Lord Rea
Main Page: Lord Rea (Labour - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Rea
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Judd for bringing Chechnya and the North Caucasus to our attention. As he told us, he was for four years the rapporteur on Chechnya for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, trying in his characteristic way—as we heard in his intervention in the fourth Question preceding this debate—to encourage dialogue rather than conflict between the Russians and Chechens.
Most people in the West associate Chechens with the hostage-taking episodes of the Ostrava theatre in Moscow and the school in Beslan. These acts were inexcusable but it should be pointed out that the deaths in the theatre rescue were caused by the poison gas used by the Russians and that the Beslan rescue operation was handled violently when dialogue might have resulted in the release of some or all of the hostages. Both these operations were masterminded by the notorious Shamil Basayev and were strongly condemned by the late President Maskhadov, leader of the Chechen resistance, and his representative in exile, Akhmed Zakayev, who has given his opinion that Basayev has done more than the Russians to damage the Chechen cause.
My interest in this area comes from a somewhat hazardous unofficial visit to Chechnya with a small health charity in 1995 during the first of the two phases of the Russo-Chechen war. Our safety was guaranteed by General Maskhadov, in charge of the Chechen resistance. We stayed in the homes of ordinary Chechens behind the lines, although there were no established lines. My overall impression was of the generosity and resourcefulness of the Chechen people but also of the corruption, cruelty and unnecessarily destructive methods, particularly in Grozny, of the occupying Russian army. Some of the weapons used by the Chechens had been bought from hungry, underpaid Russian soldiers. We heard eye-witness accounts from former inmates of the so-called filtration camps of murder, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment of arbitrarily arrested prisoners. Families often had to pay a ransom to receive the bodies of their murdered relatives.
Historically, as the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, pointed out, the North Caucasus has for nearly three centuries been a problem for Russia. The Chechens—only some 1 million—have been the most persistent of the Islamic North Caucasians in their resistance to Russian domination. The worst event in Chechen history came in 1944 when Stalin deported the whole population of Chechnya, Ingushetia and some neighbouring republics—except for those who hid in the forest—to faraway Kazakhstan and Siberia. They were packed into cattle trucks and some estimates say that about half of them died from starvation, privation and disease. As the noble Viscount said, Stalin’s reason for this was that the Chechens were planning to collaborate with the Germans when they reached the Caucasus—which of course they never did. When the deportation took place, they were in full retreat. After Stalin’s death, the survivors were allowed to make their own way back, to find that their land and houses were occupied and had to be bought back or taken by force. Even so, the Russians gave part of Ingushetia to North Ossetia—an act that caused lasting resentment.
This experience of deportation has left a searing folk memory. No family was unaffected. However, Chechens then showed themselves to be astute in business and some became quite well off. A minority resorted to shady Mafioso-style business, including kidnapping and extortion. This has been used by some Russians to blacken all Chechens. They and other North Caucasians have become Russia’s hate objects and are targeted and often beaten up by a racist, fascist youth cult that has recently grown up in Russia.
When the USSR disintegrated in 1991, the Chechens declared unilateral independence. Dzhokhar Dudayev, a Chechen general in the Soviet air force, was elected President in a free, fair election on an independence ticket. However, Chechnya’s independent status was not accepted by the Russian hierarchy. Later, President Yeltsin thought he would gain popularity, particularly with the military, if he regained Chechnya through “a short successful war” in 1994. It did not work out that way. After initially capturing Grozny with heavy losses, the Russians were humiliated by Maskhadov’s skilfully led guerrilla army, who recaptured the city. By then, in 1996, the war had become deeply unpopular in Russia and a peace treaty with Maskhadov was negotiated. In an internationally monitored election, Maskhadov was elected President in 1997 to replace Dudayev, who had been killed by a Russian missile.
There followed an anarchic period with some foreign aid workers, including two British Telecom workers, being murdered. The perpetrators were thought to be a militant Wahhabi Islamic sect from outside Chechnya, wishing to drive all foreigners out—they largely succeeded. Others blame the Russians and their attempt to destabilise Chechnya and give the Chechen Government a bad name.
As the noble Lord said, in 1999 the blowing up of apartment blocks in Moscow and Ryazan, which was blamed on Chechens without any evidence, and a Chechen incursion into Dagestan, which was not sanctioned by Maskhadov, were used by the then Prime Minister Putin to launch a full-scale military assault on Chechnya to assuage the humiliation of Russia’s earlier defeat. Grozny, already half destroyed, was further devastated, to leave the picture that my noble friend Lord Judd found. The Chechen forces were eventually reduced to guerrilla bands based in the mountains and forests. Maskhadov was traced and killed, as was Shamil Basayev, Chechnya’s enfant terrible. The Russians have now reduced their military presence, as the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, pointed out. The former Chechen resistance fighter, Ramzan Kadyrov, was installed as President by Putin. He now heads the repressive state described by my noble friend Lord Judd.
This time, the Russians have been generous in their support of Kadyrov’s regime as compared with the interwar years when they gave not a penny in reparation for the damage they had done. On the surface, as my noble friend said, Grozny has regained its former handsome status but the absence of the rule of law and arbitrary arrests and disappearances have still carried on, as revealed by several journalists and my noble friend’s human rights delegation.
