Brookings: Topics - Caucasus

The Chechen War Comes to Boston

Pavel K. Baev — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

In the days that have passed since the terrorist attack in Boston, the many details of this crime and the even greater volume of speculations have still provided no satisfactory explanation of reasons and motives. What had seemed to be a picture of an émigré family working hard for their pieces of the American dream turned out to be a story of failed socialization and a frustrated search for identity that turned into blind hatred. The US media has focused on the blunders of the security services in preventing this premeditated crime, on the shortcomings of the American immigration policy (currently distorted by the deadlocked battles in the US Congress), or on the continuing mutations of Islamic extremism. There is, however, a twist to this tragic story that sets it apart from other cases of quiet Americans turning into Muslim fanatics. This twist originates in the humanitarian catastrophe in the North Caucasus and spins through the protracted agony of the Chechen diaspora.

One family in the trail of tears

The uprooting of the Tsarnaev family was a micro-episode in Stalin’s punishment of the Chechens and other peoples that were forcefully displaced from the Caucasus and dumped into Siberia and Central Asia in February 1944. Most of the survivors were allowed to return to their devastated villages in 1957, but the Tsarnaevs, who had managed to find steady jobs in Kyrgyzstan, opted to stay. It was the fast decomposition of social fabric in the newly-independent Kyrgyzstan after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 that forced them to flee, but the North Caucasus, which had been badly affected by the war that engulfed Chechnya in 1994, proved to be an equally unwelcoming home. An attempt to return to Central Asia was another failure, and they joined the sad journey of many Chechen families moving from temporary shelters in Turkey to refugee centers in Poland to asylum-seekers institutions in Austria or Norway. The difference was that this family ended up in the US, where the Chechen community is so small that, much to the dismay of the Czech Republic, first reports on the manhunt misrepresented the Tsarnaev brothers as Czechs.

As he passed his teenage years in Boston suburbia, Tamerlan Tsarnaev never developed a feeling that he could fit in despite his moderate success as amateur boxer. It is unclear how he convinced his American girlfriend to convert to Islam and to marry him, but it is a fact that he was once arrested for beating her. His father Anzor dismissed that episode as nonsense: “In America, you can’t touch a woman,” implying that in the Caucasus, a self-respecting man wouldn’t think twice about it. Unable to find a job at 26, Tamerlan was probably deeply frustrated with the role of house-father taking care of his baby daughter, while his wife supported the household with her salary. His sister married an American and cut ties with the family, but Tamerlan had a strong influence on his younger brother Dzhokhar. Still a teenager, the youngest Tsarnaev was struggling with college courses and his habit of smoking marihuana didn’t help.

The call of the war

Confused about their identity, both brothers kindled a passion for their imaginary homeland Chechnya, but it was the older one who found a way to blend this yearning with a progressively consuming devotion to Islam. The local mosque was unable to satisfy this craving and he turned to surfing through the archipelago of proselytizing and extremist websites. His parents could have checked that journey, but a few years ago they returned to Russia and settled in Makhachkala, Dagestan. In early 2012, Tamerlan came to visit them and stayed for as long as six months. It was this exposure to war as a way of life that most probably sealed his violent radicalization.

Dagestan is indeed the theater of a protracted low-intensity civil war of unique complexity, in which feuds between criminal clans are barely distinguishable from guerilla attacks of rebels of various persuasions and underground Islamic networks challenge the alliance of authorities and clergy. According to NGO data for 2012, 405 people were killed and 290 wounded in the republic. Russian society pays scant attention to the shootouts and explosions, and in the West, this smoldering war in a far corner of Europe is completely forgotten. Russian troops stick to their routine of counter-terrorist operations, but the rebels now see themselves not as ‘al-Qaeda franchises’ but as a part of the powerful revival of political Islam. Tamerlan had plentiful opportunities to internalize this powerful message.

Kadyrov can and will deny everything

Russian media is full of speculations about the ‘setup’ of the Tsarnaev brothers and ‘plots’ of US special services, but these conspiracy theories avoid one person who has benefitted from the Boston bombing – Chechnya’s warlord-president Ramzan Kadyrov. He described Tamerlan and Dzhokhar as ‘products of American culture’ but counts on this terrible incident to severely discredit the whole Chechen diaspora, which he seeks to terrorize with every means available. He was irked by his de-facto inclusion in the ‘Magnitsky list’ and knows that the Obama administration has suffered a painful ‘lesson’. More importantly, he expects that Moscow has registered the message that cutting federal subsidies to Chechnya would be unhelpful. US investigators will struggle to establish how the idea of taking the ‘jihad’ from the war-torn Mahachkala to the finish line of the Boston marathon was planted in Tamerlan’s head, but Kadyrov, the master of terror in Grozny, had a good week and enjoys being untouchable in the matter.

Authors

Pavel K. Baev

Publication: NRK

Image Source: © Handout . / Reuters

The Limits of U.S. Cooperation with Russia on Counterterrorism

Fiona Hill — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

In the wake of the Boston bombings, some have speculated whether cooperation on counter-terrorism could put the U.S.-Russian relationship back on a more stable footing at a particular tense moment in bilateral relations. This will not be an easy task, even if both President Putin and President Obama are willing to try.

When Vladimir Putin became Russian president in the 2000s, coordination on anti-terrorism efforts was his central idea for Russian-U.S. cooperation. Chechnya was an integral element for Putin. Even before the events of September 11, 2001, Putin repeatedly warned the United States of the connection between Russia’s Chechen insurgency and international terrorism. Now, 12 years later, when terrorists of Chechen ethnicity have struck the United States itself, that connection appears to have been made for him.

