Caucasus Is Threatening To Become Russia's Iraq

Russia has been increasingly frustrated by the situation in the volatile northern Caucasus, where neither warfare nor economic investment has proven effective. Instead, the violent separatist insurgency has spread.

January 25, 2011
Courtesy Of "Deutsche Welle"

With Moscow investigators reportedly searching for a trio of Chechens in connection with Monday's suicide bombing at Domodedovo airport, attention has once again turned to the volatile North Caucasus, where Russia has been battling a stubborn insurgency for years.

The area has been troubled since Russian troops marched into Chechnya in 1994 following the state's unilateral declaration of independence. After the initial war and reoccupation of the capital city Grozny, the soldiers returned in 1999, starting what has become known as the second Chechen war, which ended with Russia's unstable military occupation of the province.

Guerrilla war ensued, and Russia frequently referred to its own "war on terror" - against an insurgency that became increasingly Islamist as the past bloody decade wore on. Finally, in April 2009, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared that that the trouble in Chechnya was over. He appointed the former businessman Alexander Khloponin as a new plenipotentiary to the North-Caucasian Federal District a year later, a new man who arrived offering to give the region an image overhaul.

"The Caucasus is not a nuclear bomb and not a powder keg, on which we sit. It is a strategic territory for Russia," Khloponin told journalists in May 2010. This explained why "that amount of money is invested into Northern Caucasus; and so many armed forces are kept there."

Putin's 'Mission Accomplished' Moment

But the army has remained, and troops have kept getting killed one by one. Analysts say the carrot and stick policy of economic investment and targeted attacks on separatist leaders has merely suppressed rather than eradicated the insurgency.

"I think that over the past year the Kremlin has been experiencing something akin to Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' moment in Iraq," Ben Judah, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), told Deutsche Welle

While Chechnya itself has become relatively peaceful compared to five years ago, violence has stirred in the neighboring regions of Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. "The situation has clearly been increasing in intensity, but also in scope," said Judah. "This has taken the Kremlin by surprise."

Putin declared the Chechen war over nearly two years ago

As a whole, the region is far from pacified. The Russian military has said they're losing as many as six interior ministry troops a day, and last year Russia lost more of her security forces in North Caucasus than the US lost in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, in the first nine months of 2010 the number of attacks linked to separatist violence quadrupled to 352 compared to the previous year.

Economic Investment Lost To Bribery

Khloponin's drive to promote investment in the region is therefore coming under increasing doubt. Uwe Halbach, researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), thinks the airport bombing will not do his cause much good. "This well-meaning reform strategy is being questioned more and more," he told Deutsche Welle. "In the light of the precarious security situation in the region, companies that support tourism in North Caucasus will lose confidence."

It is almost impossible to say which of Russia's many problems is the worst. On a basic level, Judah believes Russia's endemic corruption is compromising security for its population. "According to Transparency International, Russia is as corrupt as Congo or Papua New Guinea," he said. "The fact that the state is increasingly corrupt means that the state isn't functioning efficiently, and is exposing normal Russians to dangers."

"The latest estimate is that bribes swallow up to 20 percent of the entire Russian GDP," Judah added. This is clearly also affecting North Caucasus. "The Russian government is always announcing that large amounts of funds will be dispatched to the region," said Judah. "But the question is, with corruption, how much is actually getting there?"

"Even though corruption is such a problem in Russia anyway, there's almost no region in Russia that is so affected by corruption as North Caucasus," agreed Halbach. But this is just one of many problems. "It's everything," the researcher continued. "It's the state of the regional authorities, the official security organs and the government organs. There's Islamist mobilization, there are mafia organizations. There are just so many different sources of violence."

Russian investment in the region has failed to buy stability

All these factors fuel separatist groups. "Human rights abuses, poverty, economic difficulties, and the fact they don't see themselves as being control of their own destiny. All these things foment separatism," said Judah. On top of this, "there are large ethnic tensions in Russia, which cause a lot of discontent in the Caucasus region. People in Moscow call people from the Caucasus 'blacks.'"

Degrees Of Separatism

The complexity of the discontent in the region is reflected in the way separatist impulses are expressed. The situation in North Caucasus is a lot more complex than is perhaps appreciated in the rest of the world, or even in Moscow. No single separatist group holds sway - while jihadism has certainly grown over the past few years, Islamic extremism is far from being the dominant rallying point for disgruntled people in the area.

