Word: chechenization
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Putin's Plan B may work, at least as far as Russian public opinion is concerned. Most Russians prefer not to think about the war, and hostility toward Chechens and other people of the Caucasus is endemic. Plus, Putin has been relentless in enforcing a media blackout. The war appears on TV only when there is an incident too large to ignore--like the Chechen suicide bombing in the neighboring republic of Northern Ossetia in August that killed 50 people and destroyed a military hospital--or when ministers boast that the rebels are on their last legs. Russian media owners...
...Plan B. As many as seven Russian soldiers are being killed every day in Chechnya, according to close observers of the war. Moscow rarely publishes its losses, but last February the Kremlin admitted to almost 4,600 soldiers dead since late 1999--more than it lost in the first Chechen war but still considered a gross understatement. Musa Doshukayev, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian-appointed administration in Chechnya, told TIME that the official Kremlin count "causes only mirth among security specialists." No one has counted the Chechen civilian dead this go-around, though a conservative estimate...
While Russian leaders claim that the republic is gradually returning to normal, the conflict is in fact spreading. To the west, in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, Chechen guerrillas are stepping up operations against Russian troops. Chechen fighters have reached north into the Russian heartland as far as Moscow. Suicide bombings at a Moscow rock concert and an attempted bombing on the capital's main thoroughfare in July have unnerved the public. In Chechnya the guerrilla movement is split between traditional separatist fighters loyal to Aslan Maskhadov, the last elected president of Chechnya, and newer, deeply fundamentalist militants backed...
When the Kremlin put Kadyrov in charge of Chechnya in June 2000, many assumed he would be a transitional figure. But he has consolidated his position with the Kremlin, in part by arguing forcefully that only Chechens can wipe out the anti-Russian insurgency. To help him with this, the Russians have built up the Chechen police into a well-armed force that needs to be expanded, Kadyrov told TIME in a brief interview in Grozny. "The main task is to get the [police] up and running," he said...
...Russians suspect that many of Kadyrov's Chechen police are legalized guerrillas who actively fight with or provide intelligence to the insurgents--charges that Kadyrov's aides shrug off as unproved. According to a Russian officer, these so-called loyal Chechens regularly feed information on troop movements to the rebels. When his unit helicopters into the field, this officer is supposed to inform the area commandant's office, which is staffed by Chechens. But he never lets his chopper land at the planned destination. "I always order the pilot to land some two or three hundred meters away and open...