence from Russia, and this was confirmed by a new constitution passed the following March" (Lieven, 1998, p. 63). Chechnya's bid for independence however, was never accepted by Russian authorities. None-the-less the Chechen peoples continued their attempts to gain full autonomy from Russia. In order to quell the uprising of Chechen nationalism, the Russian army launched a military operation in December of 1994 which "aimed at crushing the secessionist regime that had been ruling the North Caucasian Autonomous Republic of Chechnya since late 1991" (Cornell, 1999): "The Chechens in their turn possessed at best several hundred properly trained men at the start of the war. They not only decimated the Russian attackers trying to capture Grozny (New Year's Eve, 1994), they delayed the capture of the city for three months".

(Gall & de Waal, 1997, p. 5) Islam Chechens view themselves as an ethnically distinct people. Religion plays a major role in this sentiment, being as Chechnya is a Muslim nation. "Islam is held to as something that makes Chechens different from the Russians" (Lieven, 1998, p. 355). As the war dragged on, the feeling amongst Chechen nationalists was that the invasion of their homeland was an affront to their religion.

Chechen soldiers began wearing Islamic symbols on their clothing and appealed for help from Muslims from other Islamic nations (Watson, 1998, p. 49). However, unlike in other religious conflicts in the Eurasian and Middle East regions, support from other Islamic countries was lack lustre - in practical terms at least: "The reaction of the Muslim world against the brutalities committed against a Muslim nation had a natural potential to be much stronger than that of the Western world... but the fact remains that the response from the Islamic world to Russia's conduct remained very silent" (Cornell, 1999). The role of religion cannot be overlooked when assessing the conflict in Chechnya. The religious factor adds a kind of fervour and morale to the Chechen fighters' resolve. However, the political importance of the religious divide is one that has been exploited and exaggerated by Russian propagandists (Lieven, 1998, p. 355). Terrorism When assessing the threat of terrorism against Russia from Chechen rebels, the vicious cycle of violence seems to have neither a beginning nor an end.

Since the wars against Chechnya in 1994-1996, and 1999, terrorist activity has escalated in Russia - and the terrorist threat is now used as a justification for continued military aggression in the region: "Russia insists that they are as entitled as anyone to protection against terrorism. They will not prevail against the minority of Chechens who are irreconcilable extremists and collaborators with global terrorism unless they win over other Chechen hearts and minds". ("Russia and Chechnya", 2004) None-the-less, nations like Russia which face a terrorist threat resent being told by outsiders that their problem cannot be solved by force alone. ("Russia and Chechnya", 2004).

The Russian approach however, has never been a diplomatic one. "Russian troops have made large scale security sweeps, or zachistkas, in subduing terrorist elements (in Chechnya) " (Yasin, 2002). Now after a full decade of war and abjection aimed at Chechnya, turning back the tide seems an insurmountable task. Especially considering a great portion of the Russian population sees the military's action as necessary to fight Islamic extremism that is breeding the Chechen terrorist element: "The aftermath of the Beslan tragedy created Russia's own home-grown version of the war on terror, where suspects are shot before they are questioned and young men often disappear with no explanation at all, dragged out of their homes by masked men wearing the uniforms and insignia of federal forces" (MacKinnon, 2004).

While the explanation for the terrorist elements amongst Chechen nationalists becomes circular (ie: which came first, Russian military intervention or Chechen terrorism? ), it is clear that Russia's occupation of the region is somewhat to blame for the insurgencies. After a brutal invasion that left the country ruined, a political vacuum was left. Foreigners exploited the failed state in order to form a Jihadist state as a base of a global Islamic revolution. In response, the Russians again invaded Chechnya (in 1999), further putting the Chechens within their fundamentalist clutches.

Chechnya is now in effect a base of Islamic radicalism. The Chechen people, who feel even more doomed than before, are resorting more and more to terrorism ("A Separate War", 2002). Russia the Great The history books will read that Chechnya won the war of 1994-1996 against Russia. "The Chechen act of David-and-Goliath defiance was the final, humiliating proof that Russia's old leadership of the Soviet Union had collapsed and Russian greatness had imploded" (Bennett, 2001, p 18).

