Trouble & Attitude 1/Trouble and Attitude - Issue 01.iso/pc/pctext/ewrepb1.txt

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Beginning of Early Warning Report Volume 12
Volume 12, No. 24, January 13, 1995

Authoritarian Russia

Once again, the Kremlin and the man in power, if
not in charge, are under attack. While much has
changed in Russia, unchanged are Boris Yeltsin
and his now near-frantic inner circle, the Security
Council. They are seeking to end the Chechen
rebellion quickly, no matter the cost, and stabilize
a status quo recognized by most every sector of
the political spectrum as unpredictable, corrupt
and incompetent.

The Kremlin's priority is to end the Chechen
secession quickly since the cost of delay could be
fatal to Russia. In this they are joined by most
Russian elite groups and much of the populace.
They recognize that to allow the Chechens to
secede from the Russian Federation would be to
encourage secession in other ethnic republics and
regions, leading to the progressive disintegration
of modern Russia. This is not to say that indi-
vidual Russians are deaf to the echo of Afghanis-
tan. They are sickened and outraged at the sight
of their ill-trained and incompetently led young
soldiers left dead in the streets of Grozny.

In their effort to reassert Russian power over
Chechnya, the Kremlin has not been hampered by
President Clinton's remarks. After after first
criticizing the Russian use of force, he said,
"They are dealing with it the best they can," - a
remark that prompted National Security Adviser
Anthony Lake to state for the record full U.S.
support for Russia's territorial integrity. Secretary
of State Warren Christopher joined the American
appeasers by continuing to plan for his meeting
with Russian Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev,
next week that would "particularly emphasize the
need to get back on course toward democratization
and market reform."

In Moscow, there is an underlying mood of
resignation at being forced, by circumstances or
political expediency, to finish an unpalatable task.
Equally clear is that opposition factions, political
and military, will use Yeltsin's handling of the
Chechen crisis to attack and attempt to destroy
him not only for the folly and failure of his resort
to open military force, but for the many other
defects of his presidency, political and personal.

With much criticism of Yeltsin's economic
reforms, it is scarcely surprising that he has
steadily distanced himself from the unpopular





IN THIS ISSUE

1Authoritarian Russia: Russia's president is
discarding the remnants of his democratic guise
and is returning to authoritarianism. The
Chechen crisis provides a pretext for a crack-
down on the democratic opposition. However,
it does not guarantee the Yeltsin faction will
survive the coming power struggle.


4Bankrupting Rwanda's Genocide: A
change of currency has undermined the rearma-
ment of the Hutu soldiers and militias in exile.
Reconstruction of civil order faces continued
difficulties.


5Africa Briefs: Shorter reports from South
Africa and Zimbabwe.


6China Briefs: Items datelined Beijing,
Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Lhasa and Shanghai.


7The Test Laboratory: Italy's search for polit-
ical stability and clean government demon-
strates that the old state-versus-private ideologi-
cal split remains the core conflict.


8Algerie Francaise: France seeks to establish
a solid Western policy of no tolerance for politi-
cal Islam to counteract a perceived trend
towards "majority tolerance" of radical political
movements in Algeria.


10Environment Briefs: Reports from Australia,
Canada, Chile, France, Indonesia, Italy and
Russia.


12Poland's Pre-election Problems: Incum-
bent President Walesa is inciting continuous
controversy as his re-election campaign tactic.



reformers and allied himself with factions of the
orthodox power structure - the red managers,
politicians, and increasingly the military and
security services - and that he has availed himself
of the new powers given him under his post-coup
1993 constitution, which established what is a
fundamentally authoritarian, presidential republic.

The Russian presidential elections are only 18
months away and Boris Yeltsin, despite his
drunkenness, his dictatorial leanings and his
shameful conduct during trips to Berlin and Ire-
land, is still looking for ways to stay in power.
For several years, Yeltsin has worn camouflage as
a leader with whom the West can work; yet
beneath the cuddly friendliness of an amiable
alcoholic, there is a ferocious Communist Party
hatchet man.

It is clear that to stay in power Yeltsin must
find a scapegoat for the army's humiliation at the
hands of a poorly armed but determined Chechen
populace. The poor training and decrepit equip-
ment of the early assault troops entering Grozny
was appalling, even by Russian standards. Five
senior Russian generals openly criticized the
decision to send troops into Grozny, expressed
their disgust over the handling of the Chechen
situation, and calling the war senseless and
unwinnable. Each could be considered a major
asset to potential presidents-in-waiting.

Diversionary ploys available to Yeltsin could
include declaration of a state of emergency, disso-
lution of parliament, abridging the limited press
freedoms and civil rights that now exist, and, of
course, selecting a scapegoat. Domestically,
Defense Minster General Pavel Grachev is the
likeliest candidate for that honor; internationally,
the West and its agents will take the blame for all
of Russia's distress.

