Home > Deadly Stalemate in Chechnya
A staggering series of recent terrorist attacks rooted in the Chechen conflict have been both horrific and remote to most Americans. It’s hard to imagine what the public reaction would have been here if terrorists had seized a school full of children, blown up two passenger planes and set off a deadly suicide bomb outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada. But the Chechen conflict has always seemed to be an internal problem in a rather remote part of Russia that has little impact on the rest of the world. The Russian government, which is both suspicious of external interference and proud, has encouraged that attitude. Unfortunately, it’s wrong.
Terrorism in the 21st century flows across national borders. Chechen extremists learn the techniques of suicide bombing from experts in Afghanistan and the Middle East, and groups like Al Qaeda have been using the suffering of Chechen Muslims as a rallying cry to win new recruits for a global terrorist jihad.
Money and explosives are transferred across the middle of the great Eurasian land mass in ways that Islamist terrorists see as a riposte to the medieval Crusades. It is only a matter of time until the killing itself leaches out of Russia and into the rest of the world.
Chechen hostility to Russia goes back centuries, to the days of tsarist conquest and subjugation. The quarrel turned even more venomous after Stalin deported the entire Chechen population at gunpoint to Central Asia in 1944. Hundreds of thousands of deportees died of cold and hunger. Those who tried to stay behind were executed.
History is no excuse for today’s terrorists to now treat other innocents as inhumanely as Stalin treated that earlier generation of Chechens. What is more understandable and negotiable is the desire of many Chechens to loosen the yoke of Russian rule.
But the terrorists’ tactics harden the feelings of the Russian public, diminish international sympathy for them and make innocent Chechens the target of suspicion and fear.
Yesterday’s botched rescue attempt by Russian forces at the Beslan middle school left at least 200 hostages dead and raised serious questions about President Vladimir Putin’s handling of the crisis.
Moscow has responded to the Chechen issue mainly with force and intransigence. That has been politically popular among a majority of Russians, and it has undoubtedly been satisfying for Mr. Putin to present himself as a resolute, tough leader. The practical consequence, however, has been that an already dreadful problem is now very much worse.
Ten years have passed and thousands on both sides have died since Boris Yeltsin invaded the restive republic, which is largely Muslim, to force it to remain within the Russian Federation. Mr. Putin resumed the war and made it his own. Moscow was sure that its larger armed forces would deliver a quick and decisive victory. Instead, the contest has evolved into a military and political stalemate without any obvious resolution. A bold Russian reach for compromise is now the least bad option, but it is the one Mr. Putin is least likely to employ.
Mr. Putin has successfully routed mainstream Chechen separatists under the republic’s last freely elected president, Aslan Maskhadov, on the conventional battlefield. But that just created an opening for the murderous extremists who have been slaughtering innocent bystanders in recent days.
President Putin has never been strong on diplomatic nuance. But unless he now opens a serious negotiating channel with legitimate Chechen leaders outside the Moscow-backed puppet government, things can only get worse. And if they do, Russia will not be the only nation that pays the price.