Kosovo and Chechnya: a Comparison - Essay Example

KOSOVO AND CHECHNYA: A COMPARISON 2007 Kosovo and Chechnya: A Comparison INTRODUCTION The NATO operations in Kosovo and the actions of theRussian military in Chechnya are often compared with each other. Many western analysts repeatedly point out to the fact that Russia declaimed against NATO's actions in Kosovo while adopting same tactics to resolve the Chechen conflict. Their Russian colleagues, in their turn, highlight the fact that the Alliance condemned the actions of Russian troops in Chechnya while resorting to brutal force in Kosovo. The list of arguments cited by representatives of each camp is impressive, but neither of the counterparts seems to perceive any arguments except for convenient ones only. The key question is whether the conflicts in Kosovo and Chechnya do bear much resemblance. Certain parallels between these two conflicts exist without a doubt. Thus, both cases involve powerful separatist movements, which emerged after the collapse of the Soviets, with ethnic and religious factors underlying them: they have unfolded on almost exclusively Muslim territories (Albanians in Kosovo and Chechens in Chechnya) population of which mistrusted the respective federal authorities. In both cases these movements have formed their own military forces to rely on: the Armed Forces of Ichkeria in Chechnya and the Liberation Army in Kosovo. And finally, military solution has been chosen as an appropriate conflict management strategy in both cases. In spite of the numerous parallels, the most important distinction between the conflicts is evident as well. In former Yugoslavia NATO conducted warfare against a sovereign state though claiming to act out of humanitarian concerns; the Russian Federation embarked on the still ongoing hostilities in order to secure the territorial integrity of the state and suppress secessionism in Chechnya. However, this distinction does not relate to the underlying nature of these conflicts: it has emerged as the result of NATO's solution to intervene in Kosovo and not intervene in Chechnya. Given the numerous parallels between both conflicts, it does require serious analysis to understand the reasons underlying NATO's intensive military efforts in former Yugoslavia and lack of similar actions in Chechnya. MAIN DISCUSSION NATO justified its decision to use force in Kosovo on the basis of the so-called 'international humanitarian emergency'. The origins of this concept can be traced back to the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970). A famine which followed the conflict killed hundreds thousand people, but was ignored by the Western states in the name of non-intervention and neutrality doctrines. However, the idea that under certain circumstances the principle of the sovereignty of states might be questioned emerged to receive further theoretical development in the 1980s. In the 1990s, the Europe for the first time witnessed how this right of humanitarian intervention could be implemented in practice during the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. The armed forces of the Alliance attacked Yugoslavia under the pretence of defending the human rights of Kosovo population. The essence of their claim was since the forces of Yugoslavian government were engaged in repeated, and systematic violence against its own citizens, NATO's choice of the military intervention as the only effective method of protecting human rights was fully justified (Annan, 1999). The case for war in Kosovo immediately generated much criticism associated with the ambiguity of the juridical status of a right to intervene, validity and relevance of statistical data on human rights abuses in Kosovo, and questionable ethical aspects of using military power to restore peace. Yet perhaps the most difficult enquiry related to the Kosovo precedent came from those whom questioned the reasons for NATO's decision to intervene in Kosovo and not in Chechnya where the statistics for human rights abuses was even more frightening than in Yugoslavia. An overview of existing statistical data on the human rights abuses in both regions may provide some useful insights into the NATO's policy. Human Rights Abuses in Kosovo Both Albanians and Serbs perceive the region of Kosovo as their own historical space. The battle of Kosovo in 1389, one of the most tragic and memorable events in the history of Serbia, makes Kosovo an essential element of national consciousness for Serbs; Albanians, in their turn, believe Kosovo to be the pre-historic birthplace of their nation and culture. Such perception of the region by both ethnic groups has resulted in a series of major violent conflicts over the course of the 20th century. After World War II the situation in Kosovo became more predictable and less tense. Under the Constitution of 1945 Kosovo gained autonomous status; in 1974, the new Constitution the region