As the week ended, Russia lashed out at "inap-
propriate and hasty" criticism of its military
operations in Chechnya, threatening that it could
"destroy" the positive relations Moscow and the
West have been building. Grigory Karasin, a For-
eign Ministry spokesman, said, "Along with a
feeling of regret, such rhetoric makes one recall
the recent and lamentable past of our relations
with the West." Of particular concern to Moscow is
the European reaction that has already led to the
postponement of a trade agreement and suspended
consideration of Russia's entry into the Council of
Europe. Russia fears that its credibility with the
international lending institutions will be compro-
mised by those and other signals of European
disapproval.

In the mid-1980s when it was opportune,
Yeltsin allied himself with those supporting rapid
economic reforms. Iona Andronov, who was a
deputy in the Soviet-era Congress of People's
Deputies disbanded by Yeltsin in 1993, believes
that he has no ideology. She describes Yeltsin by
saying, "To survive the Communist Party training,
you have to be burned out - dead inside. You
appear harmless, almost like a clown. But step by
step, you are trying to strengthen your power.
That is how you become a tsar."


Yeltsin rose by being a loyal protégé of Polit-
buro member Andrei Kirilenko and singing
hymns to Leonid Brezhnev. This won him
appointment as party chief in the important Ural
industrial city of Sverdlovsk [now again called
Ekaterinaburg] from 1976 to 1985. [It will be
recalled that during this period Sverdlovsk was a
center for production of biological warfare weap-
ons, a fact that Yeltsin long denied, along with
the fact that the deaths of hundreds of Sverdlovsk
citizens from anthrax was the result of an acci-
dent in a biological warfare laboratory.]

Mikhail Gorbachev rewarded him with
appointment as Central Committee secretary in
charge of construction [April 1985] and eight
months later made him first secretary of the
Moscow City Party Committee. They fell out two
years later as both reformers and the party stal-
warts attacked Gorbachev and Yeltsin expressed
frustration with the slow pace of economic peres-
troika, not by attacking Mikhail's policies of
pseudo-reform, a reincarnated New Economic
Policy (NEP), but indirectly by scolding Raisa
Gorbachev for her profligate use of an American
Express gold card while on a trip to America.
Yeltsin's KGB friends even made a video of some
of Raisa's worst excesses - a tactic his enemies
turned against him several years later.

Yeltsin became a martyr to the cause of reform
when Gorbachev allowed him to be humiliated
and sacked from the Politburo at the October
1987 Central Committee plenum. The reason was
that Yeltsin was the highest profile patron of
radical economic reform. Eight months later at
the 19th CPSU Party Congress, Yeltsin grovelled
to be rehabilitated, only to be rebuffed again.
Yet he still had supporters and was elected as a
populist to the Congress of People's Deputies with
a huge majority and was chosen as speaker. He
used this position as a springboard to the Russian
presidency. He was able to deal the Soviet Union
a coup de grâce when he became the hero on the
tank defying the theatrical anti-Gorbachev putsch.

The push toward a free market, led by young
Harvard-inspired monetarist theorists, quickly
collided with the energy-military-industrial-and-
trade-union complex. Yeltsin compromised, fir-
ing reformers and replacing them with those they
had sought to reform. Yeltsin picked fights with
the Congress of People's Deputies until he maneu-
vered its leaders into open rebellion, then called
in the tanks to bombard the building. It was
simple thereafter to introduce his own authoritar-
ian constitution and ram it through.

Since then, Yeltsin has governed Russia by
divide-and-rule tactics among the various inter-
ests and factions with the help of a man the
Russian press has dubbed a second Rasputin.
This is veteran KGB General Alexander Korzha-
kov, chief of the 5,000-man Presidential Body-
guards. In addition, Yeltsin and Korzhakov have
the help of the presidential Security Council.
There is a divergence of Western views on the
Security Council. Observers in Britain and Amer-
ica such as the Carnegie Endowment's Michael
McFaul, believe the Security Council is the Rus-


sian government for all practical purposes. British
writers call it a new Politburo steadily massing
total power in the hands of the military and secu-
rity services. Senior German intelligence and
diplomatic sources disagree, putting the best face
on the Security Council since it incorporates the
leaders of both houses of parliament. They see it
as a new form of consensus-building body that is
activated only when there is some major crisis.
Then it does become a supra-Cabinet issuing
directives. That, say the Germans, is the reason
the Security Council has been so visible during
the past two months.

