RUSSIA, AZERBAIJAN, ARMENIA: ALL ROADS LEAD TO THE CAUCASUS
By Eric Walberg
Online Journal
Mar 10, 2010, 00:22
The Russian Federation republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, North Ossetia
and Ingushetia have experienced a sharp increase in assassinations
and terrorist bombings in the past few years which have reached into
the heart of Russia itself, most spectacularly with the bombing of
the Moscow-Leningrad express train in January that killed 26.
Last week police killed at least six suspected militants in
Ingushetia. Dagestan has especially suffered in the past two years,
notably with the assassination of its interior minister last June and
the police chief last month. The number of armed attacks more than
doubled last year. In February, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev
replaced Dagestan president Mukhu Aliyev with Magomedsalam Magomedov,
whose father Magomedali led Dagestan from 1987-2006. Aliyev was
genuinely popular, praised for his honesty and fight against
corruption, but was seen as too soft on terror.
President Magomedov has vowed to put the violence-ridden region in
order and pardon rebels who turn in weapons."I have no illusion that
it will be easy. Escalating terrorist activity in the North Caucasus,
including in Dagestan, urges us to revise all our methods of fighting
terror and extremism." He vowed to attack unemployment, organised
crime, clan rivalry and corruption.
Violence continues to plague Chechnya as well. Russian forces have
fought two wars against separatists in Chechnya since 1994, leaving
more than 100,000 dead and the region in ruins, inspiring terrorist
attacks throughout the region. Five Russian soliders and as many
rebels were killed there at the beginning of February. According
to the Long War Journal, in February, Russia’s Federal Security
Bureau (FSB) killed a key Al-Qaeda fighter based in Chechnya,
Mokhmad Shabban, an Egyptian known as Saif Islam (Sword of Islam),
the mastermind behind the 6 January suicide bombing that killed seven
Russian policemen in Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala. He was wanted
for attacks against infrastructure and Russian soldiers throughout
Chechnya and neighbouring republics.
Since the early 1990s, militants such as Shabban have operated from
camps in Georgia’s Pansiki Gorge, and used the region as a safe haven
to launch attacks inside Chechnya and the greater Caucasus. The FSB
said Shabban "masterminded acts of sabotage to blast railway tracks,
transmission lines, and gas and oil pipelines at instructions by
Georgian secret services."
This is impossible to prove, but Georgia was the only state
to recognise the Republic of Ichkeria when Chechens unilaterally
declared independence in 1991 and Shabban’s widow, Alla, has a talk
show on First Caucasus TV, a station located in Georgia and beamed
into Chechnya. Interestingly, from 2002-2007, more than 200 US Special
Forces troops were training Georgian troops in Pansiki, though neither
the Americans nor the Georigans were able to end the attacks on Russia.
Medvedev said last month that violence in the North Caucasus remains
Russia’s biggest domestic problem, arguing that it will only end once
the acute poverty in the region and the corruption and lawlessness
within the security organs themselves are addressed. He has undertaken
an ambitious reform of security organisations and the police throughout
Russia with this in mind.
Sceptics may point to the parallel between the US-NATO occupation of
Afghanistan and Iraq and Russian policy in the north Caucasus. Yes,
there is a Russian geopolitical context, but the comparison is
specious. These regions have been closely tied both economically and
politically to Russia for two centuries, which Abkhazian President
Sergei Bagpash shrewdly decided to celebrate last month in order to
ensure Moscow’s support.
The patchwork quilt of nationalities of the Caucasus has survived under
Russian sponsorship and now has the prospect of prospering if left
in peace. Politicians like Bagpash make the best of the situation,
as do sensible politicians throughout Russia’s "near abroad." To
alienate or try to subvert a powerful neighbour and potential friend,
as does Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, is plain bad politics.
The other Caucasian conflict is the long running tragedy of Nagorno
Karabakh, which unlike the other conflicts pits two supposed NATO
hopefuls against each other. The war occurred from 1988-94, dating from
the dying days of the Soviet Union, when Armenia invaded Azerbaijan,
carving out a corridor through the country to seize the mountain
region populated for over a millennium largely by ethnic Armenians. A
ceasefire was finally achieved leaving Armenia in possession of the
enclave and a corridor, together consisting of almost 20 per cent of
Azerbaijani territory. As many as 40,000 died, and 230,000 Armenians
and a million Azeris were displaced.