"It depends who you mean by separatist," said Judah. "There are people who would like the region to have more autonomy, but are not willing to risk their lives or their livelihoods for it. Then you have people who used to be separatist, when they were young, or when the situation was different, but who are now making money out of Russian investment in the region. Then you have people who will help separatists without being directly involved, then you have a variety of separatist splinter groups - some Islamic extremist, some more nationalist."

The two civil wars in Chechnya have left a legacy of hatred that Russia's economic policies in the region, hamstrung by corruption, have done little to assuage.

Author: Ben Knight
Editor:  Rob Mudge

All Roads Lead To The Caucasus

Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia

By Eric Walberg
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Mar 10, 2010, 00:22
Courtesy Of The Online Journal

The Russian Federation republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, North Ossetia and Ingushetia have experienced a sharp increase in assassinations and terrorist bombings in the past few years which have reached into the heart of Russia itself, most spectacularly with the bombing of the Moscow-Leningrad express train in January that killed 26.

Last week police killed at least six suspected militants in Ingushetia. Dagestan has especially suffered in the past two years, notably with the assassination of its interior minister last June and the police chief last month. The number of armed attacks more than doubled last year. In February, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev replaced Dagestan president Mukhu Aliyev with Magomedsalam Magomedov, whose father Magomedali led Dagestan from 1987-2006. Aliyev was genuinely popular, praised for his honesty and fight against corruption, but was seen as too soft on terror.

President Magomedov has vowed to put the violence-ridden region in order and pardon rebels who turn in weapons.”I have no illusion that it will be easy. Escalating terrorist activity in the North Caucasus, including in Dagestan, urges us to revise all our methods of fighting terror and extremism.” He vowed to attack unemployment, organised crime, clan rivalry and corruption.

Violence continues to plague Chechnya as well. Russian forces have fought two wars against separatists in Chechnya since 1994, leaving more than 100,000 dead and the region in ruins, inspiring terrorist attacks throughout the region. Five Russian soliders and as many rebels were killed there at the beginning of February. According to theLong War Journal, in February, Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) killed a key Al-Qaeda fighter based in Chechnya, Mokhmad Shabban, an Egyptian known as Saif Islam (Sword of Islam), the mastermind behind the 6 January suicide bombing that killed seven Russian policemen in Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala. He was wanted for attacks against infrastructure and Russian soldiers throughout Chechnya and neighbouring republics.

Since the early 1990s, militants such as Shabban have operated from camps in Georgia’s Pansiki Gorge, and used the region as a safe haven to launch attacks inside Chechnya and the greater Caucasus. The FSB said Shabban “masterminded acts of sabotage to blast railway tracks, transmission lines, and gas and oil pipelines at instructions by Georgian secret services.”

This is impossible to prove, but Georgia was the only state to recognise the Republic of Ichkeria when Chechens unilaterally declared independence in 1991 and Shabban’s widow, Alla, has a talk show on First Caucasus TV, a station located in Georgia and beamed into Chechnya. Interestingly, from 2002-2007, more than 200 US Special Forces troops were training Georgian troops in Pansiki, though neither the Americans nor the Georigans were able to end the attacks on Russia.

Medvedev said last month that violence in the North Caucasus remains Russia’s biggest domestic problem, arguing that it will only end once the acute poverty in the region and the corruption and lawlessness within the security organs themselves are addressed. He has undertaken an ambitious reform of security organisations and the police throughout Russia with this in mind.

Sceptics may point to the parallel between the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and Russian policy in the north Caucasus. Yes, there is a Russian geopolitical context, but the comparison is specious. These regions have been closely tied both economically and politically to Russia for two centuries, which Abkhazian President Sergei Bagpash shrewdly decided to celebrate last month in order to ensure Moscow’s support.

The patchwork quilt of nationalities of the Caucasus has survived under Russian sponsorship and now has the prospect of prospering if left in peace. Politicians like Bagpash make the best of the situation, as do sensible politicians throughout Russia’s “near abroad.” To alienate or try to subvert a powerful neighbour and potential friend, as does Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, is plain bad politics.

