Russian campaign in Chechnya botched by deceit, incompetence

By James Meek

MOSCOW: Those who ask why Russia has not resolved the Chechen crisis are asking, if not the wrong question, then certainly the less important one: Why has Britain not resolved the Ulster crisis, Spain the Basque crisis, the UN the division of Cyprus?

What marks Chechnya out is not the difficulty of finding a solution to an ethnic-territorial-religious dispute which has simmered on and off for more than a century, but the careless, haphazard, deadly way the Russian government has managed the conflict in the meantime. That has been accompanied by a fantastic combination of lies, breast-beating, self-criticism and utter lack of personal or collective responsibility for a tragic sequence of bloody blunders.

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow's approach to Chechnya has epitomized the systemic self-deceit of an insecure regime, a self-deceit bizarrely exposed by the regime's acceptance of a free press. Everyone knows that the government which sent the troops into Chechnya in 1995 was the same government which left 50 percent of Soviet-era weaponry behind for the separatists when it evacuated its soldiers from the republic in 1992; yet no one has ever been brought to account for this.

Almost monthly since the Russian invasion, the country has heard from its leaders, often from President Boris Yeltsin himself, that aircraft bombing has stopped, that shelling has stopped, that all defense ministry troops have been withdrawn from the republic, that the last rebel stronghold has fallen, that the puppet government of Doku Zavgayev fully controls Chechnya, that peace has been made.

Sometimes, perhaps, Yeltsin has believed what he has said; each time he has been wrong, and has been shown to have been wrong by the media. To lie to your own people in the hope of not being found out is wrong, but at least understandable. To lie in the almost certain knowledge of being exposed as a liar bespeaks both a terrible contempt for the real democratic power of your electorate and a terrible disarray in your system of governance.

Last week's Chechen rebel attack on Grozny may have been a turning point. The contrast between the violent reality of hand- to-hand fighting in the streets of Grozny, with young Russian soldiers once again being cut to ribbons by nimble rebel veterans, and the languid unconcern of the Moscow authorities, was even more so.

Yeltsin was tired, unwell and preoccupied with preparations for his inauguration. Defense minister Igor Rodionov and interior minister Anatoly Kulikov, whose troops were being slaughtered, surrounded, taken prisoner and in some cases running out of ammunition, took no particular interest in events in Grozny until the end of the week.

Doku Zavgayev - nicknamed "the air traffic controller" because it is unsafe for him to travel anywhere in Chechnya outside Grozny airport - commented, insanely, that "apart from Grozny, the situation in Chechnya is perfectly quiet".

Movladi Udugov, the rebel "information minister", was pouring out a gory blow-by-blow account of rebel triumphs in Grozny by satellite telephone from the Chechen countryside. But Moscow journalists could get no information out of the bloated press apparatuses of any of the security ministries.

When Alexander Lebed, Yeltsin's new security overlord, was appointed the president's representative for Chechnya at the weekend, he discovered that the man who was supposed to be his deputy was on holiday in Cyprus.

It would be almost reassuring to blame the crisis of responsibility in Moscow -- and Chechnya is only the most visible part of the problem -- on the president's state of health. He is clearly sick. His metabolism does not work at full speed. The man we saw taking the inaugural oath on Friday was not the decisive, charismatic opportunist of 1991, or the bustling deep-pocketed entertainer of the spring presidential campaign.

Yet the walking corpse theory does not stand up, either. Yeltsin has been written off too many times before, only to come back making speeches and policymaking. What we have is something a lot less clear-cut than a disabled president -- a partial president, who moves in and out of the decision-making process in an unpredictable fashion, and who may for that reason use, or be used by, different political power centers in Moscow at different times.

Even if the president were a jogging, tennis-playing, muesli- eating teetotaler half his age, the question of Russia's chain of command, of where the buck stops, the question of responsibility, would remain. Even if it were somehow known that Yeltsin was incapacitated, and that a second figure -- prime minister Victor Chernomyrdin, for example -- was actually running the country, it would not solve this question. For today's Kremlin intrigues are not simply a struggle for power: they are a struggle to define what form power in Russia should take.

It is always misleading to anthropomorphize countries -- the US is seeking this, Britain wants that -- but it is particularly misleading in Russia's case. Even talking about "the Russian government" suggests a degree of coordination which does not exist. The presidential administration and the actual government, the cabinet of ministers, are separate entities. Even though he has the decisive say in appointing them, Yeltsin feels free to criticize ministers as if he did not.

Senior government officials themselves make no distinction between personal opinion and agreed policy. Nor is there any stigma in making a forecast as if it were a statement about something which had already happened.

When, days after the president's reelection, Russian forces began bombarding Chechen villages with aircraft and artillery again, who authorized the decision? Which was the more alarming possibility -- that the commander in the field, General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, began the brutal campaign because he felt it was a good idea, or that a senior figure in Moscow had secretly given him permission?

The current disarray will inevitably change. The only question is how and when. There are encouraging signs a smaller, more disciplined cabinet this time around, and that the government and the president's administration, run by a man the prime minister has good relations with, Anatoly Chubais, are keen to avoid duplicate posts.

The media, parliament -- ineffective as it is -- and the increasingly powerful business sector will all demand greater account ability from the government, and that means at least working out common policies.

But that leaves Chechnya, and General Lebed, who far from balking at this poisoned chalice seems to be embracing it as a chance to build up the presidential security council into yet another alternative center of power. He admitted this week that Gen. Tikhomirov was an old comrade of his, and some sources believe it was he who gave the commander permission to begin bombarding again last month.

The chronic tendency for the Kremlin to keep generating these new power structures, from the Lebedite security council to the Zavgayev government to the failed peace commission, without giving them clearly-defined powers or taking responsibility for their failure, is the single biggest reason for Russia's inability to even contain, let alone end, the Chechen conflict.

-- The Guardian