Conflict and Reconstruction in Multiethnic Societies Proceedings of a Russian-American Workshop (2003) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix A: Selected Documents from the Interacademy Symposium in Moscow, December 18-20, 2000
Appendix A: Selected Documents from the Interacademy Symposium in Moscow, December 18-20, 2000
Pages 143-186
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From page 145... ...
. According to human rights organizations, about 10,000 civilian residents were killed during the second Chechen campaign (Ichkerian representatives cite other figures, namely that the federal troops lost 14,000 men, while the Chechen rebels lost 1,500~.
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In fact, the federal troops cannot ensure their own security or protect the civilian population. On December 9, General Anatoly Kvashnin, the chief of the general staff, announced the start of a new phase of the antiterrorist campaign.
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From page 147... ...
Naturally, military operations that lead to civilian casualties negate the effects of all social and economic programs, and this is the major obstacle to the stabilization process in the Chechen Republic. Outrages and violence on the part of Russian military structures against Chechen civilians only intensify the emerging tendency by which the military actions of the federal troops are perceived as "antipeople," while the resistance of the Chechen rebels takes on the features of a national liberation movement.
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From page 148... ...
perform acts of violence, commit premeditated murders of civilians, and rob local residents during clearing operations.
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From page 149... ...
According to the Pavel Krashenninikov commission, "the names of many detained local residents cannot be found in the lists of the MVD, the General Prosecutor's Office, or the FSB." A serious problem faced by Chechen residents is that many people do not hold Russian passports, and the latter are issued very slowly. Without a passport, citizens are deprived of the right to move about freely, and they face a real danger of being detained during clearing operations in various population centers.
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From page 150... ...
Previously, six people were killed in the same village (local residents suspect federal troops in this incident)
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In addition, the operations of the federal troops often turn against civilians as well. As a result, the civilian population of Chechnya finds itself facing two equally severe dangers, a hostage to the conflict.
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From page 152... ...
And it is not only that Kadyrov's popularity rating among the public is not very high; the main problem of the local authorities lies in the legal outrages perpetrated by the federal troops and the lack of funds for restoring the economy and the social sector in the Chechen Republic. Against this backdrop, conflicts among the major figures of the Chechen administration have reintensified.
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From page 153... ...
A broad-scale information war is being conducted against Russia. In the West and in the countries of the Islamic Conference, Chechen separatists aided by certain elements of the Western media are persistently spreading the myth that the Chechen people support the struggle against the federal troops.
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From page 154... ...
Chechnya must be provided with the fullest rights of self-determination and high sovereign status within the Russian Federation. The Chechen people must feel confident that their sovereignty will be preserved and that they will not be governed by regents or military commandants, but rather they will be able to choose their own leaders on the basis of free elections and establish a basis for civil governance.
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A conflict resolution program must be developed and implemented by the federal authorities in cooperation with all actors in the Chechen political process, except for those associated with criminal activities, armed separatism, and terrorism. For the purpose of defining
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4. The Chechen conflict is primarily a consequence of internal contradictions within Chechen society.
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Ending the protracted civil conflict in Chechnya and consolidating Chechen society are possible only through the election of a legitimate government that carries authority with the people. The historic traditions and mentality of the Chechen people are in favor of a parliamentary republic.
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This is how the Chechen people have lived over the ages. Consequently, they need to return to a controlled society with an autonomous parliamentary system of governance.
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Finally, in terms of protecting the rights of Russian Federation citizens of Chechen nationality, the way in which the federal authorities respond to their needs may win the trust of those who are currently being deceived by nationalistic propaganda within Chechnya. The federal and local authorities must move decisively to eliminate oppression, unlawful acts, and ethnic discrimination directed against people from Chechnya.
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From page 160... ...
Arrangements should be made for checkpoints to be jointly manned by federal troops and Chechen militia. Special rules and standards should be introduced in the army and other federal military and civilian structures in Chechnya to govern the treatment of local residents, rebels, and fellow service members.
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From page 161... ...
A Russia-wide campaign is urgently needed to provide humanitarian aid for Chechnya and Chechen refugees. The effects of the Chechen conflict may be overcome if all of Russian society confronts the problem.
