GROZNY: After four years of brutal guerrilla warfare in Russia’s separatist republic of Chechnya, the number of rebels there has stubbornly remained the same — a potent reminder that the Kremlin’s ‘Chechnya problem’ is far from being over.
Despite nearly daily reports of “liquidated” rebels, Russian officials estimate that 2,000 to 3,000 are still fighting federal troops — the same as when the war started in 1999.
“Part of the population still supports the bandits,” Ilya Shabalkin, the spokesman for federal forces, admitted to reporters last week in the shattered Chechen capital of Grozny.
“They won’t be liquidated in a year or two. They’ll be catching bandits here for another 10 years, if you look at the situation realistically,” Shabalkin said.
Turning the support for separatists into trust in the government is key to establishing a lasting peace in the region. But a month before a Kremlin-organized presidential election in the republic, that goal seems as elusive as ever.
And while federal forces kill dozens of rebels every month, dozens more keep taking their place.
When Russia sent troops to suppress Chechen separatists in 1994 during the first war in the republic, much of the Chechen population supported the rebels, proud of the men who took up arms and fought to break away from Russia.
But when that war ended and Chechnya gained de facto independence in 1996, it soon disintegrated into a lawless place of feuding warlords where kidnapping for ransom of civilians, Western journalists and aid workers became commonplace.
It was with the slogan of fighting such chaos, which the Kremlin said could destabilize the rest of the region, that then prime minister Vladimir Putin launched the second war, Kremlin’s “anti-terror operation,” in October 1999.
And many Chechens, while not welcoming the rockets, shells and bombs that rained down on their cities and villages, hoped that the operation would in the end again establish some normality.
That hope quickly evaporated as many Russian troops stole, killed and terrorized the population in the name of flushing out separatists.
Today Chechnya is still a lawless place. At dusk residents retreat to their shattered homes, never knowing whether masked armed men will burst in during the night.
“People disappear at three, four o’clock in the morning,” said 38-year-old Rizvan, who has lived through both wars in Grozny. “No one knows where they go. No one knows who has taken them.”
Moscow is keen to show ahead of Russian presidential elections next year that the situation in Chechnya has stabilized, that a political process has taken over from the war.
As part of these efforts, it has scheduled a presidential election in the republic on October 5.
But casualties on both sides mount daily as separatists step up their attacks on Russian targets ahead of the poll.
Moscow asserts today that most Chechens do not support the rebels.
Chechens say they don’t care who holds the power so long as they can lead a life where electricity and running water are not luxuries and walking around at dusk is not a life-threatening activity.
“Just so there is stability,” said 28-year-old Elmira who lives in a temporary house for refugees who have returned to the capital of Grozny. “Just so the person (in charge) is strong and could help our people get up on its feet and stop the killings.”
But resentment of “federals” often lies just below the surface.—AFP