A Doctor in Russia’s Dirty War

 

Peter Brownfeld

      Peter Brownfeld is a reporter based in Washington.

The Oath, by Khassan Baiev, with Ruth and Nicholas Daniloff. Walker Publishing Company, New York, New York, 2003, 320 pages, $26.

      Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to cast Moscow’s war against Chechen separatists as part of the global war on terror. With the Bush administration occupied with the war against al Qaeda and the continuing conflict in Iraq, Putin has been able to do so, and President Bush has even offered encouragement for Russia’s war against purported terrorists in that region.

      In America’s pursuit to preserve and extend democracy in this age of terror, it must be careful about the kind of deals it makes with men like Putin, whose democratic principles are far from certain. Such bargains can be useful in the short run, but over the longer term, deals with not only Russia, but also Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and others can erode the resonance of a democratic message.

      Khassan Baiev’s stirring memoir of how a Chechen cosmetic surgeon adjusted to the decade of war that is continuing to tear apart his homeland offers an invaluable perspective on the conflict and a humanizing depiction of the Chechen people, who are so often portrayed as terrorists and bandits.

      In the preface, Baiev explains what he intended to do (and what he indeed accomplished) with this book:

I wrote The Oath for two reasons. First, I wanted the world to know that war is a hellish thing which victimizes the innocent. In war there are no winners. Second, and equally important, I wanted to introduce my readers to the Chechen people.

      Chechnya is a Connecticut-sized Caucasian region of Russia with a long history of suffering under Russian rule. This misery has not only included the present struggle, but also has such terrible highlights as the Russian attacks of the 16th and 17th centuries and the 1944-1957 exile to Kazakhstan of all 500,000 Chechens. In 1944, Josef Stalin accused the Chechens of collaborating with the Nazis. He brutally shipped the entire Chechen population, including many World War II veterans, in cattle cars to Kazakhstan, where those who survived the journey were forced to remain until they received a reprieve from Nikita Khruschev in 1957.

      Chechnya declared independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union was collapsing. But, because Moscow viewed it as an integral part of Russia, it was not able to go the way of the Baltic countries or other Caucasian nations like Azerbaijan and Armenia. Instead, in 1994 then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin, fearing that Chechnya’s departure could trigger a new wave of secessions, sent in the Russian army to restore “constitutional order.”

      After several years of war, Chechen forces drove the Russians out of Grozny, their capital, in 1996. Then, Chechnya enjoyed a form of independence, but the elected president, Aslan Maskhadov proved incapable of reining in the many Chechen militias and enforcing the rule of law. At the same time, Russian provocateurs worked to undermine his government.

      As the war dragged on, support for independence declined, with Chechens placing a greater value on peace and freedom from Russian brutality. However, the continuing cruelty served as inspiration for young Chechens to join one of the deeply divided rebel factions. Russian and Chechen sources estimate that 157 armed groups were acting independently of the Chechen government in the late 1990s.

      In September 1999, a series of apartment building bombings in Russia were blamed on the Chechens, despite continuing speculation that Russian security forces were behind the attacks. (Shortly after these bombings, police in the provincial city Ryazan arrested Russian intelligence agents after they placed a hexagen bomb—the same explosive used in the other bombings—in the basement of an apartment building.) Two months later, Russian forces launched a full-scale attack on Grozny, restarting the war in Chechnya.

      Now, Moscow claims that the war in Chechnya is ending and life is returning to normal, although tens of thousands of Russian troops remain in Chechnya regularly committing war crimes including torture, rape, and murder.

      With Washington focused on the fight against terrorism, Moscow has gone to great lengths to demonstrate that its war in Chechnya is part of this battle. The Kremlin constantly describes all Chechen guerillas as “terrorists” and frequently compares Russia’s struggle with America’s anti-terror efforts.

      Because of this public relations strategy, Moscow’s contribution to the war on terrorism (use of Russian bases in Central Asia, public support for America’s war on al Qaeda, etc.), and America’s naturally increased sensitivity to terrorism, Washington seems to be willing to see Chechnya the way the Kremlin depicts it. Two weeks after September 11, President George W. Bush remarked, “Our initial phase of the war on terrorism is against the al Qaeda organization, and we do believe there are some al Qaeda folks in Chechnya.

