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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 4 (August 2001)
THE BALTICS
Latvia convicted three Russian members of a Bolshevik party to prison for terrorism. In protest, Russians have been shooting at and vandalising the Latvian Embassy in Moscow in several occasions. (RFE, 2nd and 7th May.)
In Moscow, an ethnic Estonian agent of the FSB, Valeri Ojamäe, was arrested, accused for espionage for British and Estonian intelligence services. (RFE Security Watch, 30th April; Eesti Päevaleht.)
EAST CENTRAL EUROPE
The Polish right-wing extremist Andrzej Lepper, who leads the anti-EU "Radical Agrarian Self-defence Party", was sentenced to prison for 16 months for repeated libelling of Aleksander Kwasniewski and other Polish politicians. (RFE, 2nd May.)
ROMANIA and MOLDOVA
After the first shocks, the Moldovan communist President Vladimir Voronin has again started some kind of détente towards Bucharest. Bucharest and Chisinau agreed on "pragmatic relations", in which the obvious political and ideological differences could be left to the backside and concentrate in practical issues. Voronin promised to a Romanian private television station Pro-TV that Russian will not become the official language in Moldova, but "another language of communication". Voronin also had to appease Romanians by saying that his earlier proclaimed aspiration to join Russia and Belarus in a union does not necessarily mean taking distance to Romania and the West, but that the union’s meaning is to "improve Moldova’s economy". (RFE, 2nd May.)
Eugen Tomiuc wrote in Radio Free Europe (4th May) about the new Romanian laws, which allow the use of minority languages (most of all, Hungarian) in administration. The two-million people Hungarian population of Romania (8 % of the country’s population) has showed satisfaction at the reforms. Meanwhile, the extreme right Greater Romanians (PRM, Partidul România Mare) are boiling in anger. The provinces with biggest Hungarian populations are Harghita and Covasna (Hargita and Kovászna), where they constitute 70-80 % of the population. Besides, they form locally a clear majority in many places, although they are nowadays a minority in Transylvania as a whole, Romanians being the majority. In Harghita and Covasna, also the administration is now in Hungarian hands. The Hungarian Mayor Almos Albert of Sepsiszentgyörgy (Sfantu Gheorghe), the capital of Covasna, said that all employees of the administration are now expected to know fluent Hungarian language.
The European Union’s east enlargement commissar Günter Verheugen praised Romania’s recent reforms, especially in the minority policy, but at the same time he demanded more development of regional administration and decentralisation. A representative of the Greater Romania Party PRM (Corneliu Vadim Tudor and Gheorghe Funar), Sever Mescu, complained that soon everybody is expected to speak Hungarian and Romania would be transformed into a bilingual state "against the Constitution". In fact, however, the knowledge of Romanian language is expected, too, also in Transylvania, which is a target of the complaints of Hungarian nationalist parties. (RFE, 4th May.)
Romanians, especially those of Transylvania and Moldova, are bitter that at the same time when Romania is improving the rights of Hungarians and Gypsies, the Romanians in Ukraine, Hungary and Yugoslavia are being given no rights at all. [Also the Vlahs, i.e. Romanians of Greek and Bulgarian mountains, have no rights.] They might be right where it comes to Ukraine and Yugoslavia, but the minority rights of Hungary’s about 10’000-30’000 ethnic Romanians are satisfactory, according to their representative Traian Cresta, although they lack representation in the parliament. Hungary has granted some local autonomy to Romanian villages and for example in the town of Gyula (Ghiula), where 20 % of population are Romanians, the street signs are also in Romanian. (RFE, 4th May.)
BALKANS
Several pogroms against Albanian population have taken place in Macedonia and Southern Serbia. In mayday communists were rioting, and Slav activists attacked Albanian-owned shops and Albanian homes. In Bitola, the mosque was similarly attacked. Dozens of Albanian-owned shops and homes were burn and stoned across Macedonia. The Albanian Embassy in Skopje was fired with a gun. (RFE, 2nd May.)
All symptoms signalled purposeful escalation of the conflict between Macedonian Slavs and Albanians into a large-scale ethnic conflict by the use of provocations and pogroms. This is nothing new for the conduct of Balkan politics by destabilisation, provocation and pogroms. At the same time the rumour mill and myth factory have been launched again, spilling new "spooky stories" to the poisoned air of Southern Balkans. [See for example Patrick Moore’s new article reprinted in this issue.]
