Is the Kremlin about to give up on Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman Russia installed as Chechen president two years ago? Sources in Moscow suggest President Dmitry Medvedev is fast running out of patience with the maverick Chechen leader, not least because of the embarrassment caused by his murderous campaign against political opponents. Last September a former Kadyrov insider was gunned down while his car was stuck in a Moscow traffic jam. This January a former presidential bodyguard was slain in Vienna and Sulim Yamadayev, a political opponent, was shot in Dubai on March 28, 2009, and died in hospital two days later.

The authorities in the Gulf state were quick to arrest two suspects, an Iranian and a Tajik and accuse four others, including Adam Delimkhanov, a key Kadyrov aide, who they said had masterminded the crime. The Russians themselves are no strangers to organizing the murder of opponents overseas. But the evidence is that Kadyrov having used his formidable militia to establish firm control over parts of Chechnya is pursuing an increasingly eccentric and difficult line. He has been asked by the Kremlin to account for significant sums of Russian development money that has gone missing.

It is interesting that his relations with the Russian president and premier are markedly different. President Medvedev has met Kadyrov only once and was recently seen to snub the Chechen leader when he failed to extend a visit to neighboring Ingushetia to take in the Chechen capital Grozny, where Kadyrov is proud of his reconstruction efforts. By contrast Kadyrov is going out of his way to extol his relations with Premier Putin, whom he compared recently in an interview with a leading Russian newspaper as “a saint”. Kadyrov presents himself as the author of the relative peace that has now descended on strife-torn Chechnya and went so far last week to say that the insurrection is over. This is clearly not true. This week a Russian soldier was killed by a roadside bomb and in a curious incident another Russian soldier went berserk, killed three members of his platoon, including its commander and then tried to shoot himself. This may be a reflection of the customary brutality within the Russian Army or it could be the action of a soldier under unbearable strain in a taxing and hostile posting.

Kadyrov may calculate that the Kremlin needs him more than he needs them. His thugs have killed insurgent supporters and terrorized community elders suspected of supporting the independence rebels. However, the real counterinsurgency work has been done with great ruthlessness by Russian forces.

In the final analysis, Kadyrov is merely a figurehead for Russian rule in Chechnya. He is supposed to do the Kremlin’s bidding. After his initial compliance with Russian wishes, his growing assertiveness and independence are clearly not pleasing Moscow. The problem with puppet regimes is that their strings are easily cut and there are plenty of Russian troops in Chechnya to do this.

Bagram: The next Guantanamo?

Excerpts from an editorial in New York Times yesterday:

The Obama administration is basking in praise for its welcome commitment to shut down the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay. But it is acting far less nobly when it comes to prisoners held at a larger, more secretive military detention facility at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

In February, the new administration disappointingly followed the example of the Bush White House in opposing judicial review for prisoners who have been indefinitely detained at Bagram without any charges or access to lawyers. The administration has now added to that disappointment by appealing a new federal court ruling extending the right of habeas corpus to some Bagram detainees.

The ruling was issued by Judge John Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Narrowly crafted, the ruling essentially grants all non-Afghan Bagram detainees captured outside Afghanistan and held over six years without due process the same right to federal court review that the Supreme Court gave last year to similarly situated prisoners at Guantanamo.

Bagram differs from Guantanamo in that it is located in an active theater of war. Historically, habeas corpus has not extended to detainees held abroad in zones of combat. But the evidence suggests it was the prospect that Guantanamo detentions might be subject to judicial oversight that caused the military to divert captives to Bagram instead.

The theater of war excuse for denying judicial review, the judge found, is unpersuasive when the government imports detainees from elsewhere. “It is one thing to detain those captured on the surrounding battlefield at a place like Bagram,” Judge Bates wrote. “It is quite another thing to apprehend people in foreign countries — far from any Afghan battlefield — and then bring them to a theater of war, where the Constitution arguably may not reach.”