Scott Ritter: How the Chechen miracle kick-started the Russian ‘Path of Redemption’
In my recent visit, I met with people who once fought a bitter war against Moscow, but are now the country’s fiercest defenders

Over the course of 24 days – from December 28 to  January 20 – I was able to take in the sights and sounds of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, as these two cities celebrated both the New Year and Russian Orthodox Christmas (I also got to experience the freezing cold of the Russian winter, which was very much part of the experience!)

I viewed my winter sojourn in Russia as an extension of the journey I began in May 2023, when I embarked on a mission of trying to discover the country's essence in a manner that could be made discernible to my fellow Americans as sort of an antidote to the poison of Russophobia. The combined experiences of observing the Christmas Eve service hosted by Kirill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in the center of Moscow and watching Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker performed live in St. Petersburg’s renowned Mikhailosky Theatre on Christmas Day, January 7, helped ground me in the importance of family and culture in the lives of the Russian people.

Russia’s mettle, however, can't be measured by its social and cultural accomplishments alone. The true test of a people comes only when the foundation of their society is threatened, and the nation is called upon to rally together in its collective defense. Amidst all the holiday celebration and fanfare that I witnessed there lurked an underlying reality that Russia was very much a nation at war. This war was defined in the mindset of those people I met not so much in terms of a Russian-Ukrainian conflict as it was an existential struggle between Russia and the collective West – led by the US – in which Ukraine is being used as a proxy.

Let there be no doubt, everyone I spoke with about this conflict was weary. They wanted the fighting to end, and to be able to get on with their lives. But they were all likewise united in their conviction that the war could only end in a Russian victory that resolved once and for all the issues that underpinned the current conflict – blocking NATO expansion into Ukraine, eliminating a Ukrainian armed force that has become a de facto extension of NATO military power, and the extermination of the odious ideology of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism as defined by the legacy of Stepan Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

To a person, the Russians I spoke with were insistent that the time for compromise had long passed and that, given the investment in blood and treasure that Moscow had made to date, there is no alternative to a decisive victory. Yes, the Russian people are tired, but they also understand that the war is a necessary evil which has to be endured all the way to a final comprehensive victory if there is ever to be a chance of a lasting peace. I was able to glimpse the character of the Russian people during the portions of my sojourn to Russia that took me out of its two largest metropolitan centers, and to the south of the country –  into what I have come to call the “Russian Path of Redemption” – Chechnya, Crimea, Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk.

Redemption is the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil. In the case of Russia’s conflict with Kiev, the six named territories all play a role that precisely matches this definition. Of them, Chechnya stands out as having no geographic, historic, ethic, religious, or political connection with Ukraine. And yet it is with Chechnya that the Russian Path of Redemption begins. 

It was the scene of two bloody wars between Moscow and separatists fought between 1994 and the early 2000s (with the final counter-guerilla operations concluding in 2009) that killed tens of thousands of people. The fighting that transpired was bloody and ruthless; little mercy was shown by either side. By 2002, Chechnya’s capital city, Grozny, had been completely leveled.

The rancor and bitterness produced by a conflict that witnessed so much violence between people with different religions, cultures, and languages made the notion of reconciliation all but impossible to imagine. Add to this was the fact that the Chechens possessed a history that lent itself to prejudice and resentment against the Russians, even without the horrors of the two wars. The exile of the Chechen people by Joseph Stalin's Soviet government during the Second World War saw nearly 610,000 Chechen and Ingush forcibly evicted from their homes and relocated to Central Asia, where nearly a quarter of them died due to poor conditions. The survivors were allowed to return to their homeland in 1957, following Nikita Khrushchev's reforms. But the resentment generated by the years of suffering was passed down through the generations that followed.

And yet, despite all the negative energy generated by the tragic history of Russian-Chechen relations, the two peoples have found a pathway to peace and prosperity. A visitor to Grozny today is greeted by a city that has been completely rebuilt from the ruins, a place where Russians and Chechens live side-by-side in peace, respectful of their respective linguistic, cultural, and religious differences. I call this transformation “the Chechen miracle”, and yet divine intervention had nothing to do with it. Instead, the Chechen and Russian people were blessed by the leadership of two remarkable men – Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the Chief Mufti (religious leader) of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Akhmad Kadyrov – who realized that continued violence would only hurt the people they were tasked with serving, and that the best chance for peace was for the two to sit down a talk in an effort to find a pathway to peace.

They succeeded.

Today, throughout the Chechen Republic, the visages of Vladimir Putin and Akhmad Kadyrov can be seen on display, side-by-side, in recognition of the role both men played in overcoming the history of violence, mistrust, and resentment that had defined the relationship, and instead forging a new path forward governed by the notion of mutual respect and shared prosperity. The success of their joint work is manifest in the fact that while the Chechen people today maintain their distinct identity, defined in large part by the Muslim faith, they very much identify themselves as being part of the Russian Federation, something that was unthinkable back in the 1990’s when they fought for independence from Russia.

While in Chechnya, I had the opportunity to meet with several prominent Chechen figures, including former deputy interior minister Apti Alaudinov, State Duma member Adam Delimkhanov, chairman of the Chechen republican parliament Magomed Daudov, and the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov. What these four individuals all had in common was that, at some point in their lives, they had taken up arms against Russia. But they were also united in the fact that, at some point during their resistance against Russia during the Second Chechen War, they realized that the cause of an independent Chechen Republic had been hijacked by foreign jihadists whose passion for violence had superseded any logical notion of Chechen nationalism, and instead created the conditions where continued conflict threatened to consume the Chechen people.

“We have witnessed for ourselves how outside parties sought to infect us with their foreign ideology in order to further their larger struggle against Russia,” I was told. “We ended up realizing that the best way to protect ourselves from being destroyed by these foreign agents was to align ourselves with Russia. In doing so, we discovered that the Russians shared our same desire to live in peace, free from outside manipulation. This is why we have made fighting alongside Russia in the Special Military Operation such a high priority. We see in the Banderist forces in Ukraine the same evil that we saw in the foreign jihadists who came to fight in Chechnya. We worked with Russia to destroy this evil back in the early 2000’s, and today we are working with our Russian brothers to destroy the same evil as it has been manifested in Ukraine.”

