Chechen war exceeds Russia's expectations

By David E. Hoffman
The Washington Post

Josef Stalin deported thousands of Chechens.

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Today, that conflict rages beyond the borders of Chechnya, neither small nor victorious for Russia or the rebels. Yesterday's raid on a school in neighboring North Ossetia, in which fighters took hundreds of hostages to demand the release of Chechen prisoners, underscored yet again the heavy toll this war has taken on Russians and Chechens alike.

At the core of the long conflict has been resistance by Chechens, who are largely Muslim, to rule by Russia, which has refused to grant the region statehood. Some Russians expressed concern after the collapse of the Soviet Union that should Chechnya become independent, other regions would also seek to secede. Moscow made deals with regions such as Tatarstan for greatly expanded autonomy, but went to war with the Chechens.

Thrust to the Russian presidency in 1999 on a wave of popular support for stronger military action, Vladimir Putin dispatched tens of thousands of troops to Chechnya. With the Russian public furious over apartment-building bombings in Moscow and other cities that the Kremlin blamed on Chechens, he promised to be tougher than Yeltsin.

	Boris Yeltsin's troops attacked Chechnya in '94.

He vowed to wipe out the separatists, but Russia has been seized this week and last with painful reminders that he has not: two airliners apparently blown up in midflight, a suicide bombing at a Moscow subway station, schoolchildren taken hostage.

Putin has blamed Chechens or people with ties to the region — particularly female suicide bombers dubbed "black widows" believed to have lost husbands or other male relatives in the fighting between rebels and Russian troops — for attacks that have killed hundreds of people in Moscow and in and around Chechnya in the past two years. Some Arab fighters have joined the Chechen militants, including rebel commander Abu Walid, a zealously Muslim Saudi-born warrior, and Omar Ibn al-Khattab — now dead — another Saudi-born militant who joined top rebel warlord Shamil Basayev in 1999 raids in Dagestan that helped prompt the current Chechen war.

Their participation has bolstered Putin's case that Russia's campaign in Chechnya is part of a war on international terrorism. Putin said Tuesday that an Islamic group's claim of responsibility for the plane bombings and the suicide blast in Moscow that killed at least nine 10 people Tuesday night, while unconfirmed, was the latest demonstration of links between Chechen militants and international terrorists such as al-Qaida, blamed for the September 11 attacks in the U.S.

	Shamil Basayev's raids triggered war in 1999.

Chechen militants and al-Qaida — which grew out of the 1980s mujahedeen resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan — were united by Islamist ideology and common hatred of Moscow. Chechnya sometimes features in statements issued by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there isn't evidence that al-Qaida is involved, but the Chechen rebels have been linked to the Muslim extremist group in the past, and new interest in aviation and increasing sophistication of attacks give reason to be suspicious.

War and upheaval have marked Chechnya for decades. Early in the 19th century, the Russian general Alexei Yermolov set about conquering Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan, leveling Chechen villages and building lines of fortresses through the region.

But the Chechens fought back, and were led by a legendary mountain fighter, Imam Shamil, for a quarter century. Authors Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal observed in their 1998 book, "Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus," that "In fighting the Caucasian wars, the Russians committed many of the mistakes which have characterized them in the region before and since. ... Above all there was a constant underestimation of the people they were fighting against. The policy chosen was consistently one of total attack, leaving the natives no option but to resist as desperately as they could."

Their lands later incorporated into the Soviet Union, half a million Chechens and Ingush were suddenly deported by the dictator Josef Stalin to Kazakstan during World War II, apparently out of fear that some would help the Nazis. They were free to return only after Stalin's death in 1953.

The latest conflict has its origins in the final years of the Soviet Union. The weakening of central authority gave rise to demands for autonomy in many regions. A former Soviet air force commander, Dzhokar Dudayev, took control in Chechnya and launched a separatist movement in 1991.

When the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of that year, little attention was paid to events in Chechnya; Yeltsin was preoccupied in Moscow with the economic upheaval and a battle with parliament. Chechnya became a notorious zone for smuggling. Weapons were everywhere.

By 1994, faced with growing chaos, Yeltsin, surrounded by a small group of hard-liners, decided to act. On Nov. 26, the Russians sent tank columns to the Chechen capital, Grozny. The attack was a fiasco; Dudayev's fighters killed many soldiers and captured nearly two dozen.

The war threw light on the post-Soviet weakness of the Russian army, but also underscored the new vibrancy of the Moscow news media. A private television station, NTV, gained a huge share of viewers in a short period of a few weeks by showing what state television would not — graphic pictures of battles in Chechnya of a kind that Russians had never seen during their war in Afghanistan. Dudayev was killed by a Russian rocket attack in April 1996, but the war continued. The Russian army was bruised and battered. Yeltsin agreed to a cease-fire later in the year. The plan was for Chechen self-government and some kind of autonomy for five years.

The chaos that followed gave rise to several powerful militia leaders. The Chechen resistance, which had initially been nationalist and separatist, was now joined by Arab fighters from outside, many of them Islamic radicals.

Basayev led an armed incursion into neighboring Dagestan in 1999, hoping to trigger an uprising there. The apartment-building bombings, in which more than 300 people died, followed a few weeks later. Putin, who had just become prime minister, decided to send in the troops again — and a second war unfolded.

Information from The Associated Press and Reuters is included.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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