Moscow Has Chechnya Back--Now What?

War, the adage goes, is the pursuit of political ends by other means. But the Chechen war breaks the rule.

After nine months of fighting, Russia’s military offensive against its southern republic of Chechnya is all but over. Russia controls more than 90% of Chechen territory, having pushed the separatist rebels to bases burrowed deep in the mountains.

By now, most countries would have used such a military advantage to force their adversaries to the negotiating table, launching peace talks to ensure that their political goals prevailed.

But in Russia, no negotiations are underway and none are in the offing. The reason is simple: The Russians don’t have clear political goals in Chechnya, so they can’t negotiate a political settlement.

“Russia doesn’t know what to do with Chechnya,” says Alexei Malashenko, an expert on ethnic conflicts who is affiliated with Russia’s Institute of Oriental Studies and the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. “It has never known, and it still doesn’t know. This is why you can say that they’ve won the war but lost the conflict. And no one knows how to end the conflict. The conflict will never end.”

The best that Russia can manage is half-steps. Earlier this month, President Vladimir V. Putin signed an order establishing an interim civilian administration in Chechnya that will report directly to the Kremlin. The decree formally erased the legal fiction that Chechnya is a functioning part of the Russian Federation, but it contained no glimmer of a vision for establishing a new government.

Presidential aides estimate that this “temporary” arrangement--in which elections and other trappings of democracy are formally suspended--will last at least two years.

Russian forces, meanwhile, are preparing for a long-term, low-intensity conflict. Every night, Russian soldiers come under attack, and commanders acknowledge that hundreds of armed rebel fighters have managed to re-infiltrate territory ostensibly controlled by Moscow’s forces. Just Sunday, the Interior Ministry said two police buildings in Grozny, the Chechen capital, had come under fire overnight, although no injuries were reported.

‘There Will Be No Peace Agreement’

Most Americans would have a hard time accepting the prospect of a drawn-out war of attrition on their own territory with no apparent political purpose. During his visit to Moscow two weeks ago, President Clinton made just that point, asking “whether any war can be won that requires large numbers of civilian casualties and has no political component bringing about a solution.”

But that’s not the way Russians see the situation. They don’t like the war but they accept it as both inevitable and unwinnable.

“There will always, always, always be fighting in those hills,” Malashenko says. “Chechens have a traditional society that will not change. And in the meantime, there will be no peace agreement.”

The Chechen conflict bears little resemblance to recent wars fought by Western powers, which have been characterized by narrow goals and overwhelming firepower.

“This conflict isn’t as neat and clean as a bunch of well-armed Western nations unleashing their power on a tin-pot dictator and then forcing their terms of the peace,” says Alan Rousso, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “This should be likened more to a situation in the Third World where you have long-term clan warfare that drags on for decades with occasional eruptions.”

The Russians see their options as limited, Rousso says. They aren’t willing to exterminate the Chechens, so they have little choice other than an extended military engagement. In their view, granting the Chechens independence isn’t a realistic prospect: That would, in effect, reestablish the situation that existed before the current conflict, when warlords used Chechen territory as a launching pad for kidnappings and other crime raids on Russian territory.

“I think the Russians think a low-level pacification mission is the best outcome they could hope for,” Rousso says.

Another complication is that Russia’s interests in Chechnya are murky. Malashenko says the situation was clearer in 1994, the first time Russia sent in troops to reclaim the rebel region. Then, he says, the political goal was to preserve what remained of the Russian empire.

But in the intervening years, Russia’s national image has moderated.

“Why is Russia interested in Chechnya?” Malashenko asks. “If you think of yourself as an empire, then there is a certain logic to it. But Russia is not an empire anymore.”

Alexander Iskandarian, director of Moscow’s Caucasus Studies Center, agrees. When the Kremlin sent in troops last fall, he says, its primary aim was to rally support for the new prime minister, Putin, who rode the war’s popularity and was elected president in March. Now that he’s been safely inaugurated, he and his supporters aren’t quite sure what to do next.

“This was a war fought on TV screens to boost the popularity of the president,” Iskandarian says. “There was no political plan associated with it. They are just beginning to try to come up with one.”

Majority of Russians Appear to Back War

At the moment, the majority of the Russian people still appear to support the war. In a recent poll by the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research, 56% of respondents said they favor continuing the military operation.

But there are signs that public support may be wearing thin. Approval of the war was much higher for most of the spring--about 70%. And there has been a sharp rise in those who favor beginning peace talks--35% in the recent poll, up from 23%.

While most Russians say they see no alternative to the war, their enthusiasm might wane in coming months if casualties mount with little sign of progress. The official Russian death toll has already topped 2,000.

Even if the government decided to open peace talks, it wouldn’t know whom to invite to the table.

Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov was elected in 1997 in a ballot recognized by Russia and international observers as free and fair. But he has lost much of his former authority in recent years; field commanders have become far more powerful, and they openly defy his orders. At this point, moreover, Russian leaders are trapped by their own propaganda, which has demonized Maskhadov and the top rebel commanders as “bandits and terrorists.”

That leaves Russia able to negotiate only with “friendly” Chechen leaders--but they obviously have little or no influence with the rebels and little or no standing with the Chechen people.

An alternative would be to convene a round table of Chechen elders to draw up a plan for the republic. But it’s not clear that any elders would be willing to participate, since any Chechen who agrees to work with Russian authorities risks being branded a traitor.

In the meantime, the government’s lack of political vision is putting the Russian military in an increasingly difficult situation.

The army’s approach to the war has been to overwhelm the rebels with firepower, and that method has largely succeeded, albeit with massive civilian casualties. But now that the Russians have regained control of so much territory, they have to hold it--and that is likely to prove far harder.

The rebels are clearly eager to fight a guerrilla war. They have grown ever bolder in recent weeks in attacking Russian checkpoints. In addition, suicide bombers have killed at least four Russian servicemen, and the rebels have even fired on medical vehicles, in one instance killing three doctors.

Such hit-and-run attacks are demoralizing, but Russian leaders fear something even worse: a surprise rebel offensive. In the 1994-96 war, after the Russians were lulled into thinking they were in control on the ground, the rebels launched an August 1996 blitzkrieg on Grozny and seized it in a matter of days. Deeply humiliated, the Russians agreed to a hasty cease-fire that gave the Chechens de facto independence--and set the stage for the current war.

Russian military commanders have been saying repeatedly that the “military phase” of the operation is over--an apparent hint that the Kremlin should make some plans for the republic’s political future. But the brass seems as much at a loss as everyone else.

“Politicians start wars,” sniffed Russia’s commander in Chechnya, Col. Gen. Gennady Troshev, when asked recently about the state of the conflict. “So they should finish them.”