Actions speak louder than words. Daudov was responsible for organizing, training, and dispatching formations of Chechen fighters to the Donbass, where they played a central role in the liberation of Lugansk, the siege of Mariupol, and in the heavy fighting that took place in Zaporozhye and Donetsk. Delemkhanov commanded Chechen forces in Mariupol, and Alaudinov was given command of joint Russian-Chechen forces in Lugansk, where the courage and commitment of the Chechen soldiers played a major role in Russia’s battlefield victories. In conversations over lunch, Ramzan Kadyrov underscored the narrative described by each of these Chechen leaders – that the Chechens considered themselves to be part of the Russian nation and would willingly sacrifice themselves in defense of Russia. And, as if to drive this point home, Ramzan Kadyrov invited me to join him on stage after lunch as he addressed the 25,000-strong Grozny garrison about the conflict in Ukraine.

If someone had suggested in 2002 that there would come a time in the not-to-distant future where 25,000 Chechen warriors could be assembled in Grozny not for the purpose of fighting against the Russians, but instead fighting side-by-side with the Russians against a common enemy, they would have been dismissed as delusional. And yet I bore personal witness to this very phenomenon, watching in amazement as Ramzan Kadyrov exhorted these heavily armed men to fight for the memory of his father, for their faith, and for the cause of greater Russia.

The Chechen miracle is the living manifestation of Russian redemption.

https://www.rt.com/russia/591663-gauntlet-of-redemption-chechnya-russia/

YES, SOME PEOPLE SUGGEST THAT THE CHECHEN PROBLEM WAS INSTIGATED BY INFILTRATION OF THE CIA, SOMEWHAT HIDDEN BY ... WAHHABISM FROM SAUDI ARABIA... NOW WE KNOW THAT PUTIN HAS MADE SURE THAT EVERYONE KNOWS HE IS IN CHARGE AND NO ONE SHOULD TRY TO MESS UP WITH THIS, AS RUSSIA GROWS AND EVERYONE IS BENEFITTING WHILE BATHING IN THE RUSSIAN SPIRIT — AND I DO NOT MEAN VODKA...

THE CHECHEN MIRACLE IS MOSTLY DUE TO PUTIN'S STYLE OF CONSENSUS AND POWER MANAGEMENT.... HERE WE SHOULD READ WHAT BILL BURNS — US AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA — HAD TO SAY ABOUT THIS BACK THEN...Gus says that at the time, Burns would not have been advised of what the CIA was doing in Chechnya....

WE ACTUALLY APPLAUD PUTIN FOR HIS VISION ON HOW TO SOLVE A PROBLEM INSTIGATED BY WESTERN FORCES WITH UNDERGROUND INTENTS TO DESTABILISE RUSSIA.... AND WE SUPPORT WIKILEAKS FOR LETTING US KNOW THE TRUTH. FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..............

FROM WIKILEAKS:

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06MOSCOW5645_a.html

Classified By: Ambassador William J. Burns.  Reason 1.4 (b, d) 

1. (C) Introduction:  Chechnya has been less in the glare of 

constant international attention in recent years.  However, 

the Chechnya conflict remains unresolved, and the suffering 

of the Chechen people and the threat of instability 

throughout the region remain.  This message reinterprets the 

history of the Chechen wars as a means of better 

understanding the current dynamics, the challenges facing 

Russia, the way in which the Kremlin perceives those 

challenges, and the factors limiting the Kremlin's ability to 

respond.  It draws on close observation on the ground and 

conversations with many participants in and observers of the 

conflict from the moment of Chechnya's declaration of 

independence in 1991.  We intend this message to spur 

thinking on new approaches to a tragedy that persists as an 

issue within Russia and between Russia and the U.S., Europe 

and the Islamic world. 

Summary 

2. (C) President Putin has pursued a two-pronged strategy to 

extricate Russia from the war in Chechnya and establish a 

viable long-term modus vivendi preserving Moscow's role as 

the ultimate arbiter of Chechen affairs.  The first prong was 

to gain control of the Russian military deployed there, which 

had long operated without real central control and was intent 

on staying as long as its officers could profit from the war. 

 The second prong was "Chechenization," which in effect means 

turning Chechnya over to former nationalist separatists 

willing to profess loyalty to Russia.  There are two 

difficulties with Putin's strategy.  First, while 

Chechenization has been successful in suppressing nationalist 

separatists within Chechnya, it has not been as effective 

against the Jihadist militants, who have broadened their 

focus and are gaining strength throughout the North Caucasus. 

 Second, as long as former separatist warlords run Chechnya, 

Russian forces will have to stay in numbers sufficient to 

ensure that the ex-separatists remain "ex."  More broadly, 

the suffering of an abused and victimized population will 

continue, and with it the alienation that feeds the 

insurgency. 

3. (C) To deal effectively with Chechnya in the long term, 

Putin needs to increase his control over the Russian Power 

Ministries and reduce opportunities for them to profit from 

war corruption.  He needs to strengthen Russian civilian 

engagement, reinforcing the role of his Plenipotentiary 

Representative.  He needs to take a broad approach to combat 

the spread of Jihadism, and not rely primarily on suppression 

by force.  In this context there is only a limited role for 

the U.S., but we and our allies can help by expressing our 

concerns to Putin, directing assistance to areas where our 

programs can slow the spread of Jihadism, and working with 

Russia's southern neighbors to minimize the effects of 

instability.  End Summary. 

The Starting Point:  Problems of the "Russianized" Conflict 

4. (C) Chechnya was only one of the conflicts that broke out 

in the former Soviet Union at the time of the country's 

collapse.  Territorial conflicts, most of them separatist, 

erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, South Ossetia, 

North Ossetia/Ingushetia, Abkhazia and Tajikistan.  Russian 

troops were involved in combat in all of those conflicts, 

sometimes clandestinely.  In all except Nagorno-Karabakh, 

Russian troops remain today as peacekeepers.  Russia doggedly 

insists on this presence and resists pulling its forces out. 

Its diplomatic efforts have served to keep the conflicts 

frozen, with Russian troops remaining in place. 

5. (C)  Why is this?  The charge is often made that Russia's 

motive for keeping the conflicts frozen is geostrategic, or 

"neo-imperialism," or fear of NATO, or revenge against 

Georgia and Moldova, or a quest to preserve leverage. 

Indeed, the continued deployments may satisfy those Russians 

who think in such terms, and expand the domestic consensus 

for sending troops throughout the CIS.  However, while one or 

another of those factors may have been the original impulse, 

each of the conflicts has gone through phases in which the 

conflict's perceived uses for the Russian state have changed. 

 No one of these factors has been continuous over the life of 

any of the conflicts. 

