by Mark Curtis
A treaty eventually signed granted Chechnya de facto independence though Moscow refused to grant full independence. The agreement also recognised that a popular referendum should be held in Chechnya in December 2001 to determine the ultimate fate of its independence. Russia’s attack on Chechnya in 1999 was a violation of the 1996 treaty and sought to avenge its defeat and reimpose Moscow’s will over the territory.
September 1999 – three months after the end of the bombing of Yugoslavia – marked the beginning of the new phase of the conflict. Then, bomb explosions ripped through apartment blocks in Moscow killing around 300 people. The Russian government immediately blamed Chechens for these attacks and within days Moscow had deployed 50,000 troops in Chechnya and begun airstrikes, which soon drove 185,000 civilians from their homes. It quickly became obvious that Russian war strategy involved both heavy indiscriminate bombing and deliberately targeting civilians. Cities and villages began to be bombarded while Chechnya was encircled by Russian forces, which cut off all gas and electricity supplies.
Let us consider a brief chronology of further Russian actions in Chechnya, alongside the response of the Blair government.
1999
Following the invasion, the EU adopted a ‘common strategy on Russia’ but this ‘contained very weak language on human rights and the rule of law’, according to Human Rights Watch. In October the EU presidency expressed only limited concern for civilians in Chechnya.
The city of Grozny was ferociously bombed for three straight months from November 1999 to February 2000 and ‘was essentially treated as one enormous military target’. Most people had left by then but between 20,000 and 40,000 remained, many too poor or sick to leave. ‘These people were given little thought as the Russian military machine obliterated the city’, Human Rights Watch noted. The attack on Grozny levelled the city with massive indiscriminate bombing, turning it into a wasteland, with thousands dead.10
The Guardian’s Maggie O’Kane wrote that ‘usually in war there are some rules. But in Chechnya, no one is saying sorry or even pretending that they are not dropping 1,000 lb bombs on houses, hospitals and schools.’11 Russian forces denied aid agencies access to the area, and engaged in systematic looting and plundering from homes, and destroyed power stations and industrial plants. Billions of roubles in assets were probably taken.
Blair wrote to then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (Boris Yeltsin was still president, resigning on 31 December) urging Moscow to halt its advance on Grozny. The US described Russia’s ‘indiscriminate’ use of force against civilians as ‘indefensible’.12 In December, the IMF postponed a £400 million loan to Russia and the EU agreed to freeze some aid. But it was already clear that the West was not going to impose any tough measures against Russia. Therefore, Russia paid little attention, proceeding to obliterate the city.
The ferocious obliteration of a defenceless city was not enough to provoke British leaders to do anything other than go through the motions of protest – mild protest at that. Britain failed to use any of its bilateral levers with Russia (see further below) to pressure the aggressors at this time. Human Rights Watch correctly noted that while Yeltsin was in power Britain ‘was unwilling to use this relationship as leverage to secure better human rights compliance by the Russian government’.13
In fact, it was Russia not Britain that used the levers available to press the other side. The Ministry of Defence noted that ‘our developing military relationship, based on high level contacts and exchanges, suffered a setback’ in 1999 – not due to British pressure over Chechnya, but because of Russian opposition to the attacks on Iraq in December 1998 and on Yugoslavia. Russia had begun ‘by scaling down contacts and then cancelling all bilateral military events planned with the UK’. One programme that survived had been launched in 1995, involving Britain retraining nearly 10,000 retired Russian officers for future employment at eight centres in Russia. ‘During 1999, we offered to extend this programme’ and agreed to establish two new centres, the MoD notes.14 The military conducting gross atrocities in Chechnya was the same that Britain was bending over backwards to court.
2000
Entering into 2000, with Grozny in the process of being flattened, Foreign Office minister Keith Vaz assured the House of Commons that ‘we have repeatedly raised with the Russians our concerns about their bombing campaign in Chechnya’. However, on the same day, Defence minister Geoff Hoon also said:
Engaging Russia in a constructive bilateral defence relationship is a high priority for the government. Russia remains the highest priority in our ‘Outreach’ programme of defence assistance to central and eastern Europe countries. We wish to continue to develop an effective defence relationship with Russia.15
In a 63-paragraph-long Foreign Office memo to a parliamentary inquiry into British relations with Russia, dated 27 January 2000, Chechnya is not mentioned once. The memo simply says that ‘we still have some concerns’ on human rights and that ‘there are also significant weaknesses, both in policy and implementation, in the [Russian] government’s treatment of vulnerable groups and its obligation to protect their rights’. There was a supplementary memo provided, fifty-four paragraphs long, on the ‘FCO’s role in promoting British interests in and relations with Russia’.16 Again, no mention of Chechnya. The issue was, quite simply, off the radar screen.
