It was hardly a surprise that a bomb killed Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov. After all, he had been the target of at least 17 previous attempts on his life, most recently by three female suicide bombers. The real surprise came with the Kremlin's bizarre public embrace of his son. Hours after the assassination, there was Ramzan Kadyrov on national television being consoled by President Vladimir Putin. A day later, he was promoted to first deputy prime minister of Chechnya, making him the highest-ranking Chechen in the war-ravaged republic. Will the Kremlin next appoint him to take over from his father? If so, most experts agree, it will be a testament to how badly Putin's policies in Chechnya have failed.
Even in a land where people are numb from a decade of chaotic violence, Ramzan Kadyrov is an unusually repugnant figure. His horrific record as the head of a 1,500-man private army includes kidnapping, extortion and torture, according to the Russian human-rights group Memorial. One victim, in an affidavit sent to the General Prosecutor's Office in Moscow but never acted upon, tells of being tortured into organizing a bomb attack on a political rival of Akhmad Kadyrov's. In another incident, the younger Kadyrov is said to have extorted $50,000 from the republic's Education minister. When the minister complained to the father, Ramzan Kadyrov's men beat the minister "to within an inch of his life," recounts a Moscow-based Chechen leader. The son consistently denies doing anything more than serving as head of the republic's presidential security force.
Why would the Kremlin even hint at supporting such an allegedly brutal figure? With Kadyrov Jr. as president, the Kremlin could keep intact the complicated clan-based power structure that his father erected and ruled by. Kadyrov rivals theorize —that some factions in Moscow would actually prefer a weak and inexperienced leader, someone unlikely to end the current lawlessness. Disorder and confusion make it easier to siphon off aid money. And, in an especially cynical view, "chaos is good for the Russian military. They can say, 'Look what's going on in Chechnya. We need more money,' " says Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former speaker of the Russian Parliament.
Khasbulatov, a Chechen-born economics professor in Moscow, would like to be Chechnya's next president. So would Malik Saidullayev, a wealthy Chechen businessman popular in the republic for his humanitarian largesse. But the Kremlin seems to have other ideas. Last year, when Khasbulatov was mulling a run for president in Chechnya's October elections, he says a Putin aide visited him twice to dissuade him. Khasbulatov eventually opted out because he doubted the election's fairness. Saidullayev, too, says he was intensely lobbied by another top Kremlin official, Vladislav Surkov, to drop out of the race. When Saidullayev refused, a court took him off the ballot on technical grounds. This time around, convinced that the new presidential election set for late summer will be just as fraudulent as last October's, Saidullayev says he won't compete. "We need one-man rule in Chechnya," he says, "but that man must be chosen in a free and fair election."
Yet Kadyrov's candidacy advances. Last Thursday the republic's top government leaders sent an appeal to Putin "to help Ramzan become president." (Only 27, he is by law too young to hold office—without an amendment to the Constitution or, possibly, an edict by the Russian president.) That same day, about 3,000 heavily armed Chechen paramilitaries stood in formation in the capital, Grozny, and held a pro-Ramzan rally.
If Kadyrov Jr. doesn't get the Kremlin's blessing, two other ethnic Chechens are options: former KGB man Said Peshkhoyev and Aslanbek Aslakhanov, a Putin adviser respected in Chechnya for speaking out against human-rights abuses. Whoever the Kremlin chooses, though, will probably not favor the only possible solution for ending the war: negotiations with the rebels. That would be anathema to Putin, who is determined to make no concessions to those he considers terrorists. Whatever happens, Chechnya's misery is likely to continue. |