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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 4 (August 2001)
A recommended link: the Russian Independent Information Centre Glasnost, which aims at open information supply on Russian and CIS affairs: http://www.glasnostonline.org/
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Prime Minister Mart Laar defended Estonia’s liberal taxation system and said that Estonia would maintain her non-progressive tax system even if applying for EU membership. (RFE, 23rd April.)
Romania has returned visa regime to Moldovan citizens. Earlier already, Romania abolished the system of passport-free movement of ethnic Romanians across the River Prut that divides Romanians into two states. Relations of Bucharest and Chisinau have been frozen when a pro-Russian communist Vladimir Voronin was pushed into Moldovan presidency by communist electoral victory.
Voronin is an ethnic Russian and citizen of the self-proclaimed separatist Republic of Transnistria. Transnistria (Pridnyestriye) was split from Moldova by Russian occupation and a bloody Russo-Romanian civil war, and has ever since been a Russian military base and a museum of old-fashioned Stalinist communism, a "little USSR" between Moldova and Ukraine. By Voronin’s rise into power, the Trojan horse or cancer implanted within Bessarabia by Stalin has now swallowed up all Moldavia. It is a daily joke that soon Putin will suggest that Romania and Moldova would after all be united (the Russians’ nightmare during the Western-oriented Snegur reign in 1991-1996), and that also Bucharest would eventually get a new leader. With the OSCE’s blessing, Voronin could be "elected" as the Romanian president, too. Or why not as well the Transnistrian Stalinist President Igor Smirnov or perhaps one of the homeless members of the past Yanayev junta who were later dumped into Transnistria?
The educated people and students of Chisinau are now panicked to apply for residences in Romania. More than 600’000 Moldovans – mainly young and educated people – have escaped abroad to seek for jobs and future. Most of them go to Romania, many with the idea of continuing their journey later towards the West. Now the speed can only expected to accelerate, despite the fact that Romania is obliged to close its borders. When an informant of The Eurasian Politician recently tried to take the regular route to Estonia through Transnistria (cheapest for someone possessing permanent Ukrainian visa), the "Transnistrian" border control (that is, the Russian army) kicked out and expelled all ethnic Romanians on the border, forcing them to walk back into Moldova. Now the anachronistic Soviet fortress of Transnistria threatens to expand west to the Prut river.
As late as in 1989 Moldova used to be among the most prosperous of the Soviet republics, and together with the Baltic republics, Moldova was in the frontline of freedom struggle in the Soviet Union. The Moldovans created their "Popular Front" as early as in 1989. Throughout all reign of Mircea Snegur (up until 1996), Moldova was Western-oriented and wished reunification with Romania and integration with Europe. However, the West systematically isolated it, passively helping Russia to carry out the mobilisation of the Transnistria conflict, the occupation, and the forced annexation of Moldova into the CIS. (Luup, 4/2001)
Voronin gave a very well describing speech at the Lenin statue in Chisinau on 22nd April: "Moldova has to oppose Europe like Cuba opposes the United States." (RFE, 23rd April.) Europe has got a new Lucastro. What nickname should we adopt for Voronin? [The nickname Lucastro is used for the Belarussian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka.]
Voronin also declared that communism is not dead in Europe, simultaneously praising Putin and Lukashenka. Honourable guests included also the leader of the Russian Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, for whose honour Voronin changed into Russian language in the middle of his speech. (At first he at least took the trouble of speaking the language of the country’s majority, Romanian.) In a few days Voronin also rushed to ratify a security treaty with Russia. This practically subjects the Moldovan army to Moscow’s command.
The Romanian President Ion Iliescu visited London. Meanwhile, the leaders of Romanian extreme right, Corneliu Vadim Tudor and Gheorghe Funar, machinised various "treason" accusations. Tudor fanatically opposes the Romanian regional administration reform, which would finally provide the provinces with long-awaited autonomy and thereby also guarantee good minority situation. Both Premier Adrian Nastase and now also President Iliescu have positioned themselves behind the reformist stand, to decentralise power. This is a very good sign. Tudor threatened that if the autonomy law is passed, his Greater Romania Party (PRM, Partidul România Mare), will sue Iliescu in court for treason. Funar accompanied Tudor’s rage. The Greater Romanians cast treason accusation also over the leader of a Hungarian party, Béla Marko, because he had participated decision-making on expatriote Hungarians in Budapest. (RFE, 23rd April.)