even more political rights including a seat on the federal presidency, separate police force and national bank. However, death of Josip Broz Tito in 1980 marked a new period of political and economic distress characterised by increasingly violent tensions between the Albanian and Serbian communities in Kosovo. These tensions peaked during the rule of Slobodan Miloevi in the 1990s. The abolition of Kosovo's autonomy and the political institutions associated with the autonomous status generated highly negative response from the Albanian community. The resistance movement led by Ibrahim Rugova carried out two referenda in 1991 and 1992 to declare Kosovo an independent presidential republic. The Serbian government immediately declared the results void and toughened its policy in the region. Yet it was not until the end of 1990s that violations of international humanitarian law committed in Kosovo became serious and numerous enough to draw attention of the international community (Mertus, 1999: 285-309). In Western public opinion, the Kosovo crisis was largely perceived as an outcome of the violent policy of implemented by the authoritarian Serbian regime embodied by Slobodan Milosevic against an Albanian minority. Incautious political decisions made by the Serbian government throughout the early 1990s set the stage for such perception even before the real outburst of violence in Kosovo. Serbia conducted several local wars against Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia in a futile attempt to retain the Balkan Empire created by Tito. The outcome of these wars was highly negative for Serbia and its political leaders. In Western public opinion, the policy implemented by Serbia became "a clear case of a regional imperialist aspiring to subjugate national liberation movements in its colonies. Milosevic's Serbia was a heir of the former Communist Tito regime, demonstrating a strong anti-Western ideological propensity, while being opposed by pro-Western Catholic or Muslim nations" (Arbatov, 2000:1). Therefore, the blame for dramatic increase of violence in Kosovo in 1998 was put on the Serbian government in the first turn. The list of human rights abuses committed in Kosovo ranged from displacement to massive ethnic cleansing involving hundreds of civilians (HRW, 1998). Unfortunately, there is a great deal of ambiguity surrounding the data on exact numbers of killed and displaced in Kosovo. Thus, during one of his press-conferences in 1999, Clinton mentioned " tens of thousands of people killed...", and claimed the Alliance "stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide (Clinton, 1999). The U.S. Department of State estimates the total number of people killed by hostile forces in Kosovo before late 1999 as 10, 000. The number of displaced reached almost 560, 000 - a huge figure which corresponded to 35 percent of total Kosovo population (U.S. Department of State, 1999). The U.S. Department of States also lists 527 mass graves (3,600 bodies in total) discovered before late 1999, and 2,750 disappearances. Evidently, the Albanian insurgency known as Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) also contributed substantially to the statistics. The Human Rights Watch explicitly admits this fact by acknowledging that the KLA "has also violated the laws of war by such actions as the taking of civilian hostages and by summary executions" (HRW, 1998). Yet the vast majority of the human rights violations in Kosovo is believed to have been committed by the governmental forces consisting of the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian special police: "Under the command of Yugoslav President Slobodan Miloevic, government troops have committed extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, systematically destroyed civilian property, and attacked humanitarian aid workers, all of which are violations of the rules of war" (HRW, 1998). Consequently, NATO relied upon these conclusions and statistical data to classify the situation in Kosovo as 'international humanitarian emergency' and launch a military campaign against Yugoslavia. Some critics have accused the Alliance of justifying the war in Kosovo by the false data on human rights abuses committed by the Serb authorities. In other words, NATO states have been suspected to deliberately inflate the number of Albanians killed by Serbs in the region of Kosovo to provide sufficient justification for the campaign (Schlafly, 1999). The data on human rights abuses in Yugoslavia collected by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) forces to seriously consider such accusations. In 1999, OSCE issued two large documents describing human rights abuses in Kosovo recorded up to then. The overall conclusion drawn by the authors of those documents was that neither violence against the civil citizens, nor ethnic cleansing had seriously affected Kosovo prior to the NATO military