The other Caucasian conflict is the long running tragedy of Nagorno Karabakh, which unlike the other conflicts pits two supposed NATO hopefuls against each other. The war occurred from 1988-94, dating from the dying days of the Soviet Union, when Armenia invaded Azerbaijan, carving out a corridor through the country to seize the mountain region populated for over a millennium largely by ethnic Armenians. A ceasefire was finally achieved leaving Armenia in possession of the enclave and a corridor, together consisting of almost 20 per cent of Azerbaijani territory. As many as 40,000 died, and 230,000 Armenians and a million Azeris were displaced.

A Russian-brokered ceasefire has been followed by intermittent peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by the United States, France and Russia. But it is clear that Azerbaijan will not rest until its territory is returned. “If the Armenian occupier does not liberate our lands, the start of a great war in the south Caucasus is inevitable,” warned Azerbaijan Defence Minister Safar Abiyev in February. “Armenians must unconditionally withdraw from our lands. And only after that should cooperation and peace be established,” said Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev last week. Armenian and Azerbaijani forces are spread across a ceasefire line in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, often facing each other at close range, with shootings reported as common. Last week an Armenian soldier was killed.

Russia, culturally closer to Armenia, is resented by Azerbaijan as biased, and indeed there has been no commitment by any of the peacemakers or Armenia to return the territory. But the playing field changed dramatically after Georgia’s defeat in its war against Russia in 2008, setting in motion unforeseen regional realignments throughout the region.

First was rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, which at first set off alarm bells in Baku, relying as it does internationally on the support of Turkey, which closed its borders with Armenia in 1993 in response to the Armenian occupation. Turkey established diplomatic relations with Armenia last year in keeping with the Justice and Development Party’s “zero problems with neighbours,” but says ratification by parliament and a full border opening will not happen until Armenia makes some concessions to Azerbaijan.

Moscow has also been pursuing a charm offensive with neighbours in recent years, and was successful in getting both Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents to sign the Moscow Declaration in November 2008, though the warring sides subsequently have managed only to agree on procedural matters.

Key to all further developments throughout the region is the role of the US and NATO. Until recently, it looked like NATO would succeed in expanding into Ukraine and Georgia. It is also eager to have Azerbaijan and Armenia join. Not surprisingly, these moves are seen as hostile by Russia. If the unlikely happens, this would mean the US has important influence in all the conflicts in the Caucasus. But would pushing Armenia and Azerbaijan, two warring nations, into the fold help resolve their intractable differences?

Though both have sent a few troops to Afghanistan, the very idea of warring nations joining the military bloc is nonsense, and noises about it can only be interpreted as attempts to curry favour with the world’s superpower. Azerbaijan has much-coveted Caspian Sea oil and gas, but Armenia is Christian and Azerbaijan Muslim, and Armenia has a strong US domestic lobby which will not go quietly into the night. Any move by Washington to meddle in the dispute without close coordination with Moscow is fraught with danger for all concerned -- except, of course, the US.

As an ally to both countries, and with important historical and cultural traditions, Russia remains the main actor in the search for a solution. Including Turkey in negotiations can only improve the chances of finding a regional solution which is acceptable to both sides. Such a solution requires demilitarising the conflict, hardly something NATO is expert at. As both countries improve their economies, and as long as ongoing tensions do not erupt into military conflict, they can -- must -- move towards a realistic resolution that takes the concerns of both sides into consideration.

Since 1991 a new Silk Road has been opened to the West, stretching as it did a millennium ago from Italy to China and taking in at least 17 new political entities. All roads, in this case, lead to the Caucasus, and US-NATO interest in this vital crossroads should surprise no one. US control there -- and in the Central Asian “stans” -- would mean containing Russia and Iran, the dream for American strategists since WWII.

The three major wars of the past decade -- Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) -- all lie on this Silk Road. The US and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance had no business invading any of these countries and have no business in the region today. Rather it is Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, Turkey et alia that must come together to promote their regional economic well being and security.

War breaking out in any one of the Caucasus disputes would be a tragedy for all concerned, for the West (at least in the long run) as much as for Russia or any of the participants. But the forces abetting war are not rational in any meaningful sense of the word. After all, it was perfectly “rational” in Robert Gates’s mind to help finance and arm Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1979. The planners in the Pentagon or NATO HQ argue “rationally” today that their current surge in Afghanistan will bring peace to the region.

