Back Into The Inferno

By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW

Imagine losing the Vietnam War, then going back for a replay. That's what Russia appears to be doing in Chechnya. Three years after suffering one of the most humiliating defeats in its history at the hands of a small, improvised army of Chechen guerrillas, Russia last week was once again in a state of undeclared war with the mountainous republic. And the conflict is about to escalate dramatically. The first Russian ground forces have crossed the frontier, thrusting into two northern Chechen districts, while Russian commandos--the Spetsnaz--are reportedly moving into the northeast. In keeping with the best traditions of Soviet propaganda, Moscow announced that "the local people" in several Chechen districts are rising up against Islamic extremists. An estimated 50,000 to 60,000 additional Russian troops are massed on Chechnya's borders, awaiting the order to move. Overhead, Russian warplanes continued the systematic destruction of Chechnya's communications and bridges. Late last week Russian air force commander General Anatoly Kornukov said he needed a week to 10 days to finish his offensive.

Barring a sudden diplomatic breakthrough, a major ground war is about to explode. The Russian military has clamped tight censorship on its operations, but political leaders have difficulty containing their glee at the prospect of hitting back at the unruly, predominately Islamic state that has been infuriating them for the past five years. Officially, they have been goaded past endurance by alleged Chechen acts of terrorism, including the spectacular bombings of four apartment buildings in Moscow and elsewhere last month. But Chechnya's determination to secede from Russia is equally a target. When asked about Russian incursions into Chechnya, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the latest in President Boris Yeltsin's revolving cast of legislative leaders, gave a sinister little smile and explained that the term incursion didn't apply. "We don't have a border with Chechnya," he said. "Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation." In the Chechen capital of Grozny, guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev displayed his own brand of black humor, calling for a massive hole to be dug in the Russian cemetery on the edge of the shattered city in preparation for a new pile of Russian corpses.

In Washington the Clinton Administration is following events with alarm. "We have asked the Russians to clarify their actions and intentions," says State Department spokesman James Rubin, adding that the U.S. is urging constructive dialogue on both sides. The use of force, he says, "will make dialogue that much harder to occur."

There was something wildly irrational in the Kremlin's thinking, starting with the notion that a second Chechnya war would be more winnable than the first one. Three years ago, a demoralized and disastrously led Russian army was savaged by Chechnya's hastily assembled guerrillas. The only obvious difference now is that there are more Chechen fighters. Since the bloody debacle of 1994-'96, the Russian army's disintegration has continued. Budget cuts and corruption have undermined its strength and reduced training to a bare minimum, while morale has dropped even lower. But by some bizarre process of mental alchemy, the top Russian brass feels it can get it right this time.

One reason for the stubbornness may be that the same military leadership is in charge in Moscow, and they claim to have learned from their previous failures. More important, they claim to have learned from NATO's almost casualty-free successes in Kosovo. Last week, before a blackout descended on military news, Moscow TV carried cockpit footage of a Russian smart missile destroying its Chechen target. It'll be a nice short offensive, General Valery Manilov of the General Staff declared cheerfully. If the troops move "energetically," he predicted, "we won't have to winter there."

Not many others are so optimistic. Russian critics of the military say the troops are moving into Chechnya too late in the year. Within a few weeks ground operations will be slowed by mud, then halted altogether by snow, while air operations will be hampered by low-hanging mists. "Military strategy says you should never, never initiate a ground operation with winter approaching," commented Alexander Zhilin, a former Russian fighter pilot and now a military analyst for the weekly Moscow News. "I am afraid there are going to be massive casualties." Former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, a hawk during the last war, is much more cautious. A ground offensive, he warned, could lead to "political catastrophe."

Russian commanders have, in fact, learned nothing at all since the first Chechnya war. Officers and NCOs who took part in battles last month against Chechen rebels in western Dagestan described their own commanders as corrupt, ill-organized and incompetent. Sources close to the Spetsnaz, the best-trained and most combat-experienced soldiers, say they lost officers to misdirected Russian "precision bombings" in Dagestan. They also speak of corrupt commanders who allowed Chechen leader Basayev to buy his way out of Dagestan after a failed offensive, and of helicopter-gunship crews who were bribed by the Chechens to hit empty slices of mountainside instead of guerrilla positions.

What's really driving the war machine is not military necessity or strategic calculation or even the fear of terrorist attack. It is the Kremlin's politics of survival. Russia's leaders are waging a war of succession, designed by Kremlin imagemakers to prove to the Russian electorate that Prime Minister Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel hastily slapped into office by Yeltsin two months ago, is a real man, capable of leading Russia as President when Yeltsin steps down next year. The Kremlin logic is clear: Putin fights a short, brilliant war, his popularity rockets, and Yeltsin backers pump millions of dollars into the presidential campaign. Putin is elected and protects Yeltsin's family and hangers-on from prosecution for corruption. Last week Yeltsin, once again invisible and by some reports dangerously ailing, sent out word that he fully approves of Putin's "decisiveness" in handling Chechnya.

So far the hard line is paying political dividends for Putin. But columnists and rival politicians have openly voiced suspicions about the official line that Basayev and his Jordanian lieutenant, Khattab, were behind the wave of apartment bombings. Even if Islamic extremists set off the blasts, skeptics say, the Russian "special services" may have guided their hand. In fact, Basayev has had a long and murky relationship with Russian intelligence. By one account he was paid by Moscow to lead a mercenary group during fighting in Abkhazia, one of the local wars that flared up in the south after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In a recent interview with TIME, Krasnoyarsk governor and presidential contender Alexander Lebed--who negotiated a peace deal with Chechnya in 1996--said bluntly that Basayev was a longtime KGB "informer" who, he added, retained "levers of influence" in Moscow.

But for now, the military mobilization appears unchecked. The invasion plan has been widely leaked to the press (thus giving the Chechens plenty of time to prepare). Russian troops are expected to take over the plains of northern Chechnya, dig in there, then continue south. They want to push the Chechen fighters into the mountains by the onset of winter and let them slowly starve--"put them through the deep freeze," says a military source. While the guerrillas are withering in the mountains, Russia will form a government of "healthy political forces," a Soviet-era term for puppets. This will probably be built around a handful of undistinguished former Chechen members of the Russian Duma who have been living in exile in Moscow. There will almost certainly be no room for current Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, the former Russian army officer whom Moscow had once viewed as a moderate.

The plan is an amazing act of amnesia. Russia has never fully conquered the Caucasus in all its turbulent history. More often, its forces have ended up like a certain Comrade Chernoglaz, a regional Communist Party chief in the 1920s. During a pacification campaign, he was ambushed and decapitated. At their trial, his killers were asked what had happened to Chernoglaz's head. "He had no head," they answered. "Otherwise he would not have tried to conquer us."

--With reporting by Douglas Waller/Washington and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow

With reporting by Douglas Waller/Washington and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow