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Today's
Stories
September 14,
2004
Jennifer van
Bergen
What's
Wrong with Torture?
September 13,
2004
Gabriel Kolko
Elections,
Alliances and the American Empire
Phillip Cryan
How Do You Say "Death Squad?": Language in Colombia's
War
Patrick Cockburn
One of Baghdad's Bloodiest Days: "I'm a Journalist! I'm
Dying! I'm Dying"
Noah Leavitt
The War on Civil Liberties
Robert Jensen
Highjacking Catastrophe: Bush, the Neo-Cons and 9/11
Mike Whitney
Alan Greenspan: Fed-Master to the Wealthy
John Chuckman
Stop Talking About the "Election"
Mike Burke
Kerry/Edwards Website Censors Discussion of Israel/Palestine
Issues
CounterPunch
Wire
The Quotations of David Cobb: "I Don't Care How Many Votes
I Get"
Website of the Day
Keep It In Your Pants: the Bush Plan to Combat Teen Promiscuity
September 11
/ 12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Swatting
at Flies
Fred Gardner
Yet Another Prozac Scandal
Saul Landau
When Our Assassins Go Free
Jennifer Van Bergen
How to Beat Bush: a Simple Strategy for the Average American
Roger Burbach
/ Jim Tarbell
The Real Dead Enders: Iraq and the Crisis of Empire
Christopher Reed
9/11 in an Historical Context: a Minor Event When Compared to
Worldwide War Casualties
Francisc Catalin
An ABC of American Interventions
Carl Estabrook
Big Science and Government Terror
Bernard Chazelle
Anti-Americanism: a Clinical Study
Sharon Smith
Third Party Blues
Dave Lindorff
Perhaps This Time We're the Silent Majority
Mike Whitney
Fallujah: an Iraqi Beslan?
Frederick B.
Hudson
Their Sons Perished in the Flames, But Not Their Faith
Mickey Z.
Round Up the Usual Suspects: a Look Back at 9/11
Ron Jacobs
Redneck Music for the New Century
Greg Moses
Soap Opera Moments in Texas School Funding Trial
Benjamin Dangl
/ Andrew Kennis
An Interview with Leslie Cagan
Poets Basement
Del Papa, Albert, Gelman
September 10,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Disappointment
at Samarrah?
Michael Donnelly
Democrats v. Democracy
Alan Farago
Mosquitoes in a Hurricane
Doug Giebel
Karl Rove's Terror Playbook
Mike Whitney
Bob Graham's Political Tsunami
David Domke
God's
Will, According to the Bush Administration
September 9,
2004
Joe Bageant
Karaoke
Night in Bush's America
Ed Kinane
Abducted in Baghdad
Peter Bohmer
The Cuban Revolution: Present and Future
Todd May
The Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution
Jeremy Scahill
The New York Model: Indymedia and the Text Message Jihad
Joshua Frank
Green House Party Gasses
Fran Shor
The Crisis in Public Dissent: When Protest is Considered a Terrorist
Act
Patrick Cockburn
Welcome
to the Dirtiest City in the World: Despair in Baghdad
Website of
the Day
Liberty Street Protest: No to War at Ground Zero
September 8,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
This
Doesn't Smell Like Victory: A War on Two Fronts in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush Confuses; Kerry Mute: Spinning 1000 Dead
Bulent Gokay
Russian and Chechnia After Beslan
Lisa Viscidi
Land Reform and Conflict in Guatemala
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Byrd's Eye View
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan: American's Drug Colony
Stan Goff
Body
Count: 1001
Website of
the Day
Bush and the Love Doctors
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 7,
2004
Diane Christian
Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker
Joshua Frank
Greens
Unravel from Within
Patrick Cockburn
Fallujah
Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000
Ron Jacobs
Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men"
Chris Floyd
Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed
Dr. Carol Wolman
No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade
John Ross
The
Politics of Darkness North / South
September 6,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
An
Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted
For Taft-Hartley?
