http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20146

Wife of alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout says that legal action is possible against those who have damaged her husband’s image and that Thailand may have cut a

Alla Bout hands out statement prior to today's oress conference (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

deal with the US regarding Thaksin.

BANGKOK – Angered by what she describes as “ a campaign of demonisation” against her husband, the alleged arms trafficker Viktor Bout, Alla Bout today suggested legal action is possible against “those who have caused terrible damage to my husband’s image”.

She also suggested that Thailand and the US may have cut a deal linking her husband’s extradition with US assistance regarding former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Asked about her view that the United States should punish those who published or made allegations against Viktor Bout, she elaborated that “I have advised my husband that he should take legal action against some of those who have published unfounded allegations”, adding that “action should definitely be taken against those who created the movie Lord of War”.

The film stars Nicolas Cage as Yuri Orlov, a Ukrainian gun runner apparently modelled on Mr Bout, with other characters resembling former Liberian President Charles Taylor and his son Chuck. Charles Taylor is currently on trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone at The Hague, for war crimes allegedly perpetrated during the 1990’s civil war in Sierra Leone, is thought to be beneficiary of of Mr Bout’s alleged arms cargo business.

Viktor Bout was extradited to the United States on November 16. He spent almost three years in jail in Thailand, after his arrest in a joint US-Thai sting operation in Bangkok in March 2008. The extradition was carried out without the advance knowledge of Mrs Bout or of the Russian Embassy in Thailand, according to both parties.

Alla Bout nevertheless maintained a cheery disposition when meeting the Thailand-based media “for the last time”, as she put it today, while handing out copies of a Russian Embassy press statement to the gathered journalists. “There won’t be enough of these”, she lamented, before launching into a scathing attack on the Thai Government and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, saying that the Democrat Party-led Thai Government is “subservient to the United States”.

Mrs Bout is planning to return to Moscow, where she will apply for a US visa before joining her husband in New York, where he detained awaiting trial. She said that “however absurd it may seem, we will be pressing the Thai Government to act to get the United States to return Viktor to Thailand”, as the extradition contravened Thai law, according to Bout’s lawyers.

She appealed to Americans to ensure that her husband receives a fair trial in New York, but hinted that comments by US Attorney Preet Bharara may have prejudiced the proceedings. ”The so-called Merchant of Death is now a federal inmate,” Bharara said after Bout arrived in New York to face charges he offered to sell millions of dollars of weapons the FARC, a Colombian militia that the United States regards as a terrorist group. “No one should ever think he can plot to kill Americans with impunity,” Bharara added

Ironically, as Mrs Bout made her entrance to Bangkok’s Foreign Correspondent’s Club, an al-Jazeera interview with Jean-Pierre Bemba ran in the background. Bemba, a former Vice-President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is on trial for crimes against humanity and war crimes at the International Criminal Court, and is alleged to have received weapons via Bout’s aircraft. Bout previously described Bemba as a “personal friend”, saying that he brought the former rebel leader spare helicopter parts as part of his air cargo deliveries to the DRC.

In recent months the Viktor Bout case became entwined with Thailand’s domestic politics. Mrs Bout said today that “there might have been some political offer from America to Thailand”, when asked about links between Viktor Bout’s case and former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. On November 18, Peua Thai MP Surapong Towichakchaikul said that the extradition may have been approved by the Thai Government, in the hope the United States will arrest and extradite Thaksin, who is facing a two year jail term for corruption charges in Thailand.

Thaksin has visited Russia at least twice during 2010, prompting Thai foreign minister Kasit Piromya to criticise Moscow back on April 13, at the height of the two-month red shirt protest in Bangkok, for giving a visa to a man described by Kasit as “a bloody terrorist”. At a previous news conference in August, Mrs Bout said that Democrat Party MP Sirichoke Sopha visited her husband in jail, seeking to link Thaksin to arms trafficking into Thailand.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bout-extradition-20101007,0,2639999.story

The U.S. wants Russian Victor Bout extradited to answer terrorism charges. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva will make a decision and risk offending Washington or Moscow.

