From The Sunday Times

October 24, 2004

Once more into the valley of death?

Tomorrow is the 150th anniversary of the charge of the Light Brigade. But where British cavalry once charged Russian guns, a cocktail of
ethnic and religious hostilities could lead to a fierce new Crimean conflict, with deadly implications for all of Europe. Askold
Krushelnycky reports

The valley of death is now a vineyard, and the ground once spattered by the blood of the Light Brigade horsemen, as they charged the Russian guns 150 years ago, now produces reputedly excellent
sparkling wine. A small, whitewashed monument erected by the British Army in memory of "those who fell" on October 25, 1854, keeps a lonely vigil amid the vines.
At the end of the valley where the thundering Russian guns awaited, there is now a railway line. The origins of the conflict lay in the eastern war of 1853 in what is now
Romania and Bulgaria, and it transferred to the Crimea, then part of the tsarist Russian empire, the following year. Britain and France wanted to block Russian ambitions to
swallow chunks of the crumbling Ottoman empire. Together with their Turkish and Sardinian allies, they embarked on what some historians call the first global-scale war.
From naval raids in St Petersburg and Finland, the war visited the Balkans, the Crimea itself, and carried on into what is now the mangled Russian province of Chechnya,
through to attacks on Russian possessions on the empireÕs Pacific coast.

Later, the Crimea saw more savagery. The heights above this vineyard near Balaclava witnessed more suicidal bravery in the second world war, when 100,000 Soviet troops
died charging uphill against well-fortified Nazi positions. It has been relatively peaceful since, an area where few foreigners were ever allowed under the old Soviet regime.

The Crimea, a peninsula that hangs like an exotic earring from the lobe of Ukraine, is a former republic that engineered independence out of the Soviet disintegration. Along
with the jewel of the Black Sea, Ukraine inherited the Crimea's complex and dangerous ethnic problems, a seething cocktail of racial, religious and political rivalries that
some fear could boil over into a new conflict, as savage and historic as the wars that tore apart the old Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Ukraine goes to the elections at the end of
this month, aware that whoever wins will inherit an increasingly dangerous Crimea.

The peninsula comprises mostly steppe farmland in the north. In the south, mountains shield spectacularly beautiful coastal areas from the harsh winters that sweep down
from the Arctic, and ensure pleasant climates for towns like Yalta, where Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt shaped Europe's cold-war future.

Throughout history the peninsula has been colonised by Scythians, Greeks, Romans, Khazars, Genoese and Venetians. From the 13th century until the armies of the
Russian empress Catherine the Great invaded and annexed the peninsula in 1783, it was the homeland to Crimean Tatars, a people speaking a Turkic language and
practising a liberal brand of Islam. Under their princely leaders — the Khans, descendants of invaders who arrived from the east with Genghis Khan — the Crimea was rich in
both commerce and culture. Many Crimean Tatars were killed or fled after the Russian invasion. Around 300,000 fled in 1856 after being accused of supporting Britain and
her allies during the Crimean war. In 1944, on the pretext that they had collaborated with the Germans, Stalin ordered the deportation within a few days of the remaining
200,000 Crimean Tatars to Central Asia. Around 14% died of sickness and malnutrition within 18 months of being transported and dumped in the barren and inhospitable
areas of Uzbekistan.

After each brutal displacement, more was destroyed of the architecture, monuments and cemeteries that told of the Muslims who had lived in the Crimea for centuries. The
only town preserved in a semblance of its ancient form was the capital of the old Muslim Crimea, Bakhchisaray, because the Russian poet Pushkin had written about it,
making it awkward to eliminate. It was resettled after the last war with mostly Russians. Many worked in the Soviet Black Sea fleet's top-secret military facilities at
Sebastopol and Balaclava. Thousands of senior servicemen and Communist-party officials retired in the Crimea's pleasant southern climes. These retirees, and serving
Russian naval personnel, forged a powerful amalgam of diehard communists and Russian nationalists.

