Russia Turns the Corner in Chechnya

Nicolai N. Petro

This weekend a normal event took place in an abnormal place, the first parliamentary elections in nearly a decade were held in Chechnya. 

This bloody conflict has been a blot on Russian democracy, and on Vladimir Putin's presidency in particular. It was Putin after all who re-invaded Chechnya in 1999, ending three years of de facto sovereignty that had turned the republic into a haven for smugglers, drug traffickers and slave traders, and led to a mass exodus that threatened to destabilize the entire Caucasus region.

Unlike most Russian pundits, however, Putin refused to give up hope that Chechnya could one day become an integral part of Russia.  His first goal was to eliminate those rebel leaders devoted to the spread of radical Islam, aptly named "Islamic Che Guevaras" by journalist and former Moscow correspondent for German television, Gabriele Krone-Schmalz. Today, with notable exception of Shamil Basayev, this task had largely been accomplished.

Once these rebel field commanders had been largely eliminated,  and the political leadership killed or exiled, Putin offered rebel foot soldiers amnesties and incentives to lay down their arms. More than seven thousand have now done so, with many going directly into the new pro-Moscow Chechen security forces, hunting down their former comrades. Finally, to help the region get back on its feet, in the last five years Moscow has plowed more than 2 billion dollars in extra federal assistance into the region. 

Taken together these policies have given Chechens new hope for peace and stability. Terrorist attacks within Chechnya have fallen from 130 in 2004 to just thirty this past year, while annual casualties among the Russian military have dwindled from 1,397 in 2000 to just 28 this year.

The safer environment has encouraged more than a quarter million refugees to return home, and to open more than 30,000 new small and medium size businesses.  The university in the Chechen capital of Grozny, with roughly 18,000 students, has re-opened, as have 500 secondary schools throughout the republic, once shut down by the fundamentalists. The State Bank of Russia has re-opened branches throughout the republic, and the biweekly Grozny-Moscow train has been carrying passengers for more than a year now without incident. A significant portion of the municipal infrastructure of Grozny has been rebuilt and, judging from the tenfold increase in housing prices the city has seen in the past three years, the city is undergoing a real estate boom.

The final piece in the Kremlin's strategy for reintegrating Chechnya back into the Russian Federation was put in place this weekend, with the uneventful election of a new, bicameral Chechen legislature. 355 individual candidates representing more than half a dozen parties that included former rebel commanders, members of the previous opposition parliament, and 27 women, competed for 58 seats. Given the republic‚s remarkable turn around it is hardly surprising that Putin‚s United Russia party won a clear majority of 33 seats, though opposition parties and independent legislators are also well represented. 

With a new parliament in place, the stage is set for the ratification of a key agreement delimiting federal and Chechen sovereignty. This treaty will give Chechens willing to work with Russia extensive local autonomy, while also providing a clear time table for federal assistance to the region.

Recognizing this progress does not mean that all is well in Chechnya. Crime, kidnapping and corruption remain very serious problems that, paradoxically, the influx of new federal monies seems to have made worse. Still, it is clear that the new state institutions, are tackling these head on. Since 2003 the state prosecutor has initiated 400 cases of fraud in the payment of compensation for civilian losses that have resulted from the conflict, the most noted being the indictment just this past week of Abubakir Baibutyrov, the former head of the republican committee on compensation.

The region's dramatic progress has finally been noted by European observers once sharply critical of Russia. In stark contrast to the past, this fall both Alvaro Gil Robles, Human Rights Commissioner for the Council of Europe, and Marc Franco, the head of the European Commission‚s delegation to Russia, pointedly lauded the new Chechen government‚s progress. Franco was even quoted by the Russian media as saying that "in the past the West had made some mistakes with respect to the Caucasus," and was now eager to make amends.

But while Chechnya has changed, Western press commentary about it seems stuck in 1999. The region‚s problems are often attributed to a rabid Chechen nationalism described as incorrigibly anti-Russian, anti-modern, and self-destructive. This mantra allows observers to blithely ignore the moderate voices that have gained ground in Chechen politics by successfully working out an accommodation with Russia.

Audacious raids and assassinations will always grab the headlines, but as Max Weber reminds us, after the "windbags who do not fully realize what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations," have left the scene, the real work of politics, the "determined and slow boring of hard boards," begins. 

Russia's determined efforts to transform Chechen society by building popular institutions have not been sufficiently appreciated. They have created a way out of perpetual conflict that, given sufficient time, could prove broadly applicable to the entire Caucasus region. It is very much in the West's interest to encourage peace in the region by supporting Russia‚s state-building efforts there.

Nicolai N. Petro is professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island (USA) and author of Crafting Democracy (Cornell University Press, 2004). He served as U.S. State Department policy adviser on the Soviet Union under George H. W. Bush.

Updated 12/6/05