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the Royal Institute of International Affairs on 28 January that Russian ‘conduct in Chechnya is unacceptable and has produced grave humanitarian suffering. Nor, without a political settlement, will it produce their own stated objective of defeating the terrorists.’ Here, Cook was accepting Moscow’s official line for its actions – ‘defeating the terrorists’, an all-too-obvious mask, as we see below.17
In February, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee noted that ‘none of these strong messages [that it believed Britain was delivering to Russia] achieved any meaningful change in Russian attitudes or actions in Chechnya’.18
The reality of the ‘strong messages’ was shown by Channel 4 news, which reported on 23 February 2000 that Cook, in his visit to Russian Foreign Minister Ivanov, said he ‘understood’ Russia’s problems in Chechnya. Cook delivered Britain’s ‘frank concerns’ over Chechnya, before also saying that ‘it is equally important that we retain a relationship with Russia that enables us to work together constructively’. Cook also said of Vladimir Putin, who had by now become acting president: ‘I found his style refreshing and open and his priorities for Russia are ones that we share.’19
On the same day that Cook was saying that Britain and Putin shared the same piorities, the Guardian reported Human Rights Watch saying that at least sixty-two people had been killed earlier in the month in one of the worst massacres. Survivors described how around one hundred Russian soldiers systematically robbed and shot civilians on the southern outskirts of Grozny in a two-day rampage in which troops raped civilians, threw grenades into basements where people were hiding and executed anyone who tried to resist looting. ‘This is the single worst massacre of civilians that we have documented so far’, Human Rights Watch commented.20
Keith Vaz gave a further speech in March 2000 to a ‘political and economic prospects in the Caspian Sea region’ conference. His only mention of Chechnya was to refer to the ‘appalling footage of fighting in Chechnya, with terrible consequences on both sides’. (The ‘both sides’ formula being customary in apologising for the crimes of our allies, as with Israel and Turkey.)21
A week before a visit by Tony Blair to Vladimir Putin, the Observer revealed the slaughter of 363 people in the village of Katyr Yurt. Eyewitnesses said that Russian troops offered to give villagers safe corridor but then proceeded to use rockets against them. One witness was a doctor who had operated on hundreds of patients without anaesthetics, medicines or electricity during the bombardment. He said:
First they hit the village, then gave the civilians a corridor and they were shot. They didn’t bring the dead to us, only those in a
gony. They brought 10 bodies, to check if they were alive or not: one baby among them, grown ups, teenagers, some without both legs, burnt with traumas to the head, stomach.22
Blair met acting President Putin in Russia on 11 March 2000. They went to the opera together while Cherie was taken to the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg by Lyudmila Putin. Human Rights Watch said:
This is absolutely the wrong signal to be sending, making a private visit to the opera at a time when war crimes are being committed with impunity by Russian forces in Chechnya … There are mass executions of civilians, arbitrary detention of Chechen males, systematic beatings, torture and, on occasions, rape. There is the absolute and systematic and rampant looting of Chechen homes by Russian troops; these acts need to be condemned in the strongest possible terms.23
Asked about the risk of being seen to be backing Russia in Chechnya, a British government spokesman said: ‘You can’t plan your international diary according to the ups and downs of fighting on the ground.’24
The Observer noted that ‘Blair’s visit and the cordial tone of the meetings with Putin is being seen as a coup for the Russian leader’ which marked a ‘broad seal of approval’ for him. Blair said that it was a ‘privilege’ to be in St Petersburg and that ‘we’ve had a very good and full discussion … I want to say how much I have enjoyed that dialogue’. Britain also continued to offer public support for the Russian line, a Downing Street official saying that ‘there is a terrorist insurrection on their territory’.25
Indeed, Britain offered specific help to Russia on this visit. The press reported that Blair agreed to despatch a team headed by David Miliband, the head of the Downing Street policy unit, to advise Putin’s new government on how it could ‘best handle a well-established bureaucracy and civil service to push through its wishes’. Blair also agreed to send a top Treasury official to Moscow to advise on economic reform. Blair’s calls for investigations into human rights abuses and comments that Russian actions in Chechnya should be ‘proportionate’ could only have been drowned in this context.26
Later in the month, in response to a parliamentary question on Chechnya, Blair repeated that he had told the Russians their actions needed to be ‘proportionate’ and urged access for human rights observers. At the same time, he had also discussed the ‘prospects for the Russian economy and British investment in it. I made clear the need to improve conditions for investors.’27
It would be hard to express milder criticism of Russia than Britain did at this time, while courting the Russians in virtually every other field. After weeks of indiscriminate bombardment of civilians with massive human rights abuses ongoing, the most that a Downing Street spokesman could say ahead of the next Blair–Putin meeting was: ‘We have recognised that the Russians have a security problem. Any use of force should be proportionate and mindful of the need to reduce the risk to civilians.’28 It was hardly surprising that Putin made Britain his first destination after becoming president.
