A new strategy is being sought for Circassia which is out of control. The swagger of Putin who is treated as a hero in the southern Caucasus mountain ranges disappears in the North where resistance is robust.Never before did we see Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin while he was giving the people the right to determine their own destiny: "Decision makers must take the ideas of the people into consideration. Without the will of the people, the state cannot resolve a single issue." It should not be thought that the Russian leader was talking about Chechnya which chose to remain independent and not sign a common agreement with the Russian Federation while the soviets were dispersing. Or the other republics in North Circassia whose vein of independence is always ready to pulse… While visiting Abkhazia on August 12th, Putin’s words resembled those of former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin who said, "Take as much independence as you can handle." He said, "The people of Abkhazia and South Osetia should be treated respectfully in order to protect Georgia’s regional unity." It was as if during last year’s war Russia’s shielding the two de facto republics of Abkhazia and Southern Osetia, who had chosen to live as free and independent peoples in their historical motherlands, and recognizing them as independent states on August 26, 2008, was blood money to the Circassian people for the big massacres and exiles it has imposed on the Circassian people. In fact, this blood money is mentioned with gratitude and Putin is treated as a hero in these two republics. What about the North? The cost of the Chechnya’s independent will was 250 thousand lives. Can Putin ask the Northern peoples what they want? Without putting the barrels of guns on their foreheads and without directing tanks towards their houses… It would be in vain to think that Putin, who speaking nine years earlier about "Killing Chechens in the toilet and then flushing them," would become merciful towards the North after being victorious in the South.
Russia seeks a new strategy
While attacks followed one another in Northern Circassia after the Abkhazia visit, Putin made no comments. However, known as the milder peddler on the tandem bicycle, President Dmitri Medvedev did not fail to stand in for Putin: "The war against terrorists should be made in a rough way. Without feeling for them or having any doubts, the terrorists should be eliminated or else we cannot be successful."
On August 17th there was a suicide attack in Nazran, the former capital of Ingushetia, where 25 people died and 160 were wounded. This was a moment that made those who saw it say, "Northern Circassia is out of control." Medvedev made these comments after this event which left the Ingush security forces helpless. This event was followed by suicide protests in Chechnya, attacks on security forces in Dagestan, and pursuits of resistors in Kabardino-Balkaria that were not reported by the agencies.
Russia is now debating how to reign in on Northern Circassia. Some are recommending that Northern Circassia be declared fully as a military region. This wing thinks that it was a mistake for the "anti-terror regime" to be removed on April 16th or, in other words, that the war was officially terminated. More "civil" Russian intellectuals and politicians emphasize that armed formations will not be contained until corruption, degeneration and unemployment are eliminated.
Turning to the Kremlin, even if it is trying to keep at bay big military operations like those against Chechnya in 1994 and 1999, still it is speaking in violent terms. No one intends to remember that it is devastated Chechnya that is at the root of the problem. Moreover, it has absolutely no intention of discussing the reflections today of Circassia’s historical tragedies. With verbal consensus Russia forbids people from thinking about the problem with its propaganda that foreign powers, who are trying to prevent Russia from gaining its former power during the time of the Soviets, are interfering in Circassia. Even Yulia Latinina, who has written the strongest articles related to the resistors, repeatedly emphasizes that the resistance in Circassia has not received international assistance, not even ideological nurturing. According to him, the financial resource of the resistance is completely the federal budget! The corrupt and degenerate system facilitates the resistance’s reaching every kind of resource.
An excuse for state terror: Wahhabism
In short, the common password in Russian political discourse and practice is "Exterminate." In the August 26th speech of Russian-controlled Chechen president Ramzan Kadirov made to the security forces, these words which are an open invitation to state terror is actually a repetition on behalf of Moscow: "Do not be merciful to them. Only mass and unconditional death."
However, it would be erroneous to see the other leaders in Northern Circassia to be as interested in killing as Kadirov. It is necessary to note that Dagestan president Mukhu Aliyev has said repeatedly that power is not a solution.
To date the Kremlin has acted with a plot that the ideology of Wahhabism with foreign support is in the basis of this. The focal point of a meeting that Medvedev held in Soci on August 28th with political and religious leaders of Northern Circassia was the struggle with Wahhabism. What they have understood until now by struggle with Wahhabism is to open files on young people going to the mosque, to follow them, to bully them, to kidnap and torture them and to kill them. Or to burn bookstores that sell books that the Religious Administration finds objectionable. For instance, on the night of August 16th a book store was burned in Dagestan. On March 8th another shop named Lotos was attacked, and after the books were taken outside, they were burned. Another bookstore named Sunna managed to escape being set on fire.
