While no one has claimed responsibility for the recent bomb blasts in Moscow, Russian authorities have strong reasons to suspect a Chechen connection. The blast went off exactly a year after hundreds of militants from Chechnya invaded neighbouring Dagestan with a declared purpose of setting up an independent Islamic state spanning both regions. Shortly after the rebels were driven back to Chechnya, a spate of devastating bomb attacks rocked Russian cities, killing nearly 300 people. Moscow blamed the bombings on Chechen terrorists, although it is yet to prove the charge. Russia launched a large-scale ground offensive to recapture Chechnya, which it had surrendered to separatists in 1996 after two years of bloody war.

Today Russia is as far from subduing Chechnya. The second Chechen campaign has turned out to be a carbon copy of the first war that Russia lost. Federal forces, currently numbering 80,000, have occupied the whole of Chechnya, except for a tiny mountainous part in the south, but their control of the small region, which is only 160 km long and 100 km wide, is nominal. Chechen guerrillas rely on widespread support of the local population. During the day they are peaceful civilians, and at night they plant mines and mount lightning attacks on Russian garrisons. The textbook guerrilla tactics have proved quite effective. During the twelve months of hostilities in Dagestan and Chechnya, Russia has lost 10,370 men, killed or wounded—10 per cent of the military force deployed in the region at the peak of the operation.

Moscow claims that only 2,000 militants, three-fourths of whom were foreign mercenaries, were still active in Chechnya. The proportion of foreigners appears to be grossly exaggerated. Anyway, the figure represents only a small core of seasoned fighters. For major operations, rebel commanders mobilise hundreds and sometimes thousands of well-armed, battle-ready fighters to achieve local manpower superiority and launch punishing attacks on military units ...

Continued rebel attacks on military convoys have forced the Russian forces to adopt an increasingly immobile and defensive posture. They sit in hundreds of fortified garrisons scattered across Chechnya, awaiting attack every night and not knowing for certain where the enemy is ...

"Unfortunately, we are making the same mistakes again," the former deputy chief commander in Chechnya, General Vladimir Shamanov, said in a recent interview. "Events in Chechnya are unfolding according to the worst possible scenario and all victorious reports from the region are just a pack of lies."

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who has been the driving force in a year-long offensive, insists there will be no replay of the 1996 withdrawal from Chechnya ... Putin concedes the need to seek a political solution to the conflict. Moscow has relied on Chechen collaborators to bring peace to the region. But all attempts to set up local militia have fallen through and Moscow-appointed Chechen administrators have failed to persuade militants to lay down arms.

Kremlin has refused to talk to the Chechen President. Aslan Maskhadov, on the grounds that he has joined hands with the "terrorists". Analysts said it was another mistake ...

Meanwhile, public support for the Chechen war ... for the first time fell below the 50 per cent mark - 49 per cent backed the war (in July), down from 55 per cent in June and 73 per cent in March ...

Gen. Manilov, whose numerous deadlines for ending rebel resistance in Chechnya have failed to materialise, has recently promised that by the year-end "the crime incidence in Chechnya will be no higher than in other parts of Russia" ..... His forecast (may) still come true if terrorist attacks across Russia escalate to the same level as in Chechnya. (Source: The Hindu, 13 August: 2000)