Word: guerrillas
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...Moscow has defined this war as an attempt to weed out a hard core of militant separatist guerrillas from within the wider Chechen population, and destroy it. Russia blames those militants for terrorist attacks in Russia and attempts to foment a separatist rebellion in neighboring Dagestan, as well as for the atmosphere of chaos and criminality that has prevailed in Chechnya over the past three years. But Moscow's methods in the field have been those of conventional warfare, bringing overwhelming force to bear in order to capture territory. And the art of guerrilla warfare is not to hold territory...
...history of counterinsurgency warfare suggests that defeating the Chechen guerrilla forces requires a political strategy to win over the bulk of Chechnya's civilian population. Following Mao Zedong's analogy that guerrillas are fish and a sympathetic civilian population is the water in which they swim, the art of counterinsurgency is to poison the water by turning civilians against the guerrillas. And Russia had reason for optimism going into the campaign. "Many Chechens are opposed to the Islamic militants like Shamil Basayev and Khattab, who the Russians claim to be targeting," says Meier. "Even more may have been prepared...
...weekend highlighted the limits of Russian control despite its territorial gains in the first months of the war. The Chechens for the most part retreated in the face of Russian air power, armor and artillery, insisting their plan was to draw the Russians in and then harass them through guerrilla action. "Now we're entering the phase of a brutal and bitter partisan war in which the Chechens attack at night and try and raise the cost of the Russian siege," says Meier. "And the Russian military is clearly undecided about how to proceed. Even though it may be politically...
...Chechens will try to kill as many Russians as possible in Grozny, then retire into the hills to wage guerrilla warfare with hit-and-run strikes into occupied towns and cities. The Russians say they are strangling the rebels in a ring of steel, but squeezing Jell-O is a better analogy. As Russian troops advance, Chechen guerrillas slip through the lines to harass them, even in the northern plains that Moscow claims are completely Russian controlled...
...correspondent Andrew Meier. "And Putin's handlers recognize that as fast as he's risen on the success of Chechyna thus far, he could fall just as fast if the public begins to perceive that the war is going badly." The onset of winter makes a quick victory against guerrilla forces in the mountains extremely unlikely, and even Grozny is proving far more resilient - and costly in terms of Russian casualties - than Russian military boasts allowed for. Even if they risk the heavy losses of an all-out assault on the Chechen capital, its capture would be primarily a symbolic...