Source: Carnegie

By

Originally published in November 11, 2002 issue of NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL

The hostage crisis in Moscow has been called “Russia’s 9-11.” That’s an exaggeration, but it clearly was a dreadful shock. Though unlikely to produce radical changes in Russian policies, it will have serious repercussions in areas ranging from ethnic relations and media freedom to civil liberties and foreign policy.

CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA HAS NOT got nearly the credit it deserves for ethnic peace and tolerance. Given the extraordinary psychological and economic disruptions caused by the Soviet collapse, many expected an explosion of mass chauvinism. It didn’t happen. For the most part, the former republics have all been able to develop their national identities largely without interference from Moscow. Only in Chechnya has national conflict erupted.

Thanks to the war—and the dominant role of Chechens and other Caucasians in organized crime—there is widespread prejudice against Caucasians in Russia. There have even been pogroms against them. If Russia now intensifies operations throughout the north Caucasus to hunt down Chechen separatists and their allies, ethnic tensions between Russians—and all the Muslim peoples of the region—may well grow. Already, hundreds of thousands of Chechens in Moscow and elsewhere are coming under heavy police scrutiny.

The wealthy and influential Chechen business community in Russia—permeated by the so-called “Chechen mafia”—takes an ambiguous attitude toward the war. Businessmen and criminal bosses have been as angry as other Chechens at the atrocities and other losses inflicted by Russian troops, including against their own relatives. On the other hand, economic interests dictate that Chechnya should remain within Russia. In the past, this led to an informal deal whereby Chechen “businessmen” promised to help prevent terrorist attacks in Moscow, in return for promises by the authorities not to put too much pressure on their shady dealings. But in the latest crisis, the hostage takers almost certainly had help from local Chechens with agents in the Moscow police. As a consequence, the Chechen business community as a whole can expect to be targeted. The problem for Russia is that this will undermine the strategy of getting influential Chechens to accept Russian sovereignty over Chechnya and support its pro-Russian government.

The crisis has also produced a crackdown on the Russian media, at least when reporting on terrorism. Undoubtedly this will spill over to wider restrictions on critical coverage of the Chechen war—and perhaps of the Putin administration in general. Such restrictions have been less ruthless than in many semidemocracies of the developing world, however. Russia may be heading for a system similar to that of Turkey during the war with Kurdish separatists, when some areas of media discussion were entirely free, while others drew heavy sanctions.

Some of the most visible consequences may come in foreign policy. Pressure on Georgia had intensified before the crisis, to the considerable concern of U.S. diplomats. A key moment comes this month, when winter brings an end to major guerrilla activity in Chechnya. In the past, hundreds of fighters and their Arab allies have crossed the Caucasus mountains into Georgia, where they’re safe from Russian attack. Often they’ve been helped by Georgian authorities, to Moscow’s intense anger. If that happens again this year, Russian will push Georgia even harder.
An invasion remains unlikely, since it would cause a major international crisis. In any case, Russian officers admit that they simply do not have the forces for the task. But economic sanctions are possible, coupled with limited raids, such as those Turkey has launched in northern Iraq against Kurdish separatists. This would have the additional effect of humiliating and destabilizing the already shaky Georgian administration of President Eduard Shevardnadze—and send a message throughout the region concerning the dominance of Russian power.

From the West—and especially the United States—Russia seeks collusion, or at least a tacit agreement not to meddle. It wants America to pressure Georgia to act effectively against Chechen guerrillas and their Arab sponsors; it dreams of Washington classifying Chechens rebels as an enemy in the war on terror, much like the Uighurs. Hence, Putin’s Bush-like rhetoric in the early days of the hostage crisis.
All this is part of a coherent strategy. But there’s one problem: it’s essentially the game plan that Moscow has been following for three years—and it hasn’t worked. Russian officials seem to believe that, like the British in Northern Ireland, they can wear down the Chechens’ resistance to the point where they finally accept Russian sovereignty and lay down their arms. But as the latest horror in Moscow indicates, the Chechen fighters and their radical Muslim allies are vastly more ruthless than the IRA—and have much more capacity to inflict losses and terrible humiliations. Sadly, the recent hostage episode is unlikely to be the last.

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Anatol Lieven, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, is author of “Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power”