Civil Society and Peace-building in the North and South Caucasus ...

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ABDULLAYEVA: We have a dialog, and I am proud to say that we have a dialog on both sides at a non-governmental level. At the same time, we have a dialog between the NGOs and the official structures and the international organizations. For a long time, international organizations involved in the dispute between the two sides did not recognize public diplomacy and nongovernmental organizations’ opportunities in dialog and peace building. But I am proud to say that about two weeks ago, the OSCE, one of the important international organizations involved in the conflict resolution, made a decision to work with NGOs, human rights protection organizations, and organizations involved in peace building. But we started our dialog before. We sent our proposals and projects and programs to all international organizations who were interested in the dispute, and to our government. KUKLINA: We have a one-sided dialog with the government, if you could call it a dialog. At the beginning of the second war, we sent Putin a letter asking, “What is going on? What is the legal status of this war?” He was silent. Then in the media, several terms were used to describe the second war, including, “anti-terrorist actions” or “the fight against international terrorism.” But, there was still no legal status of the war. Then we asked him about human rights violations. We noted that draftees should not be sent to the conflict zone involuntarily. Okay, he cancelled one decree, and the other one, which says, “After six months, the soldier has no right to refuse to go to the war.” Can you call that a dialog? This is the dialog between the state and the NGO. But inside the society there is a lot of dialog. I am a member of the permanent acting conference on the stabilization of the situation in the Northern Caucasus. There is a lot of dialog and many proposals. At one time, we favored a proposal to begin negotiations with Maskhadov, to satisfy him with a dignified retirement, and to start a new phase of the political process from this point. The Chechen people submitted this proposal, and we liked it. But now the situation has changed again. We also have a dialog with the international structures: the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the OSCE and so on. But they are tied up with their mandates and all of their intergovernmental policies. For example, we proposed to Mary Robinson that since no one knows what to do about Chechnya, a multilateral commission on Chechnya should be organized. This multilateral commission would include Russian and international NGOs, international structures, federal authorities and so on. It was my impression that our commissioner on human rights liked this idea, but then she thought, “How could I organize such a thing? There is no possibility. There is no mechanism.” She is limited by her mandate and by UN procedures. That is the kind of dialog we have inside society. QUESTION: Do any of your organizations have informal contact with responsive leaders or commanders in the military with whom you could have some reasonable dialog, and then try to use the interests of the military in reform to push some of these things forward, or, perhaps, to find ways of opening or making more transparent the war itself? KUKLINA: Thank you for your question, because I forgot to discuss this. Yes. In February we had the Second International Congress of Soldiers’ Mothers for Life and Freedom. We worked out eleven resolutions, which we sent to all the state authorities concerned, and first of all to the military. For the first time in the eleven-year life of our organization, we received a very detailed answer from the Chief of Staff, signed by Kvashmil. It is a very interesting document, and we are very grateful to the Chief of Staff for writing such a document. But it is so typical of the general position of the military – they didn’t take responsibility for anything. They say, “We are acting on orders. We are the military; we have to act on orders. So nothing is our fault. We are acting according to the laws.”
In listing the laws that they must follow, he mentioned a lot of secret documents. And we are grateful, because our next step will be to send him questions, “What kind of documents are these secret documents?” If they are concerned with human rights, these documents should be known to society. We are very grateful to the Chief of Staff for deciding to begin an official dialog with us. There is also the so-called Coordination Council, which consists of the military and the Soldiers’ Mothers organizations. In the Second World War, they activated their efforts to strengthen their so-called Twin Committees. It is the organization of soldiers’ parents who are acting under the aegis of the Minister of Defense. They are trying to strengthen this group of organizations. What they are doing, for example, is spreading a lot of propaganda in Krasnaya Zvezda, the official newspaper. They are also giving humanitarian aid and opening a very narrow path into the military units in Chechnya to deliver humanitarian aid and to give to each soldier his part of envelopes of sweets or other items. We are not doing such things, though our regional committee sometimes uses the humanitarian aid to penetrate the military units. But it is another thing. In Moscow, we don’t deal with such kinds of humanitarian actions. But we are members of this Coordination Council, because we prefer to keep our hands in everything and to know all the information. I think in general they failed with the strengthening of these committees. On the other hand, there is a state program of military–patriotic education in schools. That is a strategic step on the part of the government. ABDULLAYEVA: We have experience with dialog with our military structures, too. Within our organization, the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, we have a commission that acts like the Soldiers’ Mothers. They have started cooperating with Russian Soldiers’ Mothers. Sometimes very funny stories come from these structures. For example, even two years after the cease-fire, they didn’t make a statement about army mobilization. Young people were in the army for five or six years. Because it was so difficult psychologically, many deserted. We raised this question and sent a letter to the staff in the Ministry of Defense. We asked them what had happened and why, when there haven’t been battles and there is a cease-fire, was the rule still in place. Do you know what answer we received? They called us and asked for a private meeting. They said, “Please, raise this question in front of our boss, the Minister of Defense. It is a very appropriate question, but we cannot raise it ourselves. Please, if possible, organize a mass mailing of letters to the Minister.” It was clear that they were afraid of losing their jobs. We did it, and since that time, we have had very good relations with the military. Sometimes we receive some cowardly questions. They are very useful for us and useful for them. They want to solve a problem, but they cannot do it themselves. For us, the ratification of the Geneva Convention was very important. It didn’t work at first in our country. First we raised the question of signing and ratifying it in both of our countries. The Soldiers’ Mothers organization from the Armenian side heard us, and we had joint activity together. We were interested in the treatment of the prisoners of war and the hostages. According to the Geneva Convention, hostages are not allowed, so they should be released without conditions. But the treatment of prisoners of war on both sides was unfortunately very cruel. We raised the question of passing domestic laws in accordance with the Geneva Convention. People violating these laws should be arrested. We succeeded in this. QUESTION: I have a couple of questions. One, you talked about public opinion in this war versus the last one. I was wondering, as we watched this war begin at the same time as Putin was coming to power, it seemed like support of Putin and support of the war were very much tied together. I wonder if that is still true? As Putin’s approval ratings are still pretty high, is there any
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