On Tuesday April 16, right after the Boston bombings, Putin was quick to extend his condolences to Obama and to try to revitalize Russian-U.S. cooperation on counter-terrorism. In fact, Putin’s message to Obama in response to the Boston bombings is almost identical to his message to President Bush after the 9/11 attacks, when Russia extended similar offers of intelligence-sharing in Afghanistan.

The first question the U.S. intelligence services asked after word of the bombs was: did we pick up any “chatter” from al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups that would hint at this? Now we’re asking, did the Russian FSB (the successor to the KGB) pick up chatter from Chechen groups or other extremist networks in Russia, especially given the FSB’s already-established interest in Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers involved in the Boston bombings?

Read the full article »

Authors

Fiona Hill

Publication: MSNBC

Four Reasons Sens. Graham and McCain are Wrong about Military Detention for Dzhokar Tsarnaev

Benjamin Wittes — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:00:00 -0400

Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain were quick out of the box last night in declaring that the Obama administration should hold Dzhokar Tsarnaev in military detention for his role in the Boston bombing:

Now that the suspect is in custody, the last thing we should want is for him to remain silent. It is absolutely vital the suspect be questioned for intelligence gathering purposes. We need to know about any possible future attacks which could take additional American lives. The least of our worries is a criminal trial which will likely be held years from now.

Under the Law of War we can hold this suspect as a potential enemy combatant not entitled to Miranda warnings or the appointment of counsel. Our goal at this critical juncture should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks.

We remain under threat from radical Islam and we hope the Obama Administration will seriously consider the enemy combatant option.

We will stand behind the Administration if they decide to hold this suspect as an enemy combatant.

Bobby quickly explained why this is both unnecessary and a bad idea; this very fine Wall Street Journal blog sketches out why it would pose legal problems as well. But the idea has had legs on Twitter, so I want to bring together in one place and explain the several distinct but overlapping reasons why it would be not merely ill-advised but absolutely nuts to try to treat Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant.

Broadly speaking, there are four reasons:

First and most important, Tsarnaev may not be an enemy combatant. Graham and McCain warn that “The accused perpetrators of these acts were not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise, but terrorists trying to injure, maim, and kill innocent Americans.” That’s certainly true. But not every terrorist with a bomb is an enemy combatant whose military detention is authorized by law. Some are just killers with bombs. Under the AUMF as interpreted by the courts, and under the NDAA as passed by Congress, the administration is authorized to hold in military detention only those who are “part of” or “substantially supporting” Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces. Nothing that has come to light publicly has shown that Tsarnaev was operating as part of any group covered by the AUMF. Unless and until such evidence arises, military detention is not merely a bad idea. It is simply not legally available. Particularly for those of us who support military detention in appropriate circumstances and have argued for its propriety and legality, it is absolutely essential to reject it where the facts do not support it. Military detention does not flow legally from the fact of someone’s being more than just a common criminal. It flows from the fact of someone’s being a part of a military enemy’s fighting cadre. Calling for detention of people who don’t meet—or may not meet—that threshold comes perilously close to calling for a roving power to lock up nasty people.

Second, assuming for a moment that the facts as they emerge would support an enemy combatant designation, there’s the small matter of Tsarnaev’s citizenship. Tsarnaev is reportedly a naturalized American citizen, and the government’s appetite for the detention of American citizens under the laws of war has waned—and rightly so. This began under the Bush administration, which tried twice—in the early cases of Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla—to detain U.S. citizens under the laws of war and ultimately backed down both times. The question of whether such detention is legally appropriate for a U.S. citizen captured by law enforcement remains an open one. But it’s an open question that no sane executive would want to test in the presence of a viable alternative—like, say, an open-and-shut prosecution in federal court. As a matter of policy, it was informally off the table long ago, and the Obama administration made that informal policy formal. John Brennan, in a speech at Harvard Law School, declared:

when it comes to U.S. citizens involved in terrorist-related activity, whether they are captured overseas or at home, we will prosecute them in our criminal justice system. There is bipartisan agreement that U.S. citizens should not be tried by military commission.

Third, even if the reports of Tsarnaev’s citizenship prove erroneous, he was certainly captured in the United States, and the military detention of domestic captures is problematic for many of the same reasons that the detention of the citizen poses difficulties. Again, whether it is or is not legally available is an open question of law; this was the issue in the Al Marri case. But this is not a question of law that any administration should be eager to test. And just as it has adopted a policy of not testing the citizen detention question, the Obama administration has taken military detention off the table for domestic captures. As Brennan put it,

it is the firm position of the Obama Administration that suspected terrorists arrested inside the United States will—in keeping with long-standing tradition—be processed through our Article III courts. As they should be. Our military does not patrol our streets or enforce our laws—nor should it.

Fourth, even if all of these legal and policy problems could be overcome, as Bobby explained last night, military detention offers no clear advantages in this case and has several big disadvantages. The public safety exception to Miranda means the FBI has a considerable degree of flexibility in conducting this interrogation, so there’s no particular reason to expect the Bureau will be unable to glean from Tsarnaev the answers to the critical questions at stake right now: Are there accomplices still at large, and to what extent was the bombing the work of any foreign group? On the other hand, military detention would gravely complicate the longer-term interest in punishment and in Tsarnaev’s legitimate long-term incarceration. In the Hamdi and Padilla and Al Marri cases, the consequence of military detention was a substantially shorter sentence than the suspect’s conduct would have supported.