Reporting from Bangkok, Thailand, and New Delhi

The last chance for an alleged arms smuggler dubbed the “Merchant of Death” to avoid extradition from Thailand to the United States on terrorism charges appears to lie with Thailand’s prime minister, who faces a tough decision: offend the United States or offend Russia.

The difficult diplomatic choice for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva follows a ruling Tuesday by a Thai court clearing a legal obstacle that had barred the extradition. Victor Bout, a former Russian air force officer, is suspected of supplying weapons to various armies and terrorist groups in the Middle East, South America and Africa.

Moscow says Bout is a “normal businessman” and wants him returned, but Washington sees him as a dangerous arms proliferator.

Anthony Davis, an analyst with Jane’s Defense Weekly, said the Thai government is going to have to make someone angry. “My guess is it will be the Russians.”

Bout has worked feverishly to avoid the U.S. justice system since his March 2008 arrest in Bangkok under a U.S.-led sting operation. In a scene reminiscent of a John le Carre novel, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents posed as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to bring about his detention, in cooperation with Thai authorities.

But on Tuesday, the Bangkok Criminal Court dismissed money laundering and wire fraud charges against Bout that probably would have delayed extradition proceedings further.

The decision followed an Aug. 20 ruling by Thailand’s appeals court that Bout could be extradited to the U.S. on four terrorism-related charges , and that the transfer must take place within 90 days.

Russia has alleged that the case has been politicized, and Bout claims that he has no chance of a fair trial in the U.S.

“Victor Bout’s extradition to the United States cannot be justified on any legal grounds,” said Vitaly Anapov, a Russian Embassy spokesman in Bangkok. For two years Thailand has been detaining a Russian citizen unjustly, he said.

Speaking in Brussels on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe summit after Tuesday’s decision, Abhisit said his administration faces a difficult choice. Later, he said his government would hold an emergency meeting Friday after his return.

Thailand has been a key U.S. ally and enjoys strong exports to the United States. But the government must be careful not to appear too compliant in the face of U.S. pressure, analysts said. They said Thailand has also been hampered by limited resources.

“It’s very difficult for the Thai legal system to investigate allegations in Central Asia or elsewhere,” said Kraisak Choonhavan, a parliament member. “The attorney general doesn’t have the budget to go around the world.”

Bout certainly did, however, said Moises Naim, author of “Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy.”

Bout “augmented his arms brokerage with conflict diamonds, frozen fish, cut flowers,” shipping these items back to Europe in aircraft cargo holds after weapons were delivered to a particular conflict zone, Naim said.

According to some accounts, Bout may have armed the Taliban and its Northern Alliance enemies in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. According to others, he supplied the U.S. military in Iraq via a front company.

Bout’s website characterizes him as a businessman and “a dynamic, charismatic, spontaneous, well-dressed, well-spoken and highly energetic person who can easily communicate in several languages. He is a born salesman with undying love for aviation and eternal drive to succeed.”

Although Thailand and the U.S. are long-standing allies, Russia is well regarded among many Thais in part because of its positive treatment in school curricula, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

Further complicating the case are Bout’s alleged links to Thailand’s fractious domestic politics. “Thais started to pay attention when the case got into the national coverage,” said Pitch Pongsawat, a political analyst.

In August, Bout’s wife, Alla, said at a news conference in Bangkok that a political ally of Abhisit had pressured Bout to implicate Abhisit’s nemesis, former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in arms trafficking.

Thai authorities accuse Thaksin of fueling violent clashes between pro-Thaksin protesters and security forces that left 90 people dead in Bangkok from March to May. Early Wednesday, three people reportedly died in an explosion in a Bangkok suburb; authorities blamed the protest movement.

Just how long Abhisit can hold off making a decision remains to be seen.

“We look forward to the extradition of Victor Bout,” said Kristin Kneedler, spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, but said the embassy could not comment on timing.

Special correspondent Roughneen reported from Bangkok, and Magnier from New Delhi.

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2008/03/02/story30892.asp

Russia notched up major success in its quest to establish a strategic stranglehold on gas supplies to western Europe last week.