A Serbian human rights activist Natasha Kandic told that Slobodan Milosevic’s regime was systematically destroying evidence on the Kosova genocide. On 17th May 1999 as many as 87 Albanian graves were opened in Djakovica and the bodies were destroyed so that no evidence would be left of the massacres. (RFE, 2nd May.)
Croatia opened a consulate in Banja Luka, Bosnian Serb Republic. (Jutarnji list, 2nd May.)
On 1st May, Patrick Moore wrote about the unconstructive phobia of the international community towards the ongoing post-Tito decolonisation process in the Western Balkans. He referred to three recent appeals that criticise this phobia and instead, demand democracy and respect for the own will of the Balkanians. According to Moore, the West is afraid of a "chain reaction", where recognition for Montenegro’s independence would lead to Kosova’s independence, and this, in turn, would lead to splitting up Macedonia, which, in turn, would split up Bosnia. Next there would be "Greater Albania", and Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey would somehow get involved in the Balkan conflicts. This kind of mythology has been spread even by eminent commentators.
Moore considers these fears baseless. Many Balkan leaders have their reasons to maintain the status quo, even by force, and because of that they are trying to frighten the West with horror images of chain reaction mythology. All that aims at one goal: that there would not be need to change the map. According to Moore, it is exactly this status quo thinking that threatens to drive the region into new tensions, because it ignores people’s wishes and their aspirations towards democracy. (RFE, Balkan Report, 1st May.)
Alush Gashi, the advisor of the moderate Kosovar President Ibrahim Rugova, wrote to Reuters that Kosova’s independence is after all the only goal and the only alternative, even though the Kosovars are trying to be good neighbours for the democratising Belgrade. Gashi especially stressed the need of democratic process in achieving Kosovar independence, and he was most surprised of the fact that the democratic countries seem not prepared to respect the democratically expressed wishes of Kosovar and generally Balkanian people. (RFE, Balkan Report, 1st May.)
The Financial Times published a study of ICG (International Crisis Group), according to which "attempts to freeze the status quo threaten to provoke more tensions, as they ignore local circumstances". According to the ICG chairman and the Australian foreign minister, the "claim that there are already too many states in the Balkans is no proper answer to the situation of Kosova and Montenegro". According to the ICG, "wishes that Yugoslavia could be revived as a federation or confederation … have proven painfully distant to political reality". Moreover, the ICG states that also chain reaction fears are wrongly targeted and totally exaggerated. Instead, the most important reason of instability is the denial to decide over Kosova’s future. The ICG study suggests for Kosova large autonomy and gradual glide into "conditional independence" in UN monitoring. During this period, the Kosovars would also be educated to administration and democracy. (RFE, Balkan Report, 1st May.)
Jonathan Steele predicted in The Guardian that the disintegration process of Yugoslavia will continue and attempts to stop this development are doomed to fail. The West is wrong when fearing that a chain reaction would follow any changes in the status quo, and instead, Steele suggests that the West should adopt neutral attitude at Montenegrin independence. (RFE, Balkan Report, 1st May.)
A well-known Kosovar journalist Shkelzen Maliqi foresaw in "Koha Ditore" that status quo in Montenegro and Kosova will continue, but in long run Montenegro and Kosova cannot be prevented from achieving independence. Maliqi warned the West of the dangers looming in the legalist engagement for certain persons and leaders. According to him this risks that the West now fears to "loose" their favourite Serbian leader Vojislav Kostunica, was Yugoslavia to split into three parts. Kostunica, in his part, with Slobodan Milosevic’s legacy, may try to create a puppet regime, which does not enjoy trust of the voters. As an example, Maliqi mentions Sejdo Bajramovic, who pretends to represent Kosova in Yugoslavia. (Fabian Schmidt: RFE, Balkan Report, 1st May.)
Maliqi estimates that the Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic will demand Kostunica’s dismissal. Instead of him, a legitimate leader of Serbia, and better than Kostunica, would be Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. After all, Kostunica represents Yugoslavia, a state that de facto no longer exists. (RFE, Balkan Report, 1st May.)
The Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic has criticised Serbian authorities of persecution against Albanians: "Albanian homes in Lucane and Presevo are in a terrible condition. The police should protect all inhabitants against vandalism instead of participating it themselves." (AP, 27th April > RFE, Balkan Report, 4th May.)