The Germans also take exception to the Amer-
ican and British view of the Russian Security
Council as a powerful, authoritarian central ruling
body. They believe it is significant that both
Russian houses of parliament fully debated the
Chechen issue last week. They also point to the
military's ignoring Yeltsin's no-bombing order
regarding Grozny and troop mutinies as having
revealed how weak, uncoordinated and chaotic
Russia really is.

Who are Yeltsin's rivals? First on the list must
appear Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin. He is a
technocrat who formerly managed the Soviet
Union's gas and oil industries. Chernomyrdin has
endeared himself to American bankers and Demo-
crat politicians, especially Vice President Al Gore.
Americans are impressed by his apparent "busi-
nesslike" approach to the economy, and they stu-
diously ignore the taint of his old association with
Yeltsin and the stench of corruption that sur-
rounds his tenure as head of Gazprom, the state
energy monopoly.

Another potential rival is Moscow's powerful
Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who has many influential
friends among the red managers. His nationalist
posture of "Russia for the Russians" leads some to
consider him a "thinking man's" Vladimir Zhiri-
novsky since the "nuke-'em all" nationalism of
Zhirinovsky fails in the chaos and bureaucracy of
Russia's collapsed infrastructure. Among Luzh-
kov's anti-Yeltsin group is the popular liberal
economist Grigori Yavlinsky and General Boris
Gromov, a deputy defense minister and hero to
his troops when he fought in Afghanistan.

During the past few months, knowing that if
he wanted to advance his political career, further
military support would not be unwelcome, Luzh-
kov began cultivating military officers. The
funds for this were provided by one of Luzhkov's
wealthy mentors, Vladimir Gusinsky, the chair-
man of Moscow's Most Bank. In December,
members of Yeltsin's personal security service,
acting on the orders of General Korzhakov,
visited Gusinsky's bank, roughed him up and
disarmed the Bank's own "security force" [or
private army] on the grounds that they were
investigating corruption in Moscow. Gusinsky got
the message. Luzhkov now is seeking less con-
troversial friends and realizes that even if he can
run the city of Moscow, he cannot rule Russia.

Any anti-Yeltsin movement must have the
support of the Russian army. Apart from General


Gromov there is General Aleksandr Lebed, com-
mander of Russia's 14th Army in Moldovia. Last
week, he said, "Why not a military coup? Sooner
or later everyone's going to get sick of this mess."

Yet the generals will be decisive in any power
bid. Gromov and Lebed were popular before the
Chechnya war, now they are popular heros. As
General Lebed said last week, vast regions simply
ignore Moscow's edicts and now routinely with-
hold taxes. The regions would oppose a tough
new Kremlin telling them what they can or can-
not do. Further, as events in Chechnya have
shown, Moscow could be unable to force or con-
trol rebellious regions.

Already there are rumors that the mayor of St.
Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, has unveiled a
contingency plan for his city to secede from
Russia and become the Hong Kong of the Baltic.
If that should transpire, Vladivostok, which has
withheld funds from Moscow for the past two
years, would be quick to follow the lead and look
to South Korea and Japan to help the city become
a successor to Hong Kong in 1997.

The overthrow of Yeltsin, however, is not at
the top of the generals' agenda. They seek the
dismissal of Defense Minister Grachev, whom
they hate for his part in the tank attack on the
parliament in 1993 and for mishandling the
Chechen conflict.

The army is not the immediate danger. Yelt-
sin's presidential guard, led by Korzhakov, would
defend him to the last. Meanwhile, Luzhkov can
field his own force of municipal security agents,
who are more than eager to bolster their boss's
cause. If these two forces skirmish, the army
could intervene. An easier solution for any coup
plotter would be to exploit Yeltsin's physical
condition and declare him "unwell" and unfit to
govern.

The economic aspects of the Chechen conflict
are serious. A Russian parliamentary budget
official estimated the war costs at some $500
million, and the cost of repairing the Chechen oil
industry, "endless trillions." The ruble plunged
from 3,550 to the dollar at the end of December
to 3,661 last week. Ruble creation, and thus
inflation, is rising.

Late last week, shock waves went through the
Western investor community when Yeltsin's Priva-
tization Minister Vladimir Polevanov said he
would seek re-nationalization of key industries.
Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, remembering his
old friends in the oil industry, ordered the lifting
of the petroleum export quota. This will ensure
that Russia's domestic oil prices rise this winter
while encouraging foreign investment.

There are many signs in Moscow that a swing
to an authoritarian, hard-line government is
already underway. Questions remain as to the
personalities - civilian or military - that will lead
the new Russia, the precise timing of the trans-
formation and ultimately, the effectiveness of the
new leaders.

Bankrupting Rwanda's Genocide

Rwanda's new government last week declared the
old currency illegal and gave the populace just 24
hours to exchange their old banknotes for new
ones. The move dealt a significant blow to its
enemies in exile by rendering valueless the tens of
millions of dollars worth of Rwandese francs that
they had looted as the rebel forces advanced on
Kigali.

