Repression, arrogance, stubbornness, terrorism, suicidal violence, official lies. The tragedy of the Melnikova Street theatre reminds us how dangerous the world is when people grow desperate and their oppressors show no sign of compassion.
Russia, of all nations, ought to have known this. Even without glancing sideways at the modern world, at the Middle East and the twin towers and Bali, Russia should know about the power of rage, and the rage of those who have nothing left to lose. It is a nation, after all, founded on a revolution against the careless brutalisation of the weak by the powerful centre. Of course Chechen terrorists have repeatedly proved themselves to include thugs, psychopaths, and venal blackmailers. Every cause embracing violence will always have these people among them. But that does not excuse us from looking at the cause of their rage, and the history which led men and women to strap explosives to themselves in a crowded theatre, and shoot at fleeing children.
President Putin is being heavily criticised for killing the innocent along with the guilty by using a gas which it seems likely he should not have had in his armoury. But even those who give him the benefit of the doubt in the awful dilemma that faced him at the weekend find it hard to excuse the subsequent evasiveness, repression of information, and cavalier disregard of the rights of survivors’ relatives. Izvestiya puts it most clearly: “Russian citizens are quite sane. In dealing with them one need not stoop to vulgar totalitarianism, police repression or disparaging hushing-up and half-truths.”
But graver even than all that is the situation which fed this terror. Mr Putin may have committed crimes last week against Muscovite theatregoers; but long before that his federal troops were committing far worse crimes in the villages and towns of Chechnya. In the past year the West has had to learn, very painfully, just why young Muslims sometimes hate us to the point of giving their own lives to harm us. Now it is Russia’s turn. As Izvestiya said yesterday, “Russia now has its own September 11”.
But among thinking Russians, hatred and revenge are not the only instincts. The popular daily Moskovskiy Komsomolets goes straight to the heart of the matter. “It beggars belief,” says the newspaper, “that in his Saturday address to the nation, President Putin failed to mention Chechnya at all, as if the war there has nothing to do with what happened. If you refuse to accept the truth, if you treat the consequences of the disease and not its cause, you will never be cured.” The war inside Chechnya, says one liberal weekly, will have to end, and it is the manner of its ending which is important. “To show political will and a desire for peace, one political statement from the President would be enough”. Such voices inside Russia — and I quote them because they are of higher value than any perspective we outsiders can offer — say that Mr Putin must climb down, commit himself to free elections in the rebel province, and above all accept an international peacekeeping force so that he can withdraw his tainted troops and begin what the rest of the world has learnt to call a “peace process” leading to disarming of the guerrillas and a painfully won consensus that talking is better than fighting.
Over the past few years, the horror of what the most thuggish Chechen rebels do has tended to eclipse our perception of what has been done to their compatriots. At the door of the “guerrillas” we have to lay crimes like this siege, numerous hijacks and kidnappings for ransom, and the murder and mutilation of innocent aid workers, journalists, engineers and businessmen. Focused on that, the world has found it hard to give proper weight to the real suffering of the Chechen people in the past century.
Their Muslim culture has little in common with the Russians who conquered them, after a long and bloody war ending in the mid-19th century in victory for the Tsar. Chechnya became an autonomous republic 80 years ago, within the Soviet Union, but in 1944 Stalin deported its whole population to Siberia and Central Asia with accusations of collaboration with the Nazis. Tens of thousands died. Its quasi-independence was restored under Khrushchev, and held for 30 years; but with the crumbling of the Soviet empire it made another bid for independence. The decade since has seen persistent and brutal attempts by Russia to crush and rule; the 1994 war killed nearly 100,000 civilians. Attempts at peace have failed, partly because Russia will never accept full Chechen independence and partly because, fuelled by intransigence, resentful memory and the ongoing brutality of Russian troops, the rage of the rebel factions has continued to run beyond reason. The grievances of Chechnya are like the grievances of Northern Ireland, magnified a hundredfold; yet we try to meet and moderate the grievances of Ireland, and with painful slowness succeed. But Moscow does not think that way. Instead, it installs a puppet government and turns a blind eye when its own demoralised, underpaid, ill-disciplined troops trash the place and torment the people.
That casual, arrogant abuse is the fuel of terrorism. I do not propose here to go into the pornographic detail of Russian military behaviour in Chechnya, because those who want to know more have only to turn to numerous reports by human rights organisations and the UN over the past few years. But it is all there: disappearances, torture, detention in unrecorded places at the whim of local commanders, mutilated bodies in more than one mass grave, and innumerable cases of casual rape, including gang-rape and the abuse of young children. The perpetrators are soldiers; occupying soldiers. Amnesty International and other bodies have protested strongly at the failure of the UN to hold Russia to account — despite noises made by its human rights committee, it has turned a blind eye to the brutality of Russian forces against a largely defenceless civilian population. Russia in this context ignores the Geneva Convention, ignores the UN, and barely ever even attempts to bring its killers and rapists to justice. A recent protest from human rights organisations concluded that “it is this ongoing environment of impunity that facilitates continued, serious abuses”.
In a culture like ours, where the word “abuse” has degenerated to describe people complaining to employment tribunals about the slightest harsh word, I should perhaps repeat again: mass graves, child rape, mutilation. If Chechen terrorists are brutal and care nothing for poor terrified theatregoing families, there is an explanation — though never an excuse — in what has been happening to their own families for years. Maybe some of those women with bombs strapped to their bodies lost parents, or sisters, or babies, or were themselves gang-raped by laughing Russian troops in an “ongoing environment of impunity”.
The aftermath of the twin towers attack has made it even easier for Mr Putin to be “tough” and intransigent with Chechnya. There are allegations that Chechen rebels are in cahoots with al-Qaeda; well, no surprise there. If you are Muslim, anywhere in the world, and despair of getting reasonable treatment either from your direct oppressor or through the mechanisms of international justice, then for the hotheads among you the loose, shadowy cause of al-Qaeda will be tempting indeed.
Peace is never easy to make. Never in the world’s history has there been a brokered peace deal which did not leave some people on both sides bitter, saying “those bastards got away with murder”. Ireland, South Africa, the Middle East, all have to learn that hard lesson. Chechnya and Moscow will have to learn it too. But whenever there is a faint glimmer of hope of a peaceful settlement, it becomes apparent that Moscow is not really keen: its instincts are still Soviet: crush and rule, don’t talk, don’t give in — “dump them”, as Mr Putin says, “down the bog”.
The rest of the world has tended to turn its back and shrug. Well, not any more. Human rights campaigners, like Amnesty, have quite rightly extended condolences to the victims of the horror in the Melnikova Street theatre. Nobody with a shred of human feeling would have wanted this to happen. But if it brings about international pressure on Russia to think in a more modern, peacemaking way about its troublesome province, it may in the end kindle a small, hopeful light in the stinking darkness.
Contribute to Debate via comment@thetimes.co.uk
