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The thoughts of Aslan
Maskhadov
By Liz Fuller
Editor's note:
This
article is based on extensive answers supplied by
Aslan Maskhadov on March 4 to questions submitted
via the Internet by Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty's North Caucasus Service.
Asked about the rationale for the
unilateral ceasefire he declared in January in a
bid to persuade Moscow to agree to unconditional
talks on ending the war in Chechnya, Maskhadov
said he believes that Russian President Vladimir
Putin has been "profoundly misinformed" about the
situation in Chechnya by the Russian security
services, top Russian generals, his aides, and
what Maskhadov refers to as the "puppet"
pro-Moscow regime installed in Grozny.
Maskhadov said he thinks that as a result,
Putin's understanding of the situation in Chechnya
"is far from reality". He acknowledged that "there
is a well-established practice in the army of
reporting what your superior wants to hear from
you", and that Russian intelligence probably
operates according to a similar practice. In a
disparaging reference to pro-Moscow Chechen First
Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, for whom
Putin apparently has considerable respect,
Maskhadov asked rhetorically, "What reliable
information can a traitor who has only completed
two years of high-school education provide?"
Maskhadov went on to say that he believes
a 30-minute face-to-face "honest dialogue" with
Putin would be sufficient to explain to the
Russian president what the Chechens want, and thus
to end the war. He added that the Chechens for
their part have no idea what Russia wants from
Chechnya. Maskhadov proposed taking as a basis for
the proposed talks the twin issues of security
guarantees for the Chechen people and a Chechen
commitment to respect Russia's regional and
defense interests in the North Caucasus.
Asked whether the ceasefire he proclaimed
in January was observed, Maskhadov said, "I do not
think there are detachments on Chechen territory
that would ignore my orders, or in Ingushetia,
Daghestan, and Kabardino-Balkaria ... All military
detachments on the territory of Chechnya and
neighboring republics are subordinate to the
leadership of the Chechen resistance."
That assertion is an implicit rejection of
Russian officials' claims that most fighters in
the North Caucasus, including the militants
operating in republics bordering on Chechnya, take
their orders not from Maskhadov but from radical
field commander Shamil Basaev.
Maskhadov
added, however, that he issued a caveat to field
commanders that despite the unilateral ceasefire
they were free to resort to force to protect
themselves, which they did when surrounded in the
suburbs of Grozny on February 21. On that
occasion, the Chechen fighters escaped, but the
Russian forces sustained numerous casualties upon
entering a mined building - casualties that could,
Maskhadov argued, have been avoided if "the
politicians had enough sense to comprehend one
thing - that this conflict cannot be solved by
force".
Maskhadov went on to discuss the
geographical expansion of hostilities since the
second Chechen war began in the fall of 1999. He
disclosed that on the eve of hostilities he
appealed to the leaders of all North Caucasus
republics, convinced that if they presented a
united antiwar front, Moscow would not dare to
launch a new incursion, but only former Krasnodar
Krai governor Nikolai Kondratenko and "respected"
Ingushetian president Ruslan Aushev promised their
support.
Maskhadov said he waited in vain
for three hours in Aushev's office for Putin -
then Russian prime minister - to arrive for talks,
but Putin telephoned and said that president Boris
Yeltsin had ordered him not to come. Maskhadov
said he believes that was merely an excuse on
Putin's part, and that Yeltsin himself did not
want a second war.
Maskhadov went on to
say that "already at the beginning of this war it
was clear that it was impossible to confine it
within the limits of Chechnya. The same sort of
punitive operations that were launched in Chechnya
also began in Ingushetia, Daghestan, North Ossetia
and Kabardino-Balkaria. It was the Federal
Security Service that inflicted the war on those
republics," not Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda.
Maskhadov said he is certain that "bin Laden
couldn't even find Chechnya on a map".
In
that context, Maskhadov claimed "we were
constrained to broaden the front of military
resistance. On my orders, additional sectors were
established: Ingush, Kabardino-Balkar, Daghestan,
etc amirs [commanders] of these fronts were
appointed, and they are all subordinate to the
military leadership of the Chechen resistance."
This is the first time that Maskhadov has
claimed any personal responsibility for military
operations beyond the borders of Chechnya; in
earlier interviews and addresses to the Chechen
people, for example in June 2003, he explicitly
ordered his subordinates not to engage in
hostilities elsewhere in the Russian Federation.