6. (C) We would propose an additional factor:  the 

determination of Russia's senior officer corps to remain 

deployed in those countries to engage in lucrative activity 

outside their official military tasks.  Sometimes that 

activity has been as mercenaries -- for instance, Russian 

active-duty soldiers fought on both sides in the 

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from 1991-92.  Sometimes it has 

involved narcotics smuggling, as in Tajikistan.  Selling arms 

to all sides has been a long-standing tradition.  And 

sometimes it has meant collaborating with the mafias of both 

sides in conflict to facilitate contraband trade across the 

lines, as in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  The officers and 

their generals formed a powerful bloc in favor of all the 

deployments, especially under Yeltsin. 

7. (C) This "military-entrepreneurial" bloc soon formed an 

autonomous institution, in some respects outside the 

government's control.  There are many illustrations of its 

autonomy.  For instance, in 1993 Yeltsin reached an agreement 

with Georgia on peacekeeping in Abkhazia.  When the Georgian 

delegation arrived in Sochi in September of that year to 

hammer out the details with Russia's generals, they found the 

deal had changed.  When they protested that Yeltsin had 

agreed to other terms, a Russian general replied, "Let the 

President sit in Moscow, drink vodka, and chase women. 

That's his business.  We are here, and we have our work to 

do." 

The Secret History of the Chechen War 

8. (C) The lack of central control over the military, as well 

as officers' cupidity, may have been a prime cause of the 

first Chechnya War.  Immediately after the collapse of the 

Soviet Union, energy prices in the "ruble zone" were 3 

percent of world market prices.  Government officials and 

their partners bought oil at ruble prices, diverted it 

abroad, and sold it on the world market.    The military 

joined in this arbitrage.  Pavel Grachev, then Defense 

Minister, reportedly diverted oil to Western Group of Forces 

commander Burlakov, who sold it in Germany. 

9. (C) Chechnya was a major entrepot for laundering oil for 

this arbitrage.  It appears to have been used both by the 

military (including Grachev) and the Khasbulatov-Rutskoy axis 

in the Duma.  Dudayev had declared independence, but remained 

part of the Russian elite.  Chechnya's independence, 

oilfields, refineries and pipelines made Chechnya perfect for 

laundering oil.  Planes, trains, buses and roads and 

pipelines to Chechnya were functioning, allowing anyone and 

anything to transit -- except auditors.  In the early 1990's 

millions of tons of "Russian" oil entered Chechnya and were 

magically transformed into "Chechen" oil to be sold on the 

world market at world prices.   Some of the proceeds went to 

buy the Chechens weaponry, most of it from the Russian 

military, and another lucrative trade developed.  Dudayev 

took much of his cut of the proceeds in weapons.  The Groznyy 

Bazaar was notorious in the early 1990s for the quantity and 

variety of arms for sale, including heavy weaponry. 

10. (C) Chechnya was the home of Ruslan Khasbulatov and 

served various purposes for his faction of the Russian elite. 

 He took advantage of the army's independence from Yeltsin's 

control.  An informed source believes that it was 

Khasbulatov, not the "official" Russian government, who 

facilitated the transfer of Shamil Basayev and his 

heavily-armed fighters from Chechnya into Abkhazia in 1992, 

and who ordered the Russian air force to bomb Sukhumi when 

Shevardnadze went there to take personal command of the 

Georgians' last stand in July 1993.  The Yeltsin government 

always denied that it bombed Sukhumi, despite Western 

eyewitness accounts confirming the bombing and the insignia 

on the planes.  Given the confusion of those years, it could 

well be that the order originated in the Duma, not the 

Kremlin. 

11. (C) After Khasbulatov and Rutskoy were written out of the 

Russian equation in October 1993, so was Dudayev. 

Clandestine Russian support for the Chechen political and 

military opposition to Dudayev began in the spring of 1994, 

according to participants.  When that proved ineffective, 

Russian bombing was deployed.  (One Dudayev opponent 

recounted that in 1994 a Russian pilot was given a mission to 

fire a missile into one of the top-floor corners of Groznyy's 

Presidency building at a time when Dudayev was scheduled to 

hold a cabinet meeting there.  Not knowing Groznyy, the pilot 

asked which building to bomb, and was told "the tallest one." 

 He bombed a residential apartment building.)  When air 

power, too, proved ineffective, Russian troops were secretly 

sent in to reinforce the armed opposition.  Dudayev's forces 

captured about a dozen and put them on television -- and the 

Russian invasion began shortly thereafter. 

12. (C) Given the gangsterish background of the war, it is no 

surprise that the military conducted the war itself as a 

profit-making enterprise, especially after the capture of 

Groznyy.  By May 1995 an anti-Dudayev Chechen could lament, 

"When we invited the Russian army in we expected an army -- 

not this band of marauders."  Contraband trade in oil, 

weapons (including direct sales from Russian military stores 

to the insurgents), drugs, and liquor, plus "protection" for 

legitimate trade made military service in Chechnya lucrative 

for those not on the front lines.  This profitability ended 

only with the August 1996 defeat of Russian forces in Groznyy 

at the hands of the insurgents and the subsequent Russian 

withdrawal -- a defeat made possible because the Russian 

forces were hollowed out by their officers' corruption and 

pursuit of economic profit. 

13. (C) Before they lost this "cash-cow" to their enemies, 

Russian officers went to great lengths to keep their friends 

from interfering with their profits.  On July 30, 1995, the 

Russians and the Chechen insurgents signed a cease-fire 

agreement mediated by the OSCE.  It would have meant the 

gradual withdrawal of Russian forces.  Enforcing the 

cease-fire was a Joint Observation Commission ("SNK").  The 

head of the SNK was General Anatoliy Romanov, a competent and 

upright officer -- very much a rarity in Chechnya.  After two 

months at this assignment he was severely injured by a mine 

inside Groznyy, and has been hospitalized ever since. 

Informed observers believe Romanov's own colleagues in the 

Russian forces carried out this murder attempt.  The 

cease-fire, never enforced, broke down. 

14. (C) When the second war began in September 1999, Russian 

forces again started profiteering from a trade in contraband 

oil.  Western eyewitnesses reported convoys of Russian army 

trucks carrying oil leaving Groznyy under cover of night. 

Eventually the Russian forces reached an understanding with 

the insurgent fighters.  Seeing one such convoy, a Western 

reporter asked his guerrilla hosts whether the fighters ever 

attacked such convoys.  "No," the leader replied.  "They 

leave us alone and we leave them alone." 

No Exit for Putin 

15. (C) Sometime between one and two years after Russian 

forces were unleashed for a second time on Chechnya, Putin 

appears to have realized that they were not going to deliver 

a neat victory.  That failure would make Putin look weak at 

home, the human rights violations would estrange the West, 

and the drain on the Russian treasury would be punishing 

(this was before the dramatic rise in energy prices).  Putin 

could not negotiate a peace with Maskhadov:  he had already 

rejected that course and could not back down without 

appearing weak.  The Khasavyurt accords that ended the first 

war were the result of defeat; a new set of accords would be 

seen as a new defeat.  In any case, the history of the war 

(and the fate of General Romanov) made clear that 

negotiations without the subordination of the military were a 

physical impossibility. 