Russia, as my noble friend said, has repeatedly been found guilty of human rights breaches by the European Court of Human Rights. Putin, however, tries to suppress this information, as indicated by the murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova. The perpetrators have still not been brought to justice. Murders have not been confined to Russia and Chechnya; in 2002, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who was Maskhadov’s chosen successor as President, was murdered by Russian agents in Doha, in Qatar. The culprits were caught but released and congratulated when they returned to Russia. His successor, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, was killed in Chechnya. In 2009, a prominent Chechen activist was murdered in Vienna—and so the story goes on.
The most notorious overseas murder is, of course, the polonium poisoning of the former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, where the evidence clearly pointed to a Russian, Andrei Lugovoy, as the culprit. The Chechen connection is that Litvinenko was the co-author of a book called Blowing up Russia, which gave very plausible evidence that the Moscow apartment explosions of 1999 had been carried out by FSB agents and not by Chechens. He also accused Putin of being responsible for the death of Anna Politkovskaya at a public meeting just before he was poisoned.
The conflict has other international dimensions. It has been estimated that there are 150,000 Chechen refugees in the EU. I have personally assisted a number of Chechen asylum seekers in this country. Deaths in Chechnya are hard to measure accurately, but they are estimated to be between 80,000 and 100,000 out of a population of 1 million. My noble friend has always warned that the repressive methods used by the Russians and now Kadyrov will lead to the radicalisation of the Chechens, who normally practise a moderate form of Islam akin to Sufism. This has now happened, with Doku Umarov, who claims he is the true leader of the Chechens but is rejected by Akhmed Zakayev, calling for an emirate of the north Caucasus and a jihad against Russia, Israel and the West. To the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, I would say that what Kadyrov is doing in forcing an Islamic code on the Chechen people is very different from the widespread caliphate or emirate that Umarov is calling for. How seriously he is taken by the North Caucasians is open to question, but there is no doubt that there are frequent violent acts against Russian-appointed administrators and security forces in several North Caucasian states. That was described well by the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley. Umarov claims responsibility for the recent devastating suicide bombing at Domodedevo airport in Moscow.
What can we suggest that the Russians do who are faced with this situation? First, there should be greater economic investment and job creation in the area, which is extremely poor and has massive unemployment. There should be an amnesty for the remaining resistance fighters, an end to arbitrary arrests, a return to the rule of law and compensation for those whose homes have been destroyed. As soon as possible, there should be internationally supervised free elections. Then we might see an end to kidnapping and suicide bombing.
Lord Triesman
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and to all those who have taken part in this debate. The noble Lord has returned to these issues very regularly, and the House should feel grateful for the fact that he has. He pressed the then Labour Government in March 2005—I remember the pressure—and has consistently done so since. He has reported today on the key role that he played in the Chechnya fact-finding mission of the All-Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group, which he undertook with Jo Swinson MP in February 2010. It is noteworthy, I think, that all these efforts have consistently met with all-party support. It has been one of the better examples of recognition of a significant problem. I suspect that some of that all-party support has come about because of the depth of knowledge that the noble Lord is able to impart. I know that he has made 11 visits to Russia and Chechnya and is regarded very widely as having excelled in his four years as rapporteur for the Council of Europe. Very much of what he says is accurate and authoritative and should be treated as such.
To paraphrase some of the main conclusions, which have been shared by other noble Lords, the noble Lord has argued that the Government of Chechnya are very rarely held accountable for their actions, however dire they might be; that its institutions have neither the capacity nor the desire to hold anyone to account for those actions; and that the conduct of the Government under law is consistently poor and is undermined by a judiciary that lacks independence and is unable to protect witnesses, and therefore has at its heart a corrosive dynamic that makes the effective impact of the law so much less.
Security forces in effect enjoy impunity. Crimes are committed by them in an open and completely unashamed way. There is consistent evidence from very many reporters of torture, extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances. These crimes have allegedly been committed by people who have been named frequently in the European Court of Human Rights and the judgments of that court but who are after being named very much more likely to be promoted in the security services of Chechnya than ever to face any kind of justice whatever. My noble friend Lord Ahmed spoke powerfully on these points as well.
It is very clear, as reports have shown, that the Chechen President encourages the use of any means that deal with those he sees as his enemies. No enemy can escape the environment, which is essentially paranoid in its operation. It is quite right to look, as various noble Lords have encouraged us to do, at Chechnya and Russia together in this. The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, made the point with great force that corruption with impunity is a characteristic of both, and there is a deep interpenetration of these facts. I support the noble Lord’s proposition. It would make no sense and would greatly encourage Russia to step back from taking a very clear and principled view about these activities, and I hope that the Government confirm today that that is the view they will take. I broadly agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, about the uneasy coalition between Russia and the nationalists in Chechnya, because it has created an environment of repression in its own right. I hope that I will not embarrass the noble Viscount in saying what a superb overview of the strategic conditions he provided for the House. I greatly appreciate that.