The explanation for Russia's defeat in the Chechen War is twofold: "the weakness of the contemporary Russian state, and the failure of Russian society to generate forces which would in some way compensate for that weakness" (Lieven, 1998, p. 147). The Kremlin's strategy was to promote local pro-Moscow strongmen in order to portray the war as a struggle between the supposedly law-abiding Chechens it supports and the "bandits" and "terrorists" who oppose them (MacKinnon, 2004). The initial pre-text for the war against Chechnya, was that if the nation seceded from the "mother-country", that this would entail a "domino effect" in other autonomous republics and regions which would be incited to follow suit (Cornell, 1999). While the Russians were successful in disseminating this fear, using propaganda tools, the fear was unfounded as Anna Politkovskaya points out: "There is no domino effect waiting to happen in the North Caucacus - or indeed elsewhere in Russia... Chechnya was and is a very special case... Chechens had two engines that propelled their movement for independence: both a political and economic base and a common memory of mass persecution" (Politkovskaya, 2001, p. 20) Up to this point now, the question 'What is a Russian?' had been a difficult one to answer.

The collapse of the Soviet Union caused something of an identity crisis for thenation's people. Russian political and military leaders knew that nothing can solidify nationalism and patriotism quite like a war: "While the evil results of Russia's imperialist and expansionist identity are obvious, it also has one positive side-effect: it gave Russians a very weak sense of themselves as an ethos... it divorced Russian national identity from ethnicity" (Lieven, 1998, p. 376). Oil Of all the republics of the North Caucacus, Chechnya was the only one which had its own stable and vibrant economy, "centered on its factories and oil refineries" (Politkovskaya, 2001, p. 20). Oil was first discovered in Chechnya in the early 1800's, but was not extracted until the last decade of the century. By the turn of the century, Grozny was the second "oil city" in the Russian empire (Gall & de Waal, 1997, p. 127). Oil production was responsible for nearly two-thirds of the revenue generated in Chechnya.

It briefly kept the cash-starved official budget afloat, but it also fostered corruption on a huge scale (Gall & de Waal, 1997, p. 127). Control over the resource-rich republic was not something the Russian government was going to give up easily, and the dispute over the oil-revenue was another catalyst of the Russian invasion: "If the Chechens had got a deal... giving them economic and cultural autonomy and control over the oil industry, they could have started out properly on the difficult road to state building" (Gall & de Waal, 1997, p. 370). Human Rights The Russian war against Chechnya which lasted from December 1994 to August 1996, was from the beginning a war against the civilian population rather than against military targets (Cornell, 1999). With regards to Russia's aims in Chechnya, there have been allegations of an intention to commit genocide - "roughly defined as a premeditated policy aiming at annihilating a people or nation" (Cornell, 1999). On January 6, 1995, the International Court of Justice publicly denounced the indiscriminate use of force employed by the Russian army against civilian targets in and around Grozny (Chechnya's capital). It was determined that "Russian troops had committed gross abuses in Chechnya and that the civilian population continues to suffer" (Cornell, 1999).

Imploring methods of less than civilised warfare, the Chechen side has also on many occasions used civilians as human-shields, although they were soon forced to renounce this as a strategy as it was simply useless, as "Russian attacks took place not-withstanding civilian casualties" (Cornell, 1999). Still today, the human rights situation in Chechnya is devastating: "there are no human rights in Chechnya, not even the right to life... after the Beslan tragedy, the situation got even worse. Instead of trying to solve the social problems, to make life better, they (the Russians) use force" (MacKinnon, 2004). International Attitudes In the midst of the human rights violations accompanying the occupation of Chechnya, the relations between Russia and the West did not suffer any particular deterioration. Russia became a member of the Council of Europe, although its actions were in direct conflict with the sprit of that organisation. This at a time when human rights are becoming a more intrinsic part of the formulation of the foreign policy of industrialized, post-modern countries (Cornell, 1999).

It has become clear that, despite the current tenets of advancing democracy; human rights and the rule of law, the fact remains that strategic and political considerations still override human rights concerns, even in a blatant case like Chechnya. "The international attitudes to the Russian invasion of Chechnya can be summarise d as weak, lax, and confused" (Cornell, 1999). By 1995 the United States government was, however, compelled to voice mild criticism of Russian conduct. President Clinton expressed his disappointment, but only after pressure from the Republican-led Senate which had long been criticizing Clinton for his cozy relationship with Yeltsin (Cornell, 1999). Conversely: "The leaders of (Eastern European) countries saw the invasion as confirmation of a larger pattern: Russia's switching from a pro-Western and cooperative policy to a more introvert, revisionist attitude which aimed at restoring the status and borders of the former Soviet Union" (Cornell, 1999). American President George W. Bush has made it clear that he won't allow Russia's conduct in Chechnya to jeopardize the antiterrorist partnership between Moscow and Washington.

