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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 January 2000 Issue No. 463 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 January 2000 Issue No. 463
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Heritage Millennium Features Profile Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Putin put to test
By Abdel-Malek KhalilIn his New Year's Eve address to the Russian people, Boris Yeltsin announced to a totally unsuspecting audience his resignation after eight turbulent years as Russia's president. Yeltsin named Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as his designated successor. Presidential elections are scheduled for March.
Yeltsin, who was one of the key instigators of the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, has tenaciously held on to what is left of the Russian Federation -- including the predominantly Muslim breakaway Republic of Chechnya. Yeltsin's declaration, made jointly with the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine in December 1991 that the Soviet Union was extinct, sealed the fate of Russia and the other 14 former Soviet republics. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, oversaw the process of dismantling the old Soviet Union, but tried to delay the independence of the 15 republics. Yeltsin, in contrast, didn't toy with the idea, but helped to make the independence dreams of the constituent republics of the former Soviet Union a reality when he announced Russia's independence.
Still, such actions do not hide the fact that Yeltsin failed to end the festering Chechen crisis. When Russian troops withdrew at the end of the 1994-96 war, Chechnya had de facto independence, although neither Russia nor any other country recognised its claim.
Yeltsin failed miserably in Chechnya on several counts. First, he was unsuccessful in wooing the Chechen people by peaceful means back into the Russian fold. Second, he failed to score a decisive victory against Chechen separatist forces. Russian troops entered Chechnya in September 1999 after Chechen-based Islamist militants invaded the neighbouring Republics of Daghestan and Ingushetia. Moreover, Moscow accused Chechen militant separatists of masterminding a spate of terrorist bomb attacks in the Russian capital and other key Russian cities. The Russian people were both alarmed and outraged. Yeltsin had to do something. It was only with the appointment of Putin that the Chechnya campaign got going and the Chechen separatists were put on the defensive.
Two Chechen women stand frozen in fear as Russian troops
bomb their homes
(photo: Century, Phaidon, 1999)
However, the tentative Russian success on the battlefields of Chechnya came at a terrible price. This represents the third aspect of Yeltsin's failure. The Russian campaign made hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians homeless and the refugees are living in utter misery in makeshift camps in regions bordering Chechnya. The civilian death toll was shocking beyond belief. For its ruthless - some would say genocidal - campaign, Russia was condemned by Western powers and Muslim nations alike.
It was all too much for Yeltsin, who suffers from serious heart and circulatory ailments. He had to step down. But no one expected Yeltsin to make up his mind so quickly. The world applauded him for his courage. United States President Bill Clinton called Yeltsin the "Father of Russian Democracy".
Putin, on the other hand, seems impervious to international pressure and criticism. His popularity rating soared when he got involved in the Chechen campaign. In a bid to boost morale, Putin spent New Year's Eve with the Russian generals and troops in Chechnya. US National Security Adviser Samuel Berger warned that Chechnya might prove to be Putin's undoing. "Chechnya now is a dilemma," Berger explained. "If it goes on too long, or if it begins to cause increasing Russian casualties, as we seem to be seeing now, with an intensified resistance, this could become something that mires Putin down, and the wave he rode up could become the wave that engulfs him."
Putin's surprise tour of the front-line seems to have yielded immediate results. On Monday, Russian jets and artillery intensified the bombardment of small villages in Chechnya's southern mountains, the strongholds of militant Islamist separatists, as the Russians try to block the path of retreating Chechen forces. But Akhmen Basnukayev, a Chechen field commander, and other Chechen leaders told foreign reporters that the Russian forces have suffered big losses and that the Chechens are staging a counter-attack to recapture towns and villages occupied by Russian troops.