In Macedonia, the Albanian guerrillas killed eight Macedonian soldiers. Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski threatened to declare war against Albanians, but in the last moment he gave up his plans. After all, a large government with participation of the Albanian parties was created. Time will show if this proves adequate to calm down the violence which has continued too long already that Macedonia could simply return to her earlier politics.
REPUBLIC OF KARELIA
"Muslim extremists" are now hunted even in Eastern Karelia. The interior minister of the republic, Igor Yunash, is worried about the fact that the small Muslim community of Karelia has started to show up in publicity, and Yunash has expressed his concern by a letter to the president of the republi, Sergei Katanandov. (Both are ethnic Russians.) According to Yunash, the Muslims are inspired by "Arab immigrants", and they have "even suggested a mosque to be built almost in the centre of Petrozavodsk" (Petroskoi). Yunash claims that the Muslims are agitated by a Libyan (who claims to be Palestinian) Arab called Visam Ali Bardvil. There are about 6’000 Muslims in Petroskoi, but no mosque. (RFE, 2nd May.)
UKRAINE
Mikhail Delyagin, representing "the Russian Globalisation Institute" claimed that the US intelligence service was behind the Ukrainian demonstrations and wants Leonid Kuchma to be overthrown. "Moscow has to do everything possible to prevent the ‘Yugoslav scenario’." (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 28th April.) With the expression "Yugoslav scenario" Russians usually refer to the events in Yugoslavia, where another Moscow-backed authoritarian regent, Slobodan Milosevic, was finally overthrown in democratic elections after people had risen into streets to demonstrate. It has been speculated that Kuchma could face similar fate.
Another fear has been that after Moldova, communists could rise into power also in Ukraine. Like the previous Moldovan President Petru Lucinschi, also Kuchma has been paving way to communists, for example by firing the Western-oriented liberal Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko. The Ukrainian communist leader Petro Symonenko now demanded government responsibility to be transferred to the communists. He blamed Yushchenko’s government for being "pro-American" and "anti-Slavic". The leader of the Socialist Party, Oleksandr Moroz, instead, demanded referendum on Kuchma’s dismissal. (RFE, 2nd May.)
BELARUS
Even workers can no longer march in peace in Belarus. Dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka prohibited all mayday marches in Minsk. Instead, the regime organised controlled communist marches in Hrodna, Homel, Brest and Mahilyeu. In Hrodna, 20 opposition activists were arrested. (RFE, 2nd May.)
SOUTHERN CAUCASUS
Azerbaijan and Turkey have agreed on a new security co-operation treaty on 28th April. (RFE, 2nd May.)
Azerbaijan’s deputy minister of national security, Tofig Babayev, accused Iran and "indefinite" Arab countries of supporting "Wahhabism" and conspiring to overthrow the Azerbaijani government. Babayev claimed that there would be as many as 7’000 "converts to Wahhabism" in Azerbaijan. (RFE, 2nd May.) In reality, Wahhabism is the strict and puritan official school of Islam prevailing in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Iran is a Shi’ite country, which is considered as "anti-Islamic" by Wahhabites. The Wahhabis and other Sunni fundamentalists, like the Taliban, consider Shi’ite Islam as their enemy. Besides, in the Caucasian context Iran has traditionally been Russia’s ally, and she has supported Azerbaijan’s enemy Armenia, although Azerbaijan is the only predominantly Shi’ite country, besides Iran (although unlike Iran, Azerbaijan is secular). Iran has nothing to do with "Wahhabis", and in fact the whole myth of "Wahhabism" is mainly a propagandistic image of threat, used in the rhetorics of former USSR. It can often be said to refer to any Islamic opposition movement which is desired to be branded as "fundamentalist".
Jean-Christophe Peuch wrote that there are still no prospects for peace in Abkhazia. Crime is flourishing in this republic, occupied by Russia but legally belonging to Georgia. Russia prevents any achievement of peace in Abkhazia as well as in South Ossetia (a.k.a. Samadjablo). Although Russia has engaged herself in removing her troops from Georgian territory and returning the bases of Vaziani and Gudauta to Georgia, there are still two Russian bases left – one in Batumi (autonomous republic of Adjaria) and one in Akhalkalaki (the Armenian-inhabited province of Dzavakheti). According to Peuch, Russia’s deeds are in striking contradiction to Moscow’s promises to respect Georgia’s independence. Russia has imposed a visa regime against Georgians, but the inhabitants of Abkhazia and Samadjablo can freely move both to Russia and to Georgia. Russia is blackmailing Georgia and President Eduard Shevardnadze in countless various ways. (RFE, 4th May.)
