ABSTRACT
We are terrorists for them, and they are terrorists for us. (Shamil Basaev, 2006)1
Lord Russell-Johnston, then President of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) complained in an interview with Le Monde on 6 February 2001, that not one of the 40 states in the Council was willing to bring Russia before the European Court of Human Rights over violations in Chechnya. The temporary suspension of Russia from the Council in 2000-2001 had been more than offset by Western leaders appearing to close their eyes to the catastrophe in Chechnya.2 The inconsistency of the West’s position vis-à-vis Chechen independence has been recognised by perceptive Russian observers. Boris Kagarlitsky, for example, notes that:
The situation in Chechnya is specific only in that the world community (in fact, the West), following its own interests, was prepared to recognize as independent Kuwait, and later, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and other ‘selfproclaimed’ states. . . . But they were in no hurry to recognize Chechnya, insofar as the current Russian elite (in distinction from the elite, for example, of Serbia or Iraq) is a strategic partner of the West.3
