Chechnya War Ends --or Does It?

Moscow’s 18-month-long battle to suppress Chechnya’s independence movement has been a disaster for the Chechens and a monumental embarrassment for Russia. The conflict has taken tens of thousands of lives, mostly civilians, and laid waste to Chechnya’s cities. It has exposed the Russian army, once feared throughout Europe, as badly led, poorly supplied and profoundly demoralized. Now President Boris Yeltsin and Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, the rebel Chechen leader, have agreed to a cease-fire, to take effect Saturday. A relieved Yeltsin rushed to Grozny, Chechnya’s battered capital, to tell some of the 41,000 Russian soldiers who have been fighting 1,500 Chechen irregulars that “the war is over and you have won.” Most Russians would like it to be so. But both claims may prove to be premature.

Polls show the Chechnya war tops Russians’ concerns, and with a tight presidential election now little more than two weeks away, Yeltsin was strongly motivated to seek at least a suspension of the bitter struggle. He had vowed never to negotiate with Dzhokar Dudayev, who led the Chechen secession movement. But when Dudayev was killed in a rocket attack five weeks ago, a change in political strategy became possible.

Yandarbiyev, too, had reasons to seek an armistice, not least the worry that a Yeltsin election defeat by neo-Communist Gennady Zyuganov could lead to even darker days for the Chechens.

What has been resolved so far, however, is modest. The big question of the political status of Chechnya, now one of Russia’s autonomous republics, has yet to be negotiated. Before that’s even attempted, Yeltsin and Yandarbiyev both must show they can control some of their independent-minded military chiefs, who may be eager to continue fighting. Russia’s army simply ignored Yeltsin’s cease-fire order last March 31. If it does so again, his reelection prospects will suffer.

For now, though, with his eyes focused on the June 16 Russian election, Yeltsin has acted to begin bringing a highly unpopular war to an end. Evidence, surely, that democratically expressed public opinion has become a force to be reckoned with in Russia.