Ralph Nader
The
Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for
Working People
Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
September 14,
2004
The Problem
of Chechnya
European
Islam & the Caucasian "War on Terrorism"
By
GARY LEUPP
Europe (Europe proper, the geographer's
Europe) is an odd thing, curiously shaped and conceptualized
since Herodotus invented it as the object of Persian invasion
2500 years ago. As the concept grew, Europe came to extend from
Viking-settled Iceland in the mid-Atlantic (to the northwest);
to the Iberian peninsula (abutting Africa in the southwest);
and from the Kara Sea and the upper extremity of the Urals (in
the northeast), down the mountain range to the Ural River, which
avoiding all but a small slice of (Asian) Kazakhstan, defines
Europe to the Caspian Sea. Thence the borderline straddles the
Caucasus Mountains, from Baku on the Caspian to the Black Sea
coast and onto the Crimean Peninsula, making the Caucasus the
southeastern corner of the European continent, at least the European
continent of the stickler academic. (Some place the Caucasian
countries in the Middle East as well as Europe, rather like geographers
count Vietnam alternately as an East Asian and Southeast Asian
country.)
Actually, no Europe
makes sense as a "continent," if the latter term is
to claim any consistency or analytical utility. Europe is not
surrounded by oceans, as are normal continents (Africa, North
America, South America, Australia and Antarctica)---and as Asia
would be if we simply included Europe, as Nietzsche once suggested,
"as a peninsula of the greater Eurasian super-continent."
Continental Europe is the invention of people who wanted to be
as special, and separate as oceans can make you, but lacking
the eastern ocean which ought to be there to validate continental
pretensions. South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh),
surrounded by the Indian Ocean and Himalayas, could make an equally
valid case for continent-hood. The concept is ultimately arbitrary.
But back to the southeastern
corner of this imagined Eurocontinent: the Caucasus. "Caucasian"
is of course often used as a synonym for "white" (as
in white people), and has been used in that sense since
pioneer ethnologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, in 1775, pronounced
Caucasians (supposedly descended from Noah's son Japeth after
the Ark landed on Mt. Ararat following the Flood) the "most
beautiful race of menthe primeval type [from which] others divergewhite
in color, which we may fairly assume to be the primitive color
of mankind" But white folks flattered by Blumenbach's pseudo-science,
and folks in general outside the region, have little knowledge
of this part of Europe. I can think of various reasons why this
unawareness is unfortunate:
(1) the Caucasus is a key site
of Russian-U.S. contention concerning the construction of oil
pipelines from the Caspian oilfields (in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan,
and Azerbaijan) to Black Sea and Mediterranean ports;
(2) it is a maze of new, weak
nations with vigorous secessionist movements;
(3) it is a region of centuries-old
Muslim communities, from which some "Islamic extremist"
trends have emerged;
(4) it has, since the deployment
of U.S. forces in the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia in 2002, and the
announcement of Russian President Vladimir Putin around the same
time that Chechen rebels are al-Qaeda-like terrorists, been posited
as a major theater in the "War on Terror;" and
(5) given its record, the U.S.
government might do something very brutal and very stupid in
the region. So one should pay attention. To understand "ethnic
conflict" in this area in the context of big-power rivalry,
one should brief oneself on the basics.
Compare
the Balkans
The Caucasus embraces southern
Russia (referring to the zone between the Black and Caspian Seas),
and the three nations of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. This
region is culturally linked to the west and north by Orthodox
Christianity (kindred Russian, Georgian and Armenian varieties),
and to the east by Islam (a legacy of past encounters between
Persians and Turks and the local peoples). In this mix the Caucasus
resembles the Balkans, where you have one more or less Muslim
nation (Albania, where religious practice was banned for decades
but which is officially now 70% Muslim); an unusually-constructed
Bosnia-Herzegovina in which about 40% of the population (not
all the Bosniaks) embrace Islam with varying degrees of interest;
and the de facto NATO protectorate of Kosovo, which is
about 90% Albanian Muslim. There are also longstanding Muslim
minorities in Macedonia (29%), Bulgaria (12%) and elsewhere in
the Balkans. The collapse of the Soviet bloc, the implosion of
neutral "socialist" Yugoslavia involving catastrophic
ethno-religious strife, and fall of the idiosyncratic Hoxhaite
regime in Albania brought Balkan Muslims onto the world stage,
as recipients of religious proselytization (by Arab "Wahhabis"
in particular, backed up by Saudi largesse) and as the beneficiaries
(at least short term) of US-NATO protection against the vilified
Serbs and Croatians.