Hungarian prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany met outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin last Thursday, inking a deal to allow Russia’s Gazprom to extend a pipeline, already set to cross Bulgaria and Serbia, into western Europe.

The Serbian agreement was part of a package where Gazprom gets a controlling stake in Nis, the Serbian national oil company, in exchange for Russia backing Serbia’s opposition to Kosovar independence in the UN Security Council.

Alex Brideau of business risk analysts Eurasiagroup, told The Sunday Business Post that Russia’s policy was ‘‘guided primarily by the desire to maintain the country’s position in the natural gas business in Europe over the coming decades, given its importance to Gazprom and the overall economy’’, rather than based directly on Kosovo. The pipeline will be known as Southstream. Hungary will take transit fees, and the Hungarian section of the pipeline will be jointly-owned by Gazprom and Budapest.

Molly Pattenden, head of oil and gas at Business Monitor International, said it was in Russia’s interests to control surplus pipelines, ‘‘giving it greater flexibility to turn the taps on and off and reroute supplies for political reasons’’.

But Brideau believes it is not in Moscow’s interests to play politics with the pipelines: ‘‘If European states perceive that Russia is withholding gas for political reasons, for many of them their willingness to look at alternative sources would increase.”

The US and European countries have an alternative southern pipeline planned – called Nabucco – but last week it was announced it would be postponed to 2010. Southstream could end this western attempt to bypass Russia and reduce the current 25 per cent dependence on Russia for gas supplies.

Pattenden said there might not be enough gas to supply two pipelines. ‘‘Nabucco plans to draw from the BP-developed fields in Azerbaijan. The only way it may be viable is if gas-rich Iran is brought on board.”

The potential diplomatic minefield gives Tehran an additional bargaining chip with the west over its nuclear ambitions and strengthens Moscow’s support for the Iranian regime in weapons of mass destruction negotiations.

Meanwhile, Gazprom is holding firm on its threat to reduce gas supplies to Ukraine from tomorrow in a debt and supply dispute. A quarter of Europe’s gas supplies pass through Ukraine.

Gazprom threatens to reduce supplies to Ukraine by 25 per cent. Both Moscow and Kiev have promised supplies to Europe will be unaffected.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080218/FOREIGN/79901165/10PRISTINA

PRISTINA Kosovo — Birth pangs from the emergence of the world’s newest nation reverberated yesterday from New York to Moscow as Serbia and its ally Russia rejected a unilateral declaration of independence by the self-proclaimed “Republic of Kosova.”

Kosovo Polje monument marks the spot where Serbs were defeated by invading Ottoman Turks in 1389, the start of 5 centuries of Muslim rule (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

The gambit did little to dampen the jubilation in the streets of Pristina, where red-and-black-clad celebrants waved U.S. and Kosovar flags, exploded firecrackers and ate from an enormous cake intended to feed 30,000 people.

Prime Minister Hashim Thaci issued his proclamation at midafternoon, using the Albanian-language spelling for the longtime Serbian province. The parliament followed quickly with a unanimous vote of approval as tens of thousands gathered outside.

Serbia, however, rejected the loss of a province it considers its historic heartland, and its ally Russia asked for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council in New York.

Seven Western countries — Belgium, France, Italy, Britain, Croatia, Germany and the United States — jointly announced after the closed-door meeting that the council was deadlocked.

“We regret that the Security Council cannot agree on the way forward, but this impasse has been clear for many months,” said Belgian Ambassador Johan C. Verbeke, speaking on behalf of the seven.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon later called for both Serbs and Kosovars to “reaffirm and act upon their commitments to refrain from any actions or statements that could endanger peace, incite violence or jeopardize security in Kosovo or the region.”

Kosovo has been under international protection since the 1990s, when Western forces intervened to end a heavy-handed Serbian campaign against ethnic Albanian rebels.

Both the United States and the European Union were expected to quickly recognize the newest member of the community of nations, though President Bush remained somewhat vague yesterday.

