On the eve of a decision to put down a separatist rebellion in the southern province of Chechnya 10 years ago, Oleg Lobov, one of President Boris Yeltsin’s advisers, said that what Yeltsin needed for political purposes was ‘‘a small victorious war’’.Today, that conflict rages beyond the borders of Chechnya, neither small nor victorious for Russia or the rebels. Wednesday’s raid on a school in neighbouring North Ossetia, in which fighters took hundreds of hostages on the first day of classes to demand the release of Chechen prisoners, underscored yet again the heavy toll this war has taken on Russians and Chechens alike. Thrust to the Russian presidency in 1999 on a wave of popular support for stronger military action, Vladimir Putin dispatched tens of thousands of troops to Chechnya. He vowed in earthy slang to wipe out the separatists, but Russia has been seized this week and last with painful reminders that he has not: two airlines apparently blown up in mid-flight, a suicide bombing at a Moscow subway station, schoolchildren taken as hostages.Gennady Gudkov, a former senior officer in the KGB and now a member of the Lower House of Parliament, the state Duma, said: ‘‘This will go on until we ourselves learn how to prevent terrorist acts, until we learn how to carry out effective operations to destroy terrorists.’’ At the core of the long conflict has been the resistance by Chechens, who are largely Muslim, to rule by Russia, which has refused to grant the region statehood. War and upheaval have marked Chechnya for decades. Early in the 19th century, the Russian general Alexei Yermolov set about conquering Chechnya and neighbouring Dagestan, levelling Chechen villages and building lines of fortresses through the region. But the Chechens fought back, and were led by a legendary mountain fighter, Imam Shamil, for a quarter century. Their lands later incorporated into the Soviet Union, half a million Chechens and Ingush were suddenly deported by Josef Stalin to Kazakhstan during World War II. They were free to return only after Stalin’s death in 1953. The latest conflict has its origins in the final years of the Soviet Union. A former Soviet air force commander, Dzhokhar Dudayev took control in Chechnya and launched a separatist movement in 1991. When the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of that year, little attention was paid to events in Chechnya. By 1994, faced with growing chaos, Yeltsin decided to act. On November 26, the Russians sent tank columns to Chechen capital Grozny in a bid to support opposition to Dudayev. The attack was a fiasco; Dudayev’s fighters killed many soldiers and captured nearly two dozen. The embarrassing rout set in motion a larger offensive, which was planned in Kremlin secrecy. But when carried out, the invasion quickly turned to disaster. The war also galvanised opposition in Russia to military conscription. The Chechens sometimes attacked outside the region, including a hospital in southern Russia. Dudayev was killed by a Russian rocket attack in April 1996, but the war continued. The Russian army was bruised and battered. Yeltsin agreed to a ceasefire later in the year. The Chechen resistance, which had initially been nationalist and separatist, was now joined by Arab fighters from outside, many of them Islamic radicals. One of the warlords, Shamil Basayev, led an armed incursion into Dagestan in 1999, hoping to trigger an uprising there. The apartment building bombings, in which more than 300 people died, followed a few weeks later. Putin, who had just become prime minister, decided to send in the troops again — and a second war unfolded. —(LAT-WP)
