Death of a Dissident (56 page)

“Our calls to end the war in Chechnya have annoyed the Kremlin,” commented Lev Ponomarev, whose group, For Human Rights, had been accused by a Justice Ministry official of inciting prison riots using funding from Berezovsky’s foundation.

In response to Putin’s speech, Boris pledged additional funds to the IFCL. I set out to organize a trip to Washington for the national chairperson of the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers and the head of one of their regional committees; they would take with them a strong antiwar message. The Kremlin’s policy in the Caucasus only breeds terrorism, they argued. They spoke before Congress, urging the United States to increase funding for democracy in Russia, which had been dramatically reduced in the years of the Bush administration. Then they went to see Tom Graham at the White House. But he told them the same thing that he’d said to Sergei Kovalyov more than a year earlier: We sympathize with you, but the United States is not prepared to confront Putin over Chechnya.

Beslan, North Osetia, September 1, 2004: A group of Muslim rebels take nearly twelve hundred children and adults hostage in a school, wiring it with explosives. On the third day of the siege gunfire breaks out and the building is stormed by Russian special forces: 344 civilians, including 186 children, die in the ensuing explosions and shooting. The Maskhadov government condemns the attack. Warlord Shamil Basayev claims responsibility
.

The horrific news from Beslan—of terrorists rounding up innocent schoolchildren in a gymnasium and hanging explosives on a rope over their heads, suspended from two basketball hoops—riveted the world. The aftermath of the raid, and the carnage, raised new questions about Russian law enforcement tactics, but there was universal outrage at the hostage-takers. Yet to newly reelected President Putin, much of the commentary coming from the West must have been maddening.
It looked as if some Westerners held him partly responsible for the attack on the school. Every expression of outrage was qualified by a suggestion that he needed to learn his lesson and negotiate with Maskhadov.

When Putin took to the airwaves himself to address the nation in the aftermath of the disaster, he lashed out. The blame for the attack rests with Russia’s international enemies, he declared. “Some would like to tear off a ‘juicy piece’ from us,” he said. “Others help them. They help because they believe that Russia, as one of the major nuclear powers, is still a threat to them—a threat that should thus be removed. And terrorism is, of course, a mere instrument to achieve such aims.”

Two days later he spoke to a group of foreign academics and journalists. “Why don’t you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House, engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace? You find it possible to set some limits in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child killers?”

Soon Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov added, “We are cooperating with the USA and our European partners in the fight against terrorism. However, the USA giving asylum to Ilyas Akhmadov and Great Britain doing the same for Akhmed Zakayev cannot fail to make one think of double standards…. Those who provide shelter to terrorists are directly responsible for the tragedy of the Chechen people.”

“Russia has the right to carry out pre-emptive strikes on militant bases abroad,” added Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. These “preemptive strikes may involve anything, except nuclear weapons,” he added.

“You know who they mean when they say ‘terrorist bases abroad’?” asked Sasha. “They mean us, Zakayev and Boris and I.”

Moscow and London, October 2004–March 2005: In the aftermath of Beslan, the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers, the largest Russian NGO, defies the Kremlin by starting “people’s negotiations” with Chechen separatists. The Kremlin accuses CSM of
being paid agents of foreign interests. However, opinion polls show 66 percent support for the CSM initiative. Under diplomatic pressure from Russia, the Belgian government refuses to let the CSM delegation into the country for a meeting with Akhmed Zakayev in the European Parliament in Brussels. On February 2, 2005, Aslan Maskhadov orders a unilateral cease-fire as a gesture in response to the CSM appeal. The radical warlord Shamil Basayev says that he too will observe the cease-fire. The Russian forces ignore the truce. On February 24, 2005, Soldiers’ Mothers meet with Zakayev in London in the presence of several European parliamentarians, issuing a “Peace Memorandum.” Two weeks later Aslan Maskhadov is killed in a Russian commando raid
.

