The hostage situation in Moscow that shocked the entire world ended with a rescue by Russian special forces that caused the deaths of over 100 hostages.
Although the curtain has come down for the time being, this is only the prelude to larger crises between the Chechen and Russian authorities. To see a people of only 1.2 million sacrificing their lives over a period of 100 years for the sake of nation-building and national independence is deeply moving.
The people of Taiwan, at the center of cross-strait tensions, cannot help but wonder where the Chechen people find the strength to walk down such a tragic, dead end road, without any concern for their own lives. How will the aftermath of this incident affect their future?
Located in the northern Caucasus, Chechnya is a big oil producer. Sixty percent of its inhabitants are Muslim and language, culture and lifestyle differ from those of Russia. The Chechen people have been dreaming of independence for hundreds of years.
As a result of Pan-Slavist policies under Czar Alexander II, Chechnya was integrated into Russia in 1859. During the Second World War, Joseph Stalin moved 400,000 Chechens to Central Asia on the pretext that Chechens supported the Nazis.
After Stalin's death, Chechens began returning to the Caucasus, where their original homeland had been occupied by Russians. This resulted in an ethnic feud very difficult for Chechens to forget.
Taking advantage of the fact that the Soviet Union was too busy elsewhere, Chechnya declared independence in 1991, on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Soviet troops were sent to suppress the Chechens, but faced with strong resistance they had to pull back.
When Dzhokhar Dudayev became Chechnya's first elected president in 1991, he announced Chechnya's withdrawal from the Russian Federation and the formation of an independent Chechnya.
He promulgated a constitution for the Chechen Republic, created a Chechen military, discontinued contributions to the Russian federal budget and stopped the signing of federal agreements, thus officially placing Chechnya on a par with Russia.
Dudayev told the Chechen people that he would build a "Caucasian Kuwait" within three to five years, filling them with hopes of independence.
After Boris Yeltsin solved the Duma crisis with the help of the army in 1993, he directed all his efforts towards fighting separatism, making Chechnya his first target.
From Dec. 10, 1994, when Russian troops initiated a three-pronged attack to suppress the Chechen independence movement, until today, the Chechens have never called for an end to their holy war.
At the time, however, the Russian people were sympathetic to the plight of the Chechen people and there were vociferous demands for a conclusion. Yeltsin's popularity fell sharply, and in 1996 he sent the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Alexander Lebed, to Chechnya for negotiations.
The two sides signed a temporary ceasefire agreement which included the withdrawal of Russian troops.
But the main source of the conflict, Chechen independence, was temporarily bypassed via an agreement to revisit the issue five years later. In 1997, the moderate Aslan Meskhadof was elected president of Chechnya. The radical, Shamil Basayev, formed a resistance alliance and broke with Meskhadof. Having a military advantage, he carried out terror attacks in neighboring regions, something which Meskhadof lacked the strength to prevent. At this time a series of apartment bombings took place in Moscow, resulting in high numbers of wounded and dead.
Furious Moscow residents directed their anger at the Chechen separatists.
When Vladimir Putin was appointed prime minister in August 1999, he immediately ordered a major military attack on Chechnya. Within half a year, the upsurge in Russian patriotism and nationalism caused by the Chechen war resulted in overwhelming support for Putin, and in March 2000 he was elected president.
Putin treated the Chechen issue as a domestic matter, closed the door on negotiations and applied heavy military pressure, while at the same time declaring that he would create a peaceful society governed in accordance with the rule of law. Despite constant interventions in the name of human rights by the US and other Western countries, Putin has not been swayed from his iron-fisted approach. He has said that this latest hostage-taking incident was planned by foreign terrorists.
The US has concurred and supports Russia by saying that the handling of the incident is a link in the global war on terrorism.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein disagrees with the action of the Chechen terrorists, saying that it was unwise of Chechnya to alienate Russia and the Russian people.
Even senior leaders in Chechnya believe that the incident will result in all Chechens being labelled terrorists and cancel out years of nation-building efforts.
From the perspective of international politics, Putin's intention is to blur the fundamental nature of the Chechen issue -- national self-determination and domestic separatism -- and instead link the issue to the global Muslim extremist holy war in an attempt to win both domestic and international support. The US has obviously found another excuse to wage war on Iraq, while Saddam is scurrying to debunk Iraq's image as a terrorist state.
Everyone is trying to take advantage of the situation in this example of international political neo-realism.
The incident, however, reveals that the Chechen problem is far from being resolved. The Russian people still live in fear, and past efforts at peace negotiations between the two sides have come to nought.
The result of this incident may be to strengthen hawks in both the Russian government and in Chechnya.
Putin has successfully handled previous Chechen incidents, but if he doesn't handle the current situation properly, those successes may be turned into defeats.
Putin's next move will be of major importance to his political life. Chechnya has announced that it will adopt more radical methods and that the next move will aim at Russia's nuclear facilities.
Judging from Putin's personality, everyone believes that he will increase efforts to root out Chechen separatist forces from Russian territory, which will cause the Chechen situation to deteriorate even further.
It seems the Russian people will continue to live in fear, and that the Chechen people will continue to pay a huge price for pursuing national independence.
Kwo Wu-ping is director of the Graduate Institute of Russian Studies at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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