Also in the neighbour country Hungary, the extreme right is vowing. The leader of Hungary’s MIÉP, István Csurka, is trying to get into the Fidesz government. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had recently said that he no longer categorically rejects this option. (RFE, 23rd April.)
While everything seems to get screwed up in Moldova, hope is dawning in former Yugoslavia.
The Montenegrin presidential election on 22nd April was won by the pro-independence President Milo Djukanovic, who announced that he wants a referendum to take place on Montenegro’s independence. Now time is perhaps more ripe than ever for achieving Montenegrin independence in peaceful means. Djukanovic announced he would like to have the Liberal Alliance and the Albanian Party in the government. His explicit goal is "independent, democratic and pro-European Montenegro". (RFE, 23rd April.)
The German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer immediately discouraged Montenegrin hopes by demanding that Podgorica would negotiate with Belgrade on "common future". (RFE, 23rd April.) Fischer also categorically opposed the automony project of Bosnian Croats. The Herzegovinian Croats aim at autonomy from the control of the Muslim-dominated rump federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but the UN is absolute in rejection of Croat self-determination, and it is even confiscating legitimate Croat property and business.
The Herzegovinian Croats emphasised that they only want autonomy, and neither separatism nor "Greater Croatia". Still the statements of the UN governor of Bosnia, Wolgang Petritsch, are as stunningly negative and discouraging as have been the Western statements on the autonomy appeals of Kosova and Ilirida’s Albanians. Also the Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan "warned" the Herzegovinian Croats of making the UN angry… (RFE, 23rd April.)
Bulgaria first rejected the registration of the royalist party. The royalists wish to see King Simeon II to return into power in Bulgaria. (RFE, 23rd April.)
The Azerbaijani police dispersed a demonstration organised by the Democratic Party (chairman Rasul Guliyev) in Baku on 21st April. The demonstrators demanded release of political prisoners. Twenty democracy activists were arrested and 17 policemen were injured. That makes it almost a fifty-fifty fight! (RFE, 23rd April.)
The Russian-backed Abkhaz rebels have kidnapped as many as 11 Georgian servicemen so far. Does this signal of a new Moscow offensive to destabilise Georgia before the approaching deadline of Russia’s promises to remove its military bases? The Abkhaz Prime Minister Vyacheslav Tsugba and Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba have formally asked for release for the hostages. (RFE, 23rd April.)
Nothing really constructive has, however, not appeared on the Abkhaz side, and the once beautiful Georgian coastal province remains as a ruined and impoverished occupied territory. No prospects are visible for the thousands of Georgian refugees that were driven to Georgia proper in the Russo-Georgian war over Abkhazia. Ethnic Georgians constituted a majority of Abkhazia’s population before the war. With them, also Jews, Greeks and Ahiska Turks had to flee, while Armenians, Abkhaz and Russians were on the separatist side. Even some Chechen adventurer units (of the notorious Basayev brothers) were fighting on the Russian side against Georgia, which has been a traditionally friendly country for Chechnya!
In Minsk, 25 members of the youth movement Zubr were arrested for demonstrating against the Belarussian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Earlier, 17 members of an organisation called Youth Front were arrested. (RFE, 23rd April.)
The FSB informer Aleksandr Zdanovich claimed that the Chechen commander Rezvan Chitigov, who has been considered as a close assistant of Amir al-Khattab, is a CIA agent. (ORT 17th April, > RFE Security Watch, 23rd April.)
The same Turkish citizen with Chechen ancestry, who hijacked a ship on the Black Sea years ago in order to attract the world’s attention to what happens in Chechnya, repeated his act after having been amnestied and released from prison. He held hostages in an Istanbul hotel. The drama was ended without blood and the hijackers surrender after having "made their point". Turkey has lots of descendants of Caucasian refugees who fled the genocides on imperial Russia in late 1800s and early 1900s. There are also some newer refugees of the Russian attrocities and genocide against Caucasians in 1994-2001, now residing in Turkey.
Russia vowed to tighten her anti-Chechen policies, but the Russian analyst Aleksey Malashenko commented cynically that Russia’s attitude towards the Caucasus cannot become any tighter. (Johnson’s Russia List, 23rd April.)
General Gennady Troshev, the commander of Russian occupation forces in Chechnya, spoke on 20th April in Budyonnovsk, and warned that the Chechen War could quickly escalate and spread over all Russian-held Caucasus. (Glasnost, 23rd April.)
New mass-graves have been found in Chechnya throughout the period. The most recent one was found in the Argun gorge. (RFE and Glasnost, 23rd April.)