With the death of Maskhadov the Kremlin contention that the Chechen separatist government is nothing more than a bunch of terrorists moved one step closer to becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The new Chechen president was a moderate Muslim scholar named Abdul-Halim Sadulayev, virtually unknown in the West, who was a compromise figure acceptable to various field commanders, perhaps precisely because of his weakness. He lacked the legitimacy of Maskhadov, who had been elected in an internationally recognized democratic vote. He did not have Maskhadov’s inclination to seek accommodation with Russia. At the same time, the realization that both the West and the Islamic world outdid each other in appeasing the Kremlin—a total sellout of Chechnya—strengthened the defiant suicidal streak of the field fighters. The influence of the radical wing increased dramatically. One of the first things the new Chechen president did was bring Shamil Basayev, the terrorist warlord, into his government.

“Basayev is a terrorist,” I said to Akhmed Zakayev. “I don’t see how you can stay in the same government with him.”

“You are becoming just like the Bush administration,” retorted Akhmed. “What do you want from us? For ten years the Russians have been killing us—40 percent of our population is dead—and no one said a word. Now everyone is outraged about Basayev. I did not
invite him to join the government, and I wouldn’t have if it were up to me. I fought with him all my political life. And now you want me to quit and leave him in control? So, okay, I quit. There will be no one left to stand up to the radicals. And what about those who think the way I do? We are still people, with a young generation growing up, both at home and all over Europe. They will say, Zakayev quit? Basayev is our leader? This would only mean Basayev had won, with Russian and Western help. No, I will stay and keep fighting.”

In the weeks following Maskhadov’s death, a fiery debate erupted between the two principal ideologues of Chechen independence: Zakayev, who argued for a Western-style democratic state, and Movladi Udugov, who hoped for a strict Islamic republic. Just as in occupied Europe during World War II, listeners in Chechen towns and villages and in the mountain rebel encampments tuned in to the broadcasts of Radio Liberty to hear the émigré politicians talking about the time “after the victory.” Zakayev’s and Udugov’s visions clashed across the pages of their respective Web sites, Chechen-Press.info and KavkazCenter.com, each with thousands of attentive readers in the Russian and Western European Chechen diasporas.

Sasha Litvinenko took the sellout of the Chechens very close to his heart. He became a frequent contributor to the ChechenPress Web site. Zakayev eagerly provided him with as much space as he wanted. ChechenPress became Sasha’s tribune; in 2005-2006 he authored more than a hundred opinion columns there, with titles like “Kremlin Werewolves,” “The Heroism of Mikhail Trepashkin,” and “Politkovskaya Killers Cover Their Tracks.”

He took his mission to reach out to the Chechens very seriously, as an obligation. He once told me that he saw himself as “one of those Germans who were helping Jews.”

“When the war ends, I will be the only remaining Russian whom the Chechens will still call a friend,” he said, “and Akhmed, perhaps, the only Chechen who will be willing to talk to the Russians. So the two of us will negotiate the next peace treaty.”

At one point he told Marina, “Akhmed and I are like brothers. They should bury us next to each other. Not in London. In Chechnya.”

Moscow, June 8, 2006: The State Duma adopts legislation giving the FSB authority to send commandos to assassinate “terrorist groups” abroad. “The amendments provide for special operation units of the FSB to be used at the discretion of the President against terrorists and bases that are located outside the Russian Federation for the purpose of interdicting threats to the Russian Federation,” says Mikhail Grishankov, deputy chairman of the Duma Security Committee
.

As Putin’s presidency settled into its second term, the security services roamed freely in the corridors of power. Over 70 percent of top government appointments were taken by former FSB officers. With virtually all television broadcasting under Kremlin control, regional leaders subdued, and no opposition in the Duma, the political process ground to a halt. In the aftermath of the destruction of Liberal Russia and the abortive presidential bid of Ivan Rybkin, our London group of dissidents realized that the FSB could never be chased from the Kremlin by constitutional means. But we did not despair: the events in neighboring Ukraine suggested another way.