North Caucasus at risk
Por su interés y relevancia, he seleccionado el artículo que sigue para incluirlo en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)
Since
the March 8 death of Aslan Maskhadov, former president of Chechnya and supreme
commander of Chechen militant forces, Russia has escalated its anti-terrorism
operations in the North Caucasus region.
Last Tuesday, Russian security forces apprehended Adam Jabrailov, a Chechen
terrorist responsible for capturing, killing and beheading four Red Cross
workers in 1996.
Details of Maskhadov's death remain murky. While he had limited control of
the Chechen Islamist faction led by warlord Shamil Basaev, during the unilateral
January 2005 cease-fire, most Chechen factions observed the truce in support of
a call for peace talks with the Kremlin. However, sources close to the Russian
leadership indicated in Moscow last week the Kremlin is opting for a military
crackdown and leadership elimination.
Maskhadov's
legacy is complex. He was a former Soviet Army colonel cut from the same cloth
as many Russian leaders and could have been a peace settlement partner. But he
commanded military operations and achieved Chechnya's near-sovereignty under the
Khasav-Yurt accords (1997).
During his presidency, he allowed Chechnya's frightful transformation into
Sharia-dominated anarchy. In 1997-1999, the years of Chechnya's
quasi-independence, the region became an Islamist terrorist training ground and
saw 2,000 kidnappings for ransom, slave trade and massive trafficking in
weapons, drugs and stolen goods. Maskhadov couldn't -- or wouldn't -- stop any
of it.
Maskhadov publicly distanced himself from mass hostage-taking operations by
the jihadi warlord Shamil Basaev, such as the Dubrovka Theater and the Beslan
school attack in September 2004. Nevertheless, Maskhadov took no steps to
prevent such atrocities. On the contrary, in his latest interviews he advocated
expansion of the "jihad" beyond Chechnya, to the rest of Northern Caucasus, and
targeting Russian civilians.
The formal Maskhadov's successor is a little-known Islamic law figure
("Sheik") Abdul Halim Sadullaev. Not known for religious learning or military
prowess, he apparently was Maskhadov's appointed successor to keep Basaev from
formally taking power and to threaten Moscow with chaos if it decided to
eliminate Maskhadov. Russian sources report Sheik Abdul-Halim issued fatwas
allowing murder and terror attacks.
Mr. Putin needed a great victory as his popularity began to deteriorate
after Beslan and mass protests of unpopular cash payments introduced in January
to replace social in-kind benefits. The secret service, the FSB, produced such a
coup.
One year after Vladimir Putin handily won a second presidential term, his
domestic and foreign challenges are snowballing, and his aura of almost
superhuman invincibility is quickly dissipating.
Analysts in Moscow speculate he is repeating the mistakes of the czars who
brutally suppressed the Chechens. In 1850, Nicholas I ordered his Caucasus
viceroy, Prince Michael Vorontsov, to "firmly follow my system of destruction of
dwellings and food supply, and bothering them with incursions."
Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian writer who served in the Caucasus in the
mid-19th as a military officer, had this to say about the reactions in Chechnya
in his classic "Haji Murat":
"Nobody even discussed hatred toward the Russians. The feeling that all
Chechens experienced, from a child to a grown up, was stronger than hatred. It
was not hate, but the lack of recognition of these Russian dogs as human beings.
It was such a revulsion, disgust and noncomprehension, facing the irrational
cruelty of these creatures, that the desire to exterminate them was a natural
feeling, as natural as the instinct of self-preservation. [This] was like the
desire to exterminate vermin, poisonous spiders and wolves."
With Maskhadov's killing, Moscow lost an opportunity to split the Chechens
between the more secular supporters of national independence or broad autonomy,
and radical Islamist "jihadi" terrorists. But it seems the Kremlin did not
believe such an option was available and equated Maskhadov with Basaev.
Ironically, the radical Islamists do not want an independent Chechnya, as
Maskhadov did. They want nothing less than a Califate, which would subsume
Chechen national aspirations in favor of a pan-Islamic agenda of a Muslim
superstate.
Now, according to London's Sunday Times, the radical Islamist wing, led by
Basaev and a Saudi warlord Abu Havs, which rejects diplomacy and hails jihad,
and the Russian security forces and the military, will dictate the scope and
pace of the North Caucasus war. Unfortunately, the likelihood also will increase
of terror mega-attacks, like the September 2004 horror in a Beslan school.
Quickly killing or capturing Basaev is an imperative for the Russian forces.
Islamist terrorists, with their global networks of financial support and
training, would want nothing more than to have Basaev as de-facto supreme
military commander of North Caucasus -- without Maskhadov's meddling. Basaev
already trains and equips jihadi units, which grew out of North Caucasus Wahhabi
madrassas networks. Fighting there is on the rise.
The North Caucasus Islamist movement and its allies believe their
geopolitical goal -- creating the North Caucasus Califate, a militaristic
Sharia-based dictatorship between the Black Sea and the Caspian -- just got a
bit closer.
If they succeed, a disastrous scenario unfolds. Such an entity on Europe's
doorstep, controlled by ideological soulmates of Osama bin Laden, will radiate
terrorism and religious extremism for decades to come. It may become one of the
greatest threats to Eurasian security of this century.
Russiawide terrorism will escalate, as will "jihad" in the
Russian-controlled republics of North Caucasus, where security forces
increasingly impose political controls and the Kremlin moves toward setting up
its loyalists as presidents and governors. A secular Shi'ite regime of
Azerbaijan and its oil fields, and pipelines from the Caspian basin, will also
be more prone to terrorist attacks.
It is time the United States paid attention to the threats escalating in the
Northern Caucasus.
Ariel Cohen is senior research fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and
international energy security at the Heritage Foundation and editor of "Eurasia
in Balance" (Ashgate, 2005).