International Politics

Tracking the Kremlin’s trail in the new Caucasus war

There is a sad joke in Moscow. An optimist meets a pessimist and the latter says, "Khuzhe ne budet" (it can’t be worse). The optimist answers, "Nu da, budet" (of course it can). Nothing illustrates this joke better than the bleak autumn of 1999. Even though the Russian economy has been recovering much faster than forecast, the political situation still looks bad and could be even worse. And it will have negative consequences for oil and gas projects in Russia and the rest of the Former Soviet Union, particularly export pipeline projects. Chechnya is a perfect example.

Russian fighter planes are bombing the capital, Grozny, and land forces already have penetrated into Chechen territory; Russia apparently has initiated the second Chechen war. However, prospects are no better than in 1994. Not only is the Russian Army neither ready nor fit for a short victorious war before winter, political implications in the northern Caucasus and the Caspian basin look even bleaker than during the first confrontation.

Armed conflict in such a sensitive region would cripple pipeline projects supported by the Russian government. It also would cripple any attempt to stabilize the northern Caucasus and improve relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey. The potential political losses of such a conflict are tremendous. So why is Russia going to war?

Alleged Chechen atrocities in Dagestan and other parts of Russia have spurred Moscow to bomb and invade its recalcitrant territory of Chechnya.

Explanations given by the Russian government are unclear. Radical Islamic operatives have been present in the Dagestan region of Russia, but until now they have been checked well by official religious authorities that are mostly pro-Moscow. As an ethnic group, Chechens are not thought well of within Dagestan. In addition, it’s difficult to see Shamil Bassaev’s 1,000 or so Islamic warriors as more than a local problem.

It should be noted that the Chechen governmental regime of President Aslan Maskhadov has displayed restraint, so far. It avoided any confrontation with Russian authorities and only asked for full implementation of the 1996 peace agreement. Nevertheless, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is now denying Maskhadov’s government any legitimacy.

As more and more information surfaces, the reason for such a war becomes clear, albeit unsettling. For all his Islamic radicalism, Bassaev has been well known since 1995 for close contacts with crooked tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who plays so important a role in the Kremlin. Maskhadov elaborated publicly about these contacts in interviews he gave to French and Italian newspapers.

On the bodies of Bassaev’s soldiers, Russian troops have found weapons that can be traced back to newly produced lots allocated to the Russian government’s arm export agency, Rosvooruzhenie. Incidentally, by the end of June, Beresovsky had managed to arrange for one of his lieutenants to be nominated as head of this agency. On Sept 27, 1999, former Russian Prime Minister Evguenny Primakov publicly asked for a criminal investigation of this matter.

Motives behind the ugly terrorist campaign that killed nearly 300 people over several days in Moscow and Volgodonsk are not clear, either. If Bassaev’s people were indeed reacting to the bombing of villages in northern Dagestan during early September, how could they have carried more than 2,500 lb of hexogen into Moscow during three days and put so much explosive into places that had been rented since early August? Mr. Putin, who is closely related to the so-called "best friend of the West," Anatoly Chubays, gave at least three different explanations for the bombings. He even went so far as to attribute them to noted Saudi outlaw Omar Bin Laden or to "international terrorists trying to cripple the next CIS summit in Moscow."

If poor innocent people had not died, everyone in Moscow would have been falling over, laughing. Last but not least, Russian planes bombing Chechnya have, so far, avoided places known to be under Bassaev’s control. They are concentrating their strikes (forget about precision bombing, this is not Russian "style") on facilities controlled directly by Mashkadov. So who is fighting whom and for what reason?

The sad truth is that Russia has entered into a new phase of political fighting. Around a diminished President Boris Yeltsin, the so-called "family" tries desperately to keep hold of his power. "Family" refers to his two daughters, their husbands and a select little group of people, whose names are regularly quoted by investigators in New York and Switzerland.

In a broader context, they clearly lost the battle when Russia’s financial system crashed in August 1998. This crisis was probably the last nail in the coffin of Russian liberalism. The small, widely corrupt elite who managed Russia from 1992 to 1998 — with blind and deaf Western support — had been headed toward the metaphorical garbage can of history. Although Primakov achieved impressive results in reducing capital flight and boosting tax revenue, the "family" ousted him last May, hoping to regain its former prestige and power. Unfortunately, the Luzhkov-Primakov alliance is clearly a winning one, politically. To make things worse, at the very time that Primakov (at last) was revealing his political strategy, financial scandals exploded everywhere. The "family" is clearly afraid that it will be prevented from fleeing to the West if it loses the next elections. They obviously are in a desperate situation, and desperate people are dangerous.

A raging war could provide a clever reason to either cancel elections or manipulate them through some sort of emergency administration. In any case, it’s a very dangerous gamble. One can only wonder if Russian governmental entities, including the armed forces, are ready to take part in what could amount to political suicide. But who knows? Can it be worse? Oh yes it can....

Jacques SAPIR is Professor of economics at EHESS-Paris and at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He will be a regular contributor to this column, which now features oil-and-gas-related political news from various world regions, in addition to quarterly U.S. governmental reports.

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