If Russia is Open to the World Ruslan Badalo 2 February 2003, The Chechen Times The cannonade of the past Russian-Chechen war hardly subsided, when just three years later Chechens, having awoken one day, found out that due to the opinion of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin they became bandits and terrorists again. We remember that at the very beginning of the latest military operation in Chechnya it was presented as a two-three weeks operation. These terms were publicly announced to the entire world by generals Karnukov and Manilov. They talked about the creation of the so-called "sanitary cordon." The initial term of three months was set up. The-then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin defined the figure. But today we see that the Russian-Chechen military conflict has dragged on for four years. And unfortunately, there isn't a sign it can be settled soon by political means. Meanwhile, the war has entered the stage of infinity. At present, legal armed formations of the Chechen Republic commanded by Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov widely and skillfully apply the tactics of partisan and subversive war against the enemy. As we know the world history has seen no precedent when a regular army has defeated a partisan movement. Realizing their weakness and wreaking their anger, Russian power structures bring down a squall of repression on the civilian population of the Chechen Republic. And this is being done not only with the consent of Russia's political leadership, but also with the blessing of All Russia Patriarch Alexy II. The fact that the war in Chechnya hasn't finished and has never stopped even for a day is proved by the constant savage air raids, artillery, tank and mortar shelling by the Russian army of forests and settlements of the Chechen Republic. Another proof of the undeclared war is the information reported by a correspondent for Interfax-Agency of War News of November 26, 2001, saying that more than 70,000 missiles and shells, and more than 90,000 tons of ammunition has been used during the so-called counter terrorist operation in the North Caucasus. The data was cited at a two-day meeting of generals and officers in the North-Caucasian military district. Thus, another tragedy of the Chechen people has lasted for more than 1,000 days (three years!). As a result of the two wars, a colossal damage has been inflicted on the Chechen Republic; according to preliminary estimations from independent experts it varies from 150 to 350 billion dollars. On the background of the colossal material damage we have tens of thousands of orphans, invalids, as well as countless numbers of illegally detained people, being kept in Russian prisons since 1995, and the missing people since the previous war; also several hundreds of thousands of killed, wounded and refugees, excluding those inside Chechnya who are cynically called by Russian authorities, internally displaced people. By the way, there is no such legal term in the Russian legislation. Before unleashing a new massacre, the Kremlin politicians, as well as the rest of the world, recognized for several years the legitimacy of the President and the Parliament of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Besides, on May 12, 1997, the Treaty on Peace and Principles of Relations between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was concluded in Moscow thereby recognizing Maskhadov as a legitimate leader. At that time Russian politicians did not say they have contacts with the leader of illegal armed formations as the top Russian leadership and official mass media try to depict him today! Non-recognition by the Russian leadership of legitimacy of the elected Chechen authority is an insult to such respected organizations as the OSCE and PACE, which recognized the election in Chechnya as legitimate and quite democratic. The given behavior of the Kremlin elite in connection with their traditional undependability only proves the thesis of the brilliant Englishman W. Churchill who said, "A treaty with Russia is not worth the paper it was written on". Contrary to that, having refused to settle the Russian-Chechen relations exclusively by political means, stipulated by the Peace Treaty, Russia again launched a monstrous war against the Chechen people and its statehood, applying on its territory the most sophisticated weapons, except for nuclear weapons. It is noteworthy that Article I of the Peace Treaty excludes the use of force and even the threat to use force while solving any outstanding issue. During his pre-war rule from (1997-1999), Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov spared no effort to fight crime in Chechnya. But in the conditions of the post-war devastation at that time he had neither the material, nor the human resources to achieve that aim, therefore he did not manage to fully curb the outburst of criminal elements on the territory of the Chechen Republic. Besides, President Aslan Maskhadov made attempts to fight organized crime - to that purpose he repeatedly addressed Russia's leadership urging it to join efforts. However, coordinated actions to fight organized crime ran counter to the plans form the Kremlin chiefs who gradually prepared for another war. Thus, all