Volume 5 - Issue 10

Moscow’s latest military intervention in Chechnya has been better planned and more carefully conducted than that of 1994–96. More troops are involved and morale is higher, whereas ordinary Chechens have been demoralised by the collapse of order in their country since 1996. Significantly, unlike the last war, this offensive is popular with the Russian people and media, due to Chechen attacks on Russia’s population and territory over the past two years. However, the real fighting will begin with a ground attack on Grozny, which is imminent. Heavy casualties among badly trained Russian conscript units could still blunt Russia’s appetite for further conflict.

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For the first time in history, Northern Ireland’s unionists and republicans are to share power in an executive, led by new First Minister David Trimble. Until late November 1999, the peace process, embodied in the April 1998 Good Friday Agreement, appeared to have reached a stalemate, as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) rejected unionist demands that it disarm before its political wing, Sinn Féin, could enter government. A deal brokered by former US Senator George Mitchell, approved on 27 November, extracted an IRA pledge to appoint a representative to negotiate the decommissioning of its weapons, and thus persuaded the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) to agree to the formation of the executive. However, the UUP has threatened to withdraw from the body if the IRA has not handed over some weapons by next February. The present peace settlement may, therefore, prove to be only another truce.

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The Turkish Court of Appeals’ decision on 25 November 1999 to uphold the death sentence passed on Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan has cast further doubt on Turkey’s eventual accession to the European Union. Öcalan was convicted of murder and treason committed during the PKK’s 15-year-long armed struggle. The Turkish government and establishment are split over whether to execute Öcalan. They know that this will damage Turkey’s international position, but are under immense pressure from nationalists in parliament, the country’s political parties and the general population. Turkish representatives are trying to persuade the EU that if Öcalan is to be spared, the EU must first set a definite timetable for Turkish accession. Given the country’s record on human and minority rights, this is highly unlikely. As a result, Öcalan’s execution and a crisis in relations may be inevitable.

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Since Ukrainian independence in 1991, some 250,000 Crimean Tatars – deported from the peninsula by Stalin in 1944 – have returned to Crimea to be faced with grinding poverty and few political rights. There is deep animosity between the peninsula’s 10% Tatar and 62% Russian populations, with many of the latter occupying what used to be Tatar property. The Ukrainian elections of 14 November 1999 highlighted this split, since the Tatars overwhelmingly supported the successful incumbent, Leonid Kuchma, to prevent the establishment of a more pro-Russian government under his main challenger, communist Petro Symonenko. Kuchma has pledged to address Tatar demands. If he fails to do so, Tatar protest could ignite tensions with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. The resulting instability could have dangerous regional implications, since Turkey sympathises with the Tatars, while Russia has strong links to Crimea and its Russian majority.

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