Russian skinheads carried out a pogrom against Caucasians in Moscow on 20th April to celebrate Hitler’s birthday. (RFE, 23rd April.)
The ultra-nationalist Russian geopolitician Aleksandr Dugin founded on 21st April a Eurasianist movement, which seeks to advocate a Eurasian empire with Russian hegemony. (RFE, 23rd April.) Dugin is widely recognised as a Greater Russian and passionate agitator of crusader mentality against an "Islamic threat". His anti-Islamism derives from long Russian tradition of anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories. Dugin has also argued against the Baltic countries, Poland, Turkey etc. He has strong connections to West European extreme right, too, for example to the French Front National and the Belgian Vlaams Blok. His writings are widely distributed by a Brussels-based extreme right network "Synergon". [See also wider articles on Dugin, Eurasianism and Mackinder’s Heartland theory in this issue.]
A pro-Moscow Mufti Farid Salman praised Dugin’s movement, claiming that "Eurasianism represents a suitable reply to the supporters of Satanic Wahhabism, who have introded into Russia". (RFE, 23rd April.) "Wahhabism" is actually the official state sect of Saudi Arabia and the puritan school of Sunnite Islam also practiced in some other Gulf states. Later, however, it became an official anti-Islamic myth used by the KGB and its successor the FSB, aiming to generalise and discredit all anti-Moscow Muslims or Islamic oppositions in the whole former Soviet region.
In the Chechen context, the actual "Wahhabis" have usually been understood to include the Basayev brothers and Khattab, who have influenced in the militant opposition. The Chechen leadership both in Dudayev’s and in President Maskhadov’s periods have stayed loyal to secular and moderate religious ideas. Meanwhile, it is necessary to remember that the puppet regents Russia has relied on in Chechnya, the former mufti Ahmed Kadyrov and the former policeman and founder of the "Islamic Party" Bislan Gantemirov, are Islamists by background, whereas the Maskhadov government and most pro-independence Chechens are not Islamists but moderate nationalists.
The newly appointed commander of Russian Land Forces, Nikolai Kormiltsev, promised that the Russian army would not be fighting against the whole world, but only concentrated to have wars in "two or three strategic areas", for which Kormiltsev mentioned the Caucasus and Central Asia as examples. (This confirms our long-perspect supposition that Russia’s main geopolitical dimension of expansionist ambitions is still south.) Kormiltsev also promised that more than 500 military defectors will be found and punished. (RFE, 23rd April.)
The fresh Russian Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov announced that more than 1000 officers (!) were killed last year in Chechnya. (RFE, 23rd April.)
Valentin Nikitin, the chairman of the Duma Nationality Affairs Committee, said that the "nationality problem" has grown worse since the Soviet Union split up. He opposed a suggested law on protection of the status of nationalities, cultures and languages, as well as "changes in the statuses of the ethnic republics of Russia". (RFE, 23rd April.)
Russia again attacked against Latvia, accusing the democratic Baltic country of "oppressing" Russians and "anti-Russian politics"… (RFE, 23rd April.)
The FSB declared it would list all journalists waging "info war" against Russia, mentioning as an example the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, as the latter had promised to start radio broadcasts also in Chechen language. (RFE, 23rd April.) The FSB also promised that sensorship would increase and journalists could be more cautious than before in order to not get accused of espionage. (RFE, 23rd April.)
The former US ambassador to Ankara, Mark Parris, spoke about the strategic relations of Turkey and the US on 17th April in the Washington Institute of Middle East Policy, in lectures held to commemorate Turgut Özal. According to Parris, Turkey is of crucial importance for the West already for its geography: Turkey is surrounded by Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel and the Arab world, Cyprus and the Aegean, and the Balkans, in which all areas the Turkish interests, according to Parris, coincide with those of Europe’s. Common interests can also be found in ESDI, fight against drugs, crime and terrorism, on which front Turkey is a frontier guardian to defend the West. (Turkistan News, 23rd April.)
The US has a strategic military base in Incirlik. Turkey is irreplaceable in protection of Northern Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as in the peacekeeping and refugee aid operations of the Balkans. Turkey has been mediating peace in the Karabagh and Palestine conflicts. And of course, Turkey has offered an important market area for American companies. Parris considered Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Grossman and Beth Jones as eminent experts of Turkey in the US State Department, while he criticised the Clinton foreign politics for inconsistency. (Turkistan News, 23rd April.)