| Fighting
Windmills: noble quest or deliberate self-delusion?
At this
point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills on a plain,
and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire, "Fortune
is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our
desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty
or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean
to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin
to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and
it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from the face
of the earth."
"What
giants?" said Sancho Panza.
"Those
thou seest there," answered his master, "with the long
arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long."
"Look,
your worship," said Sancho; "what we see there are not
giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails
that turned by the wind make the millstone go."
"It
is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that thou art not
used to this business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou
art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer
while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."
(From Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra)
In Cervantes’s
classic novel a 17th century nobleman sets out to engage in the
kind of heroic adventures he has read about in stories about medieval
knights. Completely immersed in the world of these narratives, he
starts seeing his decidedly unchivalrous environment through the
prism of his fantasy until his imagination makes him blind to his
real surroundings. “Fighting windmills”, taken from the incident
in the excerpt above, has become an expression to describe the behavior
of people who, often stubbornly refusing to acknowledge reality,
pour their hearts into campaigns that have nothing to do with their
actual interests or are dead-end roads on their path to redemption.
Sadly, watching
the activities of the Chechen diaspora and of many of their friends
and supporters has more than once brought that phrase to my mind.
Many of them are indeed dedicated to the point of obsession; they
have sacrificed personal fortunes, careers and peace of mind to
the cause of Chechnya, which makes it all the more exasperating
that they have been, well, fighting windmills.
What are the
Chechens’ and their devoted friends’ windmills then? They are, for
example, the misdirected trust in the the politicians and other
influential people who have flocked to the Chechens' cause in Europe
and the US without gauging their true value. Many Western supporters
who have attached themselves to the exiled Chechen leadership are
either from the political fringes of Western societies (be it on
the far left or right), or, worse, have ulterior motives for siding
with Chechnya and in their hearts do not care for the Chechens’
plight. Since most Chechens have little or no understanding of Western
politics, they rarely realize that some of their ardent supporters
are marginal figures lacking the power that resides in the political
mainstream, or that Chechnya is just a pawn in their bigger games.
But true to Chechen notions of friendship and loyalty, they have
not only clung to these feckless or false friends, but have not
even sought guidance or support beyond them.
Another “windmill”
has been the clamor for United Nations involvement in Chechnya (be
it as part of the Akhmadov peace plan or in general), or, in places
where the UN’s agencies actually work to help the Chechens, the
denunciation of those efforts as insufficient, corrupt and discriminatory.
In both cases, fundamental ignorance about the UN’s workings fuels
these calls, and, not surprisingly, they are leading nowhere while
tying up the campaigner’s energies. Having worked at the UN and
having studied its competences and structures for many years, I
decided to sort out the array of misconceptions, distortions and
outright nonsense about the UN’s role that were circulating in the
Chechen community and on most of the Chechen websites. After all,
I thought, greater knowledge and a more sophisticated understanding
should bring about more mature, effective policies on the part of
the Chechen leadership and more informed decisions on the part of
the destitute Chechens who depend on the UN agencies’ work. Encouraged
by their deputy editor, I wrote an article for the Chechen
Times that explained what the UN can do for the Chechens, what
it cannot do, and why. I was helping to expose the giants' true
character!
Or so I thought.
My article was never published. Not because it lacked substance,
or was incendiary or offensive or simply awful journalism (I'm never
happy with what I write and often embarassed to see it in print).
It was rejected by the editor of the Chechen Times, because I had
mentioned, among other issues, that I consider the Akhmadov peace
plan inherently unworkable and self-defeating. The plan calls for
Chechnya’s independence under a temporary UN administration and
could thus only be adopted at the UN Security Council (where Russia
has a veto!). It would therefore only be implemented if Russia decides
to let Chechnya go – which means that we have come full circle (and
yet are no closer to the resolution of the conflict).
The editor of
the Chechen Times considered my article “too pessimistic” and feared
that it could crush the (unwarranted) hopes many Chechens have about
this plan. Instead of opening his paper, which enjoys a wide circulation
in the diaspora community, to the kind of informed debate the Chechens
so desperately need, he chose to uphold a mirage.
Apparently he
not only prefers the illusion of a noble quest himself, but thinks
his fellow exile Chechens are happier forever charging at windmills...
Almut Rochowanski,
CAN New York
Links:
The
original article about the United Nations
and Chechnya (íà Ðóññêîì ßçûêå).
Conditional
Independence Under an International Administration
("Akhmadov peace plan").
The
Chechen Times.
|