campaign in the region. The reports admit a certain amount of human rights abuses and violence against Albanian populations, but claim that those had not reached a massive scale until NATO attacked Belgrade on March 24, 1999. Immediately after the attack the Serb authorities in Kosovo committed incomparably more human right abuses and violence against Albanian population than ever before. This dramatic change has subsequently resulted in many thousand people killed and more than half million displaced: "The fact that thousands of civilians died - not before, but after the start of the military operation - constitutes grounds for invoking the responsibility of the leaders of NATO's member States and of the Alliance itself" (Egorov, 2000: 188). Human Rights Abuses in Chechnya Chechnya, annexed to the Russian Empire in 1860s, was a minor autonomous republic in Russian Soviet Republic of the former USSR. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia became an independent state as 14 other major republics, but the smaller nations, such as Chechens were denied the same status, and dramatically lacked power to secure it. Nevertheless, on September 6, 1991 the leader of autonomous republic of Chechnya General Johar Dudayev announced Chechnya an independent state (Lapidus, 1998). The central government in Moscow refused to set a dangerous precedent by recognising the republic. Yet Russia also did not have enough resources to suppress the separatist movement at that time: Chechnya had been functioning as an independent, though unrecognised, state until December 1994 when the central government finally became strong enough to launch a serious military campaign. Despite initial success of the campaign, the Russian military unexpectedly met with tough resistance of the Chechen military forces. The withdrawal of Russian troops in August 1996 marked the end of the First Chechenyan war. The second Russian campaign in Chechnya, which subsequently resulted in establishing control over almost entire territory of the republic, was launched in the fall of 1999, and is still ongoing. Both Chechen campaigns generated a plethora of reports showing numerous evidences of violence against civilian population, tortures, and other war crimes committed by both parties involved in the conflict (Cornell, 1999: 85). The total number of people killed during the First and Second Chechen war is unknown: the estimates vary from 180,000 to 250,000, which corresponds to 16 and 24 percent of the total population respectively (Baulin, 2002). According to the estimate of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the total number of displaced reached 350,000 (UNHCR, 2002: 376). Even the most moderate estimates sum up to more than 500,000 of killed and displaced which corresponds to a frightening 45-50 percent of Chechnya's 1,1 million population. While in Kosovo the Alliance have been accused in exaggeration of actual figures, many western and Russian analysts claim that the numbers of killed and displaced population in Chechnya may be vastly underestimated (Lapidus, 1998). Analysis The absolute comparability of figures reflecting the statistics of killed and displaced in Kosovo and Chechnya (see Appendix 1) suggests there are other distinctions that determine the attitude of the Western states toward these two conflicts. The configuration of participants represents an important distinction between the conflicts. In Kosovo, the conflict between Serbs and Albanians drew overwhelming attention of European states and influential international organizations immediately after the escalation of tensions in the early 1990s. This resulted in participation of numerous mediators taking efforts to find a compromise acceptable for both parties. The Chechen conflict remained almost exclusively bilateral although in the beginning the OSCE made some attempts to effect settlement of the clash (Charney, 2001:456). During the years when the central government did nothing to change the de facto independent status of Chechnya, the Chechens failed to build any viable institutions of an independent state. Instead, the region became the centre of criminal activities of astonishing proportions which spread over other Caucasian republics and could barely be ignored (Gall & de Waal, 1997: 20-36). Therefore, while the international reaction to the Russian use of armed forces in Chechnya was extremely negative no visible international support for independence of the region was offered: "the international community accepted the view that Chechnya should remain a part of Russia. Even the issue of Chechen minority rights has not surfaced as an international issue" (Charney, 2001: 456). The Albanian community in Kosovo demonstrated absolutely different attitude toward the institutes of power and the international image of their movement. The NATO campaign in Kosovo was preceded by a long and intensive period of