Paul Goble
Vienna, May 9 – Moscow needs to focus on a dangerous new threat: its oil and gas pipelines, the backbone of Russia’s current success and the basis of its national security, are very much at risk both from terrorists and from those who would steal fuel from them, according to a leading Russian specialist on military affairs.
Terrorists increasingly have attacked these arteries of the Russian state. In Daghestan alone, Anatoliy Tsyganok writes in an article published this week, they have blown up portions of a major pipeline running across that republic at least 14 times in recent years (http://www.apn.ru/opinions/print17031.htm).
But almost equally dangerous are those who drill holes in pipelines in order to steal oil and gas. In the last year, he reports, thieves took some 30,000 tons of petroleum products out of the pipelines, often damaging them in ways that required enormous time, energy and money to fix.
Such stealing, the Moscow analyst reports, has become especially significant in Samara, Nizhniy Novgorod, Oryel, Moscow and Bryansk oblasts, in Krasnodar kray, and across the Northern Caucasus.
Both the terrorists and the thieves make use of the same tools: explosive materials contained in weapons left over from World War II and the Soviet period more generally. And both are able, the first intentionally and the second accidentally, to damage the pipelines now pressurized at 120 atmospheres, up from 75 atmospheres in earlier years.
Guarding almost one million kilometers of pipelines, of course, is a major challenge, Tsyganok acknowledges, but he argues that Russia’s “current system of protecting its pipelines is archaic” and “does it correspond to present-day security requirements.”
Tsyganok argues that the Russian government should immediately take four steps to remedy the situation. First of all, he suggests, Moscow along with the petroleum industry need to recognize this as a problem currently costing the country six million U.S. dollars every day and develop a program to address it.
Second, Moscow must ensure that already proclaims laws intended to “cleanse” the Russian Federation of the explosive materials that remain there so that neither potential thieves nor potential terrorists will have access to them. So far, that program has been more talk than action.
Third, Tsyganok says, the Russian government must increase the demands it places on petroleum companies to protect the pipelines. At present, the companies have less incentive than they should to guard the pipelines because when there is a problem, the government steps in at little or no cost to them.
And fourth – and it is clear from his discussion that this is the step Tsyganok places the greatest hope in – the central authorities must change existing laws to permit private, militarized security agencies to have the weapons and other tools they would need to guard the pipelines.
Unfortunately, these ideas will be resisted, especially the important last one. Most security firms in Russia, he writes, “function under the protection of the Interior Ministry and it is no secret that part of them have or have had a criminal past or present” – a pattern likely to make many reluctant to cede to them control over a key part of the nation’s infrastructure.
To overcome that opposition, Tsyganok argues, will require not so much additional funds but rather political will by President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials, who must recognize how increasingly dangerous the lack of security in the pipeline system is not only for the country’s economy but also for its military.
Tsyganok gives an example of the consequences of pipeline system insecurity for the Russian military that should open the eyes of the Kremlin. Over the last three years alone and “thanks to cooperation with” private petroleum companies, he notes, the Russian defense ministry has closed 24 fuel dumps.”
Russia’s commanders plan to eliminate 20 more in the near future in order to save approximately a half billion rubles a year out of the military’s budget, Tsyganok reports. But such savings, he points out, will be illusory if the country’s pipelines cannot be counted on to deliver the fuel the army needs to perform its mission.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Window on Eurasia: British Appeal to Putin a Measure of How Bad Things Are in Chechnya
Paul Goble
Vienna, May 8 – More than 100 members of the British establishment have called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene in Chechnya to end war crimes and human rights abuses by that republic’s pro-Moscow regime – the latest indication of how bad things have become under Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin’s handpicked leader there.
A summary of the contents of their open letter appeared in “The Independent” yesterday (http://www.news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2519041.ece), and that story was picked up by a small number of Russian-language news agencies and websites, including Kavkaz-Memo (http://www.kavkaz.memo.ru/printnews/news/id/1185940).
The open letter, whose signatories included former British Foreign Minister Malcolm Rifkind, the leader of the Liberal Democrats Menzies Campbell, and playwright Tom Stoppard said that “we can no longer remain silent in the face of the persistent human rights abuses and war crimes in Chechnya.”
“Despite [what the authors of the appeal described as] overwhelming evidence from human rights organizations about war crimes in Chechnya and the silencing of human rights defenders and independent journalists, the international community has remained silent,” the letter continued.
And consequently, the authors said, they hoped both “to bring the horrific situation in Chechnya” under the Kadyrov regime “to wider public attention” and simultaneously to “exhort President Putin to take whatever action he can to restore peace and the rule of law in Chechnya.”
That is especially important now, the letter continued, because the current Kremlin-installed president and government in Grozny is “little more than a regime of fear and oppression.”