16. (C) Putin thus found himself without a winning strategy 

and had to develop one.  He has taken a two-pronged approach. 

 One prong was subordinating the military.  The appointment 

of Sergey Ivanov as Defense Minister appears to have been 

aimed at subjecting the military to the control of the 

security services.  A series of reassignments and firings is 

the surface evidence of the struggle to subordinate the 

military in Chechnya.  Southern Military District commander 

Troshev, who led the 1999 invasion, refused outright the 

first orders transferring him to Siberia in November 2002, 

and went on television to publicize his mutiny.  He was 

finally removed in February 2003.  Chief of the Defense Staff 

Kvashnin, who had held the Southern District command during 

the first Chechen war, hung on in a combative relationship 

with Ivanov for three years until he, too, was replaced in 

2004 (and also sent to Siberia as the Presidential 

Representative in Novosibirsk).  The spring 2005 dismissal of 

General Viktor Kazantsev, Putin's Plenipotentiary 

Representative in the Southern Federal District, was 

reportedly the final link in the chain.  Military corruption, 

and feeding at the trough of Chechnya, has not ended,  but 

the corruption has reportedly been "institutionalized" and 

more closely regulated in Kremlin-controlled channels. 

Chechenization, Ahmad-Haji Kadyrov, and the Salafists 

17. (C) The second prong of Putin's strategy was to hand the 

fighting over to Chechens.  "Chechenization" differs from 

Vietnamization or Iraqification.  In those strategies, a 

loyalist force is strengthened to the point at which it can 

carry on the fight itself.  Chechenization, in contrast, has 

meant handing Chechnya over to the guerrillas in exchange for 

their professions of loyalty, the formal retention of 

Chechnya within the Russian Federation, and an uneasy 

cooperation with Federal authorities that in practice is 

constantly re-negotiated. 

18. (C) Chechenization is associated with Ahmad-Haji Kadyrov, 

the insurgent commander and chief Mufti of separatist 

Chechnya.  After he defected to the Russians, Putin put him 

in charge of the new Russian-installed Chechen 

administration.  Chechenization was reportedly agreed between 

Kadyrov and Putin personally.  But the seeds of the policy 

were sown by a split in the insurgent ranks dating to the 

first war.  That split that took the form of a religious 

dispute, though it masked a power struggle among warlords. 

The split is the direct result of the introduction of a new 

element:  Arab forces espousing a pan-Islamic Jihadist 

religious ideology. 

19. (C) The traditional Islam of Dagestan, Chechnya and 

Ingushetia is based on Sufism, or Islamic mysticism.  Though 

nominally the Sufi orders were the same as those predominant 

in Central Asia and Kurdistan -- Naqshbandi and Qadiri -- 

Sufism in the Northeast Caucasus took on a unique form in the 

18th-19th century struggle against Russian encroachment.  It 

is usually called "muridism."  Murids were armed acolytes of 

a hieratic commander, the murshid.  Shaykh Shamil, the 

Naqshbandi murshid who led the mountaineers' resistance to 

the Russians until his capture in 1859, was both a spiritual 

guide and a military commander.  He also exercised government 

powers.  The largest Sufi branch ("vird") in Chechnya is the 

Kunta-Haji "vird" of the Qadiris, founded and led by the 

charismatic Chechen missionary Kunta-Haji Kishiyev until his 

exile by the Russians in 1864.  Although the historical 

Kunta-Haji died two years later, his followers believe that 

Kunta-Haji lives on in occultation, like the Shi'a Twelfth 

Imam. 

20. (C) When Arab fighters joined the Chechen conflict in 

1995, they brought with them a "Salafist" doctrine that 

attempts to emulate the fundamental, "pure" Islam of the 

Prophet Muhammad and his immediate successors, especially 

'Umar, the second Caliph.  It holds that mysticism is one of 

the "impurities" that crept into Islam after the first four 

Caliphs, and considers Sufis to be heretics and idolaters. 

The idea that Kunta-Haji adepts could believe their founder 

is still alive -- and that they worship the grave of his 

mother -- is an abomination to Salafis, who believe that 

marked graves are a form of pagan ancestor worship 

(Muhammad's grave in Arabia is not marked). 

21. (C) Wahhabism-based forms of Islam started appearing in 

Chechnya by 1991, as Chechens were able to travel and some 

went to Saudi Arabia for religious study.  But the true 

influx of Salafis (usually lumped together with Wahhabis in 

Russia) came during the first Chechen war.  In February 1995 

Fathi 'Ali al-Shishani, a Jordanian of Chechen descent, 

arrived in Chechnya.  A veteran of the war in Afghanistan, he 

was now too old to be a combatant, but was a missionary for 

Salafism.  He recruited another Afghan veteran, the Saudi 

al-Khattab, to come to Chechnya and lead a group of Arab 

fighters. 

22. (C) Al-Khattab's fighters were never a major military 

factor during the war, but they were the key to Gulf money, 

which financed power struggles in the inter-war years. 

Al-Khattab forged close links with Shamil Basayev, the most 

famous Chechen field commander.  Basayev himself was from a 

Qadiri family, but he was too Sovietized to view Islam as 

anything more than part of the Chechen and Caucasus identity. 

 In his early interviews, Basayev showed himself to be 

motivated by Chechen nationalism, not religion, though he 

paid lip-service -- e.g., proclaiming Sharia law in Vedeno in 

early 1995 -- to attract Gulf donors.  Basayev's initial 

interest in al-Khattab, as indeed with other jihadists 

starting even before the first war, was purely financial. 

23. (C) After the first war, al-Khattab set up a camp in 

Serzhen-Yurt ("Baza Kavkaz") for military and religious 

indoctrination.  It provided one of the few employment 

opportunities for demobilized Chechen fighters between the 

wars.  Young Chechens had traditionally engaged in seasonal 

migrant construction work throughout the Soviet Union, but 

after the first war that was no longer open to them.  The 

closed international borders also precluded smuggling -- 

another pre-war source of employment and income.  The 

fighters had no money, no jobs, no education, no skills save 

with their guns, and no prospects.  Al-Khattab's offer of 

food, shelter and work was inviting.  As a result, between 

the wars Salafism spread quickly in Chechnya.  (Al-Khattab 

also invited missionaries and facilitators who set up shop in 

Chechnya, Dagestan and Georgia's Pankisi Gorge, whose Kist 

residents are close relatives of the Chechens.) 