In short, there is simply no case for military detention here. By pushing for it, Sens. Graham and McCain risk bringing into disrepute the one avenue realistically open to those who want answers and justice.

***

This was reposted from Lawfare, where Wittes and others have been following the situation surrounding the Boston bombing. You can read more on the Lawfare Blog »

Authors

Benjamin Wittes

Image Source: © Lucas Jackson / Reuters

Al Qaeda is Probably Pleased with Boston Bombing

Bruce Riedel — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:40:00 -0400

The two Chechen immigrants apparently responsible for the terror attack on the Boston Marathon may never have had any contact with al Qaeda—or even a single member of al Qaeda—but they are likely soon to be lauded as “heroes” of the global jihad.

It is much too soon to come to any hard conclusions about the motives and intentions of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged perpetrators, but it is not too soon to understand how al Qaeda and associated jihadists see the Chechen struggle against Russia in the context of their own ideology and narrative. Al Qaeda has long seen the Chechen struggle as part of the global war between Islam and its enemies. For the extremists who run al Qaeda and related movements, Russia’s actions in Chechnya are no different than Israeli actions in Gaza, French actions in Mali, or American actions in Afghanistan. All are allegedly part of a global conspiracy against Islam that ranges from the Caucasus to Kashmir to Bali.

In an audio message issued less than two weeks ago, Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian leader of al Qaeda and its chief ideologue, said the greatest enemies of Islam are the “biggest criminals in Washington, Moscow and Tel Aviv.” Thus Zawahiri lumped American, Russia and Israel together as the enemies of Muslims everywhere.

For Zawahiri and his predecessor, Osama bin Laden, this argument that Islam is under siege by a global conspiracy is nothing new. Zawahiri and bin Laden began their careers fighting in Afghanistan against the Russians. The Chechen struggle against Russia is for them only a continuation of that war and indeed of the Central Asian and Caucasian Muslims’ struggle against Tsars, Commissars, and now Putin that goes back to the 18th century. Zawahiri himself was briefly arrested in Russia in the mid-1990s, apparently while he was actively assisting the Chechen insurgency. Bin Laden encouraged Saudis to go to Chechnya to fight Russia.

For angry young Muslims radicalized by what has happened in their own homeland, the al Qaeda narrative provides an explanation for a bigger struggle that involves not just their own country but the entire Muslim world. At the same time it also gives them more targets for their anger. If an angry Chechen cannot attack a Russian target, then a soft target in his own city in America or Europe—a marathon or another public space—is an easier target.

Al Qaeda has been encouraging just such attacks for the last several years. The Yemeni American Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike in 2011, articulated it in the English language web magazine he helped create, called Inspire, that also printed simple manuals for how to build a bomb in your family kitchen. The attempt by a Pakistani American, Faysal Shahzad, to blow up a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010 (which was foiled by NYPD at the last minute), was an early example of this kind of small but devastating attack. Shahzad has now become a hero in the al Qaeda narrative even though he failed in his attempt.

Whether al Qaeda had any role – direct or indirect by the internet – in the radicalization of these two men, it is likely to revel in the results of their attacks in Boston. While the attack was nowhere near the magnitude of 9/11, it has consumed the American media and political scene for almost a week so far, led to the unprecedented lockdown of an entire American city, and sent the White House itself into enhanced security.

Americans have every right to ask: Why do they hate us? Americans are not responsible for the ugly civil war in Chechnya, or the horrendous terrorist attacks carried out by Chechen terrorists in Moscow and other Russian cities. Unfortunately the global jihadist movement and its violent ideology doesn’t see the differences that we rightly see. For according to the narrative of Ayman Zawahiri, Islam is under attack from every direction, and the jihadist answer is to strike back in New York, Madrid, London, Toulouse—and now Boston.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Daily Beast

Image Source: © Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

The Unfolding Situation with the Boston Marathon Bombing Suspects

Benjamin Wittes — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:35:00 -0400

One quick thought on the unfolding situation in the Boston suburbs...where one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects is dead and the other is on murderous rampage: It is very important that the remaining suspect be taken alive.

The New York Times has identified the two suspects as Chechen brothers, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26—the latter of whom is apparently dead. The most important thing, of course, is to apprehend and stop the remaining suspect before anyone else is killed or hurt. That may require the use of lethal force, and the state and federal law enforcement officers who are dealing with this situation will use their best judgment as to how to protect the public—and themselves.

But it is critically important to understand what, if any, connection these suspects have both to overseas terrorist groups and to domestic folks not yet tied to the bombing, and that project will be far easier if the surviving Mr. Tsarnaev is not killed. The question is important both for obvious reasons—if some group is attacking the United States, we need to understand with maximum precision who that is and who is involved—and for less obvious legal reasons: Is this a home-grown terrorist problem that’s purely a matter of criminal law? Is this a feature of the US’s existing armed conflict with Al Qaeda and its associated forces? Or is this some new overseas terrorist threat—an extra-AUMF threat—against the United States playing out in the streets of Cambridge and Watertown? Or is this an example of a blurry line between categories? The chance to interrogate a Mr. Tsarnaev who can still talk is the quickest and easiest way to answer these questions.