These Russian retirees and their families and others of Russian descent form 58% of the Crimea's population of just under 2m. Ethnically Russian but officially Ukrainian
citizens, most have little affection for their government by the independent Ukraine. Many openly support the declarations of Russian nationalist politicians in Moscow that
Crimea is rightfully a part of Russia. Fear that political clashes with Russian separatists could escalate into violence that might draw in Russia led the Ukrainian government
to cave in to demands to give the Crimea a level of autonomy. But the attempt to defuse tensions only encouraged ethnic Russians to thumb their noses at the Ukrainian
government in Kiev.

Ukrainian is rarely spoken on Crimean streets, most schools teach in Russian, and most newspapers are printed in Russian. The streets of the peninsula's capital,
Simferopol, still named after Soviet-era leaders and secret policemen, are adorned with an adapted Russian flag. The 500,000 Ukrainians living in the Crimea represent 27%
of the population, and they feel like foreigners in what is nominally their country. The Crimea's extremist Russians feel encouraged by Moscow. The Russian president,
Vladimir Putin, is determined to keep Sebastopol as his primary Black Sea fleet base, for swift entry into the Mediterranean via the Bosphorus, and has cajoled Kiev into
giving it lengthy leases there. When Ukraine gained its independence, the Soviet-era Black Sea fleet was divided so that Russia retained the best vessels and Ukraine was
left with mostly rusting hulks and one submarine without the batteries to run it.

What hasn't helped to damp down tension in the Crimea is that after independence, the Ukrainian government told the Crimean Tatars they could return to their homeland
and would be given Ukrainian passports and financial help. Around 250,000 have returned and another 150,000 others could also move home. Many Russians feel intense
resentment towards the Tatars. They accuse them of wanting to grab land, pave the way for Islamic fundamentalism, and eventually declare an independent Crimean Tatar
state. When Tatars hold rallies or commemorate events like the deportation, Russian adults and schoolchildren are warned to stay off the streets in case Tatars turn on
them.

The Russian Orthodox Church has been accused of stirring up more trouble. It has played on popular prejudice against the Crimean Tatars, warning against Islamic
fundamentalism and drawing historic parallels of conflict between Christians and Muslims. Uniformed "Cossack" organisations, which promote the unity of Slavs but are
mainly Russian and pledge allegiance to the Russian Orthodox Church, have confronted Tatar groups in land disputes. Some of those confrontations have come perilously
close to conflict.

All this has led to brittle ethnic relations, and large-scale brawls between Tatars and Russians are common. Earlier this year, police fired above a crowd of Crimean Tatars
trying to release one of their own whom they said had been wrongly arrested. The leader of the Tatars' biggest civic organisation, the Mejlis, is Mustafa Djemilev, who is also
a member of the Ukrainian parliament. For Crimean Tatars he is a hero. During the Soviet era he spoke out to keep the Crimean Tatar identity alive, and to demand that his
people be allowed to return home, which earned him 15 years in the gulag.

Djemilev blames the Kremlin and local Russian organisations — including the Communist party, which ruled the Crimea until two years ago — for fanning fear that the
Tatars will violently dispossess Russians and take revenge upon them. "Russians definitely fear that the Crimean Tatars would do the same to them as the Russians did to
the Crimean Tatars, if we had enough force," he said.

He also believes that Moscow wants to use the threat of unleashing ethnic conflict in the Crimea as an instrument to keep Ukraine in line. "Very powerful forces at Russian
government level are working to destabilise Crimea," he warns. He says that the most pressing problem is that of land, and that the choicest pieces of territory are falling
into the hands of Russian and Ukrainian businessmen with connections to the local authorities. Next year, new laws on land privatisation are likely to make things worse,
adds Djemilev, because they will favour those with the most cash — something Russian businessmen have but which is in short supply among the returnees.