In the Balkans, Washington
postures as the great friend of the Muslim Bosnians and Kosovars,
although its position is fraught with contradictions. U.S. acquiescence
to Helmut Kohl's reunited Germany, which unlike the U.S. State
Department championed an independent Slovenia in 1990, contributed
to the disastrous dismantling of the Yugoslav state. (This produced
much ethnic conflict, including what some term the "Bosnian
holocaust.") The U.S., having labeled the Kosovo Liberation
Army "terrorists" in 1999, made common cause with the
Kosovar Albanians against a Serbian foe whose atrocities were
wantonly exaggerated to justify the bombing of Milocevic's Yugoslavia.
The Russians meanwhile posture as friends of the Serbs and other
Slavs aggrieved by Washington policy.
Across the Black Sea from the
Balkans, in the Caucasus, we find Armenia, ethnically homogeneous
but abetting an Armenian secessionist movement within the Armenian-peopled
Nagorno-Karabakh region of neighboring Azerbaijan. Armenia has
occupied 16% of Azeri territory since 1994. 94% of the population
of Azerbaijan are Azeri, a Muslim Turkish people. (That's seven
million Muslims, double the number of Albanian Muslims; hence
if Azerbaijan is in Europe, it is the largest European Muslim
country.) Fellow Azeris live across the border with Georgia;
5.7% of Georgia's 4.69 million people (668,000) live in the Adhzaria
region. In Abkhazia, in the north along the Black Sea, live an
additional 85,000 to 100,000 Muslims speaking a Causasian language
distantly related to Georgian. Altogether 11% of Georgia's population
(over half a million) is Muslim. About 4% of the population of
Armenia are Kurds, mostly adherents of the Yezidi faith, which
reveres the Prophet Mohammed but is not commonly regarded as
an Islamic sect. So within the southern Caucasus, we have Azerbaijan,
Adhzaria, and Abkhazia as Muslim zones. In the northern (Russian)
Caucasus, we have in addition, lined up westward from the Caspian
coast, Daghestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, three republics in
the Russian Federation with predominantly Muslim populations.
Daghestan has about two and a half million people, of whom at
least 90% are Muslim. There aren't good current figures for Chechnya
and Ingushetia, but in 1989, when they were united in the Chechen-Ingush
Autonomous Republic, there were 735,000 Muslim Chechens and 164,000
Muslim Ingush, together 71% of the republic's population (the
rest being mostly Russian).
Bordering Ingushetia is North
Ossetia, a predominantly (80%) Christian republic in the Russian
Federation, with an Ingush minority. (Among the ethnic Ossetians
themselves, some 20% practice Sunni Islam.) Then to the west,
bordering Georgia, are the predominantly Muslim republics of
Kabardino-Balkaria (Kabardins mostly Sunni Muslims, Balkarians
mostly Orthodox Christian) and Karachayevo-Cherkessia, whose
Muslim populations together number maybe a million. In other
words, in the Caucasus you have in addition to the seven or eight
million Azeri Muslims, four or five million other Muslims, living
in historically Muslim districts in the Christian-majority behemoth
that is Russia, and in the ancient Christian land of Georgia.
Some of these Muslims, since
the breakup of the Soviet Union, have become involved in violent
secessionist movements. Moscow and Tblisi, who have differences
between themselves, have both become inclined since 9-11 to depict
their response to such movements as counter-terrorist in
character, to represent the secessionists as ideological soul-mates
of al-Qaeda, and to manipulate the "War on Terror"
paradigm to justify their repressive measures and to even threaten
"pre-emptive" actions. Putin like Bush vows to strike
at terrorists "wherever they may be" (which might mean,
say, striking at Chechens in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia). Thus
in the Caucasus, the implosion of the USSR, like the implosion
of Yugoslavia in the Balkans, produces a welter of nationalist
strivings, coupled with long-dormant religious sensibilities,
that both the hyperpuissance U.S. and the weakened regional
hegemon Russia seek to exploit. They do so now in the context
of Bush's eternal war project, which exploits anti-Islamic sentiment
in the U.S. (drawing especially on the most ignorant varieties
of Christian fundamentalist intolerance), even as the administration
insists before the global audience that the U.S. respects
Islam as "a religion of peace." Putin, powerless to
prevent the U.S.'s projection of power into formerly Soviet territory
from Central Asia to Georgia, applies an "If you can't beat
'em, join 'em" policy, depicting his own measures against
unruly Muslims in Russia as part of the global Terror War.
