Another New Year in Chechnya
offers no sign that the conflict
is ending.
By Umalt Dudayev
in Grozny
Usman, 37, from the
Achkhoi-Martan district of western Chechnya, is commanders of a small squad of rebels - or, as he prefers to
put it, a major in the armed forces of the Chechen Republic
of Ichkeria.
Tall and skinny, Usman wears a short,
neatly trimmed beard. "The Russian army has tried everything it could here during these four years,
but they failed," he said. "Almost every village
has a garrison stationed in
it, but that changes nothing. Complete occupation of a territory does not mean victory
over the enemy, and no one
anywhere in the world has ever succeeded in defeating a partisan movement."
As the fifth year
begins since the start of Russia's second military campaign in Chechnya, someone like Usman should,
according to Moscow's version of events, no longer be around. The Kremlin has declared that a "political process" is now fully underway
in the troubled republic and all
hostilities are over.
Yet Usman maintains that the fight
by pro-independence
rebels is continuing at full strength. And evidence for
this comes in every day.
The fighters are particularly dangerous in the gorges and
forests of the Caucasus and in the shattered landscape
of the Chechen capital, Grozny. On January 14, four military sappers were killed and
two were badly injured by
a mine laid in the Shatoi region in Chechnya's southern mountains. A day earlier, three sappers were killed
and another hurt in the same region.
Three days before that, a group of marines were ambushed near
Vedeno, and one was killed.
In the last
week, the heavily-guarded group of pro-Moscow
government buildings in Grozny has also come under grenade
attack.
Usman's group operates
in the mountains and carries out
ambushes and acts of sabotage. He says, "If the numbers
are unequal, and you have
to save your
men and survive, then you must
split your forces into many
small groups and conduct the
war so as to wear the
enemy out - and it will eventually
bring results."
A Russian officer named Vitaly from
the military command headquarters also admits that
the conflict is not over.
"Not a single day passes
by without our field-engineer
soldiers finding landmines and other
self-explosive devices on roads during terrain inspections, while in Grozny and other
major towns the attacks on soldiers continue," he said. "It's a real partisan
war going on here. At the moment the fighters are slightly
less active due to winter
conditions, but during the spring and
summer it gets really hot here."
The character of the
fighting has changed. The Chechen fighters
are more scattered and divided
than they were in the conflict
of 1994-96. Several former rebel commanders, including Ruslan Yamadayev, Apti Arsanukayev and Ibragim Sultygov are now fighting
on the Russian side.
Usman claims that those still fighting
remain loyal to rebel president
Aslan Maskhadov and that if necessary,
they can unite forces for a joint
operation at two or three days'
notice.
The main disagreement,
he says, is over the use
of suicide bombing as a tactic. The most
feared Chechen fighter, Shamil Basayev, argues for shifting military
operations to Russian territory, deploying suicide bombers, and eliminating
those who collaborate with the Russian authorities,
while Maskhadov, Ruslan Gelayev and some other
commanders disagree.
"Basayev is convinced that Russia is conducting a total war of destruction against us, a terrorist war, and therefore
Chechens have the right to
respond to it with terrorism," Usman said. "That includes terrorist
acts on Russian territory using suicide-bombers. Otherwise, there are no disagreements," said Usman.
"The war will
last as long as the Russians are
here. We are not in a hurry. Shamil [19th century Islamist leader and warrior]
said, 'When the mujahedin sleeps,
the jihad carries on!'"
The greater fragmentation
of the Chechen side actually makes
things harder for the Russians,
said Vitaly. "Groups that fight
on their own, without a single centre of command, are much more
dangerous," he said. "They are hard to locate
and defeat. They are also
quite unpredictable. After federal troops had crushed nearly all the major
groups in Chechnya in the spring and
summer of 2000, the war shifted to
sabotage and terrorism.
"This can go on for years, like
it did in Afghanistan."
Over the past year, Moscow has come to rely
more on pro-Moscow leader Akhmad
Kadyrov, who was elected president
of the republic in October 2003 in a much-criticised poll. The several thousand
armed Chechens loyal to Kadyrov,
known in Russian as "Kadyrovtsy", now play a much greater
role. They go on joint patrols with
Russian interior ministry forces, and locals say they fear the
dreaded "clean-up" operations because of the Kadyrov men more than the Russian
soldiers.
Vitaly, however, does
not trust his would-be allies. "Akhmad Kadyrov's security service is full of former [rebel] fighters," he said. "Many of them came
over to our
side only to save their
skin, and not for ideological or patriotic reasons. They used to
fight against the Russian army,
and I just don't believe that
those former rebels have made
such a sharp about-turn in their
beliefs."
"Chechnya is a very small place, and
they all know each other
and have family and clan
connections," he went on.
Certainly, Kadyrov has so
far failed to deliver on promises he made
last year when he said
that, "Chechnya must enter the
New Year without such names as Maskhadov
and Basayev." Since then the only
major capture has been of two flags,
once belonging to Basayev, when
he fought in Abkhazia in 1992-93. And even those flags
date from a time when Basayev was
fighting alongside Russian soldiers against the Georgian
army.
Usman confirmed that
many of the "Kadyrovtsy" are potential fifth-columnists. He said, "The fact that some
of my former brothers-in-arms went to join
Kadyrov's service does not mean they have
become my enemies. If I need
their help I think they won't
say no."
In the mean time
Chechnya's endless conflict continues to arouse suspicions
amongst weary Chechens, many of whom believe that
there is some kind of collusion between the two
sides.
"Chechnya is not Vietnam, which was helped by
the Soviets in its war against
the United States, and it's
not Afghanistan that was helped by
the Americans in its war against
the Soviet Army," said Chechen political analyst Murad Nashkhoev.
"We have no borders
with other countries, and our territory is a thousand times smaller than Russia's.
Where do the rebels get arms
and money? If it is so crucial,
why have the Russian special
security services failed so far to
capture Basayev or Maskhadov?
"This is not a war but a dirty game played
by both sides,
and it is the Chechen people who suffer as a result."
Umalt Dudayev is the
pseudonym of a Chechen journalist.
This article originally
appeared in the Caucasus Reporting Service, produced by the
Institute for War and Peace
Reporting, http://www.iwpr.net.