A Russian-brokered ceasefire has been followed by intermittent peace
talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by the United
States, France and Russia. But it is clear that Azerbaijan will not
rest until its territory is returned. "If the Armenian occupier does
not liberate our lands, the start of a great war in the south Caucasus
is inevitable," warned Azerbaijan Defence Minister Safar Abiyev in
February. "Armenians must unconditionally withdraw from our lands. And
only after that should cooperation and peace be established,"
said Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev last week. Armenian and
Azerbaijani forces are spread across a ceasefire line in and around
Nagorno-Karabakh, often facing each other at close range, with
shootings reported as common. Last week an Armenian soldier was killed.
Russia, culturally closer to Armenia, is resented by Azerbaijan
as biased, and indeed there has been no commitment by any of the
peacemakers or Armenia to return the territory. But the playing field
changed dramatically after Georgia’s defeat in its war against Russia
in 2008, setting in motion unforeseen regional realignments throughout
the region.
First was rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, which at first
set off alarm bells in Baku, relying as it does internationally on
the support of Turkey, which closed its borders with Armenia in
1993 in response to the Armenian occupation. Turkey established
diplomatic relations with Armenia last year in keeping with the
Justice and Development Party’s "zero problems with neighbours,"
but says ratification by parliament and a full border opening will
not happen until Armenia makes some concessions to Azerbaijan.
Moscow has also been pursuing a charm offensive with neighbours in
recent years, and was successful in getting both Azerbaijani and
Armenian presidents to sign the Moscow Declaration in November 2008,
though the warring sides subsequently have managed only to agree on
procedural matters.
Key to all further developments throughout the region is the role of
the US and NATO. Until recently, it looked like NATO would succeed
in expanding into Ukraine and Georgia. It is also eager to have
Azerbaijan and Armenia join. Not surprisingly, these moves are seen
as hostile by Russia. If the unlikely happens, this would mean the
US has important influence in all the conflicts in the Caucasus. But
would pushing Armenia and Azerbaijan, two warring nations, into the
fold help resolve their intractable differences?
Though both have sent a few troops to Afghanistan, the very idea of
warring nations joining the military bloc is nonsense, and noises
about it can only be interpreted as attempts to curry favour with
the world’s superpower. Azerbaijan has much-coveted Caspian Sea oil
and gas, but Armenia is Christian and Azerbaijan Muslim, and Armenia
has a strong US domestic lobby which will not go quietly into the
night. Any move by Washington to meddle in the dispute without close
coordination with Moscow is fraught with danger for all concerned —
except, of course, the US.
As an ally to both countries, and with important historical and
cultural traditions, Russia remains the main actor in the search for
a solution. Including Turkey in negotiations can only improve the
chances of finding a regional solution which is acceptable to both
sides. Such a solution requires demilitarising the conflict, hardly
something NATO is expert at. As both countries improve their economies,
and as long as ongoing tensions do not erupt into military conflict,
they can — must — move towards a realistic resolution that takes
the concerns of both sides into consideration.
Since 1991 a new Silk Road has been opened to the West, stretching as
it did a millennium ago from Italy to China and taking in at least 17
new political entities. All roads, in this case, lead to the Caucasus,
and US-NATO interest in this vital crossroads should surprise no one.
US control there — and in the Central Asian "stans" — would mean
containing Russia and Iran, the dream for American strategists
since WWII.
The three major wars of the past decade — Yugoslavia (1999),
Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) — all lie on this Silk Road. The US
and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance had no business invading any of
these countries and have no business in the region today. Rather it is
Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, Turkey et alia that must come
together to promote their regional economic well being and security.
War breaking out in any one of the Caucasus disputes would be a tragedy
for all concerned, for the West (at least in the long run) as much
as for Russia or any of the participants. But the forces abetting
war are not rational in any meaningful sense of the word. After all,
it was perfectly "rational" in Robert Gates’s mind to help finance
and arm Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1979. The planners in the
Pentagon or NATO HQ argue "rationally" today that their current surge
in Afghanistan will bring peace to the region.
And if it fails, at least the chaos is far away. Such thinking
could lead them to try to unleash chaos in any of the smoldering and
intractable disputes in the Caucasus out of spite or a la General Jack
Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 "Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned
to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," a film which. Unfortunately,
has lost none of its bite in the past four decades.
Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at
ericwalberg.com.