THE CHECHEN STRUGGLE THE CHECHEN STRUGGLE INDEPENDENCE WON AND LOST

Ilyas Akhmadov and Miriam Lanskoy

Foreword by Zbigniew Brzezinski

palgrave macmillan THE CHECHEN STRUGGLE Copyright © Ilyas Akhmadov and Miriam Lanskoy, 2010. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-10534-8 All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the —a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-28974-5 ISBN 978-0-230-11751-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230117518 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lanskoy, Miriam. The Chechen struggle : independence won and lost / Miriam Lanskoy and Ilyas Akhmadov ; with a foreword by Zbigniew Brzezinski. p. cm. Includes index. 1. Chechnia ()—History—Autonomy and independence movements. 2. Chechnia (Russia)—History—Civil War, 1994– 3. Government, Resistance to—Russia (Federation)—Chechnia—History. 4. Chechnia (Russia)—Foreign relations—Russia (Federation) 5. Russia (Federation)—Foreign relations—Russia (Federation)—Chechnia. 6. Akhmadov, Ilyas, 1960– 7. Foreign ministers—Russia (Federation)— Chechnia—Biography. 8. Maskhadov, Aslan Alievich, 1951–2005. 9. Presidents—Russia (Federation)—Chechnia—Biography. I. Akhmadov, Ilyas, 1960– II. Title. DK511.C2L36 2010 947.086—dc22 2010013319 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2010 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii Foreword xi Map of xv

1 The War Begins 1 2 Joining Maskhadov’s General Staff 25 3 Raid on Budennovsk: Basayev Forces Peace 41 4 Maskhadov Is Elected President 63 5 Maskhadov’s Impossible Quandary 77 6 The Hostage Trade 101 7 Crisis within Chechen Society 121 8 Incursions into Dagestan: War Resumes 151 9 The Chechen Resistance Splinters 173 10 My Tenure as Foreign Minister 193 11 The Killing of Maskhadov 221 12 The North Emirate and Beyond 235

Notes 249 Index 263 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

hen I first visited the United States in 2000 and 2001 and Wsought political asylum here in 2002, I was fortunate to find a community of Americans who were knowledgeable about Chechnya and sympathetic to my situation. Without the support of American friends and American non-governmental institu- tions this book would not have been possible. The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, which was chaired at the time by the former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the late General Alexander Haig, former senior State Department official Ambassador Max Kampelman, did a great deal to help me promote peace. The committee arranged meetings with government officials, Senators, and Congressmen, and enabled me to continue to advocate for negotiations, hold confidential meetings with Russian parliamentarians, and pro- mote the peace plan that I developed. Dr. Brzezinski with whom I discussed Chechnya frequently became an enthusiastic supporter of this project. I recall fondly my first public presentation in Washington D.C., which was at Johns Hopkins University, Central Asia and Caucasus Institute, where I first met its chairman, Fred Starr, whose cheerfulness and optimism proved invaluable during many complications and setbacks while writing this book. The work began during my Reagan-Fascell Fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy where Miriam Lanskoy and I began to draft the first two chapters. I am particularly grateful for the personal warmth and moral support of NED President Carl Gershman and Deputy to the President for Policy and Strategy Barbara Haig who had faith in me at a very difficult time, when were nearly universally feared and ostracized. viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe the biggest debt of gratitude to Edward Kline and Nicholas and Ruth Daniloff for their thoughtfulness, kindness, and generosity, which sustained me over several years while writ- ing this book. I am grateful for Edward’s and Nicholas’s detailed reading of the manuscript and their many insightful edits, com- ments, and suggestions.

Ilyas Akhmadov

* * *

This journey began for me in the fateful winter of 1994, when the war was starting in Chechnya while I was embarking on my graduate studies at Boston University and my father put in my hands his tattered copy of Tolstoy’s Haji Murat. Thanks to my father, Alexander Lanskoy I grew up with an appreciation of Russian literature, the moral example of Soviet-era dissent, and was captivated by Russia’s post-Soviet transition. In graduate school, I benefited enormously from the mentorship of Professor Uri Ra’anan who taught me about the importance of immersing myself in my subject, the historian’s demand for precision and detail, and the value of oral history. When I set out to write a dissertation about Chechnya I found that my best sources would be the Russian scholars, journalists, and human rights activists. It was with their help, and thanks to their research, and advice, that I wrote my dissertation: “The War of the Russian Succession: Russia and Chechnya between the Wars,” which analyzed Chechen effort at state-building and Russia’s Chechnya policy during President ’s second term, 1996–99. Ever since then, I have viewed my work as a part- nership with the activists. When I met Ilyas Akhmadov and was presented with an oppor- tunity to work with the Foreign Minister of Chechnya to write a history of their struggle, this appealed to me not only because of his many fascinating insights but also because the act of writing one’s own history—for a nation under foreign domination, war torn and scattered into exile—is to become the subject of history. Most books about Chechnya are written by foreign journalists or scholars, and hardly any are written by the Chechens themselves. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

