The Washington Post

Friday, February 25, 2000

The Real War Begins

By Peter Bouckaert

NAZRAN, Russia-For months, the international community's response to Russia's abusive campaign in Chechnya has been all talk and no action. In recent weeks, as allegations of summary executions emerged, even the rhetorical condemnations ceased. The West was too busy breathing a collective sigh of relief over the fall of Chechnya's capital, Grozny: Now that the war was winding up, they could get down to business with Acting Russian President Vladimir Putin, Secretary Madeleine K. Albright's "can-do" guy in the Kremlin.

From Ingushetia, where hundreds of thousands of Chechens have taken refuge, it is clear that the worst may yet be on the way. Unless they are immediately reined in, Russian forces will commit many more war crimes as they take control of Chechnya.

I have been documenting these atrocities for Human Rights Watch during the last three months. I have evidence of more than 100 summary executions committed by Russian troops during the takeover of Grozny, acts of murder by Russian soldiers plain and simple, and I am investigating dozens more. Most of the victims have been elderly men and women, who emerged from their cellars after months of bombing and shelling only to be shot down by Russian soldiers "liberating" Grozny. The Russians have detained hundreds of Chechen men in "filtration camps," where they are at risk of torture.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to explain the usefulness of my work to grieving Chechens. Every day, I am told that our work is pointless: The international community doesn't care about Chechnya, and won't do anything anyway, so why record its suffering? What do I tell a father who just lost his only two sons, summarily executed by Russian soldiers? Or the woman who is carrying around the burned remains of her two sisters, unable to travel to their home village for a traditional burial?

I am tired of going to funerals and expressing my condolences for senseless murders, acts of sheer brutality. There is little I can promise: There is no indication that the abuses will end or that the perpetrators of these crimes will be punished. In the wake of the noble principles announced during the Kosovo and East Timor crises, the silence of the international community on Chechnya is deafening. To date, the international community has given the Russian government no reason to fear any repercussions for its actions.

This must change. There are steps the international community can take to stop the violations in Chechnya.

First, governments must upgrade their rhetoric to call the violations in Chechnya what they are, war crimes, and to insist on accountability. If the Russian government will not investigate, the international community should. European states should haul Russia before the European Court of Human Rights and instigate an inquiry by the Council of Europe. The United States and others should use the upcoming session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to establish a commission of inquiry or other mechanism to investigate war crimes.

Second, the international community must insist on a monitoring presence in Ingushetia. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), of which the United States is a member, has an Assistance Group to Chechnya, left over from the last war and currently based in Moscow. In theory, it enjoys all possible freedom of movement in Chechnya and the neighboring provinces. Yet the OSCE and its member states have meekly accepted Russia's persistent refusal to let the group travel even to neighboring Ingushetia.

In the meantime, governments should be quietly dispatching their Moscow representatives to Ingushetia to bear witness. The U.S. government has sought to justify its inaction by claiming it does not have its own intelligence about abuses. At the same time, to the best of our knowledge, no U.S. official has traveled to the region since the outbreak of hostilities last fall. Security concerns relating to travel to the region are a convenient excuse. From my time here, I can attest that while security is an issue, it can be addressed, and international representatives who travel to the region will find that they enjoy an extremely cooperative relationship with local authorities.

Finally, the World Bank and the IMF should explicitly suspend pending loan payments until the Russian Federation takes steps to rein in its troops, begins a meaningful process of accountability for abuses and fully cooperates with the deployment of an international monitoring presence in the north Caucasus. The IMF and the World Bank should not be financing a government bent on a policy that is so destructive and contrary to their institutional missions as is the Russian military operation in Chechnya.

From where I sit, it is clear that the war in Chechnya is far from over and that the events that will leave the most lasting and troubling scars still are unfolding. Unless international actors take a firm stand against these atrocities, history will certainly judge them poorly.

The writer is a Human Rights Watch investigator who has been documenting abuses in the Chechen conflict from Nazran for the past three months.