the attempts by the Chechen leader remained a voice crying in the wilderness. Nonetheless, using a far-fetched pretext, Moscow-based officials launched another crafty aggression against the Chechen people attempting to destroy its statehood thereby crushing the democratic choice of the Chechen people that expressed its will on January 27, 1997, under the monitoring of international observers headed by OSCE representatives. The world community and Russia know well that the struggle against terrorism shall be conducted only by special services, and a bloody undeclared war would neither crush terrorism as a whole nor punish terrorists separately. In fact, Russia has never fought and had no intention of fighting terrorism in the Chechen Republic, because it created favorable conditions for crime growth in this part of the North Caucasus for different purposes. Undoubtedly, after all Russia has no moral right to speak about the fight against terrorism in Chechnya, because according to Russian statistical data there are much more bandits and terrorists on the territory of Russia than in the Chechen Republic. If we believe this data, there are countless numbers of them in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Thus, before starting a military campaign in Chechnya, Russia must have waged war against terrorism first of all in Moscow and St. Petersburg. History always recurs. The present Russian leadership is quite consistent in its actions; it follows the imperial principles, which have been practiced for centuries. The matter is that during the whole history of Russian-Chechen relations, Russia has repeatedly resorted to refined craftiness with regard to Chechens. So, in the second half of the 19th century after concluding an interstate treaty with the Imamate, Russian troops occupied the imamate - a united state of North-Caucasian peoples headed by Shamil. In the early 20's of the 20th century Bolsheviks did the same to the Mountainous Republic headed by Taa Chermoyev, although by that time it had been already recognized by some countries, such as Turkey and Germany. The same was done in 1999. Therefore, in the last 150 years Russia has liquidated the Chechen Statehood three times! In line with the Constitution of the Russian federation, Russia is a federal state. However, its basic fundamentals run counter to the principles of federalism. At least because so far no Russian Republic within the Russian Federation has been declared with its clear borders, capital, President and other symbols of statehood. Thus, for this very reason we cannot talk about equality of the so-called "subjects" which are artificially divided into national-territorial (republics) and territorial (krais and oblasts), and this is not the way it should be. Nevertheless, for the first time since the beginning of the so-called "counter terrorist" campaign Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently openly called the events in Chechnya a tragedy. He also added that the Chechen people should solve its problems by itself. To tell the truth, the head of the state omitted the fact that for centuries, using different pretexts, Chechens haven't been able to independently choose their fate. Great obstacles in this respect are put today when Russian politicians try to present the war in Chechnya as an inner-Chechen conflict, and themselves - as peacemakers! It is necessary to make an explanation here: the Russian leadership insists that Chechnya is a subject of the Federation. In this case the military actions in Chechnya shall be considered as a civil war on the territory of Russia. Therefore, the axiom is that a civil war goes on not among the Chechen people, as the Russian propaganda tries to present it to the world community, but is a war between the metropoly and its colony. Aside from that, senior Russian officials, including Putin, have repeatedly claimed that the Chechen people approve the actions by the federal authority. But such statements are doubtful because no one can support genocide with regard to himself and his own people; and Chechens are not an exception in this case. In one of his public statements V. Putin stressed that the events in Chechnya had a pre-history. Many viewed that phrase as a positive shift of Russian politics towards a legal approach to solve the problem. It is well known that the true pre-history of the endless Russian-Chechen war is its colonial nature, that the Chechen resistance has nothing in common with terrorism or extremism, and has never had, and Moscow knows it well! Russian politicians persistently and consecutively pass over in silence the fact that under the tsar Russian soldiers and officers were decorated with orders and medals: "For Conquest of Small Chechnya," "For Conquest of Ichkeria," (and officer's cross), "For Conquer of Big Chechnya," "For Conquer of Chechnya and Dagestan." In January of 2001 human rights activists found out that during a year of the war against the Chechen people the Kremlin decorated 500 soldiers and officers with the Hero of Russia, whereas for 10 years of the Afghan war only 300 Soviet soldiers and officers became Heroes of the Soviet Union. Destruction of towns and villages, objects of social-cultural and industrial-technical importance, killing of children, women