For a nation, particularly one that has endured such turmoil, the record, analysis, and debate of recent history are needed for the maintenance of the national idea. I am very grateful to my colleagues at the National Endowment for Democracy, and especially Carl Gershman, Barbara Haig, Nadia Diuk, Marc Plattner, and Sally Blair for encouragement and good advice; Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Edward Kline, who read and commented on drafts of the manuscript and our edi- tor, Luba Ostashevsky, for her patience and professionalism. We owe the biggest debt of gratitude to Nicholass Daniloff who read early versions of the manuscript and suggested numerous revi- sions and clarifications, particularly during a two-day editing ses- sion in October 2009. My mother, Anna Lanskoy, and my friends Catherine Osgood, Irakly Areshidze, and Ruth Daniloff provided tremendous encouragement and moral support.

Miriam Lanskoy FOREWORD

lyas Akhmadov’s story is simultaneously a personal account of Ithe turmoil and confusion of the national rebirth of Chechnya, and the tale of a young intellectual-turned-fighter, eventually Chechnya’s Foreign Minister, who sought peace for a state that the international community preferred to ignore. This small nation—in a poor, mountainous, landlocked terri- tory—after two hundred years of Russian domination attempted to realize a centuries old dream: to fashion their own nation state on the basis of its national customs and culture, relying on the inspiration of the heroic warrior tradition with which Chechens resisted Russian conquest in the nineteenth and twentieth cen- turies. Among its most serious internal obstacles were the acute post-Soviet ideological confusion among the Chechens, and the challenges from radical Islamic religious ideas. In this book, a remarkable person, with a graduate degree in political science, recently discharged from the Soviet army, joins the Chechen resistance and becomes a witness to the trials of establishing statehood. He provides the first authoritative, inside account of the problems they encountered, the splintering of the resistance, and its eventual fragmentation and radicalization. Fighters of Akhmadov’s generation modeled themselves on the murids of mid-nineteenth century when Imam Shamil sought to unite the Caucasus nations against the Russian annexation. Tsar Alexander II eventually defeated Shamil and took him pris- oner. The Chechens, a fierce warrior people, gained the reputa- tion through Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Lermontov’s literary works of being fearsome enemies and cutthroats. That reputation has lived on and successive Russian governments have exploited it to mar- ginalize or terrorize the Chechens into submission. In the 1890s, the Russian government expelled significant numbers to Turkey xii FOREWORD and Jordan. In 1944, Stalin deported almost the whole Chechen nation, more than 500,000 persons, to Central Asia, while falsely accusing it of collaboration with the invading Nazis. This depor- tation, recognized by the European parliament as genocide, resulted in the deaths of a third of the Chechen population during their transportation and the first year of their resettlement. Ilyas Akhmadov’s balanced, honest, and courageous voice stands in sharp contrast to extremist Chechens and Russians alike and makes it glaringly obvious that the authorities in and Washington and European capitals missed an opportunity to engage with moderate Chechen leaders in an attempt to avert the twin catastrophes that unfolded over the course of the two Chechen wars: the mass slaughter of the Chechens and Russia’s slide into dic- tatorship. Far from establishing peace or stability, western silence as Russia destroyed the Chechen moderates only encouraged and buttressed the radical elements in both Russia and Chechnya. President Boris Yeltsin attempted to remove the Chechen President , who had declared independence in 1991, by sending in troops three years later “to restore constitutional order.” However, his ground forces were woefully unprepared and Marshal , Chief of the General Staff, seriously miscalculated. He declared that a regiment of assault paratroop- ers could conquer the Chechens within forty-eight hours without assessing the Chechen potential for armed resistance. Within two years, no more than 10,000 Chechen fighters had brought the Russian invasion force, made up largely of poorly trained recruits, to a standstill and Moscow was forced to negoti- ate a cease-fire at Khasavurt in 1996 and a peace treaty in Moscow in 1997. The agreements called for the removal of from Chechen territory, and for both sides to respect each other; to desist from using force; to develop their relations in accor- dance with generally recognized principles and norms of interna- tional law; and to conclude an agreement by 2001 on Chechnya’s final and definitive political status. Elections were organized for January 1997, during which , Dudayev’s top military officer, defeated several opposing candidates in ballot- ing that was recognized by Chechens and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as “free and fair.” For the first time in its history, Chechnya had acquired a legiti- mately elected President through a democratic process. FOREWORD xiii