A Georgian political analyst Ghia Nodia said that Russia has already de facto annexed Abkhazia and Samadjablo. The main Georgian negotiator in the Abkhaz peace talks, Malkhaz Kakabadze, told that Russia has purposefully been sabotaging the peace talks. (RFE, 4th May.)
Georgia’s Human Rights Union organised demonstrations defending the Chechens. Georgians protested in mass against the Russian Embassy in Tbilisi, and demanded a stop to the genocide. (Kavkaz.org) There were also protests in Warsaw. (Glasnost, 11th May.)
NORTHERN CAUCASUS
Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov’s ultimatum was forecast in Chechen and Russian languages for about an hour in Groznyi, on the channel 1 of the state television. Maskhadov demanded Russian troops to leave Ichkerian territory within two months. If the troops are not removed, the Chechens will start a major operations to wipe them out. At the same time, Maskhadov promised that the Islamists who organised the Dagestan provocation in summer 1999 would be charged in court in Chechnya for provoking the war. (Glasnost, 27th April.)
In Gudermes, the Chechen troops destroyed a police station of the occupiers on 25th April. The two-storage building was destroyed entirely in the raid. (Glasnost, 27th April.)
In Ingushetia, a "Congress of Oppressed Nations" gathered. The Congress was participated by, among others, Ingush, Balkars, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Russian Germans, and representatives of a couple of other nations. Inhabitants of Karachay-Cherkessia had been prevented from participation, and this republic’s representatives to the Congress were arrested by the authoritarian regime of the republic. The Ingush President Ruslan Aushev remarked in the Congress that if the Chechens would have received decent compensation for the deeds of Stalin’s era, the war would not have broken out. (Glasnost, 28th April.)
In Czech Republic, Chechen refugees have been granted residence and they do not need to apply for asylum. (The Prague Post, 2nd May.) Also Poland has recently received more Chechen refugees. In Kyrgyzstan, Chechen refugees have faced troubles, including for example anti-Chechen propaganda and hostility from the authorities’ side. According to reporter Sultan Jumagulov, the Kyrgyz people understands Chechens, but authorities are pro-Russian. (IWPR > RCA, No. 50, 4th May.)
The former Soviet-time policeman, Islamist and professional criminal Bislan Gantemirov, who leads the pro-Russian puppet government as the right hand of former mufti and Islamist Ahmed Kadyrov, cited in Ekho Moskvy secret instructions of the former Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo. Rushailo’s instructions for Chechens stressed that the conditions of Chechens living within the Russian Federation should be made unbearable, their movement within the country should be limited only to the place they live, Chechens should be prevented from getting passports and visas, and besides, arbitrary arrests, checks and careful investigations of their background and business should be carried on. (Glasnost, 11th May.) Rushailo’s instructions confirm the image that Russia is imitating the czarist methods in using provocations, pogroms and discrimination of minority groups in her strategy.
RUSSIA
The neo-Nazi problem is in rise in Russia. (Vek, No. 17.) According to Ekho Moskvy (30th April), however, the Jewish leading Rabbi Adolf Shayevich announced reopening of the Arkhipov Street synagogue, which was already once targeted by a destructive raid. Now the synagogue would be guarded. (RFE, 2nd May.)
There are still citizen movements demanding changes to the Kremlin’s imperialist politics. The FSB arrested and examined members of a Russian movement supporting the right of Chechens to self-determination, and arrested editors of the "Separatist" newspaper in Moscow. (Glasnost, 28th April.)
The spy hysteria continues and enlarges in Russia. Pyatigorsk’s FSB accused UN humanitarian workers to be spies and "pro-Chechen collaborators". The FSB claimed that of the UN employees working alone in Ingushetia as many as 14 were spies. (Glasnost, 28th April.)
Vladimir Putin, and simultaneously Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who was visiting Baghdad, demanded dropping all the sanctions against Iraq, and expressed their support to Saddam Hussein. (RFE, 2nd May.) It seems that Saddam represents that kind of Islam that Moscow would like to see also Chechens, Circassians, Turks and other "Wahhabis" to embrace…
The FSB next predicts violence and instability in Central Asia. In July 2000 Putin founded a CIS "Anti-Terrorist Centre". The Centre’s leader Major General Boris Mylnikov announced that Russia is preparing for operational actions against Central Asian "Islamist groupings" within advancing months. (Rossiyskiye Vesti, No. 14.) This can only be interpreted as a threat to spread military actions into Turkestani republics.