***

This was reposted from Lawfare, where Ben Wittes is following the situation in the Boston suburbs. You can read more on the Lawfare Blog »

Authors

Benjamin Wittes

Publication: Lawfare

Image Source: © Handout . / Reuters

From Chechnya to Boston: Bombing Suspects and a Trail of Homegrown Radicalism and Terror

Fiona Hill — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:00:00 -0400

Two young men—brothers Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev with origins in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus regions—have been connected to this week’s bomb attacks at the Boston Marathon. They lived, for a time, in Dagestan, which is recognized as the epicenter of the Islamic insurgency that spilled over from Chechnya. Senior Fellow Fiona Hill, director of the Center on the United States and Europe, says Chechnya and Russia have spent centuries at war and it isn’t surprising that this conflict, which has spanned generations, would provide fertile ground to incite and radicalize sympathizers wherever they happen to live.

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From Chechnya to Boston: A Trail of Homegrown Radicalism and Terror

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From Chechnya to Boston: A Trail of Homegrown Radicalism and Terror

Authors

Fiona Hill

Workshop on Protecting Rights of Civilians in Natural Disasters in Central Asia and the Caucasus

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 15-16, 2012

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus are susceptible to both sudden (such as earthquakes, floods, landslides) and slow-onset disasters (such as drought and land degradation). In addition, climate change scenarios predict more extreme temperatures and precipitation as well as changes in the intensity and frequency of weather-related natural hazards. Experience from many disaster areas has shown that the disaster response is most successful when both governments and humanitarian actors use a rights-based approach when preparing for, responding to and recovering from disasters. Unfortunately, in many cases, human rights concerns are rarely taken into consideration in disaster management.

Given this reality, the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and UN OCHA jointly convened a workshop with key players in the field, including government representatives (responsible for disaster relief and disaster risk reduction), Red Cross/Red Crescent representatives, major national NGOs and civil society representatives and key UN actors with the aim to increase the capacity of involved actors to incorporate human rights and protection issues in preparing for, responding to, and/or recovering from natural disasters. From the Brookings Institution, Elizabeth Ferris (co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement) and Daniel Petz (senior research assistant on natural disasters) planned and engaged with partners for this workshop.

Specific overall objectives of the workshop included:

Increasing awareness of the protection challenges that exist in natural disasters and activities that promote the rights of disaster-affected people;
Clarifying the role of governments and humanitarian actors in protection in natural disasters;
Increase awareness of the IASC Operational Guidelines on the Protection of Persons in Situations of Natural Disasters and the IASC Framework on Durable Solutions and how they can be applied in the Central Asia and the Caucasus;
Discussing good practices in terms of regional, national and local monitoring mechanisms of humanitarian response in natural disasters;
Generating specific recommendations to strengthen policy and action for rights protection at the local, national and regional levels.

Download the sythnesis report (PDF) »

Event Materials

Central Asia and Caucasus Workshop Report 2012

Internally Displaced Persons and Host Communities: The Limits of Hospitality?

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:00:00 -0400

Event Information

March 22, 2012
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM EDT

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Most of the world’s 27 million people who have been internally displaced by conflict do not live in camps; rather they live with family members or friends or are dispersed within communities. One frequently overlooked aspect of displacement is the impact of internally displaced persons (IDPs) on the communities which host them—communities which are often poor and marginalized themselves.

On March 22, the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) hosted a discussion of two recent reports on IDP and host community relations: "Can You Be an IDP for Twenty Years? A Comparative Field Study on the Protection Needs and Attitudes Toward Displacement Among IDPs and Host Communities in Azerbaijan” and “The Effects of Internal Displacement on Host Communities: A Case Study of Suba and Ciudad Bolívar Localities in Bogotá, Colombia.” Panelists included Chaloka Beyani, United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons and co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement, and Roberto Vidal, professor of law at Pontifica Universidad Javierana in Bogota, Colombia. Mary Werntz, head of delegation at the ICRC, provided introductory remarks. Senior Fellow Elizabeth Ferris, co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement, moderated the discussion.

After the program, the panelists took audience questions.

Participants

Moderator

Panelists

Mary Werntz

Head of Regional Delegation
International Committee for the Red Cross

Chaloka Beyani

UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of IDPs
Co-Director, Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement

Roberto Vidal

Professor of Law
Pontifica Universidad Javierana

Conflicts in the Caucasus: Prospects for Resolution

Fiona Hill — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's Note: In testimony before the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Fiona Hill discusses the latest developments in the Caucasus, focusing on the relationship between Georgia and the countries in the region and outlining policies that could help ease tensions.

I want to begin my remarks by addressing directly the questions that the Helsinki Commission posed to us for the briefing. The questions, of course, were already distributed to all of you in the announcement. And Michael Ochs has already begun to frame the first part of those questions about where the conflicts stand today, and he posed the question about the differences in terms "frozen," "protracted," "still unresolved." And I think, you know, I can certainly speak on behalf of my other two colleagues here that we cannot call these conflicts frozen, and indeed, Michael said that himself; protracted most certainly, and yes, still unresolved.

But these are very dynamic conflicts, as all of you in the room know, and the situation on the ground, including in Nagorno-Karabakh, which Michael actually posed, has much changed in the last 15 years. In fact, yes, there's been some significant changes in all of these conflicts in their on-the-ground configuration. And it's not just been the outbreak of war in Georgia in 2008 that was the only event here, though perhaps this has been the most notable event. What we saw with the war in Georgia, of course, is that the configuration of contested boundaries changed as a result of that war. And we also got some new dimensions to that specific complex of conflicts with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. We have a controversial cease-fire document that has become itself a focal point of contestation. And the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by their handful of rather small states as well as Russia that Michael referred to has brought a whole new dimension to this conflict.