Battle Lines in Peacetime 

24. (C) Chechen society is distinguished by its propensity to 

unite in war and fragment in peace.  It is based on opposing 

dichotomies:  the Vaynakh peoples are divided into Chechens 

and Ingush; the Chechens are divided into highlanders 

("Lameroi") and lowlanders ("Nokhchi"); and these are further 

divided into tribal confederations and exogamous tribes 

("teyp") and their subdivisions.  Each unit will unite with 

its opposite to combat a threat from outside.  Two lowland 

teyps, for example, will drop quarrels and unite against an 

intruding highland teyp.  But left to themselves, they will 

quarrel and split.  After the Khasavyurt accords, when Russia 

left the Chechens alone, the wartime alliance between 

Maskhadov and Basayev split and the two became enemies. 

Other warlords lined up on one side or the other -- the 

Yamadayev brothers of Gudermes, for example, fighting a 

pitched battle against Basayev in 1999.  But the rise of 

Basayev and al-Khattab undermined Maskhadov's authority and 

prevented him from exercising any real power. 

25. (C) This power struggle took on a religious expression. 

Since Basayev was associated with al-Khattab and Salafism, 

Maskhadov positioned himself as champion of traditional 

Sufism.  He surrounded himself with Sufi shaykhs and 

appointed Ahmad-Haji Kadyrov, a strong adherent of Kunta-Haji 

Sufism, as Chechnya's  Mufti.  Kadyrov had spent six years in 

Uzbekistan, allegedly at religious seminaries in Tashkent and 

Bukhara, and seems to have developed links to other enemies 

of Basayev, including the Yamadayevs. 

26. (C) The religious division dictated certain policies to 

each side.  The Sufi tradition of Maskhadov and Kadyrov had 

been associated for over two centuries with nationalist 

resistance.   Basayev, with his new-found commitment to 

al-Khattab's Salafism, adopted the Salafi stress on a 

pan-Islamic community  ("umma") fighting a worldwide jihad, 

notionally without regard for ethnic or national boundaries. 

Al-Khattab and Basayev invaded Dagestan in August 1999, 

avowedly in pursuit of a Caucasus-wide revolt against the 

Russians.  They brought on a Russian invasion that threw 

Maskhadov out of Groznyy. 

Chechenization Begins 

--------------------- 

27. (C) The second Russian invasion did not unite the 

Chechens, as previous pressure had.  Perhaps the influence of 

al-Khattab and his Salafists, as well as the devastation of 

the first war, had rent the fabric of Chechen society too 

much to restore traditional unity in the face of the outside 

threat.  (We should also remember that unity is relative. 

Only a small percentage of the Chechens actually fought in 

the first war, and many supported the Russians out of disgust 

with Dudayev.)   Kadyrov and the Yamadayevs separately broke 

with Maskhadov and defected to the Russians.  Kadyrov began 

to recruit from the insurgency non-Salafist nationalist 

fighters who were highly demoralized and disoriented by the 

disastrous retreat from Groznyy in late 1999.  Kadyrov began 

to preach what Kunta-Haji had preached after the Russian 

victory over Imam Shamil in 1859:  to survive, the Chechens 

needed tactically to accept Russian rule.  His message struck 

a chord, and fighters began to defect to his side. 

28. (C) Putin appears to have stumbled upon Kadyrov, and 

their alliance seems to have grown out of chance as much as 

design.  But they were able to forge a deal along the 

following lines:  Kadyrov would declare loyalty to Russia and 

deliver loyalty to Putin; he would take over Maskhadov's 

place at the head of the Russian-blessed government of 

Chechnya; he would try to win over Maskhadov's fighters, to 

whom he could promise immunity; he would govern Chechnya with 

full autonomy, without interference from Russian officials 

below Putin's level; and he would try to exterminate Basayev 

and Al-Khattab. 

29. (C) If the objective of Chechenization was to win over 

fighters who would carry on the fight against Basayev and the 

Arab successors to Khattab (who was poisoned in April 2002), 

it has to be judged a success.  The real fighting has for 

several years been carried out by Chechen forces who fight 

the war they want to fight -- not the one the Russian 

military wants them to -- and who appear happy to kill 

Russians when they get in the way.  The Russian military is 

"just trying to survive," as one officer put it.  Not all the 

pro-Moscow Chechen units are composed of former guerrillas. 

Said-Magomed Kakiyev, commander of the GRU-controlled "West" 

battalion, has been fighting Dudayev and his successors since 

1993.  But at the heart of the pro-Moscow effort are fighters 

who defected from the anti-Moscow insurgency. 

The Military Overstays Its Welcome 

30. (C) The development of Kadyrov's fighting force, along 

with that of the Yamadayev brothers, left the stage clear for 

a drawdown of Russian troops, certainly by early 2004 

(leaving aside a permanent garrison presence).  But those 

troops, still not fully responsive to FSB control, did not 

want to leave.  Especially now that Chechens had taken over 

increasing parts of the security portfolio, the Russian 

officers were free to concentrate on their economic 

activities, and in particular oil smuggling. 

31. (C) Kadyrov could not be fully autonomous until he -- not 

the Russians -- controlled Chechnya's oil.  He therefore 

demanded the creation of a Chechen oil company under his 

jurisdiction.  That would have severely limited the ability 

of federal forces to divert and smuggle oil.  On May 9, 2004, 

Kadyrov was assassinated by an enormous bomb planted under 

his seat at the annual VE Day celebration.  The killing was 

officially ascribed to Chechen rebels, but many believe it 

was the Russian Army's way of rejecting Kadyrov's demand. 

Under the circumstances, one cannot exclude that both 

versions are true. 

In the Reign of Ramzan 

---------------------- 

32. (C) Kadyrov's passing left power in the hands of his son 

Ramzan, who was officially made Deputy Prime Minister.  The 

President, Alu Alkhanov, was a figurehead put in place 

because Ramzan was underage.  The Prime Minister, Sergey 

Abramov, was tasked with interfacing between Kadyrov and 

Moscow below the level of Putin. 

