Gwynne Dyer: Chechens are Moscow's enemies, not the world's
"Whether you are in a Moscow subway or a London subway or a train in Madrid or an office building in New York, we face the same enemy," said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, responding to the twin suicide bombings on the Moscow metro system that killed 39 commuters on March 29. And it’s true: the Chechens, the enemies of all mankind, are everywhere these days.
No? That’s not what she meant? Oh, she really meant that Muslims are the common enemy, whether they are Chechen Muslims in Moscow or British Muslims of Pakistani descent in London or Moroccan Muslims in Madrid. That’s a relief. Then all we have to do to be safe is get rid of all the Muslims.
Hang on a minute! This just in! What she really, really meant was that we all face the same enemy, a shadowy network of Islamist extremists who plot terrorist attacks against innocent people, mostly Christians, all around the world. But they aren’t true Muslims, or they wouldn’t do such terrible things. (Neither would true Christians, or true Jews, or true Hindus or Buddhists or Sikhs, which is why the world is so peaceful and so just.)
Okay, I’ll stop now, but do you see why it makes me so cross? A terrible event happens somewhere, and then we have to listen to politicians talk pompous nonsense about it. Terrorism cannot be our common enemy, because it is only a technique. Enemies have to be people—and the people who use terrorist techniques, though some of them may be our enemies, have little in common from one place to another.
The Chechens, who are strongly suspected of being behind the Moscow bombs, are waging a quite traditional colonial struggle for independence. As they are Muslims, they have increasingly adopted the Islamist ideology that is now fashionable in Muslim revolutionary circles: these days they even talk of a “North Caucasian Emirate.” But in practice their sole target remains Russia, the imperial power that oppresses them.
There have never been any Chechen bombs on the London underground, or on the commuter rail network in Madrid, or in office buildings in New York, nor will there ever be. Russia, like Israel, has been remarkably successful over the years in selling other countries on the notion that they must maintain a joint front against “terrorism,” but the fact is that the only terrorist threat either government faces is from its own subject peoples.
Israel obviously has a lot at stake in its quarrel with the Palestinians, since both peoples claim the same land and there isn’t much of it. Russia has land to spare for every imaginable purpose, and there has never been much settlement by ethnic Russians in Chechnya and the other small Muslim republics of the northern Caucasus. They don’t have much economic value, either, so why not just let them go?
The answer you always hear is that it would start the unraveling of the Russian Federation itself. Letting the so-called “Union Republics” (Ukraine, Latvia, Azerbaijan, etc.) go when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 was inevitable, for they already possessed the legal status of independent countries in a voluntary association, and besides they were too big to stop. But the “republics” within Russia itself were a different matter.
Chechnya, which was conquered by Russia in the mid-19th century but rebelled every time the Russian government was weak or distracted, declared its independence in 1991. Moscow rejected the declaration on the grounds that it did not have the right to secede under the old Soviet constitution, and that letting it go would create a precedent for some of the other twenty ethnic republics within the Russian federation to leave as well.
Moscow tried to reconquer Chechnya in 1994-96 in a war that left Grozny, the capital, in ruins, and about 35,000 Chechen civilians dead. The Chechens actually defeated the Russian army, and a ceasefire in 1996 was followed by Russian recognition of Chechen independence in 1997. However, Vladimir Putin reopened the war in 1999, and Chechnya has been back under the Russian heel for the past ten years.
None of this has the slightest relevance to people outside Russia, nor does the anti-Russian terrorist campaign that was the inevitable aftermath of the Chechen defeat. It is as localized as the Basque terrorism that afflicts Spain or the occasional terrorist killings carried out by breakaway, diehard Republican groups in Northern Ireland. And as pointless, for the Chechens, too, have decisively and permanently lost.
All terrorist attacks on civilians are wicked, because they transgress one of the few boundaries that we have managed to place on war. (In fact, all attacks on civilians are wicked, including nuclear war, aerial bombing, and the “collateral damage” that occurs during conventional military operations, but never mind that.) Most wicked of all are attacks that are mere vengeance, after all hope of victory is gone.
That is what the Moscow metro bombings are, and therefore they are doubly to be condemned. But they should not be confused with some vast global terrorist conspiracy, although the Russian government naturally pushes that line. Let us hope that Hillary Clinton was just being polite to her Russian colleague when she took the same line. It would be very bad if she actually believed it.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Comments
10 Comments
An Observer
Mar 30, 2010 at 1:49pm
I suppose that's all well and good if you ignore the ties Chechnyans have to Islamic terrorist organizations around the world. Not quite as localized as you are misrepresenting.
glengyron
Mar 30, 2010 at 4:59pm
Right... so these are good people that blow innocent people up?
The people on the trains weren't agents of the Russian state, they were civilians. They weren't even necessarily Russian civilians.
You take the basic reason for Chechnian separatism and then go way too far.
Strategis
Mar 30, 2010 at 8:33pm
The Russiam government commited countless war crimes in its brutal repression of the Chechnyan independence movement. The near inevitable consequence of decades of brutal war crimes and atrocities is the occasional desperate act of reprisal. But this recent "terrorist attack" is likely the same as most of the others around the world - the work of the Russian state spy and propaganda agency to bolster support for the Putin regime's hardline policies of militarism and state repression.
maxvision
Mar 30, 2010 at 10:52pm
perfect timing for Putin's glorious rise to power for a third term. he can campaign on a platform of destroying uppity caucauses like he did the last 2 times instead of having to answer questions
Ghenghis Khan and his Brother Don
Mar 30, 2010 at 11:12pm
glengyron, did you bother to even read his article?
