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Russia and the Caspian: The New Middle East. Part V in a series - Page 2

© Jeffrey Deutsch

Also don't forget that, after all, Turkey controls the Black Sea outlet to the Mediterranean, through her ownership of the Turkish Straits - the Dardanelles and the Bosporos. At least in the short term, she could probably get away with discriminating among oil tankers and other ships according to nationality, though she would likely only do this in case of crisis. Otherwise, this would be like a bus company - which usually has a monopoly in a given community - exercising discretion over who can ride. Buses are expected to be common carriers - anyone who pays the fare and otherwise complies with general rules gets a ride - and Turkey is more or less expected to behave the same way regarding ships passing through the straits.

Perhaps the biggest news in the region is the Chechnya hostage crisis. In an eerie reenactment of events in a certain nearby country just 20 years ago, General Gennady Shpigun of the Russian Interior Ministry was kidnapped on March 5. President Aslan Maskhadov claims - with considerable credibility - that his government wasn't behind it and cannot easily get the general freed. As I've written before, authority in Chechnya seems to be split between an absolutist Islamic government and warring local bands.

Needless to say, this has had reverberations in Moscow. Russian Premier Yevgeny Primakov has made a point of saying that violent measures are not on the table at this time (though subsequent reports have Moscow threatening force if the general is not freed shortly). Moscow is not - yet anyway - looking at this as a casus belli, though on the other hand, other (unspecified) retaliatory measures are being considered. Also, responding to hints that Shpigun's kidnappers may be willing to ransom him, Moscow has made clear that they will not pay for his release.

On March 15, Maskhadov addressed the Chechen people on television, and on the next day held a mass rally, to blame this on both his political opponents (who would want to discredit his government) and also on Moscow (who may not be directly masterminding this, but whose general machinations, according to Maskhadov, have led to this crisis). In fact, he particularly blamed the machinations of Boris Berezovsky, in his capacity as one of Russia's top tycoons. Certainly Moscow would also have obvious reasons to show up the incompetence of the Chechen government, especially to show that it can't even maintain order.

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