We've also had the introduction of new international actors into the broader conflict zone. Previously, of course, the U.N. and the OSCE were the principal international players, but now we have the EU, in the form of the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia. And that also brings, again, a whole array of different dimensions to the conflicts in the region.

Now, the only way in which the conflicts can be deemed frozen is that, as Michael also said, that the initial parameters for resolution that we laid out, which was this desire to try to bridge the demands for self-determination by the individual peoples on territories of the conflicted and contested regions, with the imperative of maintaining the territory integrity of the respective states, has reached an impasse. It's that concept that has become frozen, if anything is frozen at all.

And what we've seen over this last almost 20 years now in terms of thinking about these conflicts is that increasingly, and especially now given the obvious developments in 2008, Abkhazia and South Ossetia have rejected the increasingly elaborate attempts to find a proposal for ensuring their autonomy, while at the same time the two principal states that are involved on the other sides of the conflict, Azerbaijan and Georgia, have found it very difficult to accept proposals that seem, at least have the appearance of falling short of the full reintegration of the territories back into their states, all of them not seeming to come under their full sovereignty. So this is really what Michael was talking about, about the frozen aspects of it. And it's really impasse that we've reached, the inability to find this bridge.

Now, the other question that was posed here is, is the resumption of armed hostilities a serious threat? I think as we saw in 2008 and we've seen continuously since, there is always the risk of miscalculation and of seemingly isolated incidents of violence sparking out of control. Since the war in Georgia, we've seen repeated incidents of violence in Georgia itself and in the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. We've also seen at many times what looks to be the result of deliberate provocation to up the political ante when we've reached critical junctures in negotiations, and that's been, unfortunately, very much the case in Nagorno-Karabakh, where we've seen consistently relatively large numbers of casualties in cease-fire violations and sniper attacks along the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh. And also, we've seen a great deal of bellicose rhetoric on all sides, especially at the state level in Azerbaijan and also in Armenia, that have further inflamed this situation and have increased the potential for violent incidents to get out of hand.

And then, as Michael mentioned, although this isn't the specific topic of our briefing today, but obviously it's an important component, we have the added complication of armed hostilities that are already under way in North Caucasus across the border. There, insurgency and violence are a fact; they're not just something of dispute. And as all of you in this room know, historically, the violence in the North Caucasus bled into violence in the South Caucasus. The two areas are intrinsically interlinked in terms of their populations and their shared history within both the Russian Empire and in the Soviet Union. And the fact that armed hostilities are ongoing in the North Caucasus really increases the level of tension in the South.

And I would say, unfortunately, the situation in the North Caucasus is likely to become more, rather than less, tense as we look ahead over the next couple of years. We're seeing now turbulent politics in Russia in the work of the recent Duma elections. We don't know how that is all going to unfold. We have next March's presidential election in Russia, and obviously there's going to be a lot of scrutiny on the various regions as to see how people are going to engage in the election campaign over the next few months.

And then of course we have the impending event of the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, which has been designated a national priority project by the Russian government and has obviously become quite a focal point in the North Caucasus. Moscow is extremely concerned about the risks to the Olympic project from the ongoing insurgency. Moscow also, to some degree, was very concerned about the implications of Sochi of its ongoing disputes with Georgia, and we can say that Sochi was a factor in propelling Georgia and Russia toward war in 2008. And we could also, of course, point to many instances where cross-border insurgency, particularly spillover from Chechnya, has resulted in Russia's intervention directly in Georgia's internal affairs.

And the Georgian government's quite recent explicit support for North Caucasian groups, including those who are concentrated around in Sochi, the – (inaudible) – and their grievances against Moscow and against the Russian state have certainly caught Moscow's attention and raised the political tension even further. So I would say that unfortunately, over the next couple of years, we see potentially even more dangerous situation emanating where North and South Caucasus become intertwined.

Now, the other question was raised about what factors impede a settlement. And as I started to put together my bullets for this, I could have gone on perhaps for pages, and I know that Wayne – (laughs) – and Tom would also like something to say, so I've confined myself to I think it's sort of seven bullets here, which is of course not at all exhaustive of all of the different factors.

Michael already mentioned perhaps the primary fact, of the fact that the roots of the conflicts are very long and are intrinsic to the set of the administrative structures and the nationality policies of the Soviet Union. And as Michael said, the roots of most of the conflicts date back to the 1980s and, in some cases, some of the factors for conflict go back to the czarist era. So it makes it very difficult to basically disentangle some of the elements of conflict here.

But as most of us know, in any case, the independent modern states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were never established in their administrative configuration to be independent. They were intended to be interdependent with each other, as well as dependent on Moscow, and that is primarily one of the problems that we see. And the Constitution of the Soviet Union in theory, at least, provided for autonomous regions like Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh to also appeal to Moscow for a change in their status. And as Michael alluded, some of that was already underway by the late '80s and certainly in the 1990s. And that also includes republics in the North Caucasus as well. So we have a very complicated situation to handle here.

Also, none of the contested territories, or indeed the states themselves, have really had any independent existence outside of the framework of the Soviet Union or of the Russian Empire, with of course the exception of a very brief period of independence after the collapse of the Russian Empire and just after World War I.

