The Hindu : Putin and Chechnya

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Tuesday, Jul 08, 2003

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Putin and Chechnya

By Vladimir Radyuhin

Mr. Putin, who won the hearts of voters with the promise of crushing Chechen resistance, must demonstrate that he can deliver if he wants to win a convincing mandate for a second term next June.

THE RUSSIAN President, Vladimir Putin, will press on with his peace plan for Chechnya despite the latest bomb attack, which killed 16 and wounded almost 60 at a rock concert in Moscow on Saturday. Hours after the attack, carried out by two women suicide bombers, the Kremlin made it clear that presidential elections in Chechnya will go ahead as planned on October 5.

Mr. Putin's peace blueprint calls for shifting responsibility to a pro-Moscow local administration and a 12,000-strong Chechen police to pacify the insurgency-torn Chechnya. Moscow is willing to grant Chechnya broad enough economic and political autonomy to deprive separatists of a reason to fight.

Fighting in Chechnya has been going on since 1994 with a three-year break from 1996-1999 when Russia pulled out its forces from the region in the face of massive anti-war feeling across the country. In October 1999, Russian troops returned to Chechnya after a rebel attempt to occupy a neighbouring region and a series of apartment bombings in Russian cities.

In contrast to the 1996 peace deal, which Boris Yeltsin signed with rebel leaders recognising Chechnya's de facto independence, this time Mr. Putin has refused to talk to the rebels, blamed for a series of terrorist attacks in and outside Chechnya. Instead, he has placed his trust in the ability of the Moscow-installed interim leader, Akhmad Kadyrov — who was the rebels' chief mufti in the first Chechen campaign — to persuade the militants, with the help of Russian money, to lay down arms while the military and security forces hunt down die-hard separatists. Weary of the war, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives, Chechens overwhelmingly voted in a referendum in March to approve of a new constitution that restored Chechnya's status as an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation, that it had been prior to the declaration of `self-styled' independence by Chechen separatist leaders in the early 1990s.

To facilitate peace in Chechnya, the Russian Parliament last month declared amnesty for rebels who agree to lay down arms by September 1. Russia has also been pumping in billions of roubles for the economic rehabilitation of oil-rich Chechnya.

However, the odds against peace are high. Even though the rebels' ability to conduct large-scale combat operations has been crippled, federal forces suffer daily losses from hit-and-run attacks and landmine war. A spate of suicide bomb attacks, in which more than 200 people have died over the past six months, is a grim reminder of the intensity of hatred generated by years of fighting. A new generation, which has seen only death and violence, has come up in Chechnya.

The war has long become a gold mine for both sides. Rebels get money from foreign Islamic funds for each `successful' attack on federal troops. They earn much more by running an illegal oil business and from racketeering local officials responsible for disbursing federal money. The Russian military reportedly does much the same. It has also been accused of detaining people at random and demanding ransom from their relatives for their release.

Last year, Mr. Putin sacked the top military commander in the region, Gennady Troshev, who failed to put an end to large-scale oil theft in the region. But the situation has not improved since. Officials have reported that rebels and federal troops have stolen at least 25,000 tonnes of oil from the pipelines of Chechnya's monopoly oil operator, Grozneftegaz, in the first six months of this year.

Mr.Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed favourite to win the presidential elections, may not be not the right man to promote national reconciliation, given his ruthless suppression of political opposition. But apparently, Mr. Putin feels that Mr. Kadyrov is the best choice to keep the situation in Chechnya in control as Russia pulls out the bulk of its forces in keeping with the peace plan.

Mr. Putin desperately needs to wind up the Chechen campaign which helped catapult him to presidency in 2000, but has since become a ticking time bomb. The President, who won the hearts of voters with the promise of crushing rebel resistance, must demonstrate that he can deliver if he wants to win a convincing mandate for a second term next June.

Keeping the conflict in Chechnya simmering is an ideal instrument for many in the Russian power elite who want Mr. Putin to perpetuate the system of corrupt capitalism created under his predecessor,

Mr. Yeltsin, in which a handful of super-rich tycoons sit on privatised oil and other mineral resources, while the vast majority of Russians sink in abject poverty. To win a free hand to reform the system, Mr. Putin must defuse the Chechen bomb.

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