Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [169]
What are modern Russia’s interests in the territories beyond the Caucasian mountains? What has Putin’s bureaucracy got to fight over in the region? In the first place, Russia wants to strengthen its so-called “Christian (Ossetian) axis” in the Caucasus as a counterweight to its “soft Islamic underbelly” (Chechnya, Ingushetia, Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Dagestan and Adigeya). These axes have a long history and are real enough. There genuinely is a territorial imperative which makes it logical for Russia to focus on South Ossetia, a tiny scrap of land on the other side of the mountains from North Ossetia.
In the second place, Russia has an interest in Abkhazia, a strip of land on the Black Sea coast, which it needs if it is to have overland access to Armenia, the Kremlin’s sole remaining partner in that region (the others all having deserted Russia) where the US does not yet have a strategic presence.
The aims of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are also understandable. They have nowhere else to go. South Ossetia makes no secret of the fact that it would like to be united with North Ossetia, which is impossible without Moscow’s involvement. For its part Abkhazia sees no possibility of returning to the bosom of Georgia and, since it needs someone to snuggle up to, turns to Moscow.
In practice, however, both these conflicts, frozen in Soviet times, have now turned into black holes, and although the political map of the world shows both territories as part of independent Georgia, both Abkhazia and South Ossetia are de facto zones without taxation, without transparent budgets, without legitimate government institutions, without budgetary resources and all the other things which fundamentally differentiate a law-governed territory from a lawless one.
Why does the Kremlin need black holes? For internal puposes, mainly; for a straightforward way of injecting covert funds where they are needed; to facilitate all kinds of plots. Russia’s claims to support the rule of law are just so much hot air. In reality there is still a policy of supporting territories which can be used for injecting or extracting large amounts of money that don’t need to be accounted for. Such zones are needed for covert operations and missions where nobody is accountable to anybody else, or even has to sign a form.
Russian policy continues to be one of cash under the counter. Without it nothing happens. Cash under the counter is a cornerstone of every branch and institution of the Government. Externally supported chaos in place of order and defined norms is essential for such games to succeed.
To have black holes beyond your own borders is extremely convenient, far more convenient than offshore funds, where at any moment somebody may sniff you out and you have to devise elaborate multi-layered structures for purposes of concealment, only increasing the probability that information will leak out. In Abkhazia and South Ossetia nothing like that is needed.
In Soviet times, certain African regimes served this purpose. The Politburo presented them as centers of “national liberation,” pumped in Party funds, and got on with its dodgy financial operations. In Russia Chechnya provided a domestic black hole for a while. The failure to develop a normal banking system there was entirely deliberate, and Chechnya has none to this day. Chechnya, however, is within the Russian Federation and that was a snag. There was always the risk of official inspections, Audit Commissions, even an honest Prosecutor popping up. In any case the appetite of Ramzan Kadyrov and his comrades keeps growing.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia have so far operated without a hitch. You can do many things there which you can’t elsewhere. You can send in money, arms and drugs – and that does go on. You can also pull it back out, and that too occurs. There is no inventorising