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57010 septembre 2004 — L’article de l’excellent John Laughland dans le Guardian du 8 septembre mérite toute notre attention. Intitulé : « The Chechens' American friends — The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own », il met d’abord en évidence les extraordinaires soupçons anti-russes qui ont accompagné les événements de Beslan, jusqu’à mettre sur un pied égal de responsabilité, pour ne pas dire pire, Poutine et les preneurs d’otages/massacreurs d’enfants.
[Cette attitude nous avait valu une réaction violente de Poutine devant les journalistes occidentaux,
« “Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House, engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?” Putin said to a group of Western academics and journalists late Monday night. “You find it possible to set some limits in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child killers?” »]
Laughland développe une analyse en nous rappelant quelques bonnes nouvelles que nous aurions tendance à oublier. Principalement, il s’agit de l’engagement des fameux néo-conservateurs (neocons) aux côtés des Tchétchènes, notamment sous la forme d’un lobby puissant à Washington, D.C., où rien ne fonctionne que par lobbying et l’argent qui va avec. Parlant des « mounting criticism » (contre Poutine à l’occasion de l’affaire de Beslan, — citation de l’honorable Sunday Times), Laughland développe les remarques suivantes :
« On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called “mounting criticism” is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American supporters. The leading Russian critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov — men associated with the extreme neoliberal market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin — and the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head office, this influential thinktank — which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the US restructure the “Greater Middle East” — has been quoted repeatedly in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.
» These people peddle essentially the same line as that expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed Zakaev, the London exile who wrote in these pages yesterday. Other prominent figures who use the Chechen rebellion as a stick with which to beat Putin include Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like Zakaev, was granted political asylum in this country, although the Russian authorities want him on numerous charges. Moscow has often accused Berezovsky of funding Chechen rebels in the past.
» By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are putting it about that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only western channels reported live, the implication being that Putin's Russia remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while watching both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels had far better information and images from Beslan than their western competitors. This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled “distinguished Americans” who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the “war on terror”.
» They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be “a cakewalk”; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.
» The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable “Muslim” causes, Bosnia and Kosovo — implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilise the situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration. »
On notera déjà deux choses intéressantes :
• L’implication de Carnegie dans une campagne visant à dramatiser la position de Poutine et à confirmer la nécessité où il se trouverait de s’aligner sur les USA se trouve confirmée par des analyses diverses. (Voir l’analyste Dmitri Trenin, de Carnegie Centre de Moscou, cité dans un article de Jonathan Steele et sur lequel nous attirons l’attention)
• La présence de Bruce K Jackson dans l’ACPC est également intéressante. Nous avons souvent parlé de cet ancien VP de Lockheed Martin devenu le relais principal des néo-conservateurs en Europe, et instigateur des lettres de soutien de pays européens à la guerre en Irak, que ce soient les huit d’Europe de l’Ouest ou les dix d’Europe de l’Est. On comprend mieux pourquoi un Letton-ministre qui passait par le sommet des ministres de l’UE à Valkenbourg a suggéré au ministre néerlandais (les Pays-Bas assurent la présidence de l’UE) de
Par ailleurs, il y a déjà eu des informations sur les implications des néo-conservateurs en Russie, avec en étendard l’inamovible Richard Perle. Tout cela a énormément à voir avec des affaires de très gros sous, dont il s’avère que Perle et les neocons sont extrêmement friands.
D’où cette conclusion de John Laughland qu’il n’est pas indifférent de lire avec attention : « Allegations are even being made in Russia that the west itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the purpose of such support is to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighbouring Georgia — a country which aspires to join Nato, has an extremely pro-American government, and where the US already has a significant military presence — only encourages such speculation. Putin himself even seemed to lend credence to the idea in his interview with foreign journalists on Monday. »
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