Ahead of the next meeting in April, Human Rights Watch wrote to Blair imploring him to press human rights concerns on Putin. It said that ‘your failure to condemn the war crimes committed by Russian forces and to call for accountability’ would undermine the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly, which had just voted to strip Russia of its voting rights. ‘Britain must play a critical role in maintaining pressure on the Russian government to curtail abuses by its forces in Chechnya, and to punish’ those guilty of human rights violations.29
Blair met Putin on 13 April. His speech showed that he failed to condemn the violations in Chechnya and repeated the formula that Russia was simply responding to terrorism: ‘I can understand Russia’s need to respond to the threat of force from extremists and terrorists.’ He added that ‘I am also clear that the measures taken should be proportionate and consistent with its international obligations’ – weeks after Grozny had been levelled. He said that Russia should allow humanitarian access by international organisations, and there are no military solutions. ‘But I believe that the best way … is through engagement [with Russia] not isolation.’30
Resolutions of the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1999 and 2000 condemned Russia for its actions in Chechnya and called on it to undertake investigations into ‘all violations of international humanitarian law and human rights’. According to Human Rights Watch, ‘Russia has blatantly resisted implementation of both resolutions, challenging the authority and credibility of the Commission and the UN human rights mechanism … Not a single high level commander has had to answer for atrocities.’31
2001
Coming into 2001, numerous unmarked graves containing people last seen in Russian custody continued to be discovered, with Dachny only the largest. About 140,000 people forced to flee from Chechnya remained in neighbouring Ingushetia, many in squalid conditions. In March, Human Rights Watch reported 113 documented ‘disappearances’ since September 1999. It described a ‘dirty war’ in Chechnya, with ‘mass violations of human rights’ by Russian forces who were also detaining thousands of people, most without access to lawyers.32
A human rights organisation based in Grozny, the Lam Centre for Pluralism, also reported in March on the terrible conditions in the mountain region of Chechnya. People were living in half-destroyed houses while ‘nothing is left of the regional capital of Itum-Kale except ruins and piles of trash’. The regional hospital now operated out of a private home with patients cared for ‘either outside or in tents’. School buildings had been completely destroyed and children were studying mainly in unheated tents.33
After the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11th, Britain, NATO and the EU virtually abandoned all pretence of concern at Russian atrocities in Chechnya. Blair said that ‘Russia has impressed many by her willingness to set history aside and to align herself solidly with the international coalition against terrorism.’ The German Chancellor said that Russia’s war against Chechnya should be ‘re-evaluated’ in the light of the ‘war against terrorism’. NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson stated that ‘we have certainly come to see the scourge of terrorism in Chechnya with different eyes’; Russia and NATO are ‘trusting friends and brothers-in-arms’.34
At the same time, Muscovites were asked in an opinion poll: ‘What do you think most influenced Vladimir Putin’s declaration of firm support for the struggle against international terrorism?’ The highest number – 44 per cent – said: ‘to reduce criticism by the West of actions by Russian forces in Chechnya’.35
By October 2001, Blair was exuding praise for Putin in unprecedented terms. In a joint press conference in Moscow he said that ‘I would like to pay tribute to the strength and leadership of President Putin at this time.’ Britain and Russia were ‘working through problems in the spirit of friends and true partners’. This was Blair’s eighth meeting with Putin in under two years. This, Blair noted, was ‘a very good indication of the strengthening relationship, not just between Russia and Britain, but a strong personal relationship too, which I greatly value,’ he added. The relationship today is of Russia as ‘a partner and a friend’. It was thus Blair that proposed the creation of a Russia–North Atlantic Council to bring Moscow closer to NATO – one of the post-September 11th rewards for Moscow’s good behaviour in supporting the ‘war against terrorism’.36
At another joint press conference on 22 December 2001 Blair was asked if Chechnya had been discussed. He said it had, and that Putin had told him of the ‘political initiatives being taken there, but it is important to remember that whatever cause people have, terrorism is not the way to pursue it’, mentioning only acts of terrorism carried out against Russia. This was Blair’s only mention of Chechnya in the press conference. No wonder Putin could say of Russia’s attempts to deal with ‘terrorism’ (meaning Chechnya) that ‘we felt and we saw and we knew that our voice was being heard, that the UK wanted to hear us and to understand us and that indeed we were being understood’.37
During 2001, the EU tabled a draft resolution on C
hechnya at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva but then tried to negotiate a much weaker chairman’s statement. Human Rights Watch said that:
UK prime minister Tony Blair and German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder undermined the European Union’s efforts in Geneva, repeatedly praising President Putin’s leadership but neglecting publicly to raise abuses in Chechnya, including Russia’s failure to comply with EU-sponsored resolutions.
At two EU–Russia summits Chechnya was discussed behind closed doors and the EU said nothing in public.38
2002
Following September 11th into 2002, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded in a report on Chechnya that ‘no tangible improvement of the human rights situation in the Chechen republic could be observed during the past year’. A US State Department report said that Russia’s human rights record was ‘poor in Chechnya, where the federal security forces demonstrated little respect for basic human rights and there were credible reports of serious violations, including numerous reports of extra-judicial killings by both the government and Chechen fighters’.39
Human Rights Watch noted that ‘civilians in Chechnya continued to suffer from ruthless sweep operations by Russian troops and from abusive guerilla tactics employed by rebel fighters’. In April it released another report documenting eighty-seven new cases of ‘disappearances’ in Chechnya since its last report in March 2001, noted above. This meant there had been more than 200 documented cases in Chechnya since September 1999, but there were a further 793 missing persons as of December 2001. The Russian human rights organisation, Memorial, documented 992 people murdered by the security forces from 1999 until January 2002, but said that the true figure was probably double that.40