33. (C) Ramzan Kadyrov has none of the religious or personal 

prestige that his father had.  He is a warlord pure and 

simple -- one of several, like the Yamadayev family of 

warlords.  He is lucky, however, in that his father left him 

a sufficient fighting force of ex-rebels.  Though they may 

have been lured away from the insurgency for a variety of 

reasons, it is money that keeps them.  Kadyrov feels little 

need for ideological or religious prestige, though he makes 

an occasional statement designed to appeal to Muslims, and 

makes a point of supporting the pilgrimage to the tomb of 

Kunta-Haji's mother in Gunoy, near Vedeno (though that is in 

part to show he is stronger than Basayev, whose home and 

power base are in the Vedeno region).  Kadyrov must only 

satisfy his troops, who on occasion have shown that, if 

offended or not given enough, they are willing to desert 

along with their kinsmen and return to the mountains to fight 

against him.  He must also guard against the possibility, as 

some charge, that some of the fighters who went over to 

Federal forces did so under orders from guerrilla commanders 

for whom they are still working. 

34. (C) Kadyrov is also fortunate in that the FSB, with whom 

he has close ties, has by this time emasculated the military 

as "prong one" of Putin's strategy.  Kadyrov has slowly but 

surely also taken over most of the spigots of money that once 

fed the army, and like his father he has started agitating 

for overt control over Chechnya's oil (while prudently 

ensuring that others take the lead on that in public). 

Kadyrov is at least as corrupt as the military, but the money 

he expropriates for himself from Moscow's subsidies is 

accepted as his pay-off for keeping things quiet.  And indeed 

Kadyrov and the other warlords are capable of maintaining a 

certain degree of security in Chechnya.  The showy 

"reconstruction" developments they have built in Groznyy and 

their home towns demonstrate that the guerrillas cannot or at 

least do not halt construction and economic activity. 

Moreover, there is enough security to end Putin's worries 

about a secessionist victory.  That has allowed Putin to 

demonstrate a new willingness to be increasingly overt in 

support of separatism in other conflicts (e.g., Abkhazia, 

Transnistria) when that advances Russian interests. 

35. (C) Despite its successes to date, however, Putin's 

strategy is far from completed.  He still needs to keep 

forces in the region as a constant reminder to Kadyrov not to 

backtrack on his professed loyalty to the Kremlin.  Ideally, 

that force would be small but capable of intervening 

effectively in Chechen internal affairs.  That is unrealistic 

at present.  The current forces, reportedly over 25,000, are 

bunkered and corrupt.  When they venture on patrol they are 

routinely attacked.  One attempt to redress this is to 

position Russian forces close but "over the horizon" in 

Dagestan, where a major military base is under construction 

at Botlikh.  However, that may only add to the instability of 

Dagestan.  A Duma Deputy from the region told us that locals 

are vehemently opposed to the new military base, despite the 

economic opportunities it represents, on grounds that the 

soldiers will "corrupt the morals of their children." 

36. (C) Another approach is the Chechenization of the Federal 

forces themselves.  Recently "North" and "South" battalions 

of ethnically Chechen special forces -- drawn from Kadyrov's 

militia -- were created to supplement the "East" and "West" 

battalions of Sulim Yamadayev and Said-Magomed Kakiyev. 

Those formations are officially part of the Russian army. 

The Kremlin strategy appears to be to check Kadyrov by 

promoting warlords he cannot control, and to check the FSB 

from becoming too clientized by allowing the MOD to retain a 

sphere of influence.  In Chechnya, that is a recipe for open 

fighting.  We saw one small instance of that on April 25, 

when bodyguards of Kadyrov and Chechen President Alkhanov got 

into a firefight.  According to one insider, the clash 

originated in Kadyrov's desire to get rid of Alkhanov, who 

now has close ties with Yamadayev. 

What Can We Expect in the Future? 

--------------------------------- 

37. (C) The Chechen population is the great loser in this 

game.  It bears an ever heavier burden in shake-downs, 

opportunity costs from misappropriation of reconstruction 

funds, and the constant trauma of victimization and abuse -- 

including abduction, torture, and murder -- by the armed 

thugs who run Chechnya (reftels).  Security under those 

circumstances is a fragile veneer, and stability an illusion. 

 The insurgency can continue indefinitely, at a low level and 

without prospects of success, but significant enough to serve 

as a pretext for the continued rule of thuggery. 

38. (C) The insurgency will remain split between those who 

want to carry on Maskhadov's non-Salafist struggle for 

national independence and those who follow the 

Salafi-influenced Basayev in his pursuit of a Caucasus-wide 

Caliphate.  But the nationalists have been undercut by 

Kadyrov.  Despite Sadullayev's efforts, the insurgency inside 

Chechnya is not likely to meet with success and will continue 

to become more Salafist in tone. 

39. (C) Prospects would be poor for the nationalists even if 

Kadyrov and/or Yamadayev were assassinated (and there is much 

speculation that one will succeed in killing the other, 

goaded on by the FSB which supports Kadyrov and the GRU which 

supports Yamadayev).  The thousands of guerrillas who have 

joined those two militias have by now lost all ideological 

incentive.  Since they already run the country, they feel 

themselves, not the Russians, to be the masters, and are not 

responsive to Sadullayev's nationalist calls; Basayev's 

Salafist message has even less appeal to them.  Even if their 

current leaders are eliminated, all they will need is a new 

warlord, easily generated from within their organizations, 

and they can continue on their current paths. 

40. (C) We expect that Salafism will continue to grow.  The 

insurgents even inside Chechnya are reportedly becoming 

predominantly Salafist, as opposition on a narrowly 

nationalist basis offers less hope of success.  Salafis will 

come both from inside Chechnya, where militia excesses 

outrage the population, and from elsewhere in the Caucasus, 

where radicalization is proceeding rapidly as a result of the 

repressive policies of Russia's regional satraps.  There are 

numerous eyewitness accounts from both Dagestan and 

Kabardino-Balkaria that elite young adults and university 

students are joining Salafist groups.  In one case, a 

terrorist killed in Dagestan was found recently to have 

defended his doctoral dissertation at Moscow State University 

-- on Wahhabism in the North Caucasus.  These young adults, 

denied economic opportunities, turn to religion as an outlet. 

 They find, however, that representatives of the traditional 

religious establishments in these republics, long isolated 

under the thumb of Soviet restrictions, are ill-educated and 

ill-prepared to deal with the sophisticated theological 

arguments developed by generations of Salafists in the Middle 

East.   Most of those who join fundamentalist jamaats do not, 

of course, become terrorists.  But a percentage do, and with 

that steady source of recruits the major battlefield could 

shift to outside Chechnya, with armed clashes in other parts 

of the North Caucasus and a continuation of sporadic but 

spectacular terrorist acts in Moscow and other parts of 

Russia. 