The fundamental conclusion that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and many others come to, including the noble Lord, Lord Rea, is that tyranny generally generates militant extremism as a response. Secure and stable societies based on human rights are, of course, the antidote. It is clear that those who have put that point are far from alone. Leading academic investigators have reached similar conclusions over the years. For example, research at the Free University of Brussels shows that the concentration of power and the brutal exercise of that power by Kadyrov, often in concert with Russia in pursuit of his own material, political, economic and other interests, have produced a response that is itself dangerous to all of us.
That is, without question, a depressing picture. I suspect that those who say that they see more stability must be arguing that that is a relative state. Conflict and terrorism are still there and they are not conducive to stability. Rebuilding and growth have taken place, but they have done so in a grim way and in grim human rights conditions. That is one reason why I think that in our description of this we face a rather more complex picture than we sometimes draw. The UN Commission on Human Rights identified atrocities that have been committed on all sides in the Chechen conflict, a point that I recall was made eloquently in 2005 by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. The pursuit of greater autonomy has been conducted with considerable brutality in its own right, not least in acts of appalling terror against Russian civilians, against schoolchildren at Beslan, against commuters in the attacks on the trains and the metro, and recently, I note sadly, in some of the conflict that is emerging even around events that should be social and enjoyable, like football matches, where groups of neo-Nazi thugs are now attacking each other. I say with the greatest respect to my noble friend Lord Rea that on occasion the Russian authorities might well have dealt with situations—the siege of the theatre and other things—with responses that might not have been the most sophisticated that they could have produced, but they did not instigate the attack on the schoolchildren. That is what we should ensure we condemn.
Lord Triesman
My Lords, I acknowledge that. I suppose I am trying to make the point that responses to terrorist acts can sometimes be badly planned, misjudged and so on, but they occur in the context of the terrorist attack having taken place. The response overall has been pretty brutal and, in the minds of the Russians, has been seen as directed towards them by forms of extremism, and by al-Qaeda in particular. That is what they have used to justify their actions.
However bleak the situation, the need for further discussions is clear, as many noble Lords have said. The need to abide by international legal decisions of the European Court of Human Rights against Russia in the human rights abuse cases is equally clear. The Government could tell us today how they are pursuing these objectives with Russia to ensure that it meets its obligations as a member of the Council of Europe. Will they sustain their position, as the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, asked, on NATO and its Parliament?
I turn to the wider region. I welcome the general style of the approach that has been taken by this Government, and indeed by the previous one, to regional crises. The ethos is well set out in a response to your Lordships’ European Union Committee report on the EU and Russia following the crisis in Georgia. It is a good model for how to deal with many of these issues, and it is important because it shows that however difficult and modest the achievements were in intervening—to try to achieve, first, a ceasefire in Georgia and then, with much delay, partial withdrawals from Georgian territory, except in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which were followed by all-party talks—we saw that initiatives can, on occasion, bear at least a little fruit.
Both North Caucasus and South Caucasus are of great strategic significance. Both provide bridges between Europe and Asia. The region is in the midst of huge transitions of populations and resources, and I suspect that the consequences have been that that has given rise to many of the ethnic and interstate conflicts, some of those conflicts becoming full-scale wars. The region is important for its natural resources and as an important intersection of energy supply systems. Both the north and the south are central to Eurasia’s energy and transport corridors, hence the strategic importance of what the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, said. The issues that must arise about the management of resources, their fair distribution and the way in which the income yield gets passed to the populations of those countries rather than being held exclusively by small elites are vital. Environmental issues are vital. The pollution issues from the ageing industries of those areas are vital. In some cases, uncontrolled urban growth becomes an acute issue. Collapsing irrigation systems—all of them—call for attention. I am interested to know how the Government believe some of this could be done.
We cannot intervene everywhere and I am not advocating that we should try, but there might be some lessons to learn, at least from the efforts made by one of the near neighbours of the regions. I am referring to Turkey. Turkish policy is focused on intensive efforts to foster regional co-operation—understandably, given its location, both in the southern Caucasus and more generally. It has promoted economically independent projects, some of which have huge potential, including in the northern Caucasus. Turkey’s speed off the mark in supporting independence and recognising emerging nations might have pre-empted some of the decisions that people in the region might have taken for themselves about geographical borders. All in all, though, active economic and state-building approaches appear more likely to have some success than a constant lament, however justifiable, about how bad things are in the region. Do the Government intend to engage more with Turkey, either through the EU or directly, on exploring some of the practical programmes that can be developed in this region and which might be an adjunct to peace?
As I said, we cannot do everything everywhere; were we to try, we would certainly fail. We might, however, have other partners with whom we could engage more vigorously. Have the Government themselves identified partners in these circumstances? What do they think of the programmes of some of those potential partners?
I ask these questions fully aware of the complexity of the region and of the issues that we face, which were introduced so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and debated so ably in this Chamber. I am eager to learn how the Government believe they can assist in fostering peace in the region and in seeing the peace that has been achieved in southern and eastern Europe over the past couple of decades extended further south and east for the greater security of us all.