HOW WEST MISREPORTS CONFLICTIN CAUCASUS
(c) Sputnik/ Igor Mikhalev
COLUMNISTS
16:37 13.12.2014(updated 18:09 13.12.2014)
Alexander Mercouris
1709202
In the midst of the United States’ seemingly endless “War on Terror”,
the jihadi terrorist movement that for more than a decade has been
waging war on Russia in the Caucasus, is spared all criticism.
(c) SPUTNIK/ IGOR MIKHALEV Commemorating the First Chechen War
in Pictures 17 LONDON, December 13 (Sputnik) — The latest jihadi
attack on the Chechen capital Grozny once again illustrates a dark
truth. Namely that in the midst of the United States’ seemingly
endless “War on Terror” one jihadi terrorist movement is spared all
criticism. This is the one which for more than a decade has been
waging war on Russia in the Caucasus.
This is clearly shown by the way the Western media reported the
attack. Though it received scant attention, the reports of the incident
that were provided studiously avoided referring to the perpetrators as
either “jihadis” or “terrorists”. Instead they were called such things
as “militants”, “separatists” or even just “Chechens” — the last
especially outrageous given that their intended targets were Chechens.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that it is because this
particular jihadi movement, unlike all the rest, targets Russia. That
this is the only thing that differentiates this jihadi movement
from the others is unimportant. The mere fact it opposes Russia is
apparently enough.
That this is indeed a terrorist jihadi movement no different from
the others requires some explanation and a brief discussion of the
recent history of the Caucasus.
Firstly, it should be said clearly that the jihadi movement in the
Caucasus is a product of the political crisis that arose in Russia at
the fall of the USSR in 1991. It is fashionable in the west to claim
that it is something else and dates back to earlier times. Recently
a number of books and articles have appeared that purport to trace
its origins all the way back to the wars the Russian Empire fought in
the 19th century in the Caucasus. According to this view, the jihadi
movement is merely the latest manifestation of the struggle of the
Muslim people of the Caucasus against Russia that began in the early
19th century. The Chechens in particular are supposed to be engaged
in a centuries old struggle for liberation against Russia and their
recent history is in inevitably described in these terms.
(c) SPUTNIK/ SAID TCARNAEV Putin: Chechnya Will Successfully Cope
With Recent Surge in Terror Activity A brief survey of the actual
history of the Caucasus, and of Chechnya in particular, shows that
this view of Caucasian history is quite simply wrong.
In the 19th century the Russian Empire did fight a long war in the
Caucasus against some, though not all, the Muslim people there. This
war is the subject of Russian literary works by Tolstoy and Lermontov
amongst others. Russia was eventually victorious in this war, fully
pacifying the Caucasus by the 1860s. In the process the Russians
and the Caucasians who fought each other acquired considerable
knowledge and respect for each other. The Caucasian leader Shamil was,
for example, treated with great respect by the Russians following
his capture and was even allowed by them to go on a pilgrimage to
Mecca — honorable treatment of a brave enemy unknown and probably
incomprehensible to the West today.
Following the 1860s, the Caucasus basically became a peaceful
and stable region of the Russian Empire. During the period of the
Revolution, the region witnessed considerable instability, but then
this was true of the Russian Empire as a whole. Once the USSR became
consolidated the history of the peoples of the Caucasus became part of
the general history of the USSR. Thus whilst there was considerable
opposition in the Caucasus to collectivization this was true of the
USSR as a whole.
Claims made of a continuous history of Chechen hostility to Russia
and Russians tend to center on events during the Second World War.
Stalin’s government accused the Chechens of collaborating with the
Germans and as a form of collective punishment deported the entire
Chechen nation from their homes.
This episode has been seized on by certain Western scholars and
journalists looking for proof of the supposed age-old enmity that
supposedly exists between the Chechen people and Russia. Recently a
number of books have appeared in the west which purport to describe
the conflict between the Chechens and the Russians during the Second
World War and the rebellion the Soviet authorities are supposed to
have faced in the Caucasus.
