The possible 'Chechenization' of Aceh

Dmitri Kosyrev, Political Columnist, RIA Novosti, Moscow

Aslan Maskhadov , the nominal leader of the Chechen separatist movement"We want to repeat the Timor exercise with the Chechen Republic" -- that was the essence of the recent message of the nominal leader of the Chechen separatist movement, Aslan Maskhadov. This message have been displayed on the London web- site, one of the several run by the underground network of fugitive Chechens spread from the Middle East to Europe to South East Asia.

To be precise, Maskhadov himself did not use the word "Timor". He mentioned transferring the Chechen Republic, a part of the Russian Federation, under the "international rule" as a start. It was the friendly Chechen propaganda commentaries to his statement that immediately mentioned Timor (and Kosovo, a part of Yugoslavia, which has suffered a similar fate in the same year of 1999) as a good example.

Why would a man who is wanted by the Russian police for the State crimes, invoke the sad ghost of Timor ?

First of all, Maskhadov knows about East Timor. In the late 1990s Aslan Maskhadov himself has repeatedly visited Malaysia, his wife and son had a house there, they had many friends among the local people currently in jail for their terrorist connections -- and no doubt he was following the Timor tragedy quite attentively.

So he knows that -- to put it very plainly -- sometimes the crime pays, if you know how to appeal to the right people in this world.

The Chechens have accumulated a very long list of crimes. Hostage-taking of a whole hospital, or of a whole audience of a musical. Night-time explosions of the apartment blocks in Moscow. Slave trade as the mainstay of the "economy" during the times before the "Putin clean-up" began in 2000. And -- recently -- a barrage of suicide bombings: In Chechnya against the local Chechen authorities or in Moscow among the teenage crowds at a concert.

In fact, the much-feared al-Qaeda has to look up to the Chechen separatist movement when the head count of the victims begins. But then, they do not compete -- they cooperate. There are tons of proof about the Chechen separatists' connections to the Talibs in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention all the rest of the international terrorist network. Including the facts about the people from the Middle East drugging and preparing the suicide female bombers for the latest murders in Moscow. That's Mr. Maskhadov and his associates. No hope for them to become legitimate in our world. At least not after September 11.

But evidently their logic is: If it worked in East Timor, it may work again in Chechnya. After all, Sept. 11 was in 2001 -- two years ago, and the memories tend to fade. You just need to check and recheck whether the West is back to its reflexive support to all the separatist and opposition movements from all over the world, including the personalities like Pol Pot and Khomeini (both came back home from Paris).

The thing is, the West -- that is, Europe and to some extent the U.S. -- still have not quite decided if they should firmly say that everyone who kills the innocents to obtain the independence is a criminal. They were shaken, yes, but maybe not quite stirred.

Just look at the way the newspapers from Europe treats the Chechens now: For some papers they are the terrorists, for others -- the freedom fighters, like before. Ahmed Zakaev, Maskhadov's right hand in London, is still under the extradition process at Moscow's legal request -- and the court obviously doesn't know what to do.

It's very obvious that too many people in Europe wish they could stop thinking about all these complicated things, and shove the dust of the year 1999 -- that was East Timor and Kosovo -- forever under the carpet.

This spring I was among the judges of a wine contest in Germany. The question arose -- why was the vintage of 1999 bad all over Europe ? "You should not have bombed Yugoslavia that year -- God punished you", -- said I, and heard the awkward silence. "Do we need to go all over these things here -- or anywhere -- again and again?", -- someone asked politely.

Nobody wants to remember Kosovo and East Timor. Nobody wants to proclaim openly that in both cases it was at least a mistake. It was the UN that participated in that mistake in East Timor, they tell me privately -- so do you want to blame the UN now? Now, when it's obvious that the U.S. and the British are failing in Iraq and we need the UN to take over and help that miserable country?

So if you keep all this dust under the carpet for a couple of years more, you can gradually go back to the doctrine of supporting any terrorist as long as he claims to be a freedom fighter. After all, it's so good to keep a leverage over almost anyone in this world. Almost any country in Asia or Africa may have its Timor any moment. To think of it, same applies to Europe or the U.S. -- but why does it seem to me that the world's poor will not use that leverage against the developed world, and only the reverse is possible ?

The problem of separatism was an obvious PR failure of the Indonesian authorities: They thought that if anybody in Indonesia can see the truth, say, about the Aceh separatists, than everyone in the world would see it too. Many Russians are making the same mistake, thinking that if they are been murdered in the streets by the Chechen terrorists, than all the world sees it the same way.

So now Maskhadov is probing the world: If you allowed a "liberated" East Timor, why don't you allow a "liberated" Chechnya? And next we shall hear from somebody: OK, if they walked away with it in Chechnya, why can't we do it again with a place called Aceh?