Chechnya
Of Muslims seeking independence
from Russia, the Chechens receive the most attention. Their secessionist
movement has been the bloodiest in the region, and exacted a
most grotesque toll on Russians, in particular, from the Caucasus
to Moscow. The small Chechen homeland has had a very bad press,
internationally, and most Americans who've heard of Chechnya
no doubt by this point associate its people with Islamic terrorism.
The recent school hostage episode in Beslan, in Russia's North
Ossetia, presented the world with the most nightmarish spectacle:
a school commandeered, children specifically targeted,
seized, terrified, shot in the back as they attempted to escape.
About 330 Christians, half of them kids, killed
by Muslims from Chechya, and the adjoining Muslim republic
of Ingushetia, and (if one believes an early Russian report uncorroborated
by reporters) Muslim Arabs. (I seriously doubt any Arab
participation, simply because it too obviously serves Putin's
wish to depict his repression of the Chechen independence movement
as part of the global Bush-war project targeting Arabs.) Anyway,
a horrible, unforgivable scenario, which some may see as Russia's
9-11.
One might suppose that, as
Putin seeks to link Chechen rebels to al-Qaeda, the U.S. would
support the Russian leader in his moves against Chechen separatism,
rather as it endorses every single move the Likud regime in Israel
takes against the cause of the Palestinians (a "terrorist"
cause to the Likudists in the Bush administration), or that President
Arroyo in the Philippines takes against the Moro. But no,
not quite. Just as Washington found it useful to validate Bosnian
and Kosovar nationalism in the Balkans (entrenching its expanding
NATO-self into what was once proudly non-aligned European territory),
so it has (under the Clinton and Bush administrations alike)
found it useful to promote Muslim separatisms in southern Russia,
to better destabilize the Russian Federation. Why? Because Russia
seeks to thwart U.S. oil pipeline ambitions and the U.S.'s general
pursuit of geopolitical advantage in the Caucasus. Ruling circles
in both the U.S. and Russia are acting rationally in pursuit
of their ends. Those anti-people ends are the problem.
As the Soviet Union broke up
in 1991, Chechens, having resented Russian domination for a century
and a half, under the leadership of air force general Dzhokar
Dudayev declared independence. http://www.infoplease.com/spot/chechnyatime1.html
Russian President Boris Yeltsin refused to grant this, and Russian
forces invaded in 1994 to reestablish central government authority.
The invasion met with fierce resistance, prompting a withdrawal
in 1996 and a peace agreement in 1997. A new Chechen government,
headed by Aslan Maskhadov, failed to acquire international recognition,
or to contain rampant crime, corruption, and warlordism. "Islamic
extremism" flourished and spread into neighboring Ingushetia
and elsewhere. In October 1992, Ingush militias clashed with
Russian-backed North Ossetian security forces, paramilitaries
and army troops in the disputed region of Prigorodnyi. This is
978 square kilometers of once-Ingush land given North Ossetia
during the Stalin years. This land dispute is at the heart of
Christian Ossetian-Muslim Ingush animosity, and the Ingush and
Chechens, whose languages are mutually comprehensible, identify
with one anothers' struggles. (The Beslan school seizure was
a joint operation involving Chechens and Ingush militants.)
Thousands of Ingush homes were
destroyed in 1992, and the bulk of the Ingush population in North
Ossetia (46,000 by official Russian count) displaced. Complicating
matters, South Ossetia, in the Republic of Georgia, attempted
to succeed from Georgia and unite with North Ossetia. In response,
the new Georgian government sent in troops, leveling 100 Ossetian
villages and producing 100,000 refugees, many of whom wound up
in Prigordnyi, seizing Ingush homes. (Tit for tat, Moscow tilted
towards Abkhazia as fighting there killed 16,000 and drove 300,000
ethnic Georgians from their homes.)
Following bombings in North
Ossetia that killed 53, an attack on a Russian military barracks
in Daghestan, and the bombing of two Moscow apartment buildings
in1999 that killed over 300, the government of President Putin
resumed the war with Chechnya, forcing Maskhadov underground.