and old people in the Chechen Republic - all that has been made in Russia synonym to courage and heroism. Orders and medals are given to those who have tormented the civilian population of the Chechen Republic with an unprecedented brutality for years. In this respect we shall not forget that for previous centuries the Russian state has been a murder-state, the state-oppressor towards the Chechen people. The Chechen people have constantly been subjected to acts of genocide and deportations. The outburst of criminal elements and the practice of abduction in Chechnya is a Russian invention, because during the previous military campaign Russian power bodies widely used the method of demanding ransom, when Chechen civilians were illegally arrested and kept in custody. Criminals claiming they are "Chechens" took over the experience of their Russian colleagues and did business under the cover of secret services in Russia and other countries. Abductions were practiced not only in Chechnya, but also in the whole North Caucasus and other Russian regions. Naturally, these monstrous crimes have always been attributed to Chechens to show the world community the failure of Chechen statehood, and all Chechens were depicted as arrant bandits and terrorists. Under the pretext of the struggle against terrorism and banditry and having staged the sad events in Dagestan in 1999 by the order of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, in violation of the Peace Treaty, the Russian army treacherously invaded and occupied the territory of the Chechen Republic, bringing down a squall of artillery shells and air bombs on the civilian population. It is widely known that during the last decade the Russian troops have left the territory of Chechnya twice - in 1992 and in 1996. The world has seen no analogues of such "counter terrorist operations," when and where front and assault aviation dropped 500-kilogram vacuum bombs, and strategic missiles "ground-to-ground" were used. As a result, people died in fire, and settlements were destroyed by the Russian troops in the long-suffering Chechen land. By the way, from the beginning of the war in Chechnya the civilian population has never been warned about the so-called "dot" strikes on terrorists, as NATO and US forces did in Kosovo. The monstrous explosions of the apartments in Buinaks, Moscow and Volgodonsk, as well as the attempt to do the same in Ryazan, and the events in Dagestan have nothing to do with the Chechen people or the Chechen leadership. More than three years have passed since the explosions but so far the Russian secret services have failed to produce evidence of Chechens' involvement. Besides, the National Congress of the Chechen People, convoked on the initiative of the Chechen president and the parliament that took place on October 2, 1999 in Grozny, denounced the organizers of the apartment explosions in Russia. Since the beginning of this undeclared war the whole Chechen people have become the hostage of the Russian leadership and continues to suffer from the so-called countless "zachistka" conducted by federal forces. They are accompanied with mass human rights violations in the Chechen Republic. Almost daily dozens of civilians disappear without trace or die. Specially trained "death squads" widely practice extra judicial executions, they kill Chechens who are guilty of being Chechens. To give a more correct definition of what is going on in Chechnya, we shall note that even Chechens totally loyal to the federal authority are being exterminated. According to international law such actions classify as genocide. Here we shall note that the attitude of the Russian troops towards Chechens is not as to common fellow citizens. Here people face open, and barbaric torments of civilians of the Chechen Republic: sadist tortures, rape, marauding and extra judicial executions, although in 1996 Russia adopted the moratorium on death penalty. The "military" are so cynical that they even excavate dead bodies from graves in order to sell them to relatives for money, as happened this past July in Tsotsan-Yurt. Representatives of Russian power structures in Chechnya behave openly hostile. They behave as invaders, and not as keepers of the constitutional order, which they widely violate. Obviously, Russia needs Chechnya without Chechens. Thus, if previously Chechnya was considered de-jure a Russian subject, a similar attitude of the federal authorities automatically drove it out of the Russian Federation. From now on Russia, in fact, has no moral right to claim for a "voluntary subject" - the Chechen Republic, because hundreds of thousands of killed innocent women, children and old people became a watershed in these relations. The Russian troops have constantly resorted to the acts of open vandalism, when Russian front and assault aviation and artillery bomb not only settlements, but also historic tower complexes, which date back to the middle Ages. Thus, the Chechen Republic has turned into a zone of arbitrariness, death, violence, humanitarian and ecological catastrophes. Ruslan Badalov, Chairman of the Public Movement "The Chechen Committee of National Salvation" [02.02.2003 17:16] Ruslan Badalov, Chairman of the Public Movement "The Chechen Committee of National Salvation"