41. (C) Outside Chechnya, the most likely venue for clashes 

with authorities is Dagestan.  Putin's imposition of a "power 

vertical" there has upset the delicate clan and ethnic 

balance that offered a shaky stability since the collapse of 

Soviet power.  He installed a president (the weak Mukhu 

Aliyev) in place of a 14-member multi-ethnic presidential 

council.  Aliyev will be unable to prevent a ruthless 

struggle among the elite -- the local way of elaborating a 

new balance of power.  This is already happening, with 

assassinations of provincial chiefs since Aliyev took over. 

MOSCOW 00005645  008 OF 010 

In one province in the south of the republic, an uprising 

against the chief appointed by Aliyev's predecessor was 

suppressed by gunfire.  Four demonstrators were shot dead, 

initiating a cycle of blood revenge.  In May, in two 

Dagestani cities security force operations against 

"terrorists" resulted in major shootouts, with victims among 

the bystanders and whole apartment houses rendered 

uninhabitable after hits from the security forces' heavy 

weaponry.  It is not clear whether the "terrorists" were 

really religious activists ("Whenever they want to eliminate 

someone, they call him a Wahhabi," the MP from Makhachkala 

told us).  But the populace, seeing the deadly over-reaction 

of the security forces, is feeling sympathy for their victims 

-- so much so that Aliyev has had to make public 

condemnations of the actions of the security forces. If this 

chaos deepens, as appears likely, the Jihadist groups 

("jamaats") may grow, drift further in Basayev's direction, 

and feel the need to respond to attacks from the local 

government. 

42. (C) Local forces are unreliable in such cases, for clan 

and blood-feud reasons.  Wahhabist jamaats flourished in the 

strategic ethnically Dargin districts of Karamakhi and 

Chabanmakhi in the mid-1990s, but Dagestan's rulers left them 

alone because moving against them meant altering the delicate 

ethnic balance between Dargins and Avars.  Only when the 

jamaats themselves became expansive during the 

Basayev/Khattab invasion from Chechnya in the summer of 1999 

did the Makhachkala authorities take action, and then only 

with the assistance of Federal forces.  Ultimately, if 

clashes break out on a wide scale in Dagestan, Moscow would 

have to send in the Federal army.  Deploying the army to 

combat destabilization in Dagestan, however, could jeopardize 

Putin's hard-won control over it.  Unleashing the army 

against a "terrorist" threat is just that:  allowing the army 

off its new leash.  Large-scale army deployments to Dagestan 

would be especially attractive to the officers, since the 

border with Azerbaijan offers lucrative opportunities for 

contraband trade.  The army's presence, in turn, would 

further destabilize Dagestan and all but guarantee chaos. 

43. (C) Indeed, destabilization is the most likely prospect 

we see when we look further down the road to the next decade. 

 Chechenization allows bellicose Chechen leaders to throw 

their weight around in the North Caucasus even more than an 

independent Chechnya would.  A case in point is the call on 

April 24 by Chechen Parliament Speaker Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov 

for unification of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, 

implicitly under Chechen domination (the one million Chechens 

would constitute a plurality in the new republic of 4.5 

million).  The call soured slowly normalizing relations 

between Chechnya and Ingushetia, according to a Chechen 

official in Moscow, though the Dagestanis treated the 

proposal as a joke. 

What Should Putin Be Doing? 

--------------------------- 

44. (C) Right now Putin's policy towards Chechnya is 

channeled through Kadyrov and Yamadayev.  Putin's 

Plenipotentiary Representative (PolPred) for the Southern 

Federal District, Dmitriy Kozak, appears to have little 

influence.  He was not even invited when Putin addressed the 

new Parliament in Groznyy last December.  Putin needs to stop 

taking Kadyrov's phone calls and start working more through 

his PolPred and the government's special services.  He also 

needs to increase Moscow's civilian engagement with Chechnya. 

45. (C) Putin should continue to reform the military and the 

other Power Ministries.  Having asserted control through 

Sergey Ivanov, Putin has denied the military certain limited 

areas in which it had pursued criminal activity -- but left 

most of its criminal enterprises untouched.  He has done 

little if anything to form the discipline of a modern army 

deployable to impose order in unstable regions such as the 

North Caucasus.  Recent hazing incidents show that discipline 

is still equated with sadism and brutality.  The Ministry of 

Internal Affairs (MVD) has undergone even less reform.  The 

Chechenization of the security services, despite its obvious 

drawbacks, has shown that locals can carry out security tasks 

more effectively than Russian troops. 

46. (C) Lastly, Putin should realize that his current policy 

course is not preventing the growth of militant, armed 

Jihadism.  Rather, every time his subordinates try to douse 

the flames, the fire grows hotter and spreads farther.  Putin 

needs to check the firehose; he may find they are spraying 

the fire with gasoline.  He needs to work out a credible 

strategy, employing economic and cultural levers, to deal 

with the issue of armed Jihadism.  Some Russians do "get it." 

 An advisor to Kozak gave a lecture recently that showed he 

understands in great detail the issues surrounding the growth 

MOSCOW 00005645  009 OF 010 

of militant jihadism.  Kozak himself made clear in a recent 

conversation with the Ambassador that he appreciates clearly 

the deep social and economic roots of Russia's problems in 

the North Caucasus -- and the need to employ more than just 

security measures to solve them.  We have not, however, seen 

evidence that consciousness of the true problem has yet made 

its way to Moscow from Kozak's office in Rostov-on-Don. 

47. (C) We need also to be aware that Putin's strategy is 

generating a backlash in Moscow.  Ramzan Kadyrov's excesses, 

his Putin-given immunity from federal influence, and the 

special laws that apply to Chechnya alone (such as the 

exemption of Chechens from military service elsewhere in 

Russia) are leading to charges by some Moscow observers that 

Putin has allowed Chechnya de facto to secede.  Putin is 

strong enough to weather such criticism, but the ability of a 

successor to do so is less clear. 

Is There a Role for the U.S.? 

----------------------------- 

48. (C) Russia does not consider the U.S. a friend in the 

Caucasus, and our capacity to influence Russia, whether by 

pressure, persuasion or assistance, is small.  What we can do 

is continue to  try to push the senior tier of Russian 

officials towards the realization that current policies are 

conducive to Jihadism, which threatens broader stability as 

well; and that shifting the responsibility for victimizing 

and looting the people from a corrupt, brutal military to 

corrupt, brutal locals is not a long-term solution. 

49. (C) Making headway with Putin or his successor will 

require close cooperation with our European allies.  They, 

like the Russians, tend to view the issue through a strictly 

counter-terrorism lens.  The British, for example, link their 

"dialogue with Islam" closely with their counter-terrorist 

effort (on which they liaise with the Russians), reinforcing 

the conception of a monolithic Muslim identity predisposed to 

terrorism.  That reinforces the Russian view that the problem 

of the North Caucasus can be consigned to the terrorism 

basket, and that finding a solution means in the first 

instance finding a better way to kill terrorists. 

