Europe
Russia/Chechnya
Rebel Retaliation
The newly appointed chief of the pro-Russian administration in Chechnya, Ahmad Kadyrov, declared at the end of June that he had a “sensational” plan to pacify the separatist republic.
Sensational news did come from Chechnya, but of an entirely different nature. On July 2, Chechen rebels staged suicide truck bombings in five locations, reportedly killing and wounding 165 Russian servicemen and policemen.
Because the idea of martyrdom is an important part of Chechen tradition, the suicide bombings send an ominous signal of resolve and defiance. These implications were very much in evidence in Russian press reactions to the attacks. The commentaries were almost uniformly critical of the Russian military’s conduct of the war.
“The commanders of the federal troops were caught unawares,” stated Moscow’s reformist business weekly Kommersant (July 4). “The death machine has started clattering,” Ilya Skakunov commented in the liberal Sevodnya (July 3). “The guerrilla war in Chechnya is acquiring an appalling resemblance to the Afghan war: The federal forces are being stabbed in the back in the areas ‘liberated’ from the bandits....The [bombings] demonstrated to both the Chechens and Moscow that the Russian government’s appointees have no influence with guerrillas. And without it they cannot bring the situation under control,” he wrote.
Several newspapers, including the liberal Nezavisimaya Gazeta (July 4), judged that Moscow has failed to establish its rule in Chechnya. “Not a single Chechen district is under control of the federal forces…who are in dismay if not in panic…,” it wrote. “Many reports emerging from Chechnya suggest that the federal forces are incapable of bringing the ‘antiterrorist operation’ to a logical conclusion and even have no desire to do it. The situation is aggravated by the fact that the military cannot defend themselves, to say nothing of civilians....The only alternative is an immense and growing toll of needless victims on both sides.”
Pro-reform Moskovsky Komsomolets concurred on July 3. “It is absolutely clear that the Russian army and interior troops are not in full control of Chechen territory.”
One of the few dissenting voices was that of the official Vedomosti (July 4), which tried to make the best of the worst case scenario. “These acts of intimidation do not have any special strategic, moral, or political meaning,” it argued. Nevertheless, it had to admit that “at night, the majority of Chechen territory is controlled by the rebels.”
Another youth newspaper, the liberal Komsomolskaya Pravda (July 5), reflected that the war in Chechnya is dragging on with no end in sight. “Nobody can explain the logic of this antiterrorist operation,” it opined. “The generals used to refer to the ‘first stage,’ then ‘the second stage.’ It looks like the current one has degenerated into an ‘endless stage.’ ”
Alan Kachma, writing in the liberal Izvestia (July 5), also found Chechen support for the rebel cause disturbing. In his assessment, “suicide bombings with the help of plastic explosives-laden trucks spell out a new war. We have to be honest with ourselves: The majority of the local population supports these people and honestly believes they are heroes.”
For Leonid Radzikhovsky, Sevodnya’s popular commentator (July 4), the suicide bombings evoke the specter of inevitable defeat in Chechnya. “If the Chechens have a few dozen more of these fanatical kamikazes, we shall never bring them to heel,” he asserted.