And if it fails, at least the chaos is far away. Such thinking could lead them to try to unleash chaos in any of the smoldering and intractable disputes in the Caucasus out of spite or a la General Jack Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 “Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” a film which. Unfortunately, has lost none of its bite in the past four decades.

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at ericwalberg.com.

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Fanning The Flames Of Another Caucasus War

Georgia vs. Russia

By ERIC WALBERG
Weekend Edition
March 5 - 7, 2010
Courtesy Of CounterPunch

Will there be another war in the Caucasus? This is a smoldering issue on more than one front, finds Eric Walberg, in the first of a two-part analysis of the spectre of conflict in this crucial crossroads

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world expected a new era of peace and disarmament. But what happened? Instead of diminishing, US and NATO presence throughout Europe, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Central Asia rapidly increased, and the world experienced one war after another -- in the Caucasus, Yugoslavia , Iraq and Afghanistan , each one hotter and more horrible than the last. And we are far from seeing the end to the savagery now unleashed by the anti-communist jinni.

Though a pokey backwater for the past millennium, the south Caucasus is now a key battleground, the “critical strategic crossroads in 21st century geopolitics”, writes analyst Rick Rozoff, the focus of ambitious energy transit projects and a military corridor reaching from Western Europe to East Asia, controlled (or not so “controlled”) from Washington and Brussel.

Surely peace in this vital region should be a paramount goal for both Russia and the West, for their own reasons -- Russia because, well because it is there and its cultural and economic links are vital to Russia ’s well being. The US, if only to benefit economically, since peace everywhere is a boon to economic well being and logically should be blessed by the world’s superpower, whether or not it is a benevolent one.

But this logic has been betrayed -- egregiously, in the case of US abetting Georgia in its disastrous war against Russia in 2008, less obviously in likely covert US and other involvement in Chechnya and its neighbours, as well as in the Armenia-Azerbaijan stand-off over Nagorno Karabakh.

Topping the list in recent times are Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where firebrand Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili struts and threatens, running from one NATO gathering to another, embracing one US military envoy after another, as he shakes his fist at his northern nemesis and vows to retake his breakaway territories Abkhazia and South Ossetia, now fully fledged republics. This pits a NATO hopeful against a NATO foe, and despite the fact that NATO expressly forbids membership to any country with disputed borders, it continues to vow that Georgia will soon be a full member, a project that can only mean war with Russia.

US encouragement for Saakashvili in his failed 2008 war with Russia was, to put it mildly, an embarrassment for the US and should be a warning to politely distance itself from further abetting a dangerously unpredictable character. Despite the likelihood that Saakashvili’s extreme pro-West policies will be reversed by a future government, the US navy is conducting war exercises at this very moment with Georgia in the Black Sea, and the Pentagon is preparing to build three military bases in Georgia and dispatch of up to 25,000 US servicemen to the country by 2015. It seems the embarrassment is also a “window of opportunity”, a chance to put facts on the ground which a future government would find very difficult to change.

Georgia is a tempting morsel for other reasons. US special envoy to AfPak Richard Holbrooke just last week visited Georgia to arrange transit of arms to his killing fields via Georgia. Saakashvili offered Georgia’s Black Sea ports Poti and Batumi as docks for military supply ships and the country’s airports as refuelling points for cargo planes. “The route to Afghanistan is already used extensively, because almost 80 per cent of cargo which is not going through Pakistan is going through Georgia, and only 20 per cent through Russia,” boasts Alexander Rondeli, president of the Georgian Foundation for Security in International Studies.

Saakashvili is pursuing a propaganda campaign aiming to destabilise the region through direct and indirect provocation of Russia and support of terrorists with the tacit approval of Washington and Brussels. He has launched a Russian-language TV station First Caucasus beamed into South Ossetia, much like Reagan’s TV Marti set up in 1985 for Cubans. He has also reached out to Abkhazians and Ossetians to try to convince them to subvert their current governments and join Georgia.

The idea, according to analyst at the Strategic Cultural Foundation Nicolai Dimlevich, is to foment instability throughout the Caucasus and in Transcaucasia and then call for all the zones of conflict to be passed into UN, EU and/or NATO hands for safekeeping, since Russia would be proven to be incapable of ensuring the security of local populations. In this scenario, the US and NATO “benefit” from war in the region, as it is an opportunity to weaken Russia and extend control over the region. Terrifying thoughts, but unfortunately perfectly “rational”.