The other fact that we need to bear in mind is that conflicts do not exist in a vacuum. And Michael already referred to Transnistria and said that that was not a subject of a discussion today. But in addition to strong parallels with Transnistria and the conflict obviously that also involves Moldova, there are distinct parallels between these conflicts in the Caucasus and conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, such as Kosovo, and we could go on in a broader sense there, but also Cyprus and indeed the Middle East conflict between Israel and the territories of Palestine, the Palestinian territories.

And a lack of settlement in each of these other cases that I've listed here provides, in fact, a rather negative example, unfortunately, for the protracted conflicts in the South Caucasus. If there had been, say, a major breakthrough in Cyprus or elsewhere, we might have something positive to point to that might provide a different frame of reference. What we've seen instead, unfortunately, as of the attempts to resolve the conflict in Kosovo and the disputes between Kosovo and Serbia provided, in fact, yet another negative factor in the resolution of the South Caucasus' conflicts and can be said to also impede a settlement.

The United States government explicitly denied, of course, the existence of any parallels between Kosovo and the South Caucasus and the fact that this could possibly set a precedent for a Caucasus resolution. But in fact, what the international recognition of Kosovo did, because it was treated entirely separately from this, has greatly complicate the situation between Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Tom de Waal wrote very eloquently about this at various points just after that decision. The parallels and precedent were quite obvious, certainly to people on the ground, and they were explicitly used, of course, by the Russian government in its engagement of all the three parties to the Georgian complex of conflicts, and also explicitly used by the Russian government in their direct involvement in the conflicts and in the war.

Kosovo was used as the point of reference, in fact, for Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia's independence, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia now assert that, on the basis of the Kosovo precedent and Russia's recognition of their independence, even if it hasn't been picked up on an international level, that they should no longer be expected to negotiate their relationship with Georgia on the old terms. And clearly Georgia – because nobody else has recognized this, and in fact because of, you know, the long nature and details of the conflict – naturally refuses to engage with the territories on these terms in any way that might suggest some kind of implicit acknowledgement of any change whatsoever in their status. So we've got ourselves into another impasse as a result of what happened in Kosovo.

In even the convoluted way that I'm describing it here, you can see that it's become difficult for experts like myself to even talk about this without raising a whole host of additional questions that we have to prefigure everything with, seven or eight bullet points of caveats before we even mention the issue.

Now, notably, of course, Russia's not made the parallel between Kosovo and Nagorno-Karabakh, nor has it made any attempt to recognize its independence, which underscores how much bilateral political antipathy between Russia and Georgia has framed Moscow's response to the conflict and to the conflicts in general.

Now, another couple of factors just to mention before getting onto the last set of questions about the negotiating formats: One very important factor that we see now, and this is where things really have changed in Karabakh and elsewhere over the last 15 to 20 years is we've got a whole generation of people who have grown up on both sides of each conflict without any experience of interaction with each other. And they obviously have very different attitudes, very different experiences, very different expectations and intentions from the generation before them. And new relationships have developed between populations in those outside the region. So we have a whole different dimension and a whole different outlook now on the conflicts from what we had 20 years ago.

Also, local governments, and I mean this both at the level of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and then Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, have also had their own problems in establishing and consolidating and keeping a hold of their own legitimacy, and the conflicts have become part of this issue. And what we've seen is when there's been a lot of questions about democratic developments, whether there have been contested elections, whether there have been other questions about the legitimacy of local leaders, the governments have often resorted at all different levels to rhetoric about the conflicts to compensate for and deflect away from political failings. South Ossetia, which we may get into in the discussion, is a classic case in point, right now after a contested and rather disputed election just in the last month.

Now this, of course, has an impact on the negotiating format, this legitimacy issue on the part of local governments, because the international negotiating mechanisms that were to set up and respond to the armed conflicts of the 1990s have now become part of the domestic political scene in each case. They've been around, frankly, as long as the governments have been around, as long as the independent states have been around. They've almost evolved along with the conflicts and they're no longer seen as neutral. And they're often presented as different actors on different sides – by different actors on different sides in the Caucasus as part of the problem. They've become very politicized, not by the fault necessarily of those people involved in the negotiations, but just by being a fact of existing so long. They use bi-regional leaders frequently as an excuse for avoiding compromise. In the case of Karabakh, you know, for example, we frequently hear after failed rounds of negotiations, well, the Minsk Group didn't do their job properly. Nobody says, well, I, the leader of this or that entity, couldn't really reach a compromise this time because of X, Y domestic factors; this wasn't a good juncture. It's very easy to blame the Minsk Group for them, rather than air out all of the dirty laundry difficulties or all the difficulties of your domestic politics that have prevented you from being able to move forward in any way.

One of the other issues that we're currently facing also in the negotiations is the lack of time and resources on part of the international players. The Minsk Group has been around so long that the world has changed, and now we have the inevitable press of other international issues. And the impact of ongoing economic crises on diplomacy, people don't have the same time and effort or the same money to expend on these ventures as they did before.

And what we've also seen is the U.S., Europe and all the other international entities, the U.N. and OSCE, have all developed their own approaches to conflict. They've all put money into their individual mechanisms. And everyone is now facing the question of what to do with dwindling budgets and dwindling cadres of international diplomats about what can they do. So is it possible, for example, to join forces for a concerted effort to push things forward? That's one of the questions about, could we have a new negotiating format, and at different points, people have suggested this.

However, I would say that it's not entirely clear, and Wayne and Tom I think will have a lot of opinions on this, as to whether setting something new up would actually solve the conflicts. We actually saw in the last year an intense personal push, and I would actually say quite a sincere personal push, by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Nagorno-Karabakh. He spent a lot of time and effort in bringing the leaders together and trying to push things forward. He didn't really get anywhere. And it wasn't really the lack of effort on his part or the resources that was the problem; it was simply that again, this was not the good juncture for the conflicting parties to reach a resolution.

