halldor
10-31-2002, 01:53 PM
Russia under Siege
(Civil Georgia Oct.30, 2002)Moscow hostage crisis reinforces Russia's
siege mentality and is likely to undermine country's civil
development. This is bad news for its neighbors, and for Georgia in
particular.
Putin's Russia becomes consumed with a spiral of violence in
Chechnya. Fixation on war and revenge is not healthy for any world
power, big or small, but these symptoms can throw a state trying to
break its ties with repressive Communist rule into the abyss of blind
violence against all who look, think or seem different.
President Vladimir Putin says the international terrorism poses a
threat tantamount "to use of the weapons of mass destruction" and
pledges that Russia would respond "proportionally" to this
threat "everywhere where the terrorists, organizers of crimes or
financial and moral backers of them are located." And this is scary.
It is a terrorist trait is to attack indiscriminately and not to shun
the collateral damage. A state, any state, can claim its moral
superiority and the right to prosecute, as it is built on the consent
of the citizens and employs the law, not an intuition or own moral
judgment, to seek and punish criminals.
The recent decisions of the Putin administration have shown that it
is not apt to this task. Dangerously few people, in Russia and
abroad, seem to have shrugged when the Russian security officials
said that 10% casualties among hostages is a "normal worldwide
practice." Even fewer have asked why 100% of the terrorists are dead,
if the gas incapacitated at least some of them.
A habit of sacrificing own citizens to fight the "evil" was a good
old habit of the "Evil Empire." For many in Tbilisi, Georgia, Moscow
siege stroke a painfully familiar note: on 9 April, 1989 the Soviet
special troops used the deadly gas against peaceful demonstration in
the Georgian capital and than denied to name the gas or provide an
antidote to the doctors, thus risking the lives of many more people,
their own citizens. Then, as it was now in Moscow, the military
officials said there was a threat from "separatists" which had to be
countered proportionally.
It seems that the security and police establishment kept their old
habits, ones that should be incompatible with behavior of the
democracy. Ironically, and almost cynically, Anatolii Sobchak was the
chief independent investigator on Tbilisi gas attack. Later, in his
being a mayor of St. Petersburg Sobchak has picked Vladimir Putin to
his administration. But Putin does not seem to have learnt much from
his boss and teacher.
While the human rights and civil implications of the Moscow hostage
crisis are appalling, the military ones are also to be feared. Both
wars in Chechnya, the Moscow hostage crisis, Russia's September
threats to attack Georgia also showed that the country simply does
not have a military surgical strike capability.
When Putin orders his Chief of Staff to "revise" the plans for
applying the military force against the terrorist
threat "everywhere," he attempts to reorient a starving goliath of
the military machinery, bred for fighting the world war, against a
scattered, small target. Putin knows the goliath would hit and is
likely to miss. What we can be sure of is that the collateral
casualties would not be shunned.
MP Vladimir Zhirinovski, "a parrot of the Kremlin" as one daily
newspaper called him, said Russia should compile its own list of
the "axis of evil" and named Georgia as a front-runner on that list.
Georgian politicians were quick to voice (and quite rightly) their
sympathy to those under siege. But they were even quicker to
sympathize with actions of the Russian government to solve the
crisis, and to marginalize "inevitable," as President Eduard
Shevardnadze put it, casualties. And that is, I would suggest,
potentially damaging policy of appeasement.
Georgia, already short-listed for the "preemptive" strike by the
Russian militaries, should be at the forefront of the states
concerned by Russia's growing siege mentality.
The reports are already coming in that the Russian police started to
take the fingerprints of all Chechens in Russia. Some Russian
security officials suggested opening of the "anti-terrorist centers"
in each and every city, primarily tasked with "sweeping" the illegal
immigrants - and the Georgian government knows many of them would
prove Georgian citizens. Pogroms against the "Persons of Caucasian
Nationality" are also far from rarity.
Growing controls over free media and free speech, proven use of the
deadly force against own citizens in Chechnya and in Moscow, direct
threats of the military strikes should not leave any illusion in the
minds of the Georgian politicians and the society that appeasement
would work.
There is a need for the Georgian state to take preventive political
measures for protecting its own citizens in Russia, its own statehood
and its future, by doing everything in its force to prevent emergence
of the giant state predisposed to use force at any occasion at its
very borders.
Instead of appeasement, it is vital to start an active and
constructive work with the European states and institutions to
explore the ways for peaceful solution in Chechnya, to weaken the
block on freedom of speech and information in Russia.
Simply put, this is in Georgia's national interest, even if it goes
against the mainstream, both in Russia and worldwide.
