Putin's Wars
Page 24
18. Kroth, “Moscow Police Shall Revive the Great Cossack Tradition.”
19. Sergey Israpilov, “Rossii neobkhodimo ‘Novoe kazachestvo,’” Krasnoyarskoe Vremya (December 17, 2012).
20. Vladimir Putin, “Address to the Federal Assembly” (December 12, 2012).
21. Steven Eke, “Russia’s Cossacks Rise Again,” BBC News (August 9, 2007).
22. Eke, “Russia’s Cossacks Rise Again.”
23. “The Patriarch on the Cossacks” (October 14, 2009), speech by Patriarch Kirill at the session of the Council for Cossack Affairs under the President of the Russian Federation in Novocherkassk on October 14, 2009. http://www.fondkazachestva.org/patriarcheng.htm.
24. “The Patriarch on the Cossacks.”
25. Max Seddon, “Russia Restores Cossacks to Positions of Power,” Times of Israel (November 28, 2012).
26. Quoted in US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Resource Information Center (August 27, 1999).
27. “Georgia/Russia: Use of Rocket System Can Harm Civilians,” Human Rights Watch (August 12, 2008).
28. “Shashki nagolo: Donskie Kazaki gotovyatsya voevat v Yuznoy Osetii” (Swords drawn: Don Cossacks preparing themselves to fight in South Ossetia), Nezavisimaya Gazeta (August 6, 2008).
29. “The Cossacks Return,” StrategyPage.com (September 17, 2010).
30. “The Cossacks Return.”
31. “The Cossacks Return.”
32. Luke Harding, “Russia’s Cruel Intention,” The Guardian (September 1, 2008).
33. Israpilov, “Rossii neobkhodimo ‘Novoe kazachestvo.’”
34. Fatima Tlisova, “Kremlin Backing of Cossacks Heightens Tensions in the North Caucasus,” North Caucasus Analysis 9, no. 14 (April 10, 2008).
35. Tlisova, “Kremlin Backing of Cossacks Heightens Tensions in the North Caucasus.”
36. Quoted in Masha Lipman, “Putin’s Patriotism Lessons,” The New Yorker (September 24, 2012).
37. Lipman, “Putin’s Patriotism Lessons.”
38. Lipman, “Putin’s Patriotism Lessons.”
39. Olesya Gerasimenko, “Kazak: eto ne natsionalnost, eto rytsar pravoslaviya” (A Cossack: this is not a nationality, this is a knight of the Orthodox religion), Kommersant Vlast no. 46 (November 19, 2012).
40. Gerasimenko, “Kazak: eto ne natsionalnost, eto rytsar pravoslaviya.”
41. Dorokhina, “Kratkiy kurs istorii kazachestva.”
42. Kroth, “Moscow Police Shall Revive the Great Cossack Tradition.”
43. “Russia’s Cossacks Take on New Foes in Moscow: Beggars, Drunks and Illegally Parked Cars,” Associated Press (November 27, 2012).
44. “Cossacks Should Be Allowed to Flog Gays, Siberian Lawmaker Says,” Moscow News (July 5, 2013).
45. http://www.kazakirossii.ru.
46. Julia Smirnova, “Wie Russlands patriotische Kosaken Moskau erobern,” Die Welt (November 28, 2012).
47. Lyudmila Alexandrova, “Russian Cossacks Want to Have More Say in Russia’s Social and Political Life,” Itar-Tass (November 26, 2012).
48. Alexander Golts, “A Cossack Mafia in the Making,” Moscow Times (December 4, 2012).
49. Golts, “A Cossack Mafia in the Making.”
50. Golts, “A Cossack Mafia in the Making.”
Part III
The Wheels of War
Chapter 10
Three Lost Wars
From Afghanistan to the First Chechen War
Over the past sixty-five years—not counting the armed interventions of the Warsaw Pact in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968)—the Soviet Union/Russia has fought five wars:
The Cold War (1945–1989)
The War in Afghanistan (1979–1989)
The First Chechen War (1994–1996)
The Second Chechen War (1999–2009)
The war with Georgia (2008)
The first three wars were lost; the last two were won. The two last wars were Putin’s wars: these military actions were carefully prepared, meticulously planned, and ruthlessly conducted by the Putin regime. Why did Putin succeed where his predecessors failed? What are the differences between these wars? And—an even more important question—what role does war play in Putin’s overall strategy? I will try to answer these questions here and in the following chapters.