Crimean Tatars usually live in the most dilapidated parts of towns or inhabit new shanty-type settlements, often without water, gas or electricity. Access to hospitals and
doctors is often difficult, and only about 10% of their children have the opportunity for primary education in their own language. "A total process of Russification is in
progress," Djemilev has said. "Children have not learnt some of the most elementary words of their native tongue." The majority of Crimean Tatar men here are officially
unemployed, and with no social safety network they eke out a living as best they can.

The circumstances of the Crimean Tatars have many of the same grim ingredients that made up the cocktail of frustration and ethnic intolerance which has triggered
conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya and the Middle East.

At the same time, relations between Ukraine and Russia have often been tense. Many Russians, even liberal citizens, have never fully accepted Ukraine's independence.
Around 10% of Ukraine's population, mostly in the east and south of the country, is of Russian origin, and their leaders label policies to increase the use of the Ukrainian
language for state employees, television and schools as "nationalist". Moscow has shown displeasure and applied pressure when Ukraine has sought close ties with the
European Union, America and Nato. Ukraine's armed forces are much smaller than those of Russia, and are in poor shape. But with 355,000 men, its army is Europe's
largest and is equipped with modern tanks and planes.

Last autumn, there was sabre-rattling and talk of war in the Crimea when Russia continued building an illegal dam into Ukrainian waters across the Kerch Strait separating
the peninsula from Russian territory and linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Ukraine bolstered its border forces and the construction stopped. However, the
agreement subsequently reached by both sides concerning the waterways was a humiliation for Ukraine.

The potential for triggering bloodshed in the Crimea is immense and, if it begins, it will be difficult to confine the violence just to the peninsula. Moscow could use the
protection of its naval base and its people as a pretext to rapidly become involved. One of the most prominent Russian ethnic leaders and politicians on the peninsula,
Serhiy Tsekov, chairman of a group called the Russian Community of Crimea, warns of potential conflict. He believes the Crimean Tatars are being given too many
advantages. "Today the core problem is land," he argues. "Tomorrow they will raise the issue of Crimean Tatar national autonomy, and then they will want some kind of
statehood."

Scare stories about Islamic fundamentalism strike a raw nerve in the Crimea, where news about the war in Chechnya is plentiful. At the Crimea's main mosque, in the oldest
part of Simferopol, the peninsula's senior Muslim cleric, Mufti Emirali Adzi Ablayev, says that Crimean Tatars traditionally practise a moderate form of Sunni Islam, but that
fundamentalist missionaries have tried to take advantage of ethnic tensions to promote a stricter form of the religion. The missionaries, usually from rich Arab states such as
Saudi Arabia, sport ragged full beards, and their women are veiled and covered from head to toe — in contrast to the western look of most Crimean Tatar men and women.
Ablayev says that stricter forms of Islam, notably the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia — the brand favoured by Osama Bin Laden — are being preached by people from the
Middle East, who distribute cash to build local religious and social facilities.

"Brochures have appeared," says Djemilev, "which say things such as that Muslims don't have to obey laws if the head of the state is not a Muslim. That is provocation
designed to spark a conflict. Fortunately, we are able to keep such things under control for the moment." But he warns that the longer young Crimean Tatars are made
unwelcome and denied the chance for jobs and normal economic development, the more they will be attracted to radical Islam.

He says he is ready to mobilise young men to confront attacks against his community.

A beautiful sandy bay near southern Crimea's Cognac-grape-growing Koktebel area, where holidaymakers splash around in the Black Sea or bake in the sunshine, seems
an unlikely flash point for conflict. However, on a nearby cliff top, uniformed men at a camp of "Russian Cossacks", who declare they are ready to fight to prevent the local
land being handed over to Crimean Tatars, listen to a mass intoned by the Russian Orthodox priest who has come to bless them, Father Vladimir Melnyk.

The men's uniforms are part modern and part pre-Russian-revolution. They proudly call themselves Cossacks, and believe they have a mission to defend Russian Orthodoxy
and to keep the Crimean Tatars in check. They repeat the accusations that the Tatars want to build an independent state.