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The twenty-first century is often characterized as the Age of Globalization; however, the claim that ethnic and national identities are becoming vague and utterly meretricious remains unsubstantiated. So far, globalization is primarily an economic and technological development.
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Second, individual countries, as well as certain strata and groups within these countries, benefit from globalization to a greater extent and more quickly than others. Where the differences are of an ethnic nature, competition for the scarce goods of modernization may be increased and, thus, ethnic relations aggravated.
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From page 164... ...
However, when ethnic groups develop into nationalities or nations, with literary languages, cultural institutions, mass media, occupationally differentiated social structures, specific economic interests, and political elites or counter-elites, there is less room for unifying integration than in the premodern and early modern societies. Multiethnic, and especially multinational societies with particularistic identities, increase the necessity for and simultaneously the danger of an activist state.
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From page 165... ...
lust as the right for self-determination cannot always be equated with the right to independent statehood, in the twenty-first century, the monopoly on violence of individual states in dealing with ethnonational conflicts on their territory can no longer be regarded as their absolute prerogative. Through moral condemnation, sanctions, and other measures, the international community can and should raise the cost of violence, when the latter exceeds internationally accepted norms and violates international treaties on human rights.
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From page 166... ...
Since it is the civilian population that suffers the most in ethnonational conflicts, it should be protected first and foremost. I refer to crimes committed against the civilian population by all sides in such conflicts, be they mass destruction, execution, rape, looting, ethnic cleansing, or terrorist activities.
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From page 167... ...
It would be too optimistic to expect that even the most thoughtful, considerate, and generous politics in plural societies, with good will, skill, and luck also, can satisfy all nationalist demands. However, if ethnic and national identities are respected and minorities are provided with a real voice in decision making, then it may be possible to avoid the desire to fight because the consequences of strife may appear worse than other options.
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From page 168... ...
Berkeley: University of California Press. 2Leokadia Drobizheva gave a presentation on December 18, 2000, entitled "Socioeconomic Parameters of Interethnic Stability and Tension," at the Symposium on States in Transition and the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict: Russian and International Perspective, Moscow.
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From page 169... ...
If one fails to make this distinction, it is not possible to properly account for the process whereby ethnicity becomes a person's only relevant public identification.3 This is the National Academies process we could observe taking place in the former Yugoslavia. In BosniaHerzegovina this process was not merely borne out of the need for security amidst the chaos of a severe economic and political crisis but had to reach its completion by organized, violent force.
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From page 170... ...
This was the Tito we swear to you model of paternal authority that Tito passed on not to one successor but to six, each of whom, with the important exception of Bosnia-Herzegovina, represented the special interests of their republic/nation in a rotating presidency (see Bringa, 2002 and 2003~. When Yugoslavia held multiparty elections in 1990 there had been more than 10 years of an unresolved process
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From page 171... ...
Thus the foundation for a political system based on ethnic or national identity was already in place. Since very little time was allowed to lapse and other forms of thinking to take place before calling for multiparty elections, the fact that people overwhelmingly voted for ethnically defined parties in the first multiparty elections in 1990 was only a logical extension of this system.
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From page 172... ...
. THE ENEMY RHETORIC OF THE NEW NATIONALIST LEADERS The transfer of the totalitarian thinking of a one-party state to the Yugoslav republics and therefore to the ethnonational level is also evident from the way in which people not siding with one of the nationalist parties were marginalized or silenced.
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From page 173... ...
, or the ethnic cleansers threatened to kill (or killed) his son or another close relative.
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Bosnia was the region of the former Yugoslavia where intermarriage was the most common. It is interesting to note that cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia where the ethnic com6In addition to Rhode, 1997, court documents from the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague and Human Rights Watch reports from Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war provide examples.
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From page 175... ...
Povrzanovic, 1997~. Yet, the fact that ethnic separatist armies and militias needed to perpetrate intimate and personalized terror and violence toward individual members of an "other" ethnic community on a large and organized scale the hallmark of ethnic cleansing and the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to engineer new ethnically defined nation-states, proves that most people did not want the new social order that was being imposed on them.
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From page 176... ...
, the underlying message was, "they may do it to you again." Indeed, the public process of remembering these events from 1989 onwards was not owned by the local communities where the events had taken place; instead, it was hijacked by national leaders as a tool to manipulate fear and create a social climate where supporters would rally behind them for protection. Manipulation of fear became the most important tool for the nationalists.