The Cold War: Containment Versus Expansionism
Much has been written about the origins of the Cold War. In September 1944—only three months after the Allied invasion in Normandy and eight months before the capture of Berlin by the Red Army—the American diplomat and Kremlin watcher George Kennan predicted with great foresight not only the advent of the East-West conflict, but he also indicated its origin. Writing about “the Russian aims in Eastern and Central Europe,” Kennan wrote: “Russian efforts in this area are directed to only one goal: power. The form this power takes, the methods by which it is achieved: these are secondary questions.”[1] And he continued:
For the smaller countries of Eastern and Central Europe, the issue is not one of communism or capitalism. It is one of the independence of national life or of domination by a big power which has never shown itself adept at making any permanent compromises with rival power groups. . . . Today, in the autumn of 1944, the Kremlin finds itself committed by its own inclination to the concrete task of becoming the dominant power of Eastern and Central Europe. At the same time, it also finds itself committed by past promises and by world opinion to a vague program which Western statesmen—always so fond of quaint terms agreeable to their electorates—call collaboration. The first of these programs implies taking. The second implies giving. No one can stop Russia from doing the taking, if she is determined to go through with it. No one can force Russia to do the giving, if she is determined not to go through with it. In these circumstances others may worry.[2]
That there were, indeed, reasons to worry would soon become clear when Stalin’s Soviet Russia began to install grim communist dictatorships in the countries that fell into its sphere of influence. In July 1947, eight months before the communist coup d’état in Prague, George Kennan published in Foreign Affairs his famous anonymous article, signed “Mr. X,” on “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.”[3] In this article he formulated the principles of what was to become the “containment” policy. This policy would be adopted by President Truman and would lead, two years later—on April 4, 1949—to the foundation of NATO. The origins of the Cold War were the unprecedented territorial expansionist greed of Soviet Russia, the undisguised, unfettered imperialism of Stalin’s totalitarian regime that refused to respect the right of national self-determination of its new “brother nations.” For forty years it led to a huge military buildup by the two superpowers. And it ended, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire. This collapse was experienced by the Russians as a defeat and by many in the West as a victory (even if, for reasons of expediency, they did not always say so openly).
The War in Afghanistan: Andropov’s War?
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, this was interpreted by the West as a new phase of Soviet imperialist expansion. It was considered a war of conquest with the aim to add new territory to the Soviet bloc. But, with hindsight, things were more complicated. Initially, there was not so much a push from the Russian side to intervene militarily, as a pull by Afghan communist factions to draw the Soviet Union into an internal, Afghan conflict. The Afghan Communist Party (PDPA) had seized power in April 1978. Although the plot had been directed and steered by the KGB, it soon became clear that for the Soviet Union the communist coup d’état was an ambiguous event. The Soviet government had always enjoyed a good relationship with the former, noncommunist Afghan governments—not only when Afghanistan was still a monarchy, but also after the king, Zahir Shah, had been deposed by General Mohammad Daoud in July 1973. Communist insurgents killed Daoud in April 1978, and it was the radical Khalq faction of the Afghan Communist Party—led by Nur Mohammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin—that came to
power. Amin became prime minister, and Taraki became president. It was, however, the second faction in the Communist Party, the more moderate Parcham faction led by Babrak Karmal, which had the favor of Moscow. The Khalq soon came to persecute this faction.