So, and my final point is what can the United States or what can others do to facilitate a resolution is perhaps we need to go back to the drawing board about what do we mean by resolution, because there's not, as I said at the very beginning and as Michael has made clear, any status quo ante to refer back to or even to go back to, given the nature of the conflicts. The U.S. and everybody else has their own domestic political problems that make it difficult always to make a firm push on issues. We have as many problems in being an honest broker as the regional leaders do in really themselves being able to be honest about finding a path forward.

And by always pushing for the bridge, the final resolution that we've putting everything together, we always set ourselves up for failure. So the question is can we set ourselves a different set of goals, and Tom and Wayne and others have been engaged in efforts like this, and it would be good to hear directly from them about some of the things we could do.

But one thing where we have seen, where there has been a breakthrough is not on the conflicts itself but on (creative pollutions ?), but has been recently on WTO and the negotiations between Georgia and Russia. And maybe this is just something that we can think about for moving forward.

In the case of the WTO negotiations between Georgia and Russia, obviously the critical issue of status and the status of Karabakh – of, sorry, of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, was a critical issue. The Georgians are very worried that any agreement that they reached would somehow have an implication to the conflict. But what we saw instead was very creative mediation on the part of the Swiss. The United States wasn't out in front; we were leading from behind.

And the final resolution in this – for this very narrow thing was outsourcing of the customs monitoring to a private entity. So the question is, can private entities, can these kind of creative solutions play a role where the larger negotiation formats have failed?

Read the full testimony, including the briefing from Helsinki Commission Policy Advisor Michael Ochs »

Authors

Fiona Hill

Publication: U.S. Helsinki Commission

"Can You Be an IDP for Twenty Years?" Study of IDPs and Host Communities in Azerbaijan

Yulia Gureyeva-Aliyeva and Tabib Huseynov — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

This report is available in English and Azerbaijani.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Azerbaijan has one of the highest rates of displaced persons per capita in the world and has been grappling with internal displacement for nearly two decades. These facts raise questions regarding how the vulnerabilities and protection needs of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) have changed over time and how their needs compare with those of the general Azerbaijani population.

This study examines the vulnerabilities and protection needs of IDPs and their neighbors in both urban and rural contexts. The findings of the study are largely based on field research and numerous interviews with IDPs and host communities in two urban contexts (Baku and Ganja) and two rural areas (Tartar and Agdam districts), as well as with state officials and relief organizations.

The study finds that the vulnerabilities and protection needs of IDPs in Azerbaijan are highly situation- and case-specific. In the last two decades some, but not all IDPs in urban settings—and to a lesser extent in rural areas—have carved out livelihoods in their places of displacement. As a result, the experience of IDP communities in Azerbaijan has not been homogeneous, nor have outcomes been the same for host communities. In some instances, IDPs may be faring better than members of host communities on certain criteria (such as access to social benefits, preferential treatment when applying for state controlled jobs), yet remain vulnerable on other criteria (such as housing). In some areas visited during this study IDP communities had better access to water than host communities or were benefitting from land belonging to others that they had occupied. In other instances the improvement of one protection need, such as housing, caused deterioration in other needs, such as access to land or livelihood opportunities. For example, one IDP settlement was built on open land previously used by IDPs’ livestock for grazing.

Another important finding of the study is that smaller IDP communities who live in remote villages and have no access to land are the most vulnerable and in need of protection. These are the communities which are often off the radar screen of both the government— including on the local and national levels—and relief organizations. They consistently fare worse in comparisons with local host communities, particularly in housing, access to livelihoods and land, and access to healthcare and documentation.

The government has taken demonstrable steps in recent years to improve the living conditions of IDPs. One major success was the elimination of the notorious IDP “tent camps” by the end of 2007. Today the Azerbaijani government spends a greater portion of its national wealth on IDP needs than any other country dealing with a displacement crisis. However, the government still has much to do to relocate the bulk of the IDP population to better housing conditions from the public buildings they currently live in, which are often dilapidated and characterized by overcrowded conditions. Furthermore, the government’s IDP assistance strategies do not facilitate the alleviation of the social marginalization suffered by IDPs and at the same time create resentment among the local population. Due to widespread socio-economic problems, local communities largely view the government’s support policies towards IDPs as unfair. They believe their own livelihoods are not significantly better than those of the IDPs.

There is considerable ambiguity over the concrete vulnerabilities of IDPs in comparison with host communities. In many instances, IDP protection needs have been satisfied at the expense of the local non-IDP population’s rights. This is particularly true in the context of property rights. At the time of displacement many IDPs in urban and rural areas arbitrarily seized houses and land, which belonged (or were assigned later) to local residents. According to executive decrees, IDPs cannot be evicted from their places of residence—even those which they do not legally own—unless they are provided with alternative living arrangements. This has led some homeowners to take their cases all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, which questioned the existing government practices as a violation of property rights. To avoid similar cases in the future, the government needs to accelerate the process of finding alternative housing solutions for IDPs occupying the lawfully-owned properties of local residents, or alternatively, compensate the latter for their unused property.