political negotiations involving the central government and legitimately elected Albanian leaders whom took noticeable efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, and embarked on the quest for independence only after other alternative solutions (e.g. autonomy) had been rejected. By contrast, the political phase was practically absent in the Russian-Chechen tensions. After three silent years, the conflict rapidly unfolded into a large-scale conflict. On the one hand, such scarcity of political contacts and absence of formal negotiations between the parties provides poor justification for the ironfisted methods used by the central government in Chechnya: Russians did not have any negotiation collapse excuses to formally justify their making appeal to arms in the conflict (Gall & de Waal, 1997). On the other hand, it undermined the positive image of Chechen political leadership in the eyes of international community suggesting that Dzhokar Dudayev preferred to escalate the conflict instead of attempting to resolve it politically before violence erupted. The difference in perception of Kosovo and Chechnya by the conflicting parties is believed to affect their actions too. For ethnic Serbs Kosovo is the cradle of their nation and culture; for Russians Chechnya is nothing similar to a historic space of the nation: it is one of many remote Caucasian provinces. This difference might provide a partial explanation to the fact that the term 'ethnic cleansing' is rarely used in discussions of the Chechen conflict: Russian forces in Chechnya did not pursue the demographic goal to uproot Chechen population from the region. The number of mass graves discovered in Kosovo and Chechnya provides another indirect evidence to this assumption: 527 in Kosovo and only 11 in Chechnya (HRW, 2001). Therefore, no genocide accusations were applicable to the Russian-Chechen conflict which also contributed to a more positive image of the country as compared with the case of Kosovo. Evidently, the identified distinctions between the two models of conflict did play certain role in defining the international policy in the regions. However, the major reason for NATO's decision to intervene in Kosovo and not intervene in Chechnya seems to be purely utilitarian. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a relatively poor post-Communist state without any serious military and economic resources, but located at the heart of Europe. The Russian Federation despite its economic troubles represented a very serious military power with huge nuclear potential and was a permanent member of the UN Security Council, holding the veto right (Charney, 2001). Besides, the geo-political location of Chechnya was far from being as important as that of Kosovo: a conflict unfolding somewhere in Caucasus Mountains could hardly be of any considerable international significance to European states. The importance of geo-political location should not be underestimated though some might consider that the military potential of Russia is an argument per se powerful enough to secure sovereignty of the state under any circumstances. Some authors strongly believe that cultural, strategic, or geopolitical importance of the region in question is not less important argument to justify military interventions than the systematic violations of humanitarian law or threat to international security and peace in the neighbouring states (Ignatieff, 2001: 311-316). Each of these major criteria alone may not suffice to justify a military intervention, but their combination is incomparably more effective: "military intervention is only warranted when a gross and persistent human rights crisis is simultaneously a threat to their own national security interests or those of their most important allies (Ignatieff, 2001: 314). Evidently, the NATO's campaign in Kosovo was justified on a combination of humanitarian law violations, potential threat to the international security in Balkans, and geopolitical importance of the region to the European Union. The situation in Chechnya lacked any similar combination of factors. Consequently, the Western states failed to articulate any pressing national interests or relevant international security threats to take the risks of attacking such military power as Russia, despite the clear case of human rights being severely abused by both parties participating in the conflict. CONCLUSION At the first glance, the Alliance fell victim of an ill-considered decision when it launched its campaign in Kosovo. The perceived similarity between the Kosovo conflict and the First Chechen war suggested that the only reason for NATO's refraining from any actions was huge military potential of Russia. Such utilitarian reasoning would seriously undermine the NATO's humanitarian justification of the Kosovo campaign: the policy of double standards could hardly fit the pattern of protecting human rights or improve the reputation of the Alliance. However, the distinctions between the Kosovo conflict and Chechen war seemed considerable enough to provide an acceptable justification for NATO's decision to intervene in one case and sit on its hands in the other. These distinctions related to the origins and mechanisms underlying the conflicts, factors conducive to their escalation, and the external context in which they unfolded. The combination of these factors mapped three basic features that might play an important role in attaining the support of the Alliance: 1. Prolonged political contacts and negotiations between the parties to agree on a peaceful method of conflict resolution. 