According to the FSB, more than 25’000 "non-Afghan international terrorists" are being educated in Afghanistan, most of them Uzbeks. (RFE, Security Watch, 30th April.) It is important to notice here that the Uzbek are the third or fourth biggest ethnic group also in Afghanistan, so being an Uzbek does not necessarily mean being from Uzbekistan. The best known ethnic Uzbek commander in Afghanistan is General Dostum, who has been a somewhat disloyal and unreliable ally of the anti-Taliban forces, led by the ethnic Tajik, Afghanistan’s legal Defence Minister Ahmad Shah Masoud.
An FSB Lieutenant General Sergei Diakov has announced that from now on researchers and journalists can be accused of espionage easier than earlier. Now it will be possible for the FSB to accuse people of espionage even if the information they have published is not even classified, if only it "threatens Russia’s security" or "later appears to be secret". (RFE, Security Watch, 30th April.) This is again a new sign of the FSB’s arbitrary terror rule in Russia. Anyone can be sued for espionage if the FSB later declares that information that has been published is "secret" or "a threat to Russian security". This means total right of sensorship granted for the secret service, over all journalism and research in Russia.
Journalists have already been imprisoned in Russia for "publishing secrets". For example Novaya Gazeta’s reporter Valery Shirayev has been arrested. (RFE Security Watch, 30th April.)
The Russian foreign espionage agency SVR is dissatisfied with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, because the latter has, according to the intelligence service, been too "optimistic" in his forecasts: Ivanov, who trusted in the success of Russia’s favourites, presumed that Slobodan Milosevic would win the election in Yugoslavia, and that George W. Bush would have no chance to defeat Al Gore. (RFE Security Watch, 30th April.)
According to Itar-Tass (15th May) children’s mental illness has increased with 20 per cent in Russia.
The Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church demands "national spiritual security", in which name it demands counteractions against "alien" sects, for example Western missionaries, whom it considers "totalitarian" and claims that they aim at destruction of the Orthodox Church with a systematic conspiracy. The Orthodox Church set up counteraction by "filling the internet with contents that grip human souls". (Interfax, 15th May > Johnson’s Russia List.)
Sergei Markov, leader of a Russian "Institute of Political Research" claimed that "only a pro-Russian president can be democratically elected in Ukraine". According to him, this is also possible, since the West only pretends to support Ukraine’s independence, while in reality the West is leaving the Ukrainians on their own. The West itself is pushing Ukraine to Russia’s hands, and will not defy Russia because of Ukraine. Markov also remarks that the Europeans in fact "seem to wish Ukraine’s integration with Russia, although Russia would like to keep Ukraine as an independent European state"! Only the US is meanly against Russia and has kept Leonid Kuchma’s Ukraine as a US "vassal state". Now Ukraine should get a "free" pro-Russian president. (Obviously Markov would prefer somebody like Lukashenka and Voronin.) According to Markov, the former liberal prime minister of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, "was not any pro-Western politician, but a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and fascist". Markov is also convinced that the absolute majority of Ukrainians want to join Russia. (Strana.ru, 15th May.)
The Russian Duma accepted an emergency law, which allows the president to declare state of emergency in the country, and execute dictatorship. (Reuters, 16th May.)
The Financial Times published a study, which tells about the change in Russian attitudes toward more anti-liberal and authoritarian since 1998. Optimism is now over and a majority (76 %) of Russians considers the abolition of the Soviet Union as a bad thing. It has been replaced by support for imperialism and strong leadership. 56 % of the Russians considers NATO as a "hostile, aggressive bloc", despises democracy and market economy, and instead, supports "neotraditionalism" and "ethnocentrism" (ultra-nationalism). The attitude shift has been catalysed, according to the study, by the economic crisis in 1998 and the Yugoslav War in 1999 and Moscow bombs in autumn 1999. (Financial Times, 16th May.)
According to the IWPR’s Erik Batuyev, human rights activists face sinister times in Russia. They are being silenced, among other means, by accusing them for espionage and other "crimes" if they criticise Russia’s human rights violations. (Johnson’s Russia List, 16th May.)