[Marxism] Neocon warmonger/rollback specialist Pipes: "Give the Chechens a Land of their Own" (unlike the Palestinians, the Iraqis, the

["David Quarter" <davidquarter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[From:                  Jim Yarker


Precious little in this one that America?s Designer Leftists would
disagree with.  Could run with the text body unchanged in The
Nation or In These Times.  Would just need a pseudonym to thread
the needle.  Hasn?t lost his feel for discount ethnopsychology:
?Russians respect strong authority? ? a mentality wholly unattested
in Pipes? own enlightened Land of the Puritans of course, that
shining city on the hill where the individual is sovereign, even while
fighting terrorism ? but they -  the *Russians* that is - should learn
from the French experience in Algeria.  Meanwhile in Falluja?]

The New York Times Op-Ed: "Give the Chechens A Land of
Their Own!" 
"GIVE THE CHECHENS A LAND OF THEIR OWN"

OP-ED By Richard Pipes, The New York Times
New York, New York, Thursday, September 9, 2004

The terrorist attack in Beslan in Russia's North Caucasus was not
only bloody but viciously sadistic: the children taken hostage by
pro-Chechen terrorists were denied food and drink and even
forbidden to go to the bathroom, then massacred when the siege
was broken. It is proper for the civilized world to express outrage
and feel solidarity with the Russian people. But to say this is not
necessarily to agree with those - including President Bush and
President Vladimir Putin of Russia - who would equate the
massacre with the 9/11 attacks and Islamic terrorism in general.

In his post-Beslan speech, Mr. Putin all but linked the attack to
global Islam: "We have to admit that we have failed to recognize
the complexity and dangerous nature of the processes taking
place in our own country and the world in general." Reports that
some of the terrorists were Arabs reinforce that line of thinking.
But the fact is, the Chechen cause and that of Al Qaeda are quite
different, and demand very different approaches in combating
them.

Terrorism is a means to an end: it can be employed for limited
ends as well as for unlimited destructiveness. The terrorists who
blew up the train station in Madrid just before the Spanish election
this year had a specific goal in mind: to compel the withdrawal of
Spanish troops from Iraq. The Chechen case is, in some respects,
analogous. A small group of Muslim people, the Chechens have
been battling their Russian conquerors for centuries.

At the close of World War II, Stalin had the entire Chechen
nation exiled to Kazakhstan for alleged collaboration with the
Nazis. Khrushchev allowed them to return to their homeland but
they continued to chafe under Russian rule.

Because Chechnya, unlike the Ukraine or Georgia, had never
enjoyed the status of a nominally independent republic under the
Communists, the Chechens were denied the right to secede from
the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And so they eventually resorted to terrorism for the limited
objective of independence.

A clever arrangement secured by the Russian security chief, Gen.
Alexander Lebed, in 1996 granted the Chechens de facto
sovereignty while officially they remained Russian citizens. Peace
ensued. It was broken by several terrorist attacks on Russian soil,
which the authorities blamed on the Chechens (although many
skeptics attributed them to Russian security agencies eager to
create a pretext to bring Chechnya back into the fold). A second
Chechen war began in 1999, of which there seems no end in sight.

This history makes clear how the events in Russia differ from
9/11. The attacks on New York and the Pentagon were
unprovoked and had no specific objective. Rather, they were part
of a general assault of Islamic extremists bent on destroying non-
Islamic civilizations. As such, America's war with Al Qaeda is
non-negotiable. But the Chechens do not seek to destroy Russia -
thus there is always an opportunity for compromise.

Unfortunately, Russia's leaders, and to some extent the populace,
are loath to grant them independence - in part because of a
patrimonial mentality that inhibits them from surrendering any
territory that was ever part of the Russian homeland, and in part
because they fear that granting the Chechens sovereignty would
lead to a greater unraveling of their federation. The Kremlin also
does not want to lose face by capitulating to force.

The Russians ought to learn from the French. France, too, was
once involved in a bloody colonial war in which thousands fell
victim of terrorist violence. The Algerian war began in 1954 and
dragged on without an end in sight, until Charles de Gaulle
courageously solved the conflict by granting Algeria independence
in 1962. This decision may have been even harder than the choice
confronting President Putin, because Algeria was much larger and
contributed more to the French economy than Chechnya does to
Russia's, and hundreds of thousands of French citizens lived there.

Until and unless Moscow follows the French example, the
terrorist menace will not be alleviated. It is as impossible to track
Chechens scattered throughout Russia as it is to intimidate the
suicidal fanatics among them. Worse, the continuation of Chechen
terrorism threatens to undermine the authority of Mr. Putin,
whose landslide victory in last spring's
presidential election was in good measure due to the voters' belief
that could contain the Chechen threat. Russians respect strong
authority, and there are new signs that Mr. Putin's inability to
wield it over Chechnya makes them wonder whether he is fit to
rule them. After the school siege, there was much muttering in the
streets that under Stalin such atrocities would not have occurred.

Unfortunately, he seems determined not to yield an inch. "We
showed weakness, and the weak are trampled upon," he said on
Saturday. This may seem like a truism to Russians, but in this
case it is wrong. Russia, the largest country on earth, can surely
afford to let go of a tiny colonial dependency, and ought to do so
without delay. (END)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Pipes is an emeritus professor of history at Harvard and
the author of "A Concise History of the Russian Revolution" and,
most recently, of "Vixi: The Memoirs of a Non-Belonger."


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