Jonathan Steele

Between 3,000 and 5,000 civilians have “disappeared” in the region since Putin launched the second war.

The boredom factor in world politics can never be under-rated. If a conflict goes on long enough, foreign leaders and the media lose interest. The spotlight switches and the international caravan moves on. Pick your metaphor, but the shameful reality is the same.

So it is with Chechnya, Europe’s longest-running but least visible war. When Vladimir Putin, its architect, met the leaders of France, Germany and Spain in Paris two weeks ago, the subject was not discussed. Silence was also the order of the day when George Bush got together with the Russian president during his European foray three weeks earlier. He mentioned his concerns about democracy in Russia, but saw no need to bring up Chechnya.

On the battlefield Putin also seems to have won a breathing space. Aslan Maskhadov, the leader of the Chechen resistance and the republic’s last freely elected president, was killed by Russian special forces in a house not far from the capital, Grozny. But Maskhadov’s death does nothing to serve the cause of peace.

With Maskhadov gone, the risks of polarisation and new bloodshed have grown. The radicals in the Chechen resistance are moving the struggle outside Chechnya and have started to hit targets in several republics of the north Caucasus. On the other side, Putin’s strategy of handing more authority to Chechens, in an effort to suggest that Russia is beginning to wind down its own involvement, is creating similar divisions between radicals and moderates. Alu Alkhanov, the handpicked pro-Moscow president, presents himself as a legitimate leader (based on flawed elections last year), but barbarities in Chechnya are on the rise, as a report by Human Rights Watch makes clear, and he seems unable or unwilling to stop them. Abductions and killings by Russian and Chechen security forces far exceed the number of victims taken by Chechen radicals at Beslan and in the Moscow theatre. Among the atrocities on Moscow’s side, most crimes are committed by their Chechen puppets. Between 3,000 and 5,000 civilians have “disappeared” in the region since Russia’s second war in 1999. Many never return, and the authorities claim no knowledge of their whereabouts. The researchers have visited Chechnya regularly in the past four years and report that fewer people now dare to complain to the authorities for fear of reprisals. Faced with this horror, many outsiders, as well as Russian liberals, resort to cynicism. Some say the war is fuelled by greed more than politics, and will never end. Russian generals make money from it, as do Russian and Chechen officials. Millions of roubles earmarked for resettling refugees and rebuilding Grozny never reach their destination but are siphoned off into private pockets. With no TV coverage of these scandals or the war’s brutality, there is no pressure for change.

The more hopeful response is to create openings for dialogue. In spite of the silence of western leaders and Putin’s apparent success in killing Maskhadov, who could have been a peace partner, ripples of change have started. The committee of soldiers’ mothers, one of Russia’s biggest NGOs, signed a statement with Zakayev last month, saying a peace process was indispensable and urging the EU to support it. For relatives of belligerents to meet their supposed enemies was a step of unusual courage. Almost equally unpublicised was a meeting at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg last week. Alkhanov and other pro-Moscow Che-chens met the Russian soldiers’ mothers and several independent Chechen human rights activists, as well as European politicians. They agreed to continue a triangular discussion.

It is too early to say if these “talks about talks” can lead to a peace conference. But it is progress to have Chec-hens of different positions sitting together to explore the solutions. Because the talks have no major official Russian presence, Putin can pretend he is not accepting international mediation, even though it is clear Alkhanov would not accept such encounters independently of the Kremlin.

Separately, despite Gerhard Schroder’s silence on the war, senior MPs from Germany’s Social Democratic party have held two meetings with Putin’s representative for the north Caucasus. They propose a programme of aid and the European Commission is planning a needs assessment in Grozny. None of these offers is conditioned on reaching peace. They are “loss leaders” that give the EU a basis for talking to the Kremlin about a settlement and exploring whether Moscow is ready to change its excessively narrow and military approach. In short, Europe is replacing its old policy of publicly denouncing Russia over Chechnya. At the current session of the UN Human Rights Commission, the EU has not proposed a resolution this year. But, diplomats argue, the silence is not motivated by cynicism or “condemnation fatigue”, let alone agreement with Moscow that Chechnya is a front in the war on international terror. It is part of a new policy of constructive engagement. The hope is that low-key offers of help by European governments, and support at the Council of Europe for Chechnya’s political forces to start a dialogue, could have a better chance of success. The policy is worth trying, but the risks are enormous. If it turns out that Russia is merely coopting the EU behind its brutal tactics of “Chechenisation”, the new strategy must be dropped. —The Guardian