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It is disappointing that—apart from condemnations by the European Court of Human Rights—the alleged war crimes committed by Russia in Chechnya have met with so little protest from the international community, especially from nearby Europe. This lack of interest can certainly be explained. Not only was the war considered an internal affair of the Russian Federation, but the West also believed (or wanted to believe) the Russian propaganda that the war in Chechnya was a part of “the global war on Islamist terrorism.” The West’s failure to react—and especially Europe’s failure to react in the framework of the Council of Europe—was a disgrace. The war crimes committed in Chechnya—repulsive and criminal as they were in themselves—were also a warning for the West about Russia’s eventual future behavior. Michael Ignatieff wrote: “Even when a state’s domestic behavior is not a clear and present danger to the international system, it is a reliable predictor that it is likely to be so in the future. Consider the example of Hitler’s regime, 1933–38, or Stalin’s in the same period. In hindsight, there seems no doubt that Western governments’ failure to sanction or even condemn their domestic policies encouraged both dictators to believe that their international adventures would go unpunished and unresisted.”^[66]

Notes

1.

Martin Malek, “Russia’s Asymmetric Wars in Chechnya since 1994,” Connections 8, no. 4 (Fall 2009), 85.

2.

Pavel Felgenhauer, “The Russian Army in Chechnya,” Crimes of War Project (April 18, 2003). http://www.crimesofwar.org/chechnya-mag/chech-felgenhauer.html.

3.

Jonathan Marcus, “Russians Urged to Stop ‘Vacuum’ Bombings,” BBC News Online (February 15, 2000).

4.

Felgenhauer, “The Russian Army in Chechnya.”

5.

Quoted by Maura Reynolds, “Krieg ohne Regeln: Russische Soldaten in Tschetschenien,” in Der Krieg im Schatten: Russland und Tschetschenien, ed. Florian Hassel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), 135.

6.

Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 101.

7.

Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 101–102.

8.

Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 103.

9.

Cf. Felgenhauer, “The Russian Army in Chechnya.”

10.

Cf. Marina Caparini, “Private Military Companies,” in Combating Terrorism and Its Implications for the Security Sector, eds. Amb. Dr. Theodor H. Winkler, Anja H. Ebnöther, and Mats B. Hansson (Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2005), 216.

11.

Caparini, “Private Military Companies,” 209.

12.

Caparini, “Private Military Companies,” 209.

13.

Felgenhauer, “The Russian Army in Chechnya.”

14.

Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 71.

15.

Thomas de Waal, “Introduction,” in Anna Politkovskaya, A Dirty War (London: The Harvill Press, 2007), xxv–xxvi.

16.

According to the Main Military Procurator, Sergey Fridinsky, “in 2006–2007, more than 5,000 recorded crimes were committed by contract personnel. In 2008, the number of recorded crimes committed by contract servicemen increased by 50.5 percent.” (Cf. Roger N. McDermott, The Reform of Russia’s Conventional Armed Forces: Problems, Challenges and Policy Implications (Washington, DC: The Jamestown Foundation, 2011), 82–83.) Note that these recorded crimes mainly took place outside Chechnya, in the Russian Federation proper. Most crimes in Chechnya were neither recorded, nor punished.

17.

Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 56.

18.

Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 53.

19.

Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 51.

20.

Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya, 51–52.

21.

Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict, 29. And these were not mere words. “Between 1856 and 1864, approximately 600,000 Muslim peoples of the Caucasus quit that region for the Ottoman empire” (ibid.).

22.

Quoted in Solovyov and Klepikova, Inside the Kremlin, 249.

23.

Sergey Maksudov, “Naselenie Chechni: prava li perepis?” (The Population of Chechnya: Is the Census Right?), Kavkaz-Forum (September 8, 2005). http://www.kavkaz-forum.ru/dossier/12963.html?print=on.