The new regime was soon confronted with a growing opposition inside the country. In March 1979, there was a violent rebellion in Herat, Afghanistan’s third largest city. During this rebellion several Soviet advisers were executed. The PDPA, fearful of losing control, turned to Moscow with a demand for military support. A meeting was arranged in Moscow on March 20, 1979, between President Taraki and four Soviet heavyweights: Aleksey Kosygin, chairman of the Council of Ministers; Andrey Gromyko, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Dmitry Ustinov, Minister of Defense; and Boris Ponomarev, head of the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Taraki not only demanded weapons, but also military personnel, including pilots and tank drivers. Although Kosygin refused any direct military involvement of Soviet troops on the ground in Afghanistan, Moscow became more nervous when the KGB hinted at the supposed unreliability of the Afghan prime minister, Hafizullah Amin. Yury Andropov, the head of the KGB, feared that Amin could become an “Afghan Sadat,” turning, eventually, to the West.[4] “Andropov suspects him to be an agent of the CIA: logical if one knows that Amin has passed four years at Columbia University.”[5] This suspicion led to dramatic events in the late summer of 1979. KGB agents in Kabul told President Taraki that he should arrest Amin. When, on September 14, Amin was invited to Taraki’s palace to talk with Soviet representatives, Taraki’s guards opened fire and tried to kill him. But Amin escaped. He mobilized his own militia and had Taraki arrested. On October 9, 1979, President Taraki was executed. Hereupon the Soviet Union decided to intervene and replace Amin with its own favorite, Babrak Karmal. Amin was killed by Vympel Spetsnaz troops. These are KGB special forces consisting of multilingual officers specializing in combat and sabotage in enemy territory. “Created in 1979,” wrote J. Michael Waller, “Vympel served as the shock force prior to the invasion of Afghanistan. In its first foreign operation, Vympel commandos stormed the presidential palace in Kabul and assassinated the inhabitants, including Afghan President Hafizullah Amin and seven of his children. This allowed the Soviet protégé, Babrak Karmal, to “invite” the Soviet army to intervene in his country.”[6] Amin’s assassination took place on December 25, 1979. The next day, Karmal declared himself secretary general of the Afghan Communist Party and prime minister.
The Soviet troops were to stay in Afghanistan for more than a full decade with over a hundred thousand troops permanently involved. In this period at least twenty-five thousand Russian troops were killed. Over one million Afghans lost their lives in the conflict. An important question is who pushed Brezhnev, at that time in poor health, to take the decision to invade Afghanistan. In the politburo meeting of December 12, 1979, in which the decision was taken, Kosygin, who opposed an intervention, was absent. Many point to KGB chief Yury Andropov as the main instigator. Artyom Borovik, for instance, wrote: “Many servicemen and MID [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] workers told me that the script for the events in Afghanistan was written by the KGB. Initially, Andropov was against the idea of an invasion, but eventually he followed the same reflex that he’d learned some twenty years earlier in Hungary, where he served as an ambassador and where troops had to be sent in 1956.”[7] This interpretation is supported by Svetlana Savranskaya, a political analyst.
The decision to send troops was made on the basis of limited information. According to Soviet veterans of the events, KGB sources were trusted over the military intelligence (GRU) sources. This partly reflected the growing influence of the KGB chairman Yu. V. Andropov, who controlled the flow of information to General Secretary Brezhnev, who was partially incapacitated and ill for most of 1979. KGB reports from Afghanistan created a picture of urgency and strongly emphasized the possibility of Amin’s links to the CIA and U.S. subversive activities in the region.[8]
It seemed, indeed, that the personal memorandum, sent in early December 1979 by Andropov to Brezhnev, determined Brezhnev’s decision.[9] Anatoly Dobrynin, former Soviet ambassador to the United States, shared this view.[10] This confirms the observation made by Thierry Wolton that “the Kremlin knew the external world over the borders as if over the high walls of a citadel through the prism of what was reported to it by the KGB. The Organs, in this way, could manipulate the members of the Central Committee and the Politburo, which, in the closed Soviet universe, was a sacred power.”[11]