50. (C)  We and the Europeans need to put our proposals of 

assistance to the North Caucasus in a different context:  one 

that recognizes the role of religion in North Caucasus 

cultures, but also emphasizes our interest in and support for 

the non-religious aspects of North Caucasus society, 

including civil society.  This last will need exceptional 

delicacy, as the Russians and the local authorities are 

convinced that the U.S. uses civil society to foment "color 

revolutions" and anti-Russian regimes.  There is a danger 

that our civil society partners could become what Churchill 

called "the inopportune missionary" who, despite impeccable 

intentions, sets back the larger effort.  That need not be 

the case. 

51. (C) Our interests call for an understanding of the 

context and a positive emphasis.  We cannot expect the 

Russians to react well if we limit our statements to 

condemnations of Kadyrov, butcher though he may be.  We need 

to find targeted areas in which we can work with the Russians 

to get effective aid into Chechnya.  At the same time, we 

need to be on our guard that our efforts do not appear to 

constitute U.S. support for Kremlin or local policies that 

abuse human rights.  We must also avoid a shift that endorses 

the Kremlin assertion that there is no longer a humanitarian 

crisis in Chechnya, which goes hand-in-hand with the Russian 

request that the UN and its donors end humanitarian 

assistance to the region and increase technical and 

"recovery" assistance.  We and other donors need to maintain 

a balance between humanitarian and recovery assistance. 

52. (C) Aside from the political optic, a rush to cut 

humanitarian assistance before recovery programs are fully up 

and running would leave a vacuum into which jihadist 

influences would leap. The European Commission Humanitarian 

Organization, the largest provider of aid, shows signs of 

rushing to stress recovery over humanitarian assistance; we 

should not follow suit.  Humanitarian assistance has been 

effective in relieving the plight of Chechen IDPs in 

Ingushetia.  It has been less effective inside Chechnya, 

where the GOR and Kadyrov regime built temporary 

accommodation centers for returning IDPs, but have not passed 

on enough resources to secure a reasonable standard of 

living.  International organizations are hampered by limited 

access to Chechnya out of security concerns, but where they 

are able to operate freely they have made a great difference, 

e.g., WHO's immunization program. 

53. (C) Resources aimed at Chechnya often wind up in private 

pockets.  Though international assistance has a better record 

MOSCOW 00005645  010 OF 010 

than Russian assistance and is more closely monitored, we 

must also be wary of assistance that lends itself to massive 

corruption and state-sponsored banditry in Chechnya:  too 

much of the money loaned in a microfinance program there, for 

example, would be expropriated by militias.  Presidential 

Advisor Aslakhanov told us last December that Kadyrov 

expropriates for himself one third off the top of all 

assistance.  Therefore, while we continue well-monitored 

humanitarian assistance inside Chechnya, we should broaden 

our efforts for "recovery" to other parts of the region that 

are threatened by jihadism:  Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, 

Ingushetia, and possibly Karachayevo-Cherkessia.  Among 

these, we need to try to steer our assistance ($11.5 million 

for FY 2006) to regional officials, such as President Kanokov 

of Kabardino-Balkaria, who have shown that they are willing 

to introduce local reforms and get rid of the brutal security 

officials whose repressive acts feed the Jihadist movement. 

54. (C) We also need to coordinate closely with Kozak (or his 

successor), both to strengthen his position vis--vis the 

warlords and to ensure that everything we do is perceived by 

the Russians as transparent and not aimed at challenging the 

GOR's hold on a troubled region.  The present opposite 

perception by the GOR may be behind its reluctance to 

cooperate with donors, the UN and IFIs on long-term strategic 

engagement in the region.  For example, the GOR has delayed 

for months a 20-million-Euro TACIS program designed with GOR 

input. 

55. (C) The interagency paper "U.S. Policy in the North 

Caucasus -- The Way Forward" provides a number of important 

principles for positive engagement.  We need to emphasize 

programs in accordance with those principles which are most 

practical under current and likely future conditions, and 

which can be most effective in targeting the most vulnerable, 

where federal and local governments lack the will and 

capacity to assist, and in combating the spread of jihadism 

both inside Chechnya and throughout the North Caucasus 

region.  There are areas -- for example, health care and 

child welfare -- in which assistance fits neatly with Russian 

priorities, containing both humanitarian and recovery 

components. 

56. (C) We can also emphasize programs that help create jobs 

and job opportunities:  microfinance (where feasible), credit 

cooperatives and small business development, and educational 

exchanges.  U.S. sponsored training programs for credit 

cooperatives and government budgeting functions have been 

very popular.  Exchanges, through the IVP program and 

Community Connections, are an especially effective way of 

exposing future leaders to the world beyond the narrow 

propaganda they have received, and to generate a multiplier 

effect in enterprise.  In addition to the effects the 

programs themselves can have in providing alternatives to 

religious extremism, such assistance can also have a 

demonstration effect:  showing the Russians that improved 

governance and delivery of services can be more effective in 

stabilizing the region than attempts to impose order by force. 

57. (C) Lastly, we need to look ahead in our relations with 

Azerbaijan and Georgia to ensure that they become more active 

and effective players in helping to contain instability in 

the North Caucasus.  That will serve their own security 

interests as well.  Salafis need connections to their 

worldwide network.  Strengthening border forces is more 

important than ever.  Azerbaijan, especially, is well placed 

to trade with Dagestan and Chechnya.  The ethnic Azeris, 

Lezghis and Avars living on both sides of the 

Azerbaijan-Dagestan border and friendly relations between 

Russia and Azerbaijan are tools for promoting stability. 

Conclusion 

-------- 

58. (C) The situation in the North Caucasus is trending 

towards destabilization, despite the increase in security 

inside Chechnya.  The steps we believe Putin must take are 

those needed to reverse that trend, and the efforts we have 

outlined for ourselves are premised on a desire to promote a 

lasting stabilization built on improved governance, a more 

active civil society, and steps towards democratization.  But 

we must be realistic about Russia's willingness and ability 

to take the necessary steps, with or without our assistance. 

Real stabilization remains a low probability.  Sound policy 

on Chechnya is likely to continue to founder in the swamp of 

corruption, Kremlin infighting and succession politics.  Much 

more probable is a new phase of instability that will be felt 

throughout the North Caucasus and have effects beyond. 

BURNS 

BURNS WAS TOTALLY WRONG... AND STILL IS AS HEAD OF THE CIA....

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