Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (38 page)

First, Mr Murat Zyazikov, the President of Ingushetia. Zyazikov has been in power for a little over two years, before which his career was spent entirely in the KGB and FSB. He is one of Putin’s professional cronies. Nobody is in any doubt that Zyazikov was strong-armed into the office of President of Ingushetia by Putin and his team. His presidency has seen the secret services run riot in Ingushetia, flouting the Constitution. Citizens have been abducted by the FSB and death squads, and as a direct consequence young people have been heading to the mountains to join the fighters and there has been a wave of terrorist acts. What did Zyazikov do, this abysmal Head of Ingushetia’s Anti-Terrorist Commission? He has just sat there in his presidential seat, a typical FSB goon.

An FSB goon is, after all, somebody who sees the world from behind other people’s backs. That’s their profession. They are invisible fighters against an invisible threat. The problems begin when the threat becomes visible and real, and the President needs to come out and organise effective resistance to outlaws like those who took over Ingushetia on June 21, 2004.
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That night dozens of people died while Zyazikov sat it out in his
cellar, waiting to see what would happen and keeping his own highly important skin safe. No doubt the President’s life is very precious and important, so perhaps he really ought to be hiding in his cellar. But it is no more precious than the lives of everyone else.

The result of that night was the loss of many lives in Ingushetia, attributable to a total lack of organised resistance to the invaders. Another important result was that the fighters were encouraged to think about undertaking something similar in the future.

Let us look, then, at August 21, 2004 and the seizure of Grozny by resistance fighters in an exact replay of the Ingushetian scenario. Where were Putin’s favorites that night, Alu Alkhanov and Ramzan Kadyrov, who so often tell us on television that they have all but caught the last of the outlaws? They too were down in their cellars, rather than leading resistance to the fighters. They too were saving their precious skins for future battles against international terrorism. The result that time was the loss of more than 50 lives, and a further boost for the resistance fighters’ self-confidence.

Finally we come to Beslan, where brutes planted explosives around small children and demanded an end to the accursed war in Chechnya. What should Zyazikov, Alkhanov, and the redoubtable Ramzan Kadyrov – responsible for dealing with terrorism in their territories, who had given Putin every assurance that the enemy would never pass – have done on that first morning of September 1? They, along with Maskhadov, whose name was being bandied about by the brutes, should have been standing there in the school and, with all the means at their disposal, without attempting to haggle over guarantees of their personal safety, should have tried to talk these brutes, whom they themselves had created, into releasing the children. Only after that should they have wrangled over who was right and who was wrong.

What happened? Neither Zyazikov, nor Alkhanov, nor Ramzan Kadyrov, nor Maskhadov went anywhere near the school. They bottled out, valuing their own lives above those of hundreds of children. To my mind, in the light of what resulted from the actions of both sets of citizens, the cowards are no better than the criminals.

Clever people say now that it would have been foolish for them to
have rushed to negotiate in Beslan, foolish because it would have meant certain death. Quite possibly. What of it? Those who are guilty have to take responsibility. What actually happened was that innocent children bore the consequences of the cowardice and stupidity of those who, you may remember, chorused at election time, “We take full responsibility on ourselves.”

You will remember too that, before this, the only person in our recent history who decided to save his own skin rather than the lives of women and children was Kadyrov Senior (who was in any case assassinated on May 9 this year). In October 2002, when the terrorists who had occupied the
Nord-Ost
musical announced they were prepared to release 50 women if Akhmat-hadji Kadyrov came to them, he refused. Shortly afterwards, Putin signalled that Akhmat-hadji was his favorite in Chechnya.

Zyazikov, Kadyrov Junior and Alkhanov are all three of them Putin’s current favorites, and they have done exactly the same. The one person who did dare to go in, ex-President of Ingushetia Ruslan Aushev, got the brush-off from the Kremlin. Now the new anti-terrorist initiative consists of allotting each of these cowards a senior officer and 70 special operations troops. That is who will be averting future acts of terrorism.

Except that cowards are incapable of averting acts of terrorism: cowardice is powerless in the face of terrorism. Obviously. Those senior Interior Ministry officers can only serve to preserve the lives of the Big Three the next time the balloon goes up. They will do nothing for the rest of us.

The conclusion is simple: neither Zyazikov nor Alkhanov, nor Ramzan Kadyrov can be allowed to remain in their jobs. It is a death sentence, not for them, but for us. And that is only in the first place. In the second place, what can we oppose to terrorism? How are we to stem the tide of terrorist acts and gradually put an end to them? What we need most is courageous authorities with a transparent plan to counteract terrorism. Then what? What needs to be changed in the North Caucasus to minimise the probability of future terrorist acts?

Here is my proposal. It is the plan of a journalist very critical of much that has been going on in our country during the first term of
Putin’s presidency, and that is still going on now. These are ideas about how it may be possible gradually to regulate the Chechen crisis; and that this crisis is at the root of all that happened in Beslan and immediately before Beslan nobody apart from Putin seems to be in any doubt.

Here is what we should do now about suicide attacks in the North Caucasus; about Maskhadov; about the fact that the ranks of the resistance have been swelling this year more than in any of the previous years of the Second Chechen War; about the detachments of mercenaries active there and in adjacent territories; about the growing numbers of those seeking vengeance for the murder or disappearance of their nearest and dearest; about the unprecedented depravity of the troops; about the federal death squads operating outside the Constitution, persecuting civilians and carrying out extra-judicial executions; about federals who “wage war” only for the statistics, for combat premiums, for rank, decorations, and not in order to seek out and take out outlaws; about the absolute corruption of the Kadyrov regime, supported by the Kremlin and hated by the population; and as a result, about the level of distrust of the federal authorities among all sections of Chechen society, which today is completely off the scale.

