| Yuri Shchekochikhin
could foretell the future. In May, as a wave of suicide attacks in Chechnya
killed 77 people and wounded over 300 others, he made a prediction. "We
have entered a new stage. It's Palestine," he told TIME. "Now
suicide bombers will start hitting Russia." His grim prophecy came
true on July 5, when two female Chechen suicide bombers killed 14 and injured
over 60 by detonating explosive belts at a Moscow rock festival. But "Shchekoch,"
as he is nicknamed, wasn't around to see the attack. The crusading journalist
and politician had died under mysterious circumstances two days earlier.
And last week, just five days after his funeral, another female suicide
bomber was apprehended as she tried to enter a posh downtown Moscow restaurant.
A bomb inside a rucksack she was carrying exploded in the street, killing
a Federal Security Service officer who was trying to defuse it. Shchekoch
would have taken no satisfaction in being proved right.
Chechen attacks inside Russia are nothing new. In September 1999, over
300
people were killed in a series of apartment block bombings, which were
blamed on the Chechens. And last October, 129 hostages and 41 Chechen
terrorists died after Russian special forces stormed a theater that the
Chechens had occupied. But the two most recent bombings are different,
because the people behind the attacks represent a younger generation of
Chechens who, like the Palestinians before them, have known nothing but
war
- and who have become radicalized as a result. "We condemn the terror,"
says Salambek Maigov, Chechen rebel President Aslan Maskhadov's
representative in Moscow, "but neither the Kremlin nor we can control
the
situation any longer."
Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to reassert his control. "Terrorists
must be plucked out of the basements and caves and destroyed," he
said
after the attack on the rock festival. The tough talk echoed his promise
during the 1999 election campaign "to rub out the terrorists on the
john,"
remarks that preceded a brutal crackdown in Chechnya in which an untold
number of Chechens and at least 6,000 Russian soldiers died.
Shortly before his death, Shchekochikhin, the 53-year-old Deputy Chair
of
the State Duma's Security Committee and an outspoken opponent of the war
in
Chechnya, warned against just such a response: "Putin seeks to answer
the
mounting wave of Palestinian-type bombing terror with more terror of his
own," he said. "But it will only pour more oil onto the growing
fire."
Even before the latest bombings, Putin was ratcheting up the pressure.
Going back on a pledge to reduce his forces in Chechnya, he sent 1,000
airborne troops and an artillery battalion there last month. Though
checkpoints in Grozny had been dismantled in the spring to show that peace
was breaking out, more checkpoints were established around Chechen villages
last month. And Russian soldiers have never stopped their practice of
rounding up suspects in midnight raids. The detainees often disappear
without a trace or are later found dead. "Putin has already pushed
his
forces to the limit," says a senior federal government official.
"Now he is
sending in his last reserves. Putin will carry on blindly, spilling more
Russian and Chechen blood."
A handful of liberals in the Duma - Shchekochikhin among them - have
been
desperately calling for talks to settle the dispute. But their arguments
go
practically unreported, since the last of the independent television
stations was closed down last month. Some suspect that Shchekochikhin
himself may have been silenced, too. His death was bizarre and its cause
remains unexplained. According to an aide, Shchekochikhin developed a
slight fever on July 16 as he was en route to Ryazan, 300 km east of
Moscow. When he returned home the next day, the fever worsened and his
skin
began peeling and breaking. When an ambulance was finally called a day
later, he was so weak that he had to be carried to the car. He fell into
a
coma and died nine days later. Doctors suggest he had an allergic reaction
to an unidentified substance, but his family, friends and colleagues in
the
liberal Yabloko Party demand an international investigation.
Terror attacks against Russian civilians could hurt Putin in the run-up
to
parliamentary elections in December and the presidential elections next
year. But he could also use the crisis to cement his hold on power; it
was
the 1999 wave of apartment bombings that helped propel him into office
in
the first place. "Bombings and elections go together in Moscow,"
noted an
editorial in the English-language Moscow Times.
"At the Kremlin they believe that Russians will learn to live with
these
bombings, like the Soviets once learned to live with chronic food
shortages," says the senior federal government official. Putin lumps
the
Chechens in with al-Qaeda, calling them "the most dangerous part
of the
international terrorist network." But Shchekochikhin had a different
analysis. "All Putin's talk of international terrorism in Chechnya
is
wildly off the mark," he said last May. The crisis is not about terrorism,
but about "the bloody melee that threatens to wipe out the Chechen
people
first - and Russia second."
See also:
War
in Chechnya
|
