East Of The Oder

RUSSIA'S MURKY AFFAIR WITH TERRORISM

In words at least, the Kremlin has promised to support the antiterrorism
campaign that is being organized by the Western democracies. But within a
few days of the terrorist assault on the free world, Moscow began spelling
out the limits to and a price tag on its support for Western
countermeasures. For starters, Russia has loudly said Nyet to those
countries, from Georgia in the Caucasus to Uzbekistan in Central Asia, who
have offered to participate in American-led measures against international
terrorism.

This is only one among many examples of how Moscow has displayed less
interest in fighting terrorism than in exploiting it, particularly in its
own region.

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze and his Uzbek counterpart Islam
Karimov have announced that they would approve American and/or NATO
requests for air corridors and land facilities in Georgia and Uzbekistan,
as part of antiterrorism operations. President Nursultan Nazarbaev of
Kazakstan has given similar positive signals.

The Kremlin, however, has its own priorities. Keeping the West out of those
independent countries and restoring Moscow's dominance over them are goals
that take precedence over effective efforts against international terrorism.

So Russian leaders are talking about spheres of influence.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who is President Vladimir Putin's closest
associate, declared on Sept. 14, according to Russia's official news
agency, that: "Central Asia is within the zone of competence of the CIS
Collective Security Treaty. I see no reason whatsoever, even hypothetical,
for any suppositions about conducting NATO operations from territories of
Central Asian countries, members of the CIS."

Such statements claim to speak on behalf of the CIS countries, and without
asking them. The Commonwealth of Independent States, consisting of Russia
and eleven former Soviet-ruled countries, is a group that exists mostly on
paper.

Even less real is the six-country treaty on collective security.

It basically serves as a stage for Russia to pose as leader of a bloc of
countries.

Mr. Putin's team has set about more purposefully than its predecessors to
reconstruct a bloc.

This week, the Russian government used menacing words to criticize Georgia
for offering passage and facilities to Western forces.

Mr. Putin made phone calls to the presidents of the Central Asian
countries, and urgently dispatched his Security Council Secretary Vladimir
Rushailo to the five capitals.

Mr. Putin insists that those countries must only act with Russia, not the
West, with regard to antiterrorism and the situation in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, terrorism has been alive and kicking in some CIS countries --
but namely in those states whose leaders have evidenced resolve to preserve
their independence and to work with the West to that end.

In Georgia, Mr. Shevardnadze narrowly survived assassination attempts in
1995 and 1998. The Georgians and most Western observers suspect Russian
security agencies to have been involved through proxies.

Indeed, the main suspect in the attempts, ex-KGB officer Igor Giorgadze,
has ever since enjoyed a safe haven in Moscow, continuously threatening
Georgia in media interviews, even as the Russian government claimed not to
know where he was. This week, Mr. Shevardnadze complained for the umpteenth
time publicly that the Russian authorities are shielding an accused terrorist.

Mr. Putin is currently orchestrating accusations that Georgia harbors
Chechen fighters and other "international "terrorists." The Russian
authorities have failed to substantiate their accusations, and the observer
group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has said
repeatedly that no guerrillas crossed the Russian-Georgian border in the
sector fingered by the Russian authorities. However, it is true that many
hundreds of Chechen fighters were thrown into battle against Georgia in
1992-93 by Russia's secret services, alongside Russian soldiers, in
Georgia's secessionist region of Abkhazia. That's when the Chechen
commanders Shamil Basaev and Ruslan Gelaev earned their reputations. It was
only later that they turned against their original sponsors.

In Moldova, the Russian military and security services have underwritten
the violent secession of the Transdniester region.

A group of former KGB officers plays a key role there, heading
Transdniester's security apparatus to this day.

In Central Asia, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacked that country
and neighboring Kyrgyzstan in 1999 and 2000, and probed Kyrgyzstan again
this year. Classified as an international terrorist movement by the United
States and other Western governments, the IMU is based partly in northern
Afghanistan and partly in Russian-controlled Tajikistan. IMU's detachments
have often crossed Russian-guarded borders, on the way to and from
operations against Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Russian troops in Tajikistan could easily have suppressed IMU's camps from
the air, but left them undisturbed. Meanwhile, Moscow kept brandishing the
IMU threat as an argument for drawing Uzbekistan into a military alliance
with Russia. Mr. Karimov, the Uzbek president, has repeatedly suggested
that this terrorist group is being used to create a situation of controlled
instability -- one that can be used for recreating a Russian-led bloc in
the name of antiterrorism.

Russia's sole close ally in the region, Tajikistan, has meanwhile become
the primary corridor for the narcotics traffic from Afghanistan into Russia
and further to Europe. The United Nations and other international
authorities cite staggering figures on the heroin and opium traffic via
Tajikistan. The drugs make their way past thousands of Russian border
troops on the Afghan-Tajik border.

Inside Tajikistan, the authorities are massively complicit with the
drug-trading networks.

According to many Western observers, up to one third of Tajikistan's annual
gross domestic product comes from the drugs trade, with the authorities
themselves sharing in the profits.

How has it come to this? The ruling group in Tajikistan originated in a
paramilitary movement, armed by Moscow to fight "Islamic fundamentalists."
This group, narrowly based on the Kulob clan, is to this day being propped
up by the Russian military, which has meanwhile been granted basing rights
in Tajikistan. The government's control of the country is precarious and
significantly dependent on deals with local drug barons.

To all intents and purposes, Moscow has farmed out the government to the
leading clan, and the latter has in turn farmed out portions of the country
and of the economy to drug networks that straddle the Afghan-Tajik border.

In sum, Moscow's track record is one of misusing the terrorism issue and
manipulating terrorists for its own geopolitical goals, in a vast Eurasian
area that it considers its "near abroad". Given this record, one may well
wonder about the value of involving Russia in antiterrorist operations
planned by the Western democracies.