      More recently, silence from America’s leaders has shown their willingness to turn a blind eye to Russian human rights violations because of the aid Moscow is offering in tracking down terrorists in its backyard.

      Commenting on this phenomenon, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski said in a speech last year at the American Enterprise Institute,

We’re not dealing with indifference. We’re not dealing with ignorance. We’re dealing with a tactical expediency. After 9/11, it is better to sweep this issue under the rug, even though we know better.

      Without question, terrorism has come from Chechnya, including the siege of a Moscow theater in fall 2002, as well as the recent spate of suicide and train bombings in Chechnya and Russia. However, whether this is international terrorism or Islamic terrorism is a different question. In fact, reports that significant numbers of Chechens joined the Taliban have proven false, and purported links to al Qaeda are extremely tenuous. Chechen relationships with outside terror organizations are almost all one-way: The Chechens may receive some small aid, but there is a lack of verified accounts of Chechen reciprocation.

      In discussing international terrorism, the Russia-Chechnya conflict must be kept in context. The Chechens’ war is one of secession, not of Islamic fundamentalism. Their goal is an independent state, not the destruction of the West. Additionally, the Chechens are not very religious, with families and clans playing a more important role in their society than religion. Their Sufi brand of Islam is so moderate that some followers of Wahhabism, the type of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, do not even consider Chechens to be Muslim.

      In January, Chechen Foreign Minister Ilyas Akhmadov said,

We categorically reject Russia’s attempts to pin a label of terrorism on legitimate actions of the Chechen Resistance to destroy legitimate military targets of Russian occupation troops which have deliberately and systematically committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Chechnya for five years. . . .  Undoubtedly, Chechens have the right to defense.

      Baiev’s book is not only the story of Chechnya’s wars, but also his personal background and the history of his people. Baiev, who was born in 1963, just four years after the Chechens returned from Kazakhstan, recounts his father’s description of how the people suffered during the deportation:

Throughout the highlands of Chechnya, the NKVD troops shot the inhabitants of hamlets in out-of-the-way places in cold blood, so as not to be bothered transporting people to the valley. Dada told us that, up in the mountains at a place called Hybakh, the troops herded 600 men, women, and children into a barn, doused it with gasoline, and set it ablaze, the oldest victim being a 104-year-old man, the youngest, a day-old infant. Another massacre took place on the other side of Chechnya at Galanchozh, when bad weather held up trucks carrying about 500 deportees. Impatient, the guards shot the able-bodied, then pushed the invalids, children, and the elderly off a high bank into Lake Galanchozh.

      After training at the Krasnoyarsk Medical Institute in Siberia, where Baiev also distinguished himself as a martial arts expert, he returned to Chechnya. He began working in Grozny, where he treated burns, malignant tumors, and congenital defects. After working hours, he treated private patients, performing nose jobs and face lifts for Russia’s nouveaux riches.

      In 1992, after completing a three month internship at the Institute of Cosmetology in Moscow, he stayed in the city and became one of the nouveaux riches himself, acquiring a luxurious house and a Lincoln Town Car.

      However, when Chechnya was on the verge of war in 1994, Baiev returned home. He describes his emotions,

History had taught us to expect attacks from Russia, but now that one actually had happened, we found it hard to accept. For more than 70 years, we had lived under Soviet rule. We were all supposed to be Soviet people, living in harmony, and many of us had good Russian friends. How could Russia bomb its own citizens? How could it bomb Grozny, where half the inhabitants were Russians?

      Baiev, as a skilled surgeon was a valuable commodity in Chechnya, and he had his hands full treating civilians and fighters on both sides, never wavering from his Hippocratic Oath, from which the title of the book was taken.

It never occurred to any of us not to treat them [Russian soldiers] because they were our “enemies.” We treated whoever needed help regardless of circumstances.

