NGOs have zero impact?
The Prague Watchdog has a really intriguing interview with former journalist Timur Aliyev, who has joined the (pro-Moscow) administration of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, regarded by many as a ruthless war criminal.
Aliyev’s situation, and the subsequent interview, are confounding since he advocated an independent Chechnya for many years. The interviewer takes him to task for accepting a position with the very regime that seeks to quell the independence movement using all means of brutality, and presses him to explain what could’ve prompted such a change of heart.
Aliyev’s responses are disheartening for anyone with some faith in the power of NGOs. He said:
And for about one and a half years now my own experience has been telling me that at present it’s impossible to change anything in the situation that has developed both in Chechnya and in Russia as a whole if one remains within the sector of non-governmental organizations. In other words, that sector is a resource with limited possibilities, and its impact on society and the power of government tends towards zero. I’ve long believed that it has exhausted itself, and about a year and a half ago I started to think about finding new and more effective methods of influencing public life and the state.
There’s more:
I’ve been associating with our [NGO] activists for quite a long time, I know them well, have worked in that sector myself. In the people who concentrate there I never saw a desire to influence anything – and not only that, but even an idea that might make such social forces and organizations necessary.
Many simply used the NGOs as a platform to promote their own personal careers, and working with such people made it difficult to achieve results of any kind.
Ouch.