Asked whether he would recognize Kosovo, he repeatedly referred to U.S. support for “the Ahtisaari plan,” a reference to a program put forward by Martti Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland and U.N. envoy for Kosovo.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) describes that plan as “a compromise that offers Kosovo Albanians the prospect of independence [and] Kosovo Serbs extensive rights, security and privileged relations with Serbia.”

But the ICG also says the plan cautioned Kosovo against any unilateral declaration of independence.

The Serbian government is particularly concerned about the welfare of ethnic Serbs who are concentrated in the north of Kosovo, and who have repeatedly clashed with their ethnic Albanian neighbors.

“We are afraid that in independent Kosovo, we will be second-class,” one ethic Serb told The Washington Times in a small Serbian enclave between Pristina’s city center and the airport.

Ten minutes after the parliament session in Pristina closed, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica addressed his country, bitterly attacking the United States and European powers for backing the secession.

However, fears of immediate violence were largely unfounded, as troops from the international Kosovo Force stayed on high alert. “We will leave the violence to the violators,” Mr. Kostunica said in Belgrade, Serbia.

Nevertheless, police in Belgrade fired tear gas and rubber bullets in skirmishes with protesters who opposed the declaration. Groups of masked thugs ran through downtown, smashing windows and ransacking tobacco stands, the Associated Press reported. At least 30 persons were injured, about half of them police officers, hospital officials said.

More than 1,000 demonstrators stoned windows at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade. Others broke windows at McDonald’s restaurants and at the embassy of Slovenia, another former Yugoslav republic, which holds the European Union’s rotating presidency. Later in the evening, police prevented a group of protesters from approaching the Albanian Embassy, the AP reported.

In Pristina, celebrants rode through the streets on car roofs despite freezing temperatures and sang patriotic songs, waving the new Kosovo flag with a black double-headed eagle.

Outside the Hotel Pristina, where a large stage was arranged for the occasion, a large sign read “Welcome to our new born nation.”

Mr. Thaci, in his formal remarks, said he was “feeling the heartbeat of my ancestors” in Kosovo.

However, Serbs also cite blood links to the territory, where its medieval kings fought epic losing battles against Muslim Turkish invaders.

Belgrade still is dominant in the northern Kosovo Mitrovica zone, which is a majority-Serbian enclave, and could end up joined to Serbia.

Daniel Serwer at the U.S.-government-funded United States Institute for Peace said by e-mail that “the greatest risk in Kosovo independence will be partition: Belgrade has made it clear it intends to hold on to the northern three and a half municipalities.”

There also are fears that Russia will avenge the Western decision to support Kosovo’s independence by backing secessionist movements in two breakaway provinces of pro-Western Georgia — Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Both territories have indicated they will seek U.N. recognition.

Copyright: The Washington Times

by Simon Roughneen

Memorial to the victims of Beslan (epa)

No government should negotiate with child-killers. Without getting into any theological or ethical argumentsabout the relative value of one human life over another, shooting and blowing-up schoolchildren is a step beyond the pale, a taboo that defies any attempt at dispassionate afterthought. Russian President Vladimir Putin has legitimate reasons not to negotiate with the architects of Beslan – and has even greater reason to pursue rebels militarily.

However, this does not mean that the Russian president must ignore any openings to alter Russian policy in Chechnya – and the rest of the north Caucasus region. Years of human rights abuses, indiscriminate attacks, and abductions of those suspected of rebel connections, the cherry picking of Presidential candidates by Moscow, flawed elections and the total absence of due process surely allow for some revision of how Russia deals with Chechnya. Perhaps even more so now given that Moscow has military control over most of the republic, bar the mountains, and has air and artillery supremacy over the rest. However, Putin, linking Russia’s conflict with Chechen rebels to the international war on terror, shows no signs of revision of policy.

In a televised address broadcast live on Russian TV on September 4, he said, “We have to admit that we showed no understanding of the processes occurring in our country and the world at large. We failed to act appropriately, and instead, displayed weakness. And the weak are beaten”. This is worrying as it signals a repetition, perhaps in amplified form, of the failed and counterproductive ironfist policies that have led to up to half of Chechnya’s population leaving and over 200,000 fatalities, according to the most reliable estimates, since the first Chechen war in 1994-96.

