# Posted 7:06 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WE ARE LOSING THE WAR ON TERROR. In the name of security, we deprive our citizens of their constitutional rights. In the name of democracy, we enforce a hostile occupation. In the name of human rights, we brutalize countless prisoners. And day by day, our soldiers get shot down one by one in the futile hope of winning a war we never should have started.

That is what I would say to Vladimir Putin if I were a Russian citizen. Putin's war on terror is a sick and perverted mirror image of America's just cause. In the aftermath of Chechen terrorists' horrific attack on the children of Beslan, we stood as one with the Russian people. And now we must stand with the Russian people against the government whose authoritarian deception and incompetence has left them increasingly to terrorist attacks.

In the Washington Post, Russia expert and democracy promotion advocate Michael McFaul writes that

Putin needs to reevaluate not only his strategy for fighting terrorism, but also his plan for building a strong and effective state...

Each of Putin's political changes increased the power of the Kremlin and decreased the power of other political actors and institutions. The
restructuring has not produced a more effective state, but a weak, corrupt and unaccountable regime: authoritarianism without authority...

Beslan is the most horrific terrorist attack in Russia but not the first.
The list of victims is as long as it is shocking: More than 300 died in
apartment bombings in Moscow and two other cities in the fall of 1999; 120 hostages died in the standoff at the Moscow theater; more than 270 people, including the Kremlin-backed president of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, died in eight incidents between December 2002 and May 2004. In June, 92 were killed at a police station. On Aug. 24 two passenger jets exploded, killing 89, and 10 more died on Aug. 31 when a suicide bomber struck outside a subway station in Moscow...

Over the last four years, Putin's advisers have explained the rollback of democratic practices as part of a trade -- less freedom for more security. But Putin has not delivered on his part of this deal, as Russians now have less freedom but no more security.

Imagine our response in the United States if Al Qaeda continued to launch attack after attack while the Bush administration did nothing more than shut down the New York Times and CBS. That is the only way to understand what Putin has done.

Yet just today, Putin announced plans to replace Russia's elected regional governors with Kremlin-appointed bureaucrats. In addition, Putin will force members of the Duma, the lower house of parliament, to run on centrally-controlled party lists instead of running as independent candidates.

And let us not forget the atrocities that Putin is responsible for in Chechnya. In January, Human Rights Watch informed the UN Commission on Human Rights that

Russian forces round up thousands of men in raids, loot homes, physically abuse villagers, and frequently commit extrajudicial executions. Those detained face beatings and other forms of torture, aimed at coercing confessions or information about Chechen forces. Federal forces routinely extort money from detainees’ relatives as a condition for release. “Disappearances” remain a hallmark of the conflict, and their frequency rose sharply in early 2003. According to statements by pro-Moscow Chechen officials, in the first half of 2003 an average of two people went missing every day, many of them after being detained by Russian forces. The Russian human rights group Memorial documented 294 “disappearances” between January and November 2003, including forty-seven people whose corpses were later discovered in unmarked graves or dumped by the roadside. The group estimates that the real number of “disappearances” was three or four times higher.

According to one HRW analyst,

Five months of indiscriminate bombing and shelling in 1999 and early 2000 resulted in thousands of civilian deaths. Three massacres, which followed combat operations, took the lives of at least 130 people. By March 2000, Russia’s federal forces gained at least nominal control over most of Chechnya. They began a pattern of classic “dirty war” tactics and human rights abuses that continue to mark the conflict to this day. Russian forces arbitrarily detain those allegedly suspected of being, or collaborating with, rebel fighters and torture
them in custody to secure confessions or testimony. In some cases, the corpses of those last seen in Russian custody were subsequently found, bearing marks of torture and summary execution, in dumping grounds or unmarked graves.

Moral clarity in Chechnya means recognizing that this is a war of evil vs. evil that has taken the lives of thousands of innocent civilians on both sides. If so, is there anything that the United States can do other than wash it hands of the conflict?

Yes and no. There is no forceful action we can take, as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we must tell our supposed allies in Moscow that their self-destructive war on terror has provided another base for the terrorists of Al Qaeda. The more that Russia abuses the Chechens and slaughters the legitimate Chechen opposition, the more room Al Qaeda has to operate. According to McFaul,

Some Chechen groups have allied with al Qaeda and joined the jihad against Western civilization. Many other Chechen opponents of Russia's military operation inside Chechnya, including most government officials in power before Russia's second invasion in 1999, have unequivocally denounced the Beslan attack. They understand that such actions do not serve the interests of the Chechen people. They are nationalists, ready to begin negotiations with
authorities in Moscow, and they do not exclude the possibility of some special arrangement about Chechen sovereignty even within the formal borders of the Russian Federation. They could become, over time, allies of Moscow in fighting the kind of terrorists who attacked Beslan's children. To date, however, Putin has refused to engage in a dialogue with anyone inside Chechnya except his handpicked puppets.

Negotiation may seem unthinkable once children have been murdered. Both Russians and Chechens have a right to feel that way. Yet victory on the battlefield is not a realistic option.

In contrast to the insurgents' demands in Afghanistan and Iraq, those of the moderate Chechens are entirely reasonable. Compromising with the Chechens is not appeasement, but justice. What the Chechens want is what the United States has already offered to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan: a chance to determine their own future.

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman has some trenchant thoughts of his own.
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