Some rural communities living near the frontline, which marks the dividing line between Armenian and Azerbaijani controlled territory, include both IDP and non-IDP communities. Both groups have special assistance needs that should be addressed by the government and international relief agencies. Due to their proximity to the frontline, these populations are particularly vulnerable to escalations in confrontations along the frontline and indiscriminate firing from almost daily cease-fire violations. The government recently responded to these needs by building protective walls to shield the civilian population from stray bullets.

The frontline communities also have to take risks to maintain their livelihoods. Because of land scarcity, people in these frontline areas—IDPs and locals alike—graze their cattle in areas close to “no-man’s-land” exposing themselves to the deadly risks of landmines and enemy fire.

Due to their location near the frontline and because a large part of their cultivation and grazing lands are under occupation, land privatization efforts carried out elsewhere by the Azerbaijani government have not been conducted in these frontline villages. Land has been divided provisionally among the local population and IDPs instead, essentially putting the local population on the same footing with the IDPs in that without formal deeds, bank loans and other credit mechanisms remain out of reach.

The government lacks a consistent assistance policy towards these frontline communities. For example, in one frontline village (Ahmadagali) the government responded to local needs by extending IDP status—with all the corresponding benefits—to the non-displaced population. The government however did not extend the same benefits to another frontline village in a similar situation (Gapanly). The lack of consistency could be an additional cause of frustration among the villagers in the frontline areas.

The examples above, as elaborated in the study, show that the old blanket approach of the government, in which IDPs are treated the same, does not allow for the efficient use of limited state funds. Over their twenty years of displacement IDPs have become quite a diverse group with various degrees of well-being, government policy should change to better target IDPs based on their individual vulnerabilities in the context of a general policy for combating poverty.

Recommendations:

There is a need to further study the narrowing differences between the IDPs and the general poor population and carry out regular surveys in order to better assess their vulnerabilities. This would facilitate a more informed policy aimed at designing tailored strategies to address the protection needs of both communities.
The government should recognize the differences within the various IDP communities and employ a differential policy approach targeting the most vulnerable groups of IDPs and local residents. Integrated assistance to IDPs and host communities, particularly in impoverished rural areas, such as access to irrigation and potable water for these communities, could improve livelihoods among these communities and increase the self-reliance of IDPs, thus easing the financial burden on the government.

There is room for improvement in the performance of the targeted social assistance program for IDPs through ensuring transparency at all stages and providing clear documentation and guidance to vulnerable households irrespective of their status.

The government, international donors and civil society need to closely monitor the effectiveness of state programs aimed at improving livelihoods throughout Azerbaijan and enact changes to ensure that both groups—IDPs and local residents—equally benefit from them.

The government should refrain from the resettlement of IDPs in close proximity of the frontline and should develop an emergency evacuation plan for the population living in these risk-affected areas.

The government also needs to establish clear consultation procedures on resettlement that would ensure that IDPs’ voices are heard and taken into account when constructing new settlements. This should not be limited to the physical location of the residence but should also include the conditions of the housing provided.

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Authors

Yulia Gureyeva-Aliyeva
Tabib Huseynov

Central Asia and the Caucasus – At the Crossroads of Eurasia in the 21st Century

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

June 22, 2011
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Twenty years after independence from the Soviet Union, the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus region are at a turning point in their economic history. With greater collaboration, these countries have an opportunity to accelerate their economic and social development. Reminiscent of this region’s centuries-old role on the Silk Road, Central Asia and the Caucasus can become an important economic link between the economic giants in Asia and Europe.

On June 22, Global Economy and Development at Brookings and the Emerging Market Forum hosted the launch of Central Asia and the Caucasus – At the Crossroads of Eurasia in the 21st Century (SAGE Publications, 2011). In it, Werner Hermann and Johannes F. Linn highlight papers that cover a broad range of issues affecting the Eurasian supercontinent including energy, the regional business environment, the impact of the global economic crisis, and old and new political rivalries. Panelists included Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Johannes Linn, senior resident scholar with the Emerging Markets Forum; Pradeep Mitra, former chief economist for Europe and Central Asia, the World Bank; and Martha Brill Olcott, senior associate, Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Senior Fellow Fiona Hill, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, moderated the discussion.

After the program, panelists took audience questions.

Audio

Central Asia and the Caucasus – At the Crossroads of Eurasia in the 21st Century

Transcript

Event Materials

Participants

Moderator

Panelists

Pradeep Mitra

Former Chief Economist, Europe and Central Asia
The World Bank

Martha Brill Olcott

Senior Associate, Russian and Eurasian Program
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Human Rights, Democracy and Displacement in Georgia

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 09:00:00 -0500

Event Information

November 19, 2010
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM EST

Root Room
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC

Since the conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the early 1990s, violence has erupted several times in Georgia, most notably in August 2008. Large-scale human rights violations characterized the August 2008 war, including the displacement of almost 150,000 people. By the time the fighting ended, Georgia had lost the last areas it controlled in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Russia subsequently recognized the independence of both. While most of those displaced in the August 2008 war have returned, over 200,000 people from earlier conflicts remain displaced.

On November 19, the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement will host a discussion of current issues around human rights, democracy and displacement in Georgia. The event will feature a presentation by Tinatin Khidasheli, international secretary of the Republican Party of Georgia, and Giorgi Chkheidze, executive director of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association. Following their remarks, Sam Patten, senior program manager for Eurasia at Freedom House, and Nadine Walicki, country analyst for the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, will join the discussion.

Senior Fellow Elizabeth Ferris, co-director of the Brookings-Bern Project, will provide introductory remarks and moderate the discussion. After the program, panelists will take audience questions.