Baiev even treated the most brutal Russian soldiers, rejecting the suggestion that he should let one of them die, saying,

I am a doctor. It is my job to treat whoever needs help. Allah will punish him.

This position was one that would later get him in trouble.

      With many Chechen doctors having fled with the hundreds of thousands of other Chechen refugees, Baiev’s workload was almost unbelievable. During one period, with few medical supplies, Baiev operated nonstop for 48 hours, performing 67 amputations and seven brain surgeries.

      Despite the suffering of his friends and neighbors, Baiev sympathizes with the Russian conscripts who were often victims of mercenaries hired by the Russians to fight Chechens. It was these mercenaries who committed the worst atrocities.

      Baiev says the conscripts

. . . were badly fed and begged for food from the villagers. The elders said it was all right to feed them so long as they were not kontraktniki, special forces who signed contracts to serve for a specified number of years and many of whom were convicts released from prison to fight in Chechnya. Wearing their black sleeveless t-shirts and showing off their tattoos, the kontraktniki lacked all vestiges of humanity. For them, Chechnya was an opportunity to loot and rape. I didn’t see many of them in the hospital because our fighters usually killed them when they got the chance.

      Baiev became friends with three 18-year-old Russian draftees. After months in Chechnya, the three deserted and asked Baiev for refuge telling him that they couldn’t take it any longer, that the kontraktniki beat them up all the time.

      Baiev agreed to harbor them until their families could spirit them out of Chechnya. “We couldn’t in good conscience risk these boys being shot. They were war victims too,” he writes.

The boys became friendly with Baiev’s father and one of them . . . told him about life at the military checkpoint, how the mercenaries and special forces beat him with army boots, seized their food, and swapped it for vodka in the village; how the special troops shot Seriozha’s friend and blamed it on the Chechens. They said they were never told they were coming to Chechnya and that they had no basic training.

      Baiev tells these stories in part to counter the propaganda coming out of the Kremlin that Chechens are all bandits and terrorists. The truth is that Chechen extremism, evidenced by the suicide bombings in Chechnya and Russia, is the result of Russian brutality, which has killed as many as 250,000 inhabitants of Chechnya out of a prewar population of just 1.1 million, and there have been innumerable victims of torture and rape.

      Baiev writes,

Blood vendettas are a way of life in Chechnya, a time-honored method of justice practiced for centuries. . . . The Russians had killed so many people that Chechens just wanted revenge on any Russian, even if he wasn’t directly involved in a family member’s death.

      Baiev describes the attitudes of some of the Chechen fighters who he came to know.

They didn’t talk much about independence, but rather about driving the Russians out of Chechnya or avenging family members who had been tortured or killed.

      Like most Chechens, Baiev personally suffered a great deal because of the war—both at the hands of the Russians and the Chechen rebels. Baiev had his home raided and destroyed, was imprisoned, injured in Russian shelling, escaped death several times, and still bears scars from the mental anguish of seeing the suffering of his family and his people.

      The book is a plea for international attention. He writes,

I wish the American leadership would take a more active role in moving both sides toward negotiation, but I fear that if Russia supports the United States in the war against terrorism, Washington may turn a blind eye to the continued violation of human rights in Chechnya.

      In the Cold War, some American presidents ignored the brutality of their allies because such a policy was necessary to keep such men as Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua and Fulgencio Batista of Cuba in the American stable. Washington seems to be pursuing the same policy as the actions of repressive leaders who are on the right side of the war on terror are not condemned. The brutal war in Chechnya may be the most extreme example of repression, but sadly it is not alone as undemocratic leaders such as Islom Karimov of Uzbekistan and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan seem to be given a free pass because of their cooperation in the war on terrorism.

      There may be times when America has to compromise on its core principles in order to maintain alliances deemed necessary for America’s survival. The most obvious example is the World War II pact with Josef Stalin. However, such alliances must be carefully considered because the more often a nation compromises its core principles, the more the existence of those principles can be called into question.    Ω

“Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand; or your republic will be fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the 20th century as the Roman Empire was in the 5th; with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions.” —Letter to H. S. Randall from Thomas B. Macauly dated 23, May 1857