Chechens Hopeful but Still Wary About Prospects for Peace

Bek Pashayev, 57, was walking home from his night watchman beat at a collective farm in Chechnya one cloudless morning when a Russian jet dropped a bomb on him.

The air raid, which killed him and dozens of others a month ago, is now viewed in this leafy alpine village as a turning point in the war--one that set off an extraordinary chain of events leading this week to a cease-fire, high-level negotiations and the partial outline of a peace accord.

“How many times did we ask for these peace talks, and how many times did Russia ignore us?” asked Adam Khadashev, 56, as he stood by a crater dug by the bomb that killed Pashayev, his friend and neighbor since boyhood. “We are like a drowning man clutching at straws. This may be our last hope.”

That sentiment is widespread. Chechens in other villages and in the capital, Grozny, say they are heartened by what looks like the best opportunity to end the war, which has claimed about 20,000 lives in six months.

Their hope is dampened, however, by bitter opposition from Russian officers who want a military victory.

More than a mile high in the Caucasus Mountains, Vedeno is an ancient Chechen village with a proud warrior culture. But its 6,000 inhabitants have had enough. After Chechen separatists retreated from Grozny and moved their guerrilla headquarters here in the spring, Russian bombs destroyed much of Vedeno, including its bakery, school, textile factory, bank, telephone exchange, police station and part of a hospital.

One of the many homes destroyed appears to have been targeted. It belonged to an uncle of Shamil Basayev, Vedeno’s native son and Chechnya’s most daring separatist commander. Eleven family members, including one of Basayev’s sisters and five young nephews, died when their two-story house was flattened on May 23.

Within two weeks, Basayev and his fighters withdrew from Vedeno, allowing Russian paratroopers to capture it and claim that the separatists were on the verge of defeat.

The claim was premature. On June 14, Basayev led a daring commando raid on the Russian city of Budennovsk, held more than 1,000 hostages in its hospital for the next five days and beat back two Russian assaults. The mayhem left 121 dead before the government agreed to a cease-fire and peace talks in Grozny in exchange for the hostages.

Three days of talks this week resolved all military aspects of a peace accord--release of war prisoners, disarming of Chechen fighters and a phased withdrawal of most Russian troops.

But these steps were delayed pending the settlement of political questions.

Negotiators agreed Thursday to hold parliamentary elections in Chechnya this fall but were divided on a date. They have yet to tackle the issue that ignited the war--Chechnya’s degree of sovereignty from Moscow. More talks are scheduled today.

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On a hillcrest outside Vedeno, a Russian lieutenant spat in anger at the whole peace process. He was particularly incensed that the deal in Budennovsk had given Basayev and 72 of his men safe conduct Monday back to Chechnya, where they disappeared in the dark.

The lieutenant, who identified himself only as Viktor, commands a platoon of the Interior Ministry’s 27th Mechanized Infantry Division that had parked its armored personnel carrier above trenches along the crest. His men claim to be part of a large ring of Russian troops that had Basayev surrounded Wednesday in the valley below.

“I don’t think we should conclude peace with them,” said the lieutenant. “We won the war. One more day of fighting and we could crush them. If we don’t, they will grow again and start their terror all over again.”

Anger over Budennovsk runs so high in the Russian armed forces that Col. Gen. Anatoly S. Kulikov, their commander in Chechnya, demanded that the arrest and extradition of Basayev as a terrorist be part of the peace accord. The Chechen side agreed to help detain him but stopped short of pledging to turn him over--a weak point that could easily undermine the accord.

Budennovsk evokes a quite different reaction among Chechens.

Despite the deaths of civilians in the Russian city, many people here were buoyed by news of the raid, saying unarmed Chechens had suffered terrorism on a much wider scale and that the threat of retaliation in kind inside Russia may finally put an end to it all.

Tamara Musayeva’s eyes grow belligerent and her fist punches her palm when she is asked about Basayev’s surprise attack. “He did right!” she told a visitor to her home in Vedeno.

“He shouldn’t have taken women and children hostage,” her husband said.

“We have been hostages here for nearly seven months,” shot back Musayeva, 48, who worked 32 years at the textile plant and spent much of this spring in her bomb shelter. “I thought my head would crack from all that bombing.”

“Now the Russians have stopped shooting and bombing,” said Makkha Suleymanova, 30, a telephone operator. “For this we can be grateful to Shamil Basayev.”

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Not everyone in Vedeno is eager for the Russians to leave. Saifutdin Chamayev, the deputy mayor appointed by Russia’s puppet government in Grozny, fears that his fledgling police force, now just 26 officers, will be overwhelmed by armed separatists intent on recapturing Vedeno. “The village is deeply divided,” he said, painting a scenario of strife among Chechens. “I am afraid we are being set up.”