World's rebels chilled by bin Laden effectMOSCOW -- Within the space of a few months, Chechnya's separatist
rebels have suffered a dramatic reversal of their image on the global stage -- and they can blame Osama bin Laden for their plight.
For years, they were seen as freedom fighters whose human rights needed to be protected from Russian military abuses.
But since Sept. 11, the Chechens have increasingly been seen as
terrorists and bombmakers who represent the sinister spread of Islamic extremism.
The same reversal of fortune is evident around the world today.
In one of the lesser-noticed outcomes of the Osama bin Laden saga -- and yet probably one of his most important legacies -- a host of Muslim rebel armies have unexpectedly found themselves on the wrong side of the global propaganda battlefield.
The result is more power for national regimes to attack their domestic enemies, especially Muslim rebels.
These regimes have shrewdly exploited the global mood to justify their crackdowns on domestic insurgencies. The consequence, paradoxically, could be a rise in domestic wars and political violence.
Mr. bin Laden's terrorist tactics have provided a pretext for
military-style campaigns against Islamic separatists in Russia, China, Central Asia, South Asia and other regions.
The rise of the "antiterrorist campaign," as an all-purpose rationale for war, is strengthening military commanders and damaging the fragile peace processes and political dialogues that were under way in these regions.
Political leaders in most of these regions were already using their wars against Islamic rebels to help crush dissent and prop up their regimes. Now it is easier for them to pursue these tactics. They can gain foreign sympathy by portraying their wars as campaigns against terrorists. And there is much less international pressure to negotiate a peace agreement with rebel forces.
Chechnya is an example. The Kremlin has relentlessly exploited its
clients in
the Northern Alliance, the most significant anti-Taliban force in
Afghanistan, to spread the propaganda message that the Chechens are
terrorists and extremists with close links to the Afghan training camps of Mr. bin Laden.
This message has been constantly spouted by the Northern Alliance, even though there is little hard evidence of Chechens in the bin Laden network. Alliance commanders repeatedly proclaimed that large numbers of Chechens are rank-and-file fighters for the Taliban and Mr. bin Laden, equating them with the hundreds of Pakistani and Arab radicals who helped the Taliban.
The message was echoed in the world's news media, without verification. Yet few Chechens have been discovered among the thousands of Taliban prisoners captured in the fighting so far.
Most analysts now believe that only a handful of Chechens have ever had links to Afghanistan. But since the Northern Alliance was heavily dependent on Russian weapon supplies, it was probably not coincidental that the alliance was doing Russia a favour by trying to discredit the Chechens.
Since Sept. 11, the United States has muted its previous criticism of
human-rights violations by Russian troops in Chechnya, including
alleged mass murders, torture and other atrocities. Instead, it has allowed Moscow to portray the Chechen war as just another front in the international battle against terrorism.
U.S. President George W. Bush declared that some of Mr. bin Laden's terrorists are based in Chechnya, although he did not provide any evidence. And Russian President Vladimir Putin seized the chance to link Chechen rebels to Mr. bin Laden's terrorists, saying: "These people are virtually from one and the same organization. They were jointly trained in the same terrorist centres. They regard bin Laden as their teacher."
Mr. Putin's spokesman on the Chechnya issue, Sergei Yastrzhembsky,
boasted that the U.S. campaign against terrorism has been "a good service" to Russia.
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