The potential battleground is a mile of startlingly pretty beach and dozens of acres of land behind it. The authorities said it would be transferred to Tatars. The outraged
Cossacks vowed to prevent that, by force if necessary. A few hundred yards away, in a tent near the beach, a dozen Tatars, dressed in civilian clothes and loyal to the
Mejlis, keep watch on the Cossacks.

The leader of this particular Cossack group, Boris Stepanov, styles himself by the Cossack title Ataman. He doesn't disguise his dislike of the Crimean Tatars, and justifies
the fate inflicted on them by Stalin. "The Crimean Tatars were deported because during the war they betrayed a lot of Slavs and went over to the German side," he says.
"They wiped out whole families; entire streets of Orthodox Christian people were handed to the Germans. They tyrannised us."

These "Cossacks" talk in a splenetic mixture of prejudice and distorted mythology. One of the men says: "There's no such thing as a Crimean Tatar people — they're
mongrels."

Stepanov says that recruits undergo three months' probation before swearing an oath to the Russian Orthodox Church to become full members. He refuses to say how many
Cossacks there are — "It's a secret, but there are many of us." He says they have all undergone military training as conscripts, receive further training in unarmed combat,
and are ready to fight if necessary. The Cossacks carry long bullwhips and have batons tucked into their belts. They have used these weapons in fierce fights with Crimean
Tatars, and make it clear that they would be delighted to use them on their rivals close by.

Weapons are in plentiful supply, cheap and easy to get hold of in Ukraine from cold-war arsenals brimming with Kalashnikovs. It is obvious the Cossacks have links with
people who could swiftly provide them with guns. Mustafa Djemilev believes that the Cossacks are being urged on by both politicians and Russian businessmen who want to
gain possession of areas with a high land value, which are already visited by millions of Russian and Ukrainian holidaymakers every year.

He says the close relationship between the Russian church and Cossacks is dangerous. In 2002 the church ran a campaign to erect large crosses at places chosen, he
said, to raise the political temperature. "Some of their actions overstepped the bounds of patience," he says. "They brought one huge cross from Russia and erected it at a
Crimean Tatar burial site. That nearly caused bloodshed." But Father Vladimir denies that the church has been deliberately provocative, accusing the Crimean Tatars of
smashing crosses that were erected on what he called historic Christian sites.

However, despite the hardships and tension, most Crimean Tatars say they have no regrets about returning. One such is Iskender Ablayev, 74, who lives with his 43-year-old
son, Shakir Ablayev, and his family in a settlement called Kamenka, home to some 1,500 Tatars near the Crimean capital, Simferopol. "Yes, things have been difficult for us
here," he admits. "But this is our homeland and, despite the hardships, I am happy that we returned. We are sure things will get better." The settlement has rough,
makeshift roads, and the family home is uncompleted because of lack of money. Inflation and delays meant that their financial aid from the government eventually amounted
to around £50.

Rustem Chyigoz, the deputy head of Bakhchisaray district authority, says that the Crimean Tatars are eager to share their history and culture, which they kept alive through
the cruel times of exile, with the wider world. Bakhchisaray's enchanting centre is the cluster of 16th-century buildings forming the old Khans' palace. The palace comprises
tall, elaborately decorated rooms where the Khan held his divans, or council meetings; the cloistered harem; mosques, minarets, and an exquisite fountain written about by
Pushkin.

"Crimean Tatars have returned to their homeland not to just live here but to return to their roots and to revive these roots," says Chyigoz. "The Crimean Tatar people are like
other peoples — they have history and culture, and we want to revive those."

On the outskirts of the town are two of the most precious Crimean Tatar sites: the mausoleum of its most famous Khan, Mengli Girai, and the magnificent school of religious
and secular learning that he ordered to be built. They are both in poor shape, with the school barely a roofless shell. But reconstruction is hampered because a Russian
Orthodox monastery, dug out of the rock atop nearby cliffs, refuses to surrender land that the Crimean Tatars claim belongs to them. It is a vivid example of how ancient
grievances and historic religious animosities are threatening to intrude rudely into a fragile present.

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