Moreover, these policies have bred the killers that perpetrated Beslan – as well as the 2002 Moscow theatre siege and the spate of recent suicide attacks in Moscow. Basayev himself, though a radical Chechen nationalist in his early days, was apparently hardened into an uncompromising terrorist leader, with unverifiable Islamist credentials, by the murder of his wife, 2 daughters and brother by Russian security forces in 1995. Much the same dynamic motivates the new wave of Chechen suicide killers, including the Black Widows, female suicide bombers avenging the deaths of fathers, brothers, husbands and lovers by blowing themselves up in metro stations and schools in Russia. A 2003 poll suggested that 69% of Chechen suicide bombers do so motivated by a desire for revenge for the brutality of Russian security forces, while only 8% thought that suicide attacks were due to either jihad or the struggle for Chechen independence.

Former Chechen President and rebel Aslan Maskhadov may or may not be implicated in the Beslan atrocity, and his protestations of innocence after the event may or not be sincere, but Beslan could lead to a split in the Chechen independence struggle as Maskhadov seeks to avoid becoming an international pariah by association with fanatics who shoot schoolchildren in the back. In a statement on the rebel website chechenpress.com, Maskhadov insisted that forces under his command had nothing to do with Beslan, and added, ominously, that he wants Basayev to go on trial for his role in the siege.

A split in the Chechen rebel movement could only add to the complex patchwork of alliances and antagonists that exist and could potentially develop in the north Caucasus region. At the very least, an intra-Chechen conflict would offset any chance for stabilisation, which is a long way off as things stand, and could draw in other groups from nearby regions in Russia and in the south Caucasus. It would also grant Moscow the excuse it needs to maintain a heavy military presence and to postpone any meaningful attempt to settle Chechnya’s status in a peaceful, legitimate and accountable manner.

Beslan was perpetrated as new Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili moved to unlock the Abkhazia and South Ossetia conflicts in his own country. With continuing Russian support, both these regions have established de facto autonomy within Georgia since their respective duels with Tbilisi in the early 1990’s, but now the Harvard-educated Saakashvili, emboldened by his reining in of the Ajaria region last spring, and with the apparent tacit support of the US, attempts
to recapture some of the central control over these regions.

Saakashvili’s actions are unlikely to have gone unnoticed and indeed may have played a part in the thinking of those behind Beslan. In the words of the surviving captured hostage-taker from Beslan, apparently given to Russian authorities, ‘We were collected in the forest by a man who goes by the name of Colonel and told that we have to seize a school in Beslan. They told us this order was given by Maskhadov and Basayev. When we asked Colonel why we were doing this, he replied that we had to unleash war across the whole Caucasus’.

The whole Caucasus – not just Russian north Caucasus. Ambitious maybe, but the existence of the links needed to create the necessary dynamic should not be dismissed. Basayev himself began his career as a rebel in Abkhazia, aiding his fellow Muslim Abkhaz in their independence war against Tbilisi. In another classic example of blowback, akin to the US arming of the Afghan mujahideen in the war against the Soviets, Moscow apparently (though the evidence is murky) armed and supplied the Basayev rebels in 1992-3. Not only did Moscow aid a man who they now place a US$10 million bounty upon, they helped unleash the Pandora’s Box of extremist forces in the Caucasus, which returned to haunt them in Chechnya, and may well have wider implications in the future.

In June this year, Chechen rebels launched a mini-invasion of neighbouring Ingushetia, resulting in nearly 100 deaths – a move which echoed the 1999 invasion of Dagestan – which was apparently aimed at drawing Dagestan into the Moscow – Chechnya conflict – and illustrated the potential for such conflict to spread across the region. Now, with Ingush implicated in the Beslan atrocity, Christian North Ossetians are publicly calling for revenge on their Muslim neighbours – while also questioning Moscow’s role as protector and ally. A potential flashpoint could be the ethnically-mixed Prigorodny region in North Ossetia, on the border with Ingushetia. The area belonged to Ingushetia prior Stalin’s deportation of the Chechen’s and Ingush in 1944. In 1992, 800 people were killed in fighting there in 1992, and thousands remain displaced.