2. The use of military force (central government) and the claim for independence (the minority group) only when absolutely all means of peaceful resolution have been exhausted. 3. Undisputable legitimacy of the minority representatives involved in the process of decision-making on behalf of the whole community. Evidently, these features could hardly supersede the utilitarian concern identified above: it has yet to be seen whether these would suffice to overpower the utterly utilitarian considerations associated with taking serious risks. However, their presence substantially improves the chances of the international community supporting the minority claim. References Annan, K (1999). The Question of Intervention: Statements by the Secretary - General. New York, N.Y.: United Nations Dept. of Public Information Arbatov, A (2000). The Kosovo Crisis: The End of the Post-Cold War Era (Occasional paper). Atlantic Council of the United States Baulin, Y (2002). "The War in Chechnya: Uncontrollable Waste of Huge Sums," Novaya Gazeta, No. 85, November, pp. 2-3 Charney, J (2001). "Self-Determination: Chechnya, Kosovo, and East Timor", Vanderbilt. Journal of Transnational Law 34(2), pp. 456-59 Clinton, W (June 25, 1999). "Press Conference by the President" retrieved February 5, 2007 from http://clinton6.nara.gov/1999/06/1999-06-25-press-conference-by-the-president.html Cornell, S (1999). "International Reactions to Massive Human Rights Violations: The Case of Chechnya", Europe-Asia Studies, 51(1), pp.85-100 Egorov, S (2000). "The Kosovo crisis and the law of armed conflicts" International Review of the Red Cross No. 837, pp.183-192 Gall, C. and T. de Waal (1997). Chechnya: A Small Victorious War. London: Pan Human Rights Watch (1997). Russia / Chechnya: A Legacy of Abuse. New York: Human Rights Watch [available online at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1997/russia2/] Human Rights Watch (1998). Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Humanitarian Law Violations in Kosovo. New York: Human Rights Watch [available online at http://www.hrw.org/reports98/kosovo/] Human Rights Watch (2001). Burying the Evidence, The Botched Investigation into a Mass Grave in Chechnya. New York: Human Rights Watch [available online at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/chechnya2/index.htm] Ignatieff, M (2001). 'Human Rights as Politics, Human Rights as Idolatry' in Grethe B. Peterson (ed), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, pp.287-349 Lapidus, G (1998). "Contested Sovereignty: The Tragedy of Chechnya", International Security, 23, pp. 5-49 Mertus, J (1999). Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War. University of California Press Schlafly, Ph. (1999). "Numbers Game in Kosovo", Washington Times, November 19 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2002). Global Report 2002 - Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), retrieved February 5, 2007 from http://www.unhcr.org/publ/PUBL/3edf4ffc0.pdf U.S. Department of State (1999). Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo: An Accounting. Washington: U.S. Department of State [available online at www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/kosovoii/homepage.html] APPENDIX 1. Chechnya Kosovo* Population 1.6 million 1.1 million Total Killed by Hostile Forces 10 000 180 000** Total Killed as a % of population 0.6% 16.4% Total Displaced by Hostile Forces 559 300 350 000 Total Displaced as a % of population 34.9% 31.8% Total Killed and Displaced 569 300 530 000 Total Killed and Displaced as a % of population 35.5% 48.2% Total Number of Mass Graves Discovered 527 11*** Total Number of Deceased Discovered in Mass Graves 3 600 1 034 Total Disappearances 2 750 4 400 * Chechen figures include both the current conflict and the 1994-1996 war. ** This is a conservative estimate. Some Chechen sources claim as many as 250,000 civilian casualties over the last eight years, or as much as one quarter the population. *** Total graves discovered near Russian military installations since 1999. Research into mass burials from the 1994-1996 War remains inconclusive due to continuing hostilities and the expulsion of most Western human rights group from the region. Read More