The Soviet military, however, was not happy with the decision to invade Afghanistan. When, on December 10, 1979, Dmitry Ustinov, the defense minister, informed the chief of the General Staff, Nikolay Ogarkov, of the plan, the latter ”was surprised and outraged by such a decision.” He said he was “against the introduction of troops, calling it ‘reckless.’”[12] Georgy M. Kornienko, who at that time was deputy foreign minister under Gromyko, wrote, referring to the position taken by his boss in the politburo meeting on December 12, 1979: “From my conversations with him, already after the introduction of troops, I concluded that it was not Gromyko who said ‘A’ in favour of such decision, but that he was ‘pressured’ into it by Andropov and Ustinov together. Which one of those two was the first to change their initial point of view and spoke in favour of sending troops, one may only guess.”[13] It is a fair guess to assume that it was ultimately Yury Andropov who pushed his colleagues in the politburo—including General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev—to take this decision. It was, eventually, Andropov’s seven hundred special forces of the KGB, stationed in Kabul, who made the opening move by attacking the presidential palace and killing Amin. The justification given by the Soviet government for its intervention: that it had been asked for support by the Afghan government, was rather dubious. It is true that in March 1979 President Taraki had asked the Soviet Union to intervene by sending troops. At that time, however, the Soviet leadership had reacted negatively to this request. In December Taraki was no longer there, and Amin, who had executed his predecessor and taken his place, was certainly not in favor of a Soviet intervention. It is, therefore, not surprising to hear that “the Soviet troops . . . suffered from the confusion about their goals—the initial official mission was to protect the PDPA regime; however, when the troops reached Kabul, their orders were to overthrow Amin and his regime.”[14]
If one reconstructs the events, it becomes clear that neither the Soviet military, nor the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, nor even Brezhnev himself, were at the roots of the fatal—and in the end self-defeating—decision to invade Afghanistan, but the KGB. The “Sadat” role that Andropov ascribed to Amin was probably a deliberate attempt at disinformation by this long-serving KGB chief to manipulate the Soviet leadership. It would not have been the first time. Already in 1956, when he was Soviet ambassador in Budapest, Andropov was one of the main instigators of the Soviet intervention, falsely informing Khrushchev, who initially was reluctant to intervene, that the Russian embassy was being attacked. In 1968 Andropov would again be among the hardliners who were in favor of sending Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring.[15] Andropov, a highly intelligent man, was an undisputed expert in manipulation. Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former Romanian two-star general, and the highest intelligence officer to have ever defected from the Soviet bloc, a man who knew Andropov personally, characterized him as follows:
Once settled in the Kremlin, Andropov surrounded himself with KGB officers, who immediately went on a propaganda offensive to introduce him to the West as a “moderate” Communist and a sensitive, warm, Western-oriented man who allegedly enjoyed an occasional drink of Scotch, liked to read English novels, and loved listening to American jazz and the music of Beethoven. In actual fact, Andropov did not drink, as he was already terminally ill from a kidney disorder, and the rest of the portrayal was equally false.[16]
Andropov may be considered the secret “godfather” of Russia’s war in Afghanista
n.[17] The irony, however, was that this costly, protracted, and unwinnable guerrilla war in a mountainous and hostile environment would soon exhibit the internal weaknesses of Soviet society. This would convince Andropov—even before he became general secretary of the CPSU in 1983—of the necessity of a fundamental and profound reform of the Soviet system. And the man whom he had in mind to conduct these reforms was Mikhail Gorbachev.[18]
The First Chechen War:
Four Differences with Former Wars
Artyom Borovik wrote: “As a general to whom I became quite close in Afghanistan put it, ‘All of the wars that Russia lost led to social reforms, while all of the wars it won led to the strengthening of totalitarianism.’”[19] This seems, indeed, to be true in the cases of both the Cold War and the war in Afghanistan. These two lost wars led, first, to Gorbachev’s perestroika, and, subsequently, to the introduction of a market economy and a pluralistic democracy. But one may ask if this reformist dynamic was still operative when the Soviet Union’s successor state, the Russian Federation, lost the First Chechen War (1994–1996). There were, to begin with, four important differences between the Cold War and the war in Afghanistan on the one hand, and the war in Chechnya on the other. These differences concerned the