By Jaba Devdariani, Civil Georgia
(Civil Georgia Oct.30, 2002)Moscow hostage crisis reinforces Russia's
siege mentality and is likely to undermine country's civil
development. This is bad news for its neighbors, and for Georgia in
particular.
Putin's Russia becomes consumed with a spiral of violence in
Chechnya. Fixation on war and revenge is not healthy for any world
power, big or small, but these symptoms can throw a state trying to
break its ties with repressive Communist rule into the abyss of blind
violence against all who look, think or seem different.
President Vladimir Putin says the international terrorism poses a
threat tantamount "to use of the weapons of mass destruction" and
pledges that Russia would respond "proportionally" to this
threat "everywhere where the terrorists, organizers of crimes or
financial and moral backers of them are located." And this is scary.
It is a terrorist trait is to attack indiscriminately and not to shun
the collateral damage. A state, any state, can claim its moral
superiority and the right to prosecute, as it is built on the consent
of the citizens and employs the law, not an intuition or own moral
judgment, to seek and punish criminals.
The recent decisions of the Putin administration have shown that it
is not apt to this task. Dangerously few people, in Russia and
abroad, seem to have shrugged when the Russian security officials
said that 10% casualties among hostages is a "normal worldwide
practice." Even fewer have asked why 100% of the terrorists are dead,
if the gas incapacitated at least some of them.
A habit of sacrificing own citizens to fight the "evil" was a good
old habit of the "Evil Empire." For many in Tbilisi, Georgia, Moscow
siege stroke a painfully familiar note: on 9 April, 1989 the Soviet
special troops used the deadly gas against peaceful demonstration in
the Georgian capital and than denied to name the gas or provide an
antidote to the doctors, thus risking the lives of many more people,
their own citizens. Then, as it was now in Moscow, the military
officials said there was a threat from "separatists" which had to be
countered proportionally.
It seems that the security and police establishment kept their old
habits, ones that should be incompatible with behavior of the
democracy. Ironically, and almost cynically, Anatolii Sobchak was the
chief independent investigator on Tbilisi gas attack. Later, in his
being a mayor of St. Petersburg Sobchak has picked Vladimir Putin to
his administration. But Putin does not seem to have learnt much from
his boss and teacher.
While the human rights and civil implications of the Moscow hostage
crisis are appalling, the military ones are also to be feared. Both
wars in Chechnya, the Moscow hostage crisis, Russia's September
threats to attack Georgia also showed that the country simply does
not have a military surgical strike capability.
When Putin orders his Chief of Staff to "revise" the plans for
applying the military force against the terrorist
threat "everywhere," he attempts to reorient a starving goliath of
the military machinery, bred for fighting the world war, against a
scattered, small target. Putin knows the goliath would hit and is
likely to miss. What we can be sure of is that the collateral
casualties would not be shunned.
MP Vladimir Zhirinovski, "a parrot of the Kremlin" as one daily
newspaper called him, said Russia should compile its own list of
the "axis of evil" and named Georgia as a front-runner on that list.
Georgian politicians were quick to voice (and quite rightly) their
sympathy to those under siege. But they were even quicker to
sympathize with actions of the Russian government to solve the
crisis, and to marginalize "inevitable," as President Eduard
Shevardnadze put it, casualties. And that is, I would suggest,
potentially damaging policy of appeasement.
Georgia, already short-listed for the "preemptive" strike by the
Russian militaries, should be at the forefront of the states
concerned by Russia's growing siege mentality.
The reports are already coming in that the Russian police started to
take the fingerprints of all Chechens in Russia. Some Russian
security officials suggested opening of the "anti-terrorist centers"
in each and every city, primarily tasked with "sweeping" the illegal
immigrants - and the Georgian government knows many of them would
prove Georgian citizens. Pogroms against the "Persons of Caucasian
Nationality" are also far from rarity.
Growing controls over free media and free speech, proven use of the
deadly force against own citizens in Chechnya and in Moscow, direct
threats of the military strikes should not leave any illusion in the
minds of the Georgian politicians and the society that appeasement
would work.
There is a need for the Georgian state to take preventive political
measures for protecting its own citizens in Russia, its own statehood
and its future, by doing everything in its force to prevent emergence
of the giant state predisposed to use force at any occasion at its
very borders.
Instead of appeasement, it is vital to start an active and
constructive work with the European states and institutions to
explore the ways for peaceful solution in Chechnya, to weaken the
block on freedom of speech and information in Russia.
Simply put, this is in Georgia's national interest, even if it goes
against the mainstream, both in Russia and worldwide.
By Jaba Devdariani, Civil Georgia