Chechnya at War and Beyond by Anne Le Huérou Aude Merlin Amandine Regamey & Elisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski

Author:Anne Le Huérou, Aude Merlin, Amandine Regamey & Elisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317756163
Publisher: Routledge

Kadyrov: statebuilding and/or peacebuilding?

A 2010 report by a British parliamentary mission to Chechnya projected an almost Stalinist image of Kadyrov’s rule in Chechnya: “President Kadyrov has created a cult of personality and an image of being all-powerful within Chechnya – even many of the victims we met have great faith in his ability to put a stop to the human rights abuses perpetrated on a daily basis”. However, even this critical report was obliged to note that: “Shiny new schools, cranes busy with construction, a gleaming and impressive new Mosque – at first glance Grozny appears to be getting back on its feet after the appalling civil war of the 1990s” ([British] Parliamentary Human Rights Group Report 2010).

This grudging acceptance of the existence of a “negative”, rather than the desired “positive” (liberal democratic) peace illustrates the clash between pragmatism (interests) and principles (values) (Russell 2008b) that has engaged Western peacemakers since the Pax Europaea (Adamides and Constantinou 2012: 256–57) was so successful in democratizing former Soviet bloc countries post-1989. However, this project evidently ran out of both steam and sustainability following the onset of the world economic crisis of 2008. On the divided island of Cyprus the concept of a “European Peace” has been contrasted to a Pax Turca, with the authors categorizing the latter as the “accomplished peace”, whereas Pax Europaea is recognized as the “aspired” one (Adamides and Constantinou 2012). It is tempting to posit that, in Chechnya, Pax Ramzana (Checheniae?) likewise represents that which has been accomplished thus far rather than what might be aspired to. The problem in Chechnya, in Russia and elsewhere, is that it is people that we can most readily relate to (middle class, educated elites) that tend to be repressed in such semi-authoritarian societies.

This observation is important as the relative ease of democratization in Central and Eastern Europe was occasioned by the fact that the majority of former Soviet-bloc states contained, or had the potential to achieve, the three social components required of a strong liberal democracy: a degree of economic well-being; a strong, active and influential middle class (important in creating institutions that reflect and support middle-class values); and a national culture that tolerates diversity. The particularity of their experience in the transition to liberal democratic societies was encapsulated in Vaclav Havel’s celebrated observation that: “People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being” (Mac Ginty 2006: 81).

Russia, let alone Chechnya, lacks some if not all of these components and this fact goes a long way to explaining how difficult and, given the potential for instability, how undesirable, in terms of short-term stability and predictability, the transition to liberal democracy can be (Sakwa 2011: 1–51). That both Ramzan Kadyrov and Vladimir Putin continually stress the Eurasian, rather

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.