PEN-L message, Re: Chris Doss's "sources"

http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4546.html
Current History
October 2000
Through a Distorted Lens: Chechnya and the Western Media
By ANATOL LIEVEN
ANATOL LIEVEN is a senior associate in the Russia and Eurasia Center of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He covered the 1994-1996
Chechen war as a correspondent for the London Times. His books include
Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1998).

The second Chechen war has not brought out the best in the Western
media-with the usual exception of the brave and dedicated correspondents
who have gone to report on it. All too much of the coverage and analysis
has been relentlessly one-sided and relentlessly anti-Russian. Most of the
media-and in particular, of course, television-were typically uninterested
in the signs of growing crisis, and turned their attention to the region
only when the Russians actually invaded. Equally typically, once the war
had begun, the media lost themselves in the reporting of the unfolding
events, rarely stepping back to analyze the background to the fighting.

As a result, the media missed the great majority of the attacks on and
threats to Russia from Chechnya in the two years leading up to the war.
Above all, the media overlooked the powerful forces in Chechnya and their
international radical Muslim allies, who had publicly committed themselves
to a jihad to drive Russia from the entire North Caucasus and establish an
Islamic state-whether the peoples of the region wanted it or not.

.....
Yet the bitterly anti-Western ideology of Khattab, Basayev, and their
followers is not a matter of debate, and does not have to be sought out by
intrepid journalists venturing to interview these men in the mountains of
Chechnya. Their views can be found, on the Internet, in English, on the web
site of the international mujahedeen in Afghanistan, at qoqaz.net. This is
Basayev himself on the nature of the war (interviewed in early January
2000): "The crucifix is being raised anew and war is being declared against
Islam and Muslims; this is proof that this war is like the Crusades, where
all of Europe's intelligence capabilities are geared towards providing
Russia with information and other support. . . . The Russians and their
supporters in the West are fighting us collectively, as Allah has described
them: 'And fight the unbelievers collectively as they fight you
collectively.'"

CONFRONTING RADICAL ISLAM

The campaign of Khattab, Basayev, and their allies against Russia in 1998
and 1999 was carried out in the name of this radical Islamist ideology, as
a reading of their propaganda makes clear. The culmination of this campaign
was the invasion of Dagestan in August 1999, with the avowed intention of
overthrowing the republic's government and creating a united Islamic
republic of Chechnya and Dagestan. This was opposed by the great majority
of Dagestanis and would indeed have been a nightmare for that republic. Too
many supporters of the Chechens have tried to shrug off this invasion as a
minor affair. It was not. Quite apart from the number of casualties that
resulted from the invasion itself, Dagestan, with its 34 different
nationalities, rival religious groups, and unstable government, is a
fragile and delicately poised place. Chechen incursions have the potential
to upset this balance and plunge Dagestan into a more impoverished and
hopeless version of Lebanon during its ethnoreligious civil wars in the
1970s and 1980s. It cannot be stressed enough: even if you disapprove of
the Russian invasion of 1999, in initially resisting Basayev and Khattab
and their plans, Russia was, objectively speaking, serving the interests
not just of the region but of the West as well.

The governing council of the new state that the rebels planned to
establish-the Islamic Shura (council) of Dagestan-publicly declared
(including once again on the Internet, on the Kavkaz-Tsentr web site,
www.kavkaz.org) "the necessity of liberating the Islamic territory of
Daghestan from age-old occupation by Russian rebels," of introducing
shariah (Islamic law) across the republic, and of arresting the Dagestani
president "as a traitor to the cause of Muslims." The shura declared
Basayev amir (commander) of this jihad. Asked at the time why he had
crossed the border, Basayev told Lidove Noviny that, "Many Dagestani
political parties and movements are fighting for Dagestan's freedom
nowadays. Some of them have asked me to take up the command of the
Mujahidin United Armed Forces of Dagestan. This is no Chechen army. It is
an international corps comprising Chechens, Dagestanis, and other
nationals. . . . We shall always be pleased to fight the Russians and we
shall help anyone, in any way, who seeks freedom."

It is clear why Russia could not have tolerated Chechnya being used
indefinitely as a safe haven for such forces and as a potential base for
further attacks on Russia. For how long would the United States tolerate
such a situation in a neighboring state? It is also important to note that
the fighting in Dagestan was on a serious scale: 270 Russian servicemen
died there, considerably more than the United States lost in the Persian
Gulf War (165). If the government of Chechnya had failed to deal with
Basayev, Khattab, and their followers, then Russia-like any other
state-would have been justified in taking forceful action of its own. This
could have been accomplished by carrying out the plan drawn up by former
Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin to establish a Turkish- or Israeli-style
"security zone" in Chechnya north of the Terek River. Given the pro-Russian
traditions of the local population, and the open nature of the terrain,
this could have been carried out with minimal bloodshed. By contrast,
full-scale invasion should have been only the last resort. That the Kremlin
did so without adequately exploring other options undoubtedly has a great
deal to do both with Putin's electoral calculations and the desire of many
Russian generals for revenge against the Chechens.

The decision to invade should therefore be condemned. Before taking this
course, Moscow should have tried much harder to support Chechen President
Maskhadov with arms and money to help him establish his authority in the
republic and defeat Basayev, Khattab, and the other militants. Despite the
disappointment of many ordinary Chechens with Maskhadov's "weakness," my
interviews with Chechen refugees in December 1999 suggests that most
Chechens still respected him in principle as the country's legally elected
president; and in the end, any government in Chechnya-whether pro- or
anti-Russian-will only be able to create stability if it enjoys a measure
of legitimacy among a majority of the population.
Yet a country suffering Chechnya's conditions would have posed a severe
challenge to any neighboring organized state, and the great majority of
such neighbors would have responded with force of arms, perhaps even sooner
than Russia did. The United States has done so repeatedly in Central
America, in response to much smaller threats and provocations than those
stemming from Chechnya in 1999.