Part of Putin’s reaction to Beslan has been to verticalise central federal control over the regions, accelerating a process that has been in train since Putin took office as Prime Minister in 1999. Parallel to his restarting of the war in Chechnya, Putin has sought to roll back to autonomy of some of Russia’s more assertive regions, which has been resisted politically up to now. After Beslan, Putin has put forward a series of far-reaching reforms including Presidential nomination of regional governors, which have been elected locally since the formation of the present Russian state, and allowed regional potentates to govern their regions as personal fiefdoms – but with the support of their populations when it comes to dealing with Moscow.

Putin has announced the creation of a new commission to look at ways of ameliorating the socio-economic decline of the North Caucasus, which has surely contributed to dissatisfaction with Moscow’s role in and rule over the region. Putin’s predecessor as Russian President, Boris Yeltsin did likewise in 1999, and to little effect. This version will be headed by Putin’s envoy to the south Russia Federal District, one of seven superregions headed by Putin appointees who are meant to coordinate central policy toward Russia’s 89 autonomous republics, oblasts, and kraijs, all of which have varying degrees of autonomy. It is unclear what the blowback from these changes will be. Putin’s request to rein in the regions could prove counterproductive. Russian Muslims – even those living in the secular Volga region in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan – could see the centrist policies as threatening and eroding their hard-won autonomy that was at the core of the unwieldy compact keeping Russia together in the years after 1991.

In terms of Russia’s overall social fabric, Interethnic and inter-religious relations within Russia are in serious danger of decline. Though no evidence exists of any Islamist or nationalist subversion in Muslim Russia outside the north Caucasus, erosion of Muslim autonomy and a rise in anti-Muslim sentiments in Orthodox Russian society due to terrorist incidents could create a defensiveness and siege mentality among hitherto quiescent areas. Tatarstan lies in central Russia, has no border with another state and has a secular Islamic culture. However, it was only the de facto autonomy status granted by Yeltsin in 1991 and 1994 that stopped Tatarstan from declaring formal independence from Moscow.

However, it is in the north Caucasus where violent conflict has immediate potential to spread outside Chechnya. Clearly Moscow must revise its overly militarised policy in Chechnya – an unlikely prospect given Putin’s populating of civilian positions with military and security staff and the hardening of policies that has emerged after Beslan – precisely the intention of the terrorists who seized School No 1. Moscow must also work better with Georgia in resolving the latter’s frozen conflicts – particularly in South Ossetia, as any North Ossetian avenging of Beslan could have unforeseen consequences for regional security, given the tangled ethnic and religious links in the region, and the intricate cross-border criminal networks throughout the whole Caucasus. Finally, Moscow must face up to the reality of the problems besetting the region and cease playing to the gallery by highlighting the role of foreign extremists over indigenous issues such as socio-economic stagnation, limited democracy, corruption and unmet nationalist aspirations.

Currently the various regional levels tend to deal directly with Moscow on a unilateral level, more than they interact with each other, even when the ostensibly natural thing to do is to work as a region – be that politically or economically. One thing Moscow could do is to foster and encourage regional economic cooperation and some level of political engagement across the North Caucasus – that is not threatening to Russia as federation. Secondly, Moscow should take the lead role in assessing the current geopolitical reality in the Caucasus as a whole, given that de jure borders do not reflect de facto reality of control on the ground. This process would require international involvement in order to guarantee the interests of the smaller Caucasian states – with the OSCE, EU and US all taking part directly. Thirdly, Moscow needs to address the growing ethno-religious divisions emerging in Russian society, rather than merely bring Muslim republics more directly under its own thumb, which will aggravate an already deteriorating situation. More immediately, however, Russian policy toward Chechnya must be revised. A sincere and accountable conflict transformation process needs to be set in motion based on common interests of both sides – that would ensure at least an autonomous Chechnya within Russia and take the fi rst steps toward normalising Chechen society.