According to “The Independent,” the letter was the idea of the Chechnya Peace Forum whose leadership was close to Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist whose murder many believe was the result of her efforts to shine the bright light of publicity on developments in Chechnya and elsewhere in the North Caucasus.
What makes this appeal particularly noteworthy is that many of its authors earlier had spoken out in defense of Chechen liberties and against the human rights abuses and war crimes committed by the Russian security forces that Putin himself dispatched to Chechnya seven years ago.
Not surprisingly, its authors did not make that point directly in its text. But two of the signatories did in comments to the London paper. On the one hand, former foreign secretary Rifkind said that even those who accept that Chechnya is an “internal” Russian problem cannot but be appalled by “the methods” being used in that war.
He further noted “Putin sought to use the US-led war on terror as a reason why he expects the US and the West to turn a blind eye to what he’s doing. But it is difficult to see the credibility in the claim that the Chechens are part of al-Qa’ida.” He noted that earlier the West had not been reluctant to raise “human rights issues with the Kremlin.”
And on the other, Peter Tatchell, a British gay rights leader, denounced the situation in Chechnya as “a murderous war on Europe’s doorstep,” a conflict that continues to take place “with barely a word of protest from either the US and UK or the European Union.”
Tatchell, according to the “The Independent,” added that “President Putin and the hand-picked pro-Russian Chechen President had done nothing to address the root causes of the conflict, while the Russian President had ‘direct responsibility for much of the bloodshed’” in that North Caucasus land.
This appeal clearly reflects the desperation that many in Russia and the West feel about the current direction of developments in Chechnya: After all, its authors are asking the very man they hold responsible for what has taken place to intervene to end precisely the abuses and crimes that his policies have produced.
Vienna, May 8 – More than 100 members of the British establishment have called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene in Chechnya to end war crimes and human rights abuses by that republic’s pro-Moscow regime – the latest indication of how bad things have become under Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin’s handpicked leader there.
A summary of the contents of their open letter appeared in “The Independent” yesterday (http://www.news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2519041.ece), and that story was picked up by a small number of Russian-language news agencies and websites, including Kavkaz-Memo (http://www.kavkaz.memo.ru/printnews/news/id/1185940).
The open letter, whose signatories included former British Foreign Minister Malcolm Rifkind, the leader of the Liberal Democrats Menzies Campbell, and playwright Tom Stoppard said that “we can no longer remain silent in the face of the persistent human rights abuses and war crimes in Chechnya.”
“Despite [what the authors of the appeal described as] overwhelming evidence from human rights organizations about war crimes in Chechnya and the silencing of human rights defenders and independent journalists, the international community has remained silent,” the letter continued.
And consequently, the authors said, they hoped both “to bring the horrific situation in Chechnya” under the Kadyrov regime “to wider public attention” and simultaneously to “exhort President Putin to take whatever action he can to restore peace and the rule of law in Chechnya.”
That is especially important now, the letter continued, because the current Kremlin-installed president and government in Grozny is “little more than a regime of fear and oppression.”
According to “The Independent,” the letter was the idea of the Chechnya Peace Forum whose leadership was close to Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist whose murder many believe was the result of her efforts to shine the bright light of publicity on developments in Chechnya and elsewhere in the North Caucasus.
What makes this appeal particularly noteworthy is that many of its authors earlier had spoken out in defense of Chechen liberties and against the human rights abuses and war crimes committed by the Russian security forces that Putin himself dispatched to Chechnya seven years ago.
Not surprisingly, its authors did not make that point directly in its text. But two of the signatories did in comments to the London paper. On the one hand, former foreign secretary Rifkind said that even those who accept that Chechnya is an “internal” Russian problem cannot but be appalled by “the methods” being used in that war.
He further noted “Putin sought to use the US-led war on terror as a reason why he expects the US and the West to turn a blind eye to what he’s doing. But it is difficult to see the credibility in the claim that the Chechens are part of al-Qa’ida.” He noted that earlier the West had not been reluctant to raise “human rights issues with the Kremlin.”
And on the other, Peter Tatchell, a British gay rights leader, denounced the situation in Chechnya as “a murderous war on Europe’s doorstep,” a conflict that continues to take place “with barely a word of protest from either the US and UK or the European Union.”
Tatchell, according to the “The Independent,” added that “President Putin and the hand-picked pro-Russian Chechen President had done nothing to address the root causes of the conflict, while the Russian President had ‘direct responsibility for much of the bloodshed’” in that North Caucasus land.
This appeal clearly reflects the desperation that many in Russia and the West feel about the current direction of developments in Chechnya: After all, its authors are asking the very man they hold responsible for what has taken place to intervene to end precisely the abuses and crimes that his policies have produced.
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