What gives me the right to pronounce on this and to propose a plan? Only my experience of working in Chechnya over many years. This is, of course, a journalist’s experience, which consists mainly of constant meetings with people at every level of Chechen society: with those who are pro-federal, and those who are anti-federal; with those active in the resistance, and their opponents; with children and young people, old people, and women; with Kadyrovites, and militiamen; with special operations troops, and Kadyrov’s bureaucrats; with mullahs and muftis, and with everybody else.

My job has been to go from one village to another, from one town to another, and to ask, and ask, and ask; to try to understand what moral code people live by, what they will settle for, and what they hold unacceptable.

In other words, this journalist’s work has been conducting social surveys, month after month, since the summer of 1999, in all the
towns and villages of Chechnya about the crucial topic of what needs to be done to bring peace there. What part in the process do individuals see themselves playing? What is the future for Chechnya – with Russia or without? If with, then how are we to be reconciled? How are we to be reconciled when Maskhadov has been effectively removed from the equation as a potential negotiator, and it is in any case practically impossible to conduct negotiations with those who squeezed him out?

Proposals for Settling the Chechen Crisis

1. Set up a Federal Council for Settling the Chechen Crisis (a collegiate, advisory institution). The main prerequisite is that it should contain no representatives of the security ministries or the bureaucracy, because nobody trusts them. There should be only representatives of civil society, chosen from those who have worked in Chechnya as human rights observers throughout the years of the war. It is they who have earned the trust of the population, not those hiding behind the high fences of the government compound in Grozny. It should include public figures in Russia who have consistently opposed the war, whichever way the wind was blowing, have spoken out for a peaceful settlement and a genuine political process (and not the ridiculous elections twice conducted in Chechnya and almost totally ignored by the population).

2. From the moment this Council is established, no political or financial decision relating to Chechnya must be taken without being approved by the Council.

3. The Council should draw up a plan for clear and specific actions – “1, 2, 3, 4,” – and announce it publicly. The aim is for all the points of the plan to be completely transparent to everybody in Chechnya: what will be done and when, with deadlines, in order to settle the conflict.

4. Political negotiations with Maskhadov are essential, even though a majority of the population no longer respects him. It is, nevertheless, necessary to proceed through such negotiations, the aim of which
would be to give Maskhadov an opportunity to apologize to his people and either to depart or answer in accordance with the law for what has happened. This is important not only for him, but also for those who at one time elected him. This is regarded by a majority as the starting point for a credible political process of settlement.

5. A public apology, without fail, by the Federal Center for the civilian victims of the war.

6. A demilitarisation, without fail, of the territory of Chechnya as the first condition of a political settlement. This is impossible without a troop withdrawal. Troops can remain only in their places of permanent deployment for a strictly defined transitional period, with a publicly announced deadline for withdrawal. How the troops are to be withdrawn also needs to be made public, with sanctions for infringement of the conditions.

7. The only way of effecting demilitarisation, given the total distrust between the federal troops and intelligence services, the civilian population and the Kadyrovites is for it to be implemented in the presence of international observers of sufficient status for the population to have confidence in them (the United Nations, OSCE, PACE, etc.). International observers are seen as the only possible guarantors of an even-handed demilitarisation. It would be possible to conduct an enforced disarmament of all who hold firearms illegally, but the population will accept this only if it takes place in the presence of international observers, and without the involvement of federal military personnel.

8. The presence of international observers is essential throughout the transitional period while passions are cooling. A request from the Federal Center to the international community for observers should be seen not as a sign of weakness but of strength.

9. Political leadership during the transitional period should be in the hands of a Russian Governor (the terminology favored by the majority) with the rank of Plenipotentiary Representative of the Russian President for Settling the Chechen Conflict. This could be a Deputy Prime Minister with special powers. The continued presidency of Alu Alkhanov is likely for a time, but retaining Ramzan Kadyrov in any capacity is out of the question. He is reviled.

10. The main criterion for the Russian representative is that they should be a civilian. He or she should be well known and respected by Chechen society, and should have a record as a consistent opponent of the war in Chechnya who has not wavered in response to the “Party line.”

11. It is essential that there should be a Chechen Office of the Russian Representative in Grozny, with Russian and Chechen representatives of civil society well acquainted with the situation and with people’s needs throughout the years of the war. These should be individuals who have worked in the thick of the war as human rights observers, and accordingly have earned popular respect. No bureaucrats.

12. The economic institutions for governing the Republic should be subordinate to the Office of the Russian Representative. Revenues should be under the control of civil society and members of the Federal Council who have an unblemished reputation.

13. A public discussion on the future of Chechnya should be organised gradually. Should it be a parliamentary or a presidential republic? This cannot be decided by Moscow. Decisions from Moscow will not be accepted, and national harmony will be undermined.

14. Organization of a public discussion on the type of constitution people should live by. It is essential to do away openly, through discussion, with the present constitutional “dual power,” where one section of the population does not accept the 1992 Constitution, while another section does not accept the 2003 Constitution. Such a discussion can bring about a normalisation, and genuinely fair and free elections in accordance with a single constitution in which everybody will feel able to participate.

15. Finally, after a few years of this process of peace and demilitarisation, free elections should be held in accordance with the pattern of a presidential or parliamentary republic adopted by a majority of the population.

Other people may have other plans and different arguments to mine. This is all to the good. We had a Constitutional Convention in Russia: let there be a Chechen convention to discuss and debate the options.
There is no time left. We need high-powered brainstorming and soon, without personal ambition, without bragging about who was invited first and who second, and without the usual swinish misconduct from our political elite.