President Bush has declared this a time of solidarity with Russia, essentially agreeing with Putin's long standing argument that his actions in Chechnya are on the same plane with the U.S. war on terrorism ("A Separate War", 2002). However, such action (or inaction) may only aggravate the terrorist situation further - "by giving Moscow a free pass in Chechnya (the Americans) will further alienate moderate Muslims around the world from U.S. goals and interests" ("A Separate War", 2002). In the case of Chechnya, the feeble Western reaction could be justified in the early stages of the war considering the extent of human rights violations was not initially known. However, even now, after widespread international media attention to the crisis, the international reaction, for the most part, remains weak. The level of criticism from around the world has increased moderately, but no measures to put serious pressure on Russia to change its conduct were ever undertaken. "It would seem then that Russia has suffered no adverse consequences in its international relations, either in the political or economic field, from its conduct in Chechnya" (Cornell, 1999).

Future "A striking thing about the Chechen War, as seen from the perspective of the years after its close, is how little difference it seems to have made to the governments or the underlying political and economic orders in either Russia or Chechnya" (Lieven, 1998, p. 13) The tragedy of Chechnya is that the war could have been avoided and pride satisfied on both sides if Moscow would have been willing to strike a deal with Chechnya on independence in 1992 (Gall & de Waal, 1997, p. 370). Unfortunately, leaders in both Moscow and Grozny had found it convenient to encourage an artificial ethnic hostility, based on religion and nation-hood, and revive it from the history books through the fighting of a modern war (Bennett, 2001, p. 560). Russia's bombing of Chechnya has had an awful effect on civilians. The war cost a total of over 30,000 lives, mostly civilian - both Chechen and ethnic Russian - and has led to a mass exodus of refugees from Chechnya, somewhere in the neighbourhood of half a million (Yasin, 2002). The success of the Chechens in the 1994-1996 war was highly unusual - perhaps unique - in the modern history of war: "The Chechens won not just without the support of a real state but without the help of a formal military or even political organisation, on the basis of the strengths of their society and its traditions" (Watson, 1998, p. 49) The new war (in 1999) was partly the fault of the Chechen leadership, for even the brief period of peace was full of violence and fear. "The Chechnya they ran failed to develop the civic institutions that might have conferred real statehood on it" (Bennett, 2001, p. 538).

Following Russia's defeat, Chechen self-determination was left on the sidelines until 2001. By then, although hampered by a weak economy and the lack of formal recognition from any other foreign government, Chechnya had already established its own government and military" (Yasin, 2002). However, the notion of Chechen sovereignty is one that has garnered more favour amongst Russians recently. "Opinion polls consistently show that the majority of Russians would be happy to let Chechnya go" (Gall & de Waal, 1997, p. 371). The shift in mood against the fighting comes as fatigue over the war has set in.

"In early 2000, 68 per cent supported a war to the finish. By January 2001 the total was down to 45 per cent" (Politkovskaya, 2001, p. 318). Sympathy for the Chechen cause among Russians however, took an ugly beating after the attacks in Beslan (Kaplan, 2004). Meanwhile, the ongoing conflict does nothing to aid in Russia's quest for democracy, or global stature. If Russia desires to become a leader in the world community, it must resolve its domestic issues, specifically the Chechen conflict, in a manner appropriate to such status (Yasin, 2002): "The longer it takes for the lawlessness and abuses in Chechnya to end, the greater the danger to Russia itself. The suspension of the constitution in that small republic puts democracy and free speech throughout Russia at risk" (Politkovskaya, 2001 p. 323).

What happened in Chechnya is a culmination of many factors. Decades of political oppression coupled with the encouragement of nationalism led to a desire to secede after the fall of the Soviet Union. Islamic fundamentalism has bred a terrorist sect amongst Chechen nationalists, and Russia has responded with a typically heavy-hand. The potential secession of Chechnya sparked fear of further disintegration of Russian dominance in the Caucacus regions. Oil exploitation, human rights, and international attitudes also perpetuate the disdainful situation in Chechnya. Sadly, at the present time a resolution, acceptable to all parties, seems far off.

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