Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [128]
My job has been to go from one village to another, from one town to another, and to ask, and ask, and ask; to try to understand what moral code people live by, what they will settle for, and what they hold unacceptable.
In other words, this journalist’s work has been conducting social surveys, month after month, since the summer of 1999, in all the towns and villages of Chechnya about the crucial topic of what needs to be done to bring peace there. What part in the process do individuals see themselves playing? What is the future for Chechnya – with Russia or without? If with, then how are we to be reconciled? How are we to be reconciled when Maskhadov has been effectively removed from the equation as a potential negotiator, and it is in any case practically impossible to conduct negotiations with those who squeezed him out?
Proposals for Settling the Chechen Crisis
1. Set up a Federal Council for Settling the Chechen Crisis (a collegiate, advisory institution). The main prerequisite is that it should contain no representatives of the security ministries or the bureaucracy, because nobody trusts them. There should be only representatives of civil society, chosen from those who have worked in Chechnya as human rights observers throughout the years of the war. It is they who have earned the trust of the population, not those hiding behind the high fences of the government compound in Grozny. It should include public figures in Russia who have consistently opposed the war, whichever way the wind was blowing, have spoken out for a peaceful settlement and a genuine political process (and not the ridiculous elections twice conducted in Chechnya and almost totally ignored by the population).
2. From the moment this Council is established, no political or financial decision relating to Chechnya must be taken without being approved by the Council.
3. The Council should draw up a plan for clear and specific actions – “1, 2, 3, 4,” – and announce it publicly. The aim is for all the points of the plan to be completely transparent to everybody in Chechnya: what will be done and when, with deadlines, in order to settle the conflict.
4. Political negotiations with Maskhadov are essential, even though a majority of the population no longer respects him. It is, nevertheless, necessary to proceed through such negotiations, the aim of which would be to give Maskhadov an opportunity to apologize to his people and either to depart or answer in accordance with the law for what has happened. This is important not only for him, but also for those who at one time elected him. This is regarded by a majority as the starting point for a credible political process of settlement.
5. A public apology, without fail, by the Federal Center for the civilian victims of the war.
6. A demilitarisation, without fail, of the territory of Chechnya as the first condition of a political settlement. This is impossible without a troop withdrawal. Troops can remain only in their places of permanent deployment for a strictly defined transitional period, with a publicly announced deadline for withdrawal. How the troops are to be withdrawn also needs to be made public, with sanctions for infringement of the conditions.
7. The only way of effecting demilitarisation, given the total distrust between the federal troops and intelligence services, the civilian population and the Kadyrovites is for it to be implemented in the presence of international observers of sufficient status for the population to have confidence in them (the United Nations, OSCE, PACE, etc.). International observers are seen as the only possible guarantors of an even-handed demilitarisation. It would be possible to conduct