Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [81]
“His very closest circle?”
“No, only those who see that deserting him will leave them facing prison. Not one of them will be accepted back in the forests now. His closest circle will be the first to betray him. That’s the kind of people he has lured to his side.”
So, what change has there been in the situation in Chechnya at the end of this summer? The declaration of the amnesty and the killing of Maskhadov’s successor as President of Ichkeria, Abdul Khalim Sadulayev, and of Basayev which preceded it suddenly dispelled the inertia. These events prompted people to think about where they were, about the wider picture in Chechnya, what it might lead to, and who was who. That is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.
There is change also in the fact that, where previously almost everyone in Chechnya believed that in time Ramzan would be removed by those who had raised him up – “the Russians” – those in the security forces, and I emphasise that these are the pro-Moscow Chechen forces, now say that they will have to free Chechnya from him themselves. They see Chechnya’s major problem today as being not the jamaats, but Ramzan, the Kadyrovites, and the widening conflict associated with them.
Why? “Because the Kadyrovites are the best machine yet invented for exterminating Chechens. This is something a majority of people now recognise.”
That is the explanation I was given about the present-day Russo-Chechen political situation by a certain wise person, a Grozny resident I know, who under Maskhadov lived in Moscow because he found the Wahhabis unacceptable, who returned when power was transferred to the Russian Government’s representative, Nikolai Koshman, and now finds it almost impossible to live under Ramzan.
“The problem is that they can’t make up their minds in Moscow whether to force Chechnya to obey the law or not. Until Moscow decides, Ramzan will continue. Ramzan is a symbol of lawlessness. Those who want to come out of the forests are waiting for the law to be re-established. People want legality.”
“But it is not simply a matter of Moscow failing to make its mind up,” I reply. “The problem surely is that you Chechens periodically demonstrate that you don’t want to live under the law. How is Moscow to make its mind up if at every turn people here say ‘Khyo nokhchi vats?’ (‘Are you not a Chechen?’). What is the way out? How are Chechens to be compelled to live within the law? Even if they want to surrender to the law, and not to Ramzan’s lawlessness, will they be able subsequently to obey it? That is the snag. Incidentally, Maskhadov faced the same problems in the late 1990s. In 1998 he told me in an interview, in the presence of a group of journalists, that the only way to force Chechens to observe the law was to impose Islam.”
“Maskhadov was wrong. What is needed is not Islam but the Adats, the ancient Chechen rules of life. They are full of wisdom. Paradoxical as it may seem, the Chechens can be compelled to live in accordance with Russian laws through the Adats.”
“If we return to the amnesty, whose word can be accepted as a guarantee? Putin’s?” I ask.
“Remember Khambiev’s mission to Azerbaijan, when Maskhadov’s ex-Minister of Defence went to Baku on Ramzan’s orders to persuade former fighters to return and accept an amnesty? Nobody came back with him except for two of his relatives, and they were arrested at the border. I have no answer to your question. I think the guarantees need to come not from Ramzan, not from Putin, not from Alkhanov, but only from the law.”
Aslan is 31. He finished school as the USSR was collapsing and Chechnya was vacillating over which legal system to accept. He has been bearing arms for many years, like most men in Chechnya. He lives under a false name, like many in Chechnya. He would like to surrender, but cannot, also like many in Chechnya. Aslan is no longer the future – he is too weary and disillusioned for that – but the future of Chechnya may well depend on how he is treated. What follows is an interview, almost unedited. Draw your own conclusions: we were