Russian leader Dmitri Medvedev must have noticed that the terror tactics which have been used in an unbridled way in Circassia have not done the job, because he gave priority to moderate religious education as an antidote to propaganda war and radicalism in his meeting on August 28th. According to Medvedev, a television station to explain traditional Islam should be established, religious education outside the country should be put under control, and a road should be found for men of religion to work with the youth. Kadirov added to this the recommendation to increase universities like the Kunta Haji Russian Islam University, which was put into service at Jaharkale on August 21st and which gives traditional religious education that supports passivism.
It can be understood that at the meeting Circassian leaders except for Kadirov did not see a military solution as a "solution." As far as the news agencies revealed, after Ingushtia President Yunusbek Yevkurov, who survived the June 22nd assassination attempt with heavy wounds, announced a common war after being enticed by Kadirov in May, he appears to have grasped that a military option is not a solution, particularly as a president who has come from military quarters: "Military force is not an option. We have to reconstruct the value system."
Homework solution for the causers of the problem
While Medvedev reacted to the Nazran attack by removing Ingush Minister of the Interior Ruslan Meyriyev from Office, he asked for recommendations from security chiefs as to how to get the situation in Northern Circassia under control. It is unknown what the persons, who are signally responsible for the war being inflamed in Circassia and for things getting out of control, took to Medvedev as a homework assignment. In the days following Medvedev’s instructions, news came that federal forces had been dispatched to Dagestan from the Hankale base in Jaharkale, Chechnya’s capital. While it is not known whether or not this has any connection with the new strategy, the fear of the people of Dagestan who saw military trucks in the streets of Makhachkala was that federal intervention would force the republic into an impasse. However, Russian military authorities later announced that there was no new military dispatch to Northern Circassia.
Medvedev has placed his hope in the real instigators of both the military and ideological war.
What could be the recommendations to normalize Circassia from those who burned the office of the Dagestan Mothers in order to silence them when they made a civil struggle to find the youth who were kidnapped in Dagestan just a few weeks ago, who capture religious youth and torture them and then burn them alive in their own vehicles, who for years have kidnapped people in Chechnya for ransom, who kill those whose ransom is not paid and then sell their corpses for thousands of dollars, who raid villages in the name of cleansing, who set fire to the houses of relatives of resistors, who burn the forests so they can not be used as a hideout, who surround villages and turn them into open prisons for months, in short, the security and intelligence forces or "silovikis" who look at Circassians with the eyes of enemies who will exterminate them?
Can an understanding that labels religious youth as Wahhabi and then finds suitable every kind of oppression and that makes Wahhabi lists with the approval of the Administration of Religion and then pursues them stop the resistance ideology?
Can the Russian state which paid those close to the victims of the explosion in Nazran 3200 dollars, but on the same day paid 32,000 dollars or ten times indemnity to the close ones of the dead victims at the Sayano-Shushenskaya power station in Siberia gain the trust of the Circassians?
Can Circassia be free of violence as long as the Russian administration highly regards General Viktor Kazantsev who said during the Chechen war, "They should be openly hung so there is no excuse for the others," and General Gennadi Troshev who said, "All Chechen males are terrorists from the age of ten," and General Vladimir Shamanov who said, "The wives, sisters and mothers of Chechen terrorists are also terrorists"?
The Russians no longer have faith
Even the Russians outside of Circassia no longer believe that Russia can control Circassia. If the Levada Center questionnaire published on August 27th is looked at, while 68% of the Russians fear they will be a victim of terror, 40% believe that state terror cannot prevent terrorist attacks. While 30% indicated that conflict would continue in Chechnya, 16% said that the solution would be by means of giving the Chechens their independence. Undoubtedly the threats of the resistors to carry their attacks to Russia in general have an impact on the Russian public. It was noteworthy that Moscow immediately rejected the claim by Chechen leader Riyad-us-Salihin, known as a Member of the Martyrs and heir to Shamil Basayev who was killed in 2006, to the effect that the Sayano-Shushenkaya power station event on August 17th was not an accident and that they had arranged for a bomb attack. This situation is just opposite to the 1999 FSB’s exploding the Moscow and Volgogon buildings as a pretense to invade Chechnya and then throwing the blame on the Chechens.
The Kremlin needed war in 1999, but now it is stability at any price! Forget about the Duma, even Putin while he was eager to bring back the anti-terror regime in Chechnya and surround Northern Circassia in a ring of fire, showed his support to Kadirov by suddenly going to Jaharkale on August 25th. Kadirov’s Chechnya can mean a costly success story for Putin and a new announcement of war can be the end of the legend! For this reason, Chechnya’s remaining as Potemkin’s village for now may appear better for "Czar" Putin.
World Bulletin
By Fehim Taştekin
