President of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov (left) prays at a service memory of his father, the assassianted former president of the republic.
Photo: Ramzan Gutsiev
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The President's Man Ramzan
The public meeting in Chechnya on June 12 was not in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was a meeting for Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, says Kommersant special correspondent Olga Allenova.
When I heard about the meeting in Grozny, I was really amazed. Several thousand pro-Putin young people had gathered in the capital of Chechnya, which had very recently lain in ruin. A recruiting point was opened there on Akhmad Kadyrov Square to take in “the president of Russia's guard.” All of the guardians from the organizations Youth Guardian and Ramzan were wearing T-shirts with Russia's national colors and a portrait of Ramzan Kadyrov on them. And they were asking Putin to stay a third term.
I probably would not have been so surprised if that meeting took in Siberia or the Russian Far East. Or even Moscow. You can understand a public that is raised on television and deprived of any alternative information about their country and what is beyond it. But in Chechnya, where every family lost someone in the second Chechen war, the start of which is irrevocably tied to the name of Vladimir Putin and they say that Chechnya was the launching ground of his presidency, a meeting to call for a third term for him is a very special kind of cynicism.
Of course, you can explain anything in our country. I remember my mother and her colleagues attended May Day demonstrations under threat of being fired otherwise. At the same time, my father, a highly-trained engineer, was serving a two-year prison term for trying to engage in business. They called it “speculation” then. Father was later rehabilitated, but I still remember why I went to the May Day demonstrations – to eat ice cream.
Maybe the Chechen students, who are twice as old as I was then, also attended the meeting in support of Putin to eat ice cream or get a free T-shirt. Maybe they have forgotten the winter of 1999, when Putin ordered planes to bomb Grozny and people in the outer neighborhoods spent so long in their cellars that some of them went blind. Or the nursing home on March 8 Street, where half-dead old people spent more than a month in the cellar? Or how many children were crippled or died in those bombings. Or the pile of rubble downtown Grozny was reduced to, and how it smelt because of the corpses buried in that rubble, which people were afraid to clear because of the mines. Maybe those students did not even know those things. Maybe their parents don't mention them.
Of course they mention them. No Chechen who saw those bombings at an age old enough to remember them will ever shake off the clammy terror of seeing bombers in the sky and fleeing to the cellar. He will not forget the sight of mutilated corpses on the streets of Grozny with dogs surrounding them. He will not forget that those dogs ate people in the cellars. He cannot forget how frightened his was to look directly at the men in camouflage gear who, for three years afterward, terrified people at checkpoints, where they had the right to detain anybody forever. The have not forgotten the Stalinist deportation. There is no reason to doubt that they will remember those wars forever.
Those boys and girls, ages 16-20, were not gathering for Putin's sake. They were meeting for Ramzan Kadyrov. That young man has succeeded in doing what his father and Putin, whom they feared but did not love, never could. They love Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya. “He rebuilt Grozny in a single year,” young people said at the meeting. “Look around. You don't see a trace of the war. He built the best airport in the Caucasus and now we can fly directly to Moscow. He got rid of the checkpoints. He is a real Chechen. He defends the interests of Chechens. He is for Islam.”
There are, of course, people who think that independence is in the best interests of the Chechen people, but even they are not against Kadyrov. He never said anything to the contrary. As a matter of fact, the amnestied rebels, who make up most of his guard, do not think that they lost, but that this is a temporary break for Chechnya. They just have to take advantage of all the money the Kremlin is giving now.
Ramzan Kadyrov is the most popular hero on Chechen television. He dances and shouts “Allah akbar!” at the opening of Grozny Airport. He sits in front of the camera next to Russian Deputy Minister of the Interior Gen. Edelev and speaks Chechen to his people. When he finishes, he asks the general, “Aren't I right?” and the general nods his agreement. The general did not understand a word, of course, but the Chechens like seeing a Russian general agree with Ramzan, even if he doesn't understand. And when Ramzan founds a youth groups with his own name on them, and uses them to ask his people to support a third term for Putin, everyone understands that he is really asking for support for himself. Ramzan Kadyrov very much does not want to be left without Putin's support. That is why he will not even consider the idea of Putin's stepping down. A third term was not Kadyrov's idea, but he picked it up and is running with it.
If Putin leaves, even temporarily, Kadyrov's presidential term could end much earlier than Putin's return to the presidency. Too many people in high places in the Russian military and FSB do not like Ramzan and they will get rid of him at the first chance. So Kadyrov's love for Putin is understandable. The Russian president is his guarantee on life and power.
Olga Allenova
All the Article in Russian as of June 18, 2007
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