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From page 177... ...
On the eve of the war, this was illustrated by Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb nationalist leader's favorite propaganda line, that they could not live together. KINSHIP, ETHNICITY, AND MOBILIZATION Why did nationalist rhetoric and the appeal to ethnic solidarity have such resonance in Bosnia (and the former Yugoslavia)
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From page 178... ...
As the nationalist rhetoric of ethnic solidarity takes hold, it becomes almost impossible to resist because national identity becomes the only relevant identity, nationalism is the only relevant discourse, and people who resist are exiled, treated as traitors, or forced to become accomplices to crimes committed in the name of the group (see Gagnon, 1996; Bringa, 2002~. A FINAL WORD In all societies at all times there exist both the potential for conflict and the potential for peaceful coexistence.
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From page 179... ...
An effort is needed to bring the old elites into the restructuring process as a constructive force. The issue of old grievances also deserves focus, including · the responsibility of media and political leaders in publicly acknowledging past injustices, suffering, and loss of "the other" · the need for the states involved in the war to cooperate with international legal institutions (such as the Criminal Tribunal in The Hague)
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From page 180... ...
. Instead of measures that help to reify boundaries and separation between the three ethnic communities, arenas and fore should be created and ecouraged to develop so that citizens of different ethnic backgrounds who share similar experiences and nonethnic identifications can meet.
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2001. The Yugoslav Wars of the l990s: A Critical Re-examination of "Ethnic Conflict" the Case of Croatia.
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Comaroff, University of Chicago Socioeconomic Parameters of Interethnic Stability and Tension Leokadia Drobizheva, Institute of Sociology 182
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APPENDIX A Peace Enforcement in Ethnic Conflicts Anatoly Dmitriev, Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology, and Law, Russian Academy of Sciences Lessons Learned from Managing Conflict in Countries in Political and Economic Transition Allen Kassof, Project on Ethnic Relations Session 2: Violent Conflict and Methods for Resolution Ethnic Ideologies/Narratives: Causes and Consequences of Conflicts Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Colegio de Mexico Ethnopolitical Conflict and Paths to Its Resolution Arkady Popov and Vladimir Mukomel, Center for Ethnopolitical Research Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Nations Ronald Suny, University of Michigan The Chechen Conflict and Paths to Its Resolution Dzhabrail Gakaev, Institute for Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences Tuesday, December 19, 2000 Session 3: Postconflict Reconstruction: Political, Social, Psychological, and International Aspects Lessons from Post-Soviet Conflicts Fiona Hill, The Brookings Institution Interregional Cooperation of Federal and Local Executive Authorities Khasan Dumanov, Institute for Humanities Research of the Kabardin-Balkar Republic 183 Sociopsychological Aspects of Postconflict Situations Galina Soldatova, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences
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184 APPENDIX A Session 4: Postconflict Reconstruction: Problems of Economics, Education, Health, and Refugees Power, Fear, and Ethnicity: Forging Nations Through Terror in Bosnia-Herzegovina Tone Bringa, University of Bergen Ethnic Tension in Russia and Forced Migrants in the Territory of the Independent States Galina Vitkovskaya, Moscow Carnegie Center Political and Economic Aspects of the Disintegration of Russia's Internal Market Daniel Berkowitz, University of Pittsburgh Experience in Social Readaptation of Forced Resettlers Returning to Their Places of Former Permanent Residence Aleksey Kulakovskiy, Representation of the Russian President, Vladikavkaz Wednesday, December 20, 2000 Session 5: Paths to Peaceful Multiethnic Relations in the Twenty-first Century: Risks, Opportunities, Trends, and Needs for Long-term Strategies Ethnopolitical and Ethnoregional Factors in the Post-Soviet Territory Vitaly Naumkin and Irina Zvyagelskaya, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences Violent and Nonviolent Trajectories Charles Tilly, Columbia University Ethnic and National Conflicts in the Twenty-first Century Anatoly M Khazanov, University of Wisconsin Perspectives on Multiethnic Accord Within a Federal Governmentthe Example of Russia Rafael Khakimov, Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan
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, migration services, and conflict reduction centers 185
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