(c) SPUTNIK/ SAID TSARNAEV New Airport to Be Built in Chechen Capital:
Leader There is no doubt that some people in the Caucasus did try
to take advantage of the exceptionally difficult situation in which
the USSR found itself to try to achieve their own goals though what
these were precisely it is not always easy to say. The same however
was true in other parts of the USSR as well. The Caucasus was not the
only region of the USSR were the Germans found collaborators. As the
story of the Vlasov army shows, there were collaborators even among
Russians. That some people tried to take advantage of a difficult
situation does not mean that the majority did or even wanted to.
Those best qualified to know the true situation, the Soviet government,
exonerated the Chechens in the 1950s and allowed them to return to
their homes. In view of this it seems perverse for Western writers
to say today that Stalin’s allegations against the Chechens were
true after all. It is a bizarre, and to my knowledge unique, case of
westerners endorsing allegations Stalin made which subsequent Soviet
and Russian governments have rejected.
The deportation for the Chechen people was for them a traumatic
experience. This should not obscure the fact that the subsequent
period following their return from the 1950s to the final end of
the USSR was in Chechnya and elsewhere in the Caucasus a period of
peace and prosperity. In view of this, it is unsurprising that in
the referendum held in March 1991 the Muslim people of the northern
Caucasus voted overwhelmingly to support the continuation of the USSR.
Chechens throughout this period were full Soviet citizens and many
made the most of the opportunities this offered them. Two well-known
examples are Dzhokar Dudayev, who became a Major General in the
Soviet Air Force, and Ruslan Khasbulatov, who eventually rose to
become chairman of the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Russian
Federation in the early Yeltsin era.
(c) RIA NOVOSTI. SAID TSARNAEV Gems of Chechnya: Brick by Brick,
Mountainous Republic Rebuilds and Hopes Return 10 The crisis that
convulsed the Caucasus and Chechnya in particular in 1991 cannot
therefore be explained as part of some great historic conflict between
Chechens and Russians. Rather it is better understood as part of the
general crisis that affected the whole of the USSR at that time.
In Chechnya, the weakening of state authority opened the way for a
violent armed coup by the followers of Dzokhar Dudayev. Significantly
Dudayev’s movement had not previously sought secession from the USSR.
Rather its demands were for Chechnya to be accepted as a sovereign
Republic of the USSR alongside the three other Caucasian republics,
Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.
In the aftermath of the failed August coup attempt in Moscow in 1991,
Dudayev and his followers seized the opportunity to launch a coup
of their own in Grozny. The coup was carried out with considerable
violence and resulted in the murder of several of Dudayev’s opponents.
Whilst it is clear that Dudayev enjoyed some support in Chechnya,
its extent is difficult to judge since he never submitted himself
to any form of election process whilst he was in power. That most
people in Chechnya did not support him appears to be confirmed by a
referendum which he did hold shortly after he seized power. Turnout
in that referendum was very low, perhaps as low as 20%. The region of
Ingushetia, which had been united with Chechnya, refused to accept
Dudayev’s authority and seceded, accepting the authority of the
central government in Moscow. Today it is a separate republic within
the Russian Federation.
As time passed, Dudayev ran into increasing opposition in Chechnya
itself and by 1994 he faced rebellion. The conflict became violent
and the central government in Moscow became involved, leading to the
First Chechen War over the course of which Dudayev himself was killed.
Federal troops were withdrawn following a peace agreement in 1996 which
however enabled some of Dudayev’s former associates to seize power.
Thereafter, between 1996 and 1999 Chechnya was basically left to
itself. A presidential election took place during this period,
whose fairness and legitimacy, predictably enough, was recognized
by western governments and NGOs. However, in the conditions that
existed in Chechnya at this time, it would have been impossible for
a pro-Russian candidate to stand in such an election so it is wrong
to accept it as offering a true picture of opinion there. All one
can say about this election is that it was conducted in conditions of
great instability and that it resulted in the election of Mashkhadov,
the more moderate figure of the two put forward, the other being the
violent jihadi extremist, Shamil Basayev.