Maskhadov further defined as the objective
of the ongoing armed resistance "saving our people
from arbitrary Russian reprisals and barbarity",
and he added that "we shall consider we have
achieved that goal when we deprive Russia of the
right to continue killing Chechens with impunity".
Maskhadov said that the Chechen side is ready to
sit at the negotiating table together with "any
international experts" and discuss with Russia the
optimum model for future bilateral relations. In
this context, he pointed to the contradiction
between Russian officials' claims, on the one
hand, that Chechnya is "an internal domestic
Russian problem", and, on the other hand, those
officials' allegations of external involvement in
the form of al-Qaeda.
Invited by RFE/RL to
speculate about Putin's motives for beginning the
war, Maskhadov replied that it is not clear
whether Moscow's priority is to defend Russia's
territorial integrity or to defend Russia's
regional and defense interests. He pointed out
that Chechnya is a relatively small republic
encompassing only 17,000 square kilometers, and
that "while Russia has been at war with Chechnya,
the Chinese have occupied the whole of Primorskii
Krai and Trans-Baikal".
Maskhadov denied
that his January ceasefire offer was prompted by
the abduction of his relatives. Asked how the
situation will develop if peace talks do not take
place in the near future, Maskhadov said, "The war
will continue ... Chechen mujahideen will resist
to the end in this struggle, and the flame of this
conflagration will spread to the entire North
Caucasus." And in seeming contrast to his earlier
prohibition on terrorist acts outside Chechnya and
directed against the Russian civilian population,
Maskhadov continued, "The people of Russia will
experience constant fear of possible retribution
by suicide bombers in revenge for the evil deeds
of the [Federal Security Service] and the federal
forces in Chechnya."
Maskhadov did,
however, admit the possibility that "when the
interests of Western states and those of Russia
collide in the Caucasus, when the leaders of those
Western states comprehend the level of danger to
the entire civilized world that emanates from
Russia, then they will line up and beg us Chechens
to agree to end the war".
Asked about the
West's role, Maskhadov said the West is sitting it
out, playing with Putin and trying to achieve its
own global strategic objectives, and that the
Russian leadership for its part is taking
advantage of Western forbearance to "continue to
commit monstrous crimes on Chechen territory".
Maskhadov dismissed as "risible" the
proposed roundtable on Chechnya to be convened by
the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe's (PACE) rapporteur for Chechnya, Swiss
parliamentarian Andreas Gross. That event is
scheduled for later this month, but the venue
remains unclear. The Council of Europe originally
proposed Strasbourg, but over the past week
several members of the pro-Moscow Chechen
government have insisted that it should be held in
Grozny.
The interlocutors are Russian and
pro-Moscow Chechen officials; Gross tried to
include Maskhadov's representatives, but his envoy
Umar Khanbiev declined to attend. Khanbiev told
the information agency Daymohk on March 2 that
Maskhadov has ordered the Chechen Foreign Ministry
to consider "freezing" all contacts with PACE.
Maskhadov contemptuously dismissed the
various pro-Moscow Chechen "bandit formations"
running loose in Chechnya as "traitors" to the
Chechen cause, adding that this phenomenon dates
back to the 1994-96 Chechen war when mavericks
such as Ruslan Labazanov, Umar Avturkhanov and
Bislan Gantamirov headed such bands. The
difference, according to Maskhadov, is that those
commanders "had brains", the inference being that
Ramzan Kadyrov does not.
Maskhadov
admitted that occasional clashes occurred in
1994-96 between such bands and the resistance
forces (of which he at that time was commander in
chief), and that he personally participated in
such clashes, but that they were never protracted.
He said that "history should teach us" that
Chechens should never fight among themselves, and
he went on to claim that "there is a clear
understanding - and I mean today - how a Chechen
from one side or the other should behave during a
forced clash. Not a single self-respecting Chechen
policeman ... would ever refuse help to the
mujahideen," because those Chechen police know how
the war will end, and that "tomorrow we shall have
to live together".
Maskhadov implied that
Federal Security Service director Nikolai
Patrushev was the "godfather" of the pro-Moscow
Chechen police force and that Patrushev created
that force in the hope of triggering a civil war
in Chechnya - but to no avail.
Copyright (c) 2005, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW,
Washington DC 20036 |
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