The announcement on January 3 took Rwan-
dans by total surprise. Long but orderly lines
formed outside banks and government offices in
the capital and towns across the country to change
old 500, 1,000 and 5,000 franc notes for the new
ones before the deadline expired. Notes in
smaller denominations were left unchanged
because only the larger notes had been looted.

Deputy Finance Minister Jean-Marie Vianney
Nkezebera said that the currency change was the
climax to a three-month secret operation aimed to
stimulate the economy and to deny the use of
looted funds to the Hutu extremists now in Zaire.

Money has been a critical issue in Rwanda
since the predominantly Tutsi Rwanda Patriotic
Front (RPF) defeated the Hutu regime in June.
When the Hutu leaders realized they had lost the
civil war, they whipped up a panic to generate a
huge surge of refugees into Zaire as a future
power base and looted the banks and the national
Treasury. The Hutu troops and militias took
control of the refugees in Zaire, and officials of
the deposed regime controlled the black market
exchanging Rwandan francs for other currency,
using funds to buy arms for future destabilization
of the RPF's new government. The old currency
also was used to pay and arm a Hutu military.

The impact of the currency change was felt
immediately in Zaire's refugee camps. Many
Hutu refugees decided that they must brave
rumored Tutsi revenge, return and change their
money. In the first days, at least a thousand
Hutus a day were moved homewards by U.N.
transport. The RPF government instituted border
checks and limited the amount one could bring
into the country to not more than 5,000 francs.

Taking advantage of the situation, U.N. spe-
cial envoy to Rwanda Shaharyar Khan announced
plans to repatriate the 1.5 million Hutu refugees
and close the sprawling refugee camps on the
borders of Zaire and Tanzania. A serious prob-
lem remains at the refugee camps at Goma in
Zaire. In Goma's camps housing 750,000 Hutus,
are 30,000 former members of the army and some
10,000 army-organized militiamen. A significant
portion of them are thought to be interahamwe -
extremists ready to resume the ethnic war.

Local U.N. observers believe that Rwanda will
stand or fall by the return plan. Both the army
and militias took part in the April through June
genocide that killed some half million Tutsis after



the April 6 plane crash in which President
Juvenal Habyarimana died. The international
tribunal on genocide will commence work this
month in Kigali. Rwanda's own legal system,
assisted by foreign judges and lawyers, is slowly
getting back into business. In Nyamata, a town
40 miles from the capital, Mayor Yacinthe
Mukantabana said, "I think that 60 percent of the
people here helped with the killings. We can't
judge them all, but we will have to make
examples. Those people in Goma who say it never
happened know in themselves what went on. They
have shame. I just hope it is enough for it never to
happen again."

Not all of Rwanda's problems are Hutu related.
The Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA), regarded as
one of Africa's more professional forces, is suf-
fering a breakdown in discipline, admit govern-
ment officials and the military itself. At least 400
RPA troops and officers were arrested in recent
months for offenses ranging from murder and
theft to being absent without leave. Some killings
were revenge for relatives massacred last April;
others involved property disputes. The RPA and
the multi-party government at first tried to por-
tray these abuses as unconnected incidents; but
Interior Minister Seth Sendashonga said recently,
"The problem is when these start to accumulate, we
can no longer view them as isolated."

RPA excesses have led to an open rift between
Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu, a Hutu,
and Defense Minister and Vice President Major
General Paul Kagame. In December, Twagiram-
ungu attacked the RPA during a radio interview.
Kagame responded by calling the Prime Minister's
remarks irresponsible and saying he failed to take
account of the army's efforts to police itself. By
many accounts, when the two next met there was
a fist fight with Kagame the clear winner.

According to U.N. observers in Kigali, a key
problem is transforming a guerrilla force operat-
ing in the bush to a regular army serving a sove-
reign government. Other problems stem from the
doubling in size of the RPA from 12,000 last
April to 20,000 in December and a consequent
lack of recruit screening and training. At the
same time, the strict, near brutal, RPF code of
conduct was abolished in the belief that the "new"
Rwanda should be distanced from the barbarity of
former regimes. The problems of relaxed disci-
pline and the massive influx of raw recruits were
compounded by the lack of an adequate financial
response to Rwanda's post-war needs. For five
months, the shortage of government funds and
little outside help meant no pay for the army.
Thefts and robbery shot up. However, since
December the troops have been paid and U.N.
observers and aid groups report the crime rate
declined rapidly. Many diplomats and some
human rights workers in Kigali say that given the
enormity of the genocide, the number of reported
revenge killings is remarkably low.

End of first part, EW Volume 12