(c) SPUTNIK/ SAID TCARNAEV Islamic State Commander Threatening to
Invade Russia Dead: Chechen Leader What is indisputable is that over
the period of its self-declared independence, first under Dudayev
from 1992 to 1994, and then from 1996 to 1999, Chechnya became heavily
infiltrated by Islamic militants some of them with links to what became
Al Qaeda. As time passed these groups became increasingly dominant
and by 1999 were effectively in control. Following several years of
growing gangsterism, frequently punctuated with mass kidnappings and
ransom demands of people from southern Russia, in 1999 these militant
jihadis launched an invasion of the neighboring republic of Dagestan
and a series of bomb attacks on apartment buildings in Moscow. By
this point their agenda was no longer independence for Chechnya but
an Islamist war against Russia.
This war has been fought with relentless ferocity ever since. Using the
same methods as other Al Qaeda affiliated jihadi groups, indiscriminate
attacks have been launched against the Russian civilian population,
including horrifying terrorist outrages such as the Nord-Ost Theatre
siege and the massacre of schoolchildren at Beslan.
These actions have in turn provoked the central government in Moscow
to reassert control, which by and large it has successfully done. In
doing so there is little doubt that the central government has had
the support of the great majority of the local people. The fact that
the jihadi movement in the Caucasus has been first contained and then
largely defeated is proof of this. Without such support this would
not have been possible.
As of today, the jihadi insurgency in the Caucasus is the only jihadi
insurgency that has been successfully contained and largely defeated.
This is an important fact about it that neither the western media
nor western governments have ever acknowledged.
Indeed the account of the conflict given here, though it is the
correct one, is not the one the western media and western governments
have given. In particular the insurgency Russia has been fighting
in the Caucasus since the 1990s, and in particular since 1999, is
an Islamic jihadi insurgency is a fact which in the West has never
acknowledged. The independent US scholar Gordon Hahn (whose views
about the conflict are by no means identical to the ones given here)
has complained prolifically about this. His complaints on this point
have however gone largely unnoticed.
This in itself is bad enough. However what is much worse is the
way the western media and to some extent western governments have
sought to turn the facts of the conflict on their head by blaming
the worst atrocities of the conflict not on the perpetrators but on
their victims.
This has been true throughout the conflict. It was already true for
example during the period of Chechnya’s self-declared independence
from 1996 to 1999. The terrorist outrages involving kidnappings and
ransom demands that took place during this period were reported
with indifference in the west provided they were directed at the
Russian civilian population. Only when westerners were kidnapped
did interest briefly flicker. The Russian film ‘Voyna’ (2002) —
a film in part about the kidnapping by Chechens of two Britons —
captures this attitude perfectly.
The situation however becomes even more grotesque when jihadi terrorism
against Russians becomes so extreme that they simply cannot be ignored.
(c) AP PHOTO/ FILE Over 5,000 Killed in Jihadist Attacks Worldwide
in November: Study If one takes what were possibly the four most
egregious acts of terrorism committed against Russian targets by
Caucasian jihadi terrorists — the mass kidnapping at Budennyovsk, the
Moscow apartment bombings, the Nord-Ost Theatre siege and the Beslan
massacre — what one notices from western media coverage in each case
is (1) a reluctance to condemn the action and to call it by the simple
and accurate word “terrorism” (2) reporting that always seeks to
“explain” the action in terms of the demonstrably false historical
narrative of Russian-Caucasian interaction discussed here and (3)
an attempt to blame the Russian authorities for what happened.
The most extreme example of (3) is the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings.
Though jihadi leaders admitted their responsibility for the bombings at
the time when they happened, and though every one of those responsible
for the bombings has been identified, with several captured, put
on trial and convicted of the crime, the western media and even
some western governments continue to indulge in the theory that the
Russian authorities were in some way responsible. Though nothing that
could remotely be called evidence has ever been produced to support
this fantastic — indeed outrageous — theory, it continues to be
endlessly repeated, with a seemingly unending series of books and
articles published that purport to “prove” it true. This at the same
time as western authorities and media show no such tolerance for the
claims of the US’s government’s involvement in the terrorist attacks
on the United States that took place on September 9th 2001.
