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In
a desperate attempt to bring the rebel state under control, some Kremlin
officials are even proposing summary executions in Chechnya, writes Ian Traynor First
it was Bislan Gantamirov who came up with a bright new way of dealing with
recalcitrant rebels terrorising the Russian troops in Chechnya. The convicted
Chechen embezzler whom the Russians let out of jail to become their militia
leader and mayor in Grozny, the untamed Chechen capital, proposed shooting
Chechen suspects on the spot. ''Without trial or investigation,'' he demanded,
advocating a new policy of summary execution which contravenes the Russian
constitution, not to mention president Vladimir Putin's famous ambition of
establishing a ''dictatorship of the law'' in Russia.
Gantamirov's
startling call came last month. This
week it was the turn of Gennadiy Troshev, the army lieutenant general who
commanded the Russians in Chechnya and now commands the wider north Caucasus
military district. Venting
his exasperation with a 20-month Russian military campaign that shows every sign
of being badly bogged down, the general told the Izvestiya newspaper how he
would deal with the Chechen fighters. ''Here's what I would do, collect them all
on the square, string the bandits up and let them hang, and let everyone see
them. The word bandit's too good for them. They're scum.''
Liberals
and constitutional nitpickers in Moscow have been predictably outraged by the
bar-room language of the general and his redneck views on how to run the Chechen
war. But Mr Putin has a foul mouth, too, when it suits him. He did his
popularity ratings no damage at all when he vowed to go after the Chechen
separatist fighters and ''rub them out in the john.'' Such
crude appeals from the president, the general, and the embezzler betray the
increasing desperation of the Russian position in Chechnya, while indicating the
violence of mind with which the Russian campaign leaders view their task in the
breakaway republic.
Last
year Gen Troshev was bragging that the war was won. This week, as the Russians
admit they are losing more than 150 men every month, with the maimed numbering
more than double that, his main recommendation is to string up miscreants on
public squares pour decourager les autres. The defence minister and close Putin
aide, Sergei Ivanov, meanwhile, voiced his support and sympathy for the Russian
colonel Yury Budanov, who is accused of murdering and allegedly raping a Chechen
girl and is currently on trial. If in January the Kremlin announced it was
pulling almost three quarters of its 80,000 troops out of Chechnya, it halted
the withdrawal last month after only 5,000 had left and then this week reported
it was sending in a further 1,500.
Confusion
and demoralisation is the order of the day among the loyal Chechens the Kremlin
has recruited to try to administer the unruly republic. The Moscow-appointed
deputy prime minister, Stanislav Ilyasov, this week called on the Russian troops
to leave. ''Putin does not know what to do with Chechnya,'' said the former
Soviet parliament speaker and Chechen, Ruslan Khasbulatov. Such views were
echoed by the nationalist communist commentator, Alexander Frolov, who denounced
Mr Putin's war as farcical and clueless. ''There's no serious policy, just
hypocrisy.''
Mr
Frolov's problem is not that the Russians are being tough on Chechnya, but that
they are not being tough enough. He wants an end to the euphemistic ''anti-terrorist
campaign'' and the declaration of full-scale war against Chechnya. As for the
public executions proposal: ''There's no doubt that the overwhelming majority of
Russian citizens tortured by the bandit violence are in complete solidarity with
Troshev.''
After
much feel-good talk of short, sharp shocks that would solve the Chechen problem
once and for all - the rhetoric that put Mr Putin where he is today - the
Kremlin now discourages all notions of a settlement or a victory any time soon,
with Mr Putin making clear the Russians are in for a long haul. The brutality of
his Chechen campaign has brought only muted protest from foreign governments,
with routine declarations of concern and minimal action.
A
week ahead of Mr Putin's first encounter with president George Bush, it is not
clear whether the new US administration will take a sterner view, but already
the criticism is flowing from Washington. A senior US state department Russia
adviser, John Beyrle, this week told a congressional commission that Chechnya is
''the fundamental dilemma for human rights in Russia today … The most
persistently troubling human rights issue in Russia.
''What
kind of long-term relationship can we pursue with a government that wages a
brutal and seemingly endless war against its own people on its own territory?''
he asked. It appears that the Bush administration has not yet come up with an
answer to that. But at his Slovenia summit with Mr Bush next week, Mr Putin, to
judge by past meetings with foreign leaders, will not shrink from the
opportunity to reiterate his policy of no surrender and no compromise, which
increasingly seems to be no policy at all.
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24.06.2001
