Chechen war (Part II) (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

For too long now, the Chechen people have held that second-class status was often afforded South Africa’s black population. Indeed, in Moscow they are disparagingly referred to as “blacks” and the prejudice can be traced back over 150 years to the time when Tsarists conquered the area.

Stalin’s hate for them was such that he had the entire population deported to Central Asia in 1944, citing charges of Nazi collaboration—a venture that would wipe out some 60 percent of the Chechen population.

In recent years they have been blamed for every social ill facing Russia, from drug trafficking and kidnapping to black-marketeering. It was therefore not really surprising that the latest Moscow bomb attacks got blamed on Chechenya’s aspiring islamist secessionists—in spite of no evidence existing to suggest this—while providing the Russian rulers with another opportunity to send troops into the tiny republic.

Ostensibly, the present Chechen conflict was sparked by the seizing of border villages by islamic militants—the fundamentalist Wahhabi muslims, intent on creating an independent islamic republic made up of Daghestan and Chechenya. In the Chechen republic Wahhabi support has increased recently, chiefly because of high unemployment, despair at a corrupt local elite, frustration with the slow pace of market reforms and at the little effort Russia has made to rebuild the republic after the bungled Chechen war of 1994-6.

The Russian rulers, however, didn’t need much of an excuse to send troops into Chechenya at the end of September. They still feel the humiliation of Russia’s venture into Chechenya in the mid-90s, when 6,500 Russian troops lost their lives fighting Chechen guerrillas and the consequent pull-out sparked by public outcry at home. Moreover, here was a former superpower being whipped by a tiny band of poorly-trained fighters.

In the wake of that particular conflict, though still claiming Chechenya was breaching laws laid down in the Russian Federation constitution, Moscow was embarrassingly forced to accept the republic’s de-facto independence, but not formally.

More importantly, the Russian rulers are all too aware of Chechenya’s real significance. In spite of its size (7,350 square miles compared with the 8.64 million of the former Soviet Union) Chechenya is a veritable goldmine, and all the more important considering that previous successful secessionists—Georgia and Azerbaijan—took with them a wealth of mineral resources.

Chechenya, landlocked on three sides by Russia, includes fertile farmland that straddles the wheat fields of southern Russia. It has key transport assets—rail/road routes that link the Black and Caspian seas and trade routes to other trans-Caucasus republics. Most importantly, Chechenya controls vital oil pipelines that connect the Black and Caspian seas, as well as vital oilfields and refineries. We can add to this Chechenya’s chemical and engineering industries as well as its supply of building materials. All said, Chechenya equals roubles equals profits.

But one wonders why Russia, in recent weeks, has concentrated air strikes on oil terminals, bridges and dams. The strategy seems to be one of destroying Chechenya’s infrastructure and raw material supplies and to seal it off from the outside world. Sounds familiar? By all accounts Moscow has modelled the attack on the NATO strategy in Kosovo, hoping to bring Chechenya to its knees in as short a space of time as possible and with minimum loss of Russian life.

Nine years after the Chechen nationalists first informed Moscow of its secessionist ambitions, and with hundreds of thousands of Chechens now living the meagre life of the refugee in neighbouring republics, stability looks a long way off, and with President Aslan Maskhadov now enlisting the help of the region’s most prominent warlords—such as Shamil Basayev, a veteran commander of the first Chechen war that Maskhadov initially disowned—the conflict looks set to be long and protracted.

With so much mineral wealth at stake, wealth they are afforded no real share in, the Chechens should at least realise that whichever elite—Russian or Chechen, Russian Orthodox or Muslim—calls the shots, they will always come a poor second to the lure of the rouble and the profits that await the real victors. The 80-100,00 who lost their lives in the first Chechen war is a poignant reminder of this fact.

John Bissett