"All terrorist attacks on civilians are wicked, because they transgress one of the few boundaries that we have managed to place on war. [...] Most wicked of all are attacks that are mere vengeance, after all hope of victory is gone.
That is what the Moscow metro bombings are, and therefore they are doubly to be condemned."
This is hardly an apologetics of the bombings that took place. The point of this article is that it has become fashionable/politically expedient to include any and every such "attack" within some kind of world Islamist conspiracy. By this logic, one would suppose that sooner or later all the recently arrested members of a Michigan militia will be found to have Al Queda links too...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/us/30militia.html?src=me
Be ye a lamp unto thyself
Ghenghis Khan and Don (Brother)
kookykrumbs
Mar 31, 2010 at 1:00am
Where there's smoke... there's Muslims
gilleduc
Mar 31, 2010 at 2:12pm
The misuse of language is a sore point with me also - although many of these groups do exchange ideas and armaments and "use" ideology that is really mythology - their leaders like most public leaders end up doing much that serves their own personal interests more than the "cause" they espouse
Irene
Apr 6, 2010 at 8:27am
Both suicide bombers were NOT Chechen, they are from Daghestan. Yes, both were Muslim but no one is officially blaming Muslims. Common people, Muscovites, Russian - yes, they are nationalistic sometimes but it's not a special case for Chechens.
I don't agree with the author's point that these terrorist are of some special sort, not like IRA, Basques etc. All these monsters are terrorists, - come on, it's ridiculous to call them libertarians or rebels! What liberty do they need? To sell drugs and weapon in their small and miserable countryside? To become a transshipment point for narcomaphia?
I'd be glad if some day all Northern Caucasus republics become "independent". When it happens, all the world will feel how nice it is - to have a permanent base of terrorists, narcodealers, weapon traders just in 3 hours flight from European capitals.
Heightofhate
Apr 12, 2010 at 11:03pm
Here are a few points where the author is terribly wrong or a few things he intentionally didn't mention:
1) There WERE ethnic Russians in Chechnya before the desintegration of the USSR - 36% (yes!) of the Chechnya's population was NOT Chechen.
2) Under Djohar Dudayev, the Chechen separatist and nationalistic dictator, all non-Chechens were forced to leave Chechnya (it's about 300,000 people) leaving all their property behind, about 50,000 were killed by Chechens, raped, enslaved etc.
That was a true genocide of non-Chechens by Chechens from 1991 to 1994, that means BEFORE the very first war started
3) Chechens terrorized all neighbouring Russian regions - the Southern Stavropolye, Daghestan, Ossetia, etc. by robbing people, stealing cars, recketing etc
4) Chechens BECAME INDEPENDENT in 1996 and stayed it till 1999. What did they become? A territory of islamists, with cavemen rules and laws, Shariah, women banned from schools, schools turned into islamistic educational facilities.
5) Chechens continued terrorizing the neighbouring republics, and, finally, in March 1999 kidnapped and killed the Russian ambassador to the Chechen Republic Mr. Shpigun, attacked Russian outposts on Russian-Chechen border in June and July 1999 and eventuelly attacked Daghestan with a force of 4,000 people - led by Basayev and Arab Khattab and that's how the Second War began. It wasn't started by Russians it was a response.
6) Northern Caucasus has a huge economic value - look at its oil, at least! There's wood there, it can become a tourist resort (and is for many Russians a mountain climber worldwide).
We could also say - what economic value is there in Northern Ireland? Why doesn't Britain let it go?...
7) Al-Quaida leaders of non-Chechen descent played and are still playing a huge role in the Chechen islamist movement: Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem known as "Amir Khattab" - a Jordanian Arab with a Canadian passport; Abu al-Walid al-Ghamdi from Saudi-Arabia; Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Saif al-Tamimi from the same country; Abu-Hafs al-Urdani who was called personally by Collin Powell as a threat to the USA with links to Al-Quaida.
And all these guys were commanders and major financier of the Chechen movement!
With one word, this journalist, Gwynne Dyer, is either A LIAR or AN IGNORANT, which is both inexcusable for a journalist.
Mercer
Feb 13, 2011 at 9:09am
@Heightofhate, you have no idea what's happening around the world, this long comment of yours is a imaginary information. Did you ever know that every president Chechnya had, was put by Russian Federation, Dudayev was marionette, a plan to destroy the republic. Chechen people never did those nasty stuff that you wrote, we always was a reach country, never evaded any lands of others, only protecting motherland. This war lasts already 400 years, and all we are asking is a freedom, all this bombing, killing, Is just a Revenge. After planned war, Russia was supposed to give the compensation, somehow rebuild the city, let people eat something. What did they do? They left us dying! What would you do if you were in that kind of situation? There is no other chance than robbing and criminality. in your opinion no4, whats wrong if people follow the religion? (Woman banned from schools) dont write that nonsense stuff, it just makes people laugh. How can you talk about tourism and economy when the country is fully controlled by russia and doesnt care for it, thats a stupid suggestion.
Gwynne Dyer is not a LIAR or IGNORANT, he writes a pure Truth and people who knows history of Chechnya will admit it. Stop watching TV news and commenting WHAT actions were made, think about WHY were they made.
Im proud to be Chechen the freedom fighter.