Give the Chechens a Land of Their Own
By RICHARD PIPES
Published: September 9, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/opinion/09pipes.html

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 he 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.

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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