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The Russian Federation may
be falling apart -- and its war against Chechnya is showing why. Unfortunately,
most observers of the war in Chechnya miss the larger implications, limiting
their analysis to the struggle for independence of one small region. Moscow
blames radical Islamists for the trouble. Despite the undeniable role of
fundamentalists in the Caucasus, however, Moscow had a greater hand in the
federation's decline than it cares to admit. Russia's latest war with Chechnya
was sparked in August 1999 when radical Islamists, many of whom had infiltrated
from Chechnya, staged uprisings in the neighboring southern Russian republic of
Dagestan. Russian troops were sent and, despite Moscow's reassurances that the
conflict was under control, the operations had evolved by September into the
second full-scale war between Russia and Chechnya in five years. The innumerable
deaths, the relentless bombardment of cities, and the torrent of refugees are
eerily familiar, recalling the horrors of the 1994-96 Russo-Chechen war.
The Russian army -- even
while weakened and demoralized -- has been more successful this time; Russian
officials are proclaiming swift progress. But no real solution -- military or
political -- is in sight. Instead, Russia is drifting back to the hoary Soviet
practice of the big lie. It blames the bombing of marketplaces and civilian
dwellings on Chechen terrorists and "bandits" while praising its own
military for pinpoint strikes that supposedly destroy terrorist strongholds
without hurting civilians. Russian leaders dismiss eyewitness accounts of
civilian casualties as propaganda or as a double standard employed by the West,
fresh from its Serbian war and out to weaken Russia. The Russian news media, too,
like their state-controlled predecessors, are sticking to the official story.
Only the military setbacks that began in mid-January have forced Russian leaders
and the press to be more candid about the extent of Russian losses in the
Chechen war. Nonetheless, honest debate is seldom tolerated, as even prominent
Russian advocates of democracy and reform equate criticism of the war with
disloyalty.
Moscow attributes the
turbulence in Chechnya and Dagestan to external forces -- the bogeymen of
radical Islam and foreign zealots. In doing so, it ignores the country's deeper
afflictions. Russia has forced disparate ethnic groups to live together for
decades but has proven inept at governing its wobbly empire. Now the fighting in
Chechnya is endangering Russia's nascent democracy and dooming its efforts to
make the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) the attractive coalition of
friendly states it needs to be. Short-term Russian military successes will
actually increase the appeal of political Islam as an alternative, given the
heavy toll of Russia's unrestrained campaign on the lives of ordinary people.
HOW THE SOUTH WAS WON It is no accident that the skein of the Russian Federation
should unravel first in the North Caucasus, the bloodiest venue of tsarist
imperial expansion. When Russia's Romanovs tried to conquer it in the nineteenth
century, it took from 1816 to 1856 to subdue the fierce resistance. Thousands of
noncombatants were killed, agricultural land was denied to guerrillas . . .
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