The failed war against Russia in 2008 also left behind storm clouds in Saakashvili’s own Tbilisi , where opposition to his reckless political gambits has hardened. Even as Saakashvili blusters, key Georgian opposition figures have been visiting Moscow since late last year, disowning their president’s plans. “We are prepared to receive those, who come not for fighting and trickery, but for making some changes,” Russian Deputy Minister Gregory Karasin told reporters in Geneva recently. Karasin quoted Georgian parliament’s ex-speaker, current leader of the Democratic Movement-United Georgia, Nino Burjanadze: “When Saakashvili made a decision to wage war in summer 2008, I am quoting her ‘he intended to make Russia bend on its knees and to cause tension in relations with Russia, but Saakashvili lost the war and put the country in a tragic situation.’ We want to have open and pleasant relationship with Georgia.”

Former Georgian prime minister Zurab Noghaideli was received by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in December, the first time that the Russian leader openly met with a Georgian opposition leader. He openly advocates cooperation between his Movement for a Just Georgia and United Russia, and has developed close ties with the Union of Georgians in Russia. Noghaideli has repeatedly stated that without a radical change in Georgia’s foreign policy priorities his country’s “destruction will continue”, warning that “there is danger of Georgia’s further dismemberment” if Tbilisi’s current course continues.

“Saakashvili understands that his rule is in danger, and therefore he is prepared to plunge the country into a new war. He prefers to be a president banished from Georgia by Russia than to be banished by his own people,” said Burjanadze, condemning the TV station beamed into Ossetia which features a talk show hosted by the late Chechen rebel leader Dzhokhar Dudayev’s widow. Giorgi Khaindrava, a former Cabinet member and now an opposition leader, said. if the channel devotes coverage to the insurgency in Russia’s north Caucasus, Putin may declare it a terrorist threat and use force to shut it down. “This isn’t just fantasy. It could happen.”

The entire spectrum of Georgia’s politicians agree. Conservative Party leader Kakha Kukava says, “ Russia doesn’t have any strategic plan towards Georgia nowadays. It is in Saakashvili’s interests to provoke Russia and attract international attention to obtain support.” Even “some of the people close to President Saakashvili may also agree, but they can’t say so openly because they’re afraid of him,” asserts Noghaideli.

Perhaps Saakashvili’s bluster is just hot air. But the war exercises with the US and the planned US bases aren’t. Nor is the fact that the south Caucasus has become a transit route for drugs to Europe and Russia. Russian Federal Drug Control Service head Viktor Ivanov said last week that the ports of Batumi and Poti are “the main ones in drug trafficking, and the Georgian city of Kabuleti is one of the key points of trafficking of Afghan heroin.”

Only Saakashvili seems to think it’s possible to reunite the two breakaway regions with Georgia any time soon. For better or worse Abkhazia is ever more securely tied to Russia , as confirmed by President Sergei Bagapsh’s visit to Moscow last month to commemorate 200 years since Abkhazia was absorbed into the Russian empire. Though not Moscow’s favourite in the 2004 elections, Bagapsh has agreed to establish a joint military ground force for the next 49 years and to upgrade an existing Russian base at Gudauta, where 1,700 Russian troops are presently stationed. He also proposed that Abkhazia join the Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan Customs Union even though neither Minsk nor Astana has recognised Abkhazia as a sovereign state. Ironically, says analyst Sergei Markedonov, if even a half dozen European countries were to recognise Abkhazia, “maybe Bagapsh would favour European integration.” Carnegie Moscow Centre analyst Alexei Malashenko suspects that Turkey may set things in motion. “Turkey is ready to establish special relations with Abkhazia.”

The mouse’s defeat in 2008 also was an important incentive for Ukrainians to turn against their Orange revolutionaries last month. Incumbent Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich is merely expressing the will of the people when he dismisses any future move to join NATO and tones down the anti-Russian rhetoric. When Saakashvili goes, a similar move will surely take place in Georgia, as a future president tries to repair relations with Russia, though -- hopes the Pentagon -- leaving by-then existing US bases in place.

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him athttp://ericwalberg.com/