However, if claims of Russian involvement in the 1999 Moscow apartment
bombings are the most extreme example of this practice, it is also
present in all the other cases cited. Thus the anti-terrorist
action that saved most of the hostages in the Nord-Ost theatre
siege (and which would certainly have been praised if it had taken
place in similar circumstances in the West) is routinely condemned
for its alleged “ruthlessness”, whilst the Russian authorities were
alternatively criticized for failing to prevent the mass kidnapping at
Budennyovsk and for failing to surrender to the terrorists’ demands
at Beslan. In all cases the conduct of the Russian security forces
comes in for particular criticism and even mockery, with no attempt
ever made to relate their actual conduct to the extremely difficult
conditions they have had to face on each occasion.
If the activities of the jihadis in the Caucasus have stirred little
outrage in the West, the same emphatically has not been true of the
steps taken by the Russian authorities to combat them. Always and
invariably, these have been the subject of ferocious condemnation.
This tends to reach fever pitch whenever it appears that the Russian
security forces look like they might win. This was particularly so over
the course of 1999. Western media coverage of the conflict that year
went from confident though as it turned out groundless predictions
that the Russian security forces would lose to a furious campaign
of denunciation of the Russian security forces and of the Russian
political leadership when it became increasingly obvious that on
the contrary they were going to win. I can still remember watching a
Channel 4 ‘Despatches’ program on British television in the winter of
that year in which the reporter seemed unable to control his anger as
he reeled off a seemingly unending list of war crimes he alleged with
no evidence the Russian military had committed. The actual context
of the conflict that year, the bombings in the Moscow apartments and
the jihadi attack on Dagestan, were not mentioned.
The same biased reporting has continued ever since. The western media
still refuses to call the Caucasian jihadis terrorists — something it
unhesitatingly calls all Muslim jihadi movements everywhere else. Even
more absurdly, it still refuses even to admit that they are jihadis
even though they themselves make no secret of the fact. Whilst
Western governments act purposefully to close down all other jihadi
terrorist websites operating from their territories, the Caucasian
jihadi website the Kavkaz Centre continues in Finland unimpeded.
Such as is the tolerance extended to Caucasian terrorists in the West
that when the Russian authorities attempted to alert the US authorities
to the dangers posed by the Tsarnaev brothers their warnings were
ignored. Subsequently, their attacks in the US were rightly condemned
as terrorism. By contrast the latest jihadi attack on Grozny is not.
Meanwhile, whilst the West continues to indulge the Caucasian jihadi
movement so long as it confines its attacks on Russia, Ramzan Kadyrov,
the leader of the present government of Chechnya, who has sided with
Russia, comes in for relentless criticism for opposing them.
(c) SPUTNIK/ SAID TSARNAEV Five Police Officers Die Conducting Special
Operation in Chechnya Wild allegations of Kadyrov’s involvement in
various murders and human rights abuses are thrown around with abandon
without so much as a scintilla of proof. He continues to be routinely
accused in the West of responsibility for the murders of the two
journalists Politkovskaya and Estemirova though the investigations into
both murders have for any reasonable person conclusively established
his complete innocence in both cases. The fact that his father was the
victim of jihadi violence and that Chechnya’s economic and security
situation has been transformed during the period when he has headed
its government is hardly ever mentioned.
The size of the gap between western stories about Kadyrov and the
actual reality was for me exposed perfectly by a US embassy cable
leaked by the alternative media organisation Wikileaks. It contained
a report of a party that Kadyrov and a US diplomat both attended. The
diplomat’s report dripped with contempt for Kadyrov and was filled
with innuendo both about the nature of the party and about Kadyrov’s
behaviour during it. One had to read the report carefully to realize
that in fact nothing that could be remotely called unseemly had
actually happened or been done by anyone at the party, which seems
in fact to have been a rather staid affair.
The last few years have shown a steady, though gradual, stabilisation
of the security situation in the Caucasus. This last year was the
most peaceful the region has known since the crisis year of 1991. As
discussed, given the region’s complex history and geography, this
would not have been possible without the support of its people.
The situation in the region however remains complex. Economic
conditions are still difficult and unemployment is high. Though their
activities are much diminished and most of their leaders have been
killed, violent jihadis are still active there. The region needs
a long period of peace and of sustained investment to overcome its
problems. After all they have suffered its people deserve no less.
Playing political games with their history and supporting, however
indirectly, the terrorists who remain amongst them is not the way to
help them achieve it.
From: A. Papazian
http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20141213/1015810331.html