Moscow blamed Chechens for the Moscow attacks, although rebel
leader Shamil Basayev disclaimed responsibility, and skeptics
claim the attacks were staged to justify renewed Russian intervention.
When Putin succeeded Yeltsin as Russian president on December
31, 1999, his military was bogged down in an unwinnable guerrilla
war in Chechnya, and cutting its losses, the Putin administration
simply proclaimed victory, turning over power to a Chechen puppet
(recently assassinated) in 2002. Russian troops remain, harassed
by forces loyal to Basayev, whom Moscow says it knows "for
certain" was behind the Beslan school attack. (A Russian
daily has claimed that in a message signed by Basayev, he demanded
an end to the war in Chechnya, the withdrawal of Russian troops,
autonomy for Chechnya within the Commonwealth of Independent
States, Chechnya's continued inclusion in the ruble zone, and
CIS peacekeepers for the region.) Some of Basayev's forces, Moscow
claims, operate out of bases in Georgia, and since 2002 Russia
has threatened to take action against Chechen militants in that
country. Washington warns against this.
The Neocons'
Role
For over a decade, U.S. policy
has been to criticize Russian actions against Chechen and Ingush
rebels, while discouraging Russian support for all three separatist
movements in Georgia. In 1999, many key players in the current
administration formed an "American
Committee for Peace in Chechnya" (ACPC), whose membership
roster includes omnipresent neocon operator Richard Perle, Elliott
Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, Elliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Frank Gaffney,
Glen Howard, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Bruce
Jackson, James Woolsey, and Caspar Weinberger. Since 9-11, while
insisting on al-Qaeda links to Muslim terrorism everywhere else
(from the Philippines to Palestine), they have pronounced any
Chechen-al-Qaeda link "overstated." ACPC has successfully
campaigned for the U.S. to provide political asylum to Ilyas
Akhmadov, foreign minister in Maskhadov's toppled regime and
considered a terrorist by Moscow. Bush policy was expressed by
Steven Pifer, deputy assistant secretary of state for European
and Eurasian affairs, in an appearance before the Congressional
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 2003: "[We]
do not share the Russian assessment that the Chechen conflict
is simply and solely a counterterrorism effort. . . . While there
are terrorist elements fighting in Chechnya, we do not agree
that all separatists can be equated as terrorists." According
to John Laughland in the Guardian (Sept. 8), "US
pressure will now increase on Moscow to achieve a political,
rather than military, solution - in other words to negotiate
with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects elsewhere."
Putin's Chechnya war, that is to say, is not, as the Russian
leader wants to paint it, part and parcel of the global War on
Terrorism initially focused on al-Qaeda. It is an ongoing statement
of Russia's still-brutal, dictatorial character, and hence an
encouragement for the Caucasian nations to strengthen ties with
the U.S.
While seeking regime change
throughout the Muslim Middle East, inventing facts to achieve
that end, the Bush administration (pleased with the new U.S.-educated
president Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, which it helped place
in power; pleased to have military forces training troops in
Azerbaijan; grateful to Armenia for its 50 troops in Iraq; planning
on bringing these all into NATO) wants the status quo in the
southern Caucasus (except for the remaining Russian bases in
Georgia, which it wants to replace with its own). It also desires
the advance of Muslim separatism in the northern (Russian) Caucasus.
Should southern Russia decompose into a series of small, weak
nations (from Daghestan to Karachayevo-Cherkessia), this part
of Muslim Europe will fall firmly into the U.S. lap, terrorizing
nobody and happily cooperating with U.S. energy corporations.
This, at least, is the neocon hope, which is why they so embrace,
even after the Beslan attack, what they imagine to be the Chechen
cause. Meanwhile Moscow, repressing Muslim separatism at home,
courts Muslim separatists in Georgia's Adzharia and Abhkazia.
Thus the main issue in the Caucasus is not Islam, or Chechen
terrorism, but geopolitical control, with the U.S. and Russia
competing to depict their competition as a War on Terror.
To this the world should simply
say, with Bertolt Brecht, "The valley to the waterers, that
it yield fruit." (Caucasian Chalk Circle, Act V)
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University,
and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author
of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan;
Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan;
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle
of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial
Crusades.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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