In Moscow, however, Maskhadov’s election was viewed with hostility. Chechnya was said to be “a bandit state.” Moscow’s hardliners and military men itched to reverse the Khasavyurt agreement. In the fall of 1999, Prime Minister , was determined to use force again to “correct” the situation on Russia’s southern flank. A dramatic causus belli was needed. His administration blamed a series of apartment bombings in Moscow during 1999 on Chechen terrorists, and Putin declared that the Chechens were “international terrorists” backed by outside inter- ests. Moscow would go all out to crush them. His famous words were, “We will pursue the terrorists everywhere. In the air- port . . . in the airport . . . it means, and you will excuse me, if we catch them in the toilet, we will drown them in the shithouse! That’s it! The matter is closed.” Putin’s admirers cheered. The Russian military used intensive shelling of rebel groups, towns, mosques, hospitals, and cemeteries employing bunker-busting bombs, cluster bombs, and vacuum bombs. It seeded thousands of mines on Chechen territory, including mines cynically disguised as toys that unwary children would pick up, blowing off arms and legs. The army set up “filtration camps” ostensibly to weed out the inno- cent from those guilty of mutiny but which actually became torture and execution centers for most of those who were arrested. The tragedy of Chechnya stands as a failure of the U.S. policy of indifference and neglect. Throughout this conflict, under suc- cessive Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States essentially stood aside, asserting that the Chechen problem was a Russian internal matter. At one point the Clinton White House even compared the conflict to the U.S. civil war and President Lincoln’s determination to preserve the Union. U.S. officials, responding to Moscow pressure, declined to meet in any official capacity with representatives of the Chechen resis- tance. The Chechens who viewed the United States as a beacon of light and democracy were deeply disappointed that the State Department declined to denounce forcefully the seemingly end- less human rights abuses. Indeed, after 9/11, the Bush admin- istration officials adopted the Russian view that the Chechen resistance was really part of an international terrorist movement, alleging (falsely as it turned out) that Chechen fighters were bat- tling alongside Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The global indifference gave the Russians a free hand in Chechnya. xiv FOREWORD

This inside view of Chechnya’s latest struggle for independence was written by an intellectual, who had served earlier in his life with the Soviet strategic rocket forces. Like many of his peers, Ilyas Akhmadov was attracted to the struggle for independence and became a fighter for Chechnya’s freedom. His candid and courageous memoir highlights the challenges facing Muslim moderates as they tried to form a democratic soci- ety from a pool of politically inexperienced followers driven by sometimes primitive tribal traditions. It describes the hopelessness of a diplomat sent abroad on a multi-year assignment with no diplomatic immunity, no foreign visas, no money, and no estab- lished contacts to obtain U.S. and European support for democ- racy. And it portrays in vivid detail the difficulties of an isolated Chechen President trying to appease opposing political factions, conceding too much to one group or another as his opponents became increasingly radicalized. In the end, the tragedy of Chechnya is not just the story of the blood and cruelty of modern warfare, but also of the fact that the moderate voices of President Maskhadov and his Foreign Minister Akhmadov were overwhelmed by radical opponents and a lack of interest and attention in the West. Akhmadov benefited in his work from the support of organi- zations like the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (co-chaired by the late General Alexander Haig, former senior State Department official Ambassador Max Kampelman, and myself), which supported Akhmadov when, even in exile and separated from his family, he sought avenues to promote peace. In 2004, despite numerous Russian efforts to obtain his extradition, the U.S. gov- ernment granted Akhmadov political asylum. In the difficult period of separation and a two-year asylum case, Akhmadov relied on the support of his new American friends—chief among them Miriam Lanskoy, Nicholas and Ruth Daniloff, and Edward Kline—who thought that his voice and views could be an important contribution to preserving an accurate record of this period in Chechnya’s history. And, let us hope, it will inspire a future generation of Chechens and of Russians to fashion an alternative and a better tomorrow.

Zbigniew Brzezinski Chechnya 44 0 25 Kilometers 45 46 47 0 25 Miles Boundary representation is Caspian not necessarily authoritative. Sea Zelenokumsk Achikulak RUSSIA Kochubey

Dagestan Stavropol’

44 44

Kamyshev StaryyTerek Kizlyar Kargalinskaya Prokhladnyy Terek Novyy Kabardino- Kalinovskaya Balkariya Nadterechnaya Malgobek Chervlënnaya Terek

Ingushetiya Aksay Groznyy Gudermes Khasavyurt Argun Sulak Nazran’ Terek Bamut Urus-Martan Shali

North Assa 43 43 Ossetia Vedeno Shatoy Buynaksk C A U C A S U S M O U Argun N T Mt’a Mqinvartsven A I Botlikh (Gora Kazbek N s 5,047 m e y o (18,558 ft) k s ye iy o d k n s A r a v P’asanauri A

RUSSIA Krasnodar Stavropool’ Dagestan Karachayevo- Kabardino- Cherkesiya 42 Balkariya Ingushetiya 42 47 44 North Chechnya Ossetia Black Dagestan Sea GEORGIA T’BILISI

ARMENIA AZERBAIJAN TURKEY 0 100 Kilometers YEREVAN 0 100 Miles

Map of Chechnya