Chechens defy Russian war machine
Just before Christmas, Russian generals and politicians alike were predicting a sharp, swift end to the war against Chechnya by the New Year. Now, four months into the conflict, their forces have become bogged down.
Both military and civilian casualties are mounting, army morale has plummeted, and the Chechens are staging successful counter attacks.
The official figures for Russian soldiers killed so far is 600, but the anti war movement there puts it at over 3,000.
With the savage, indiscriminate and continuous bombing of the capital Grozny and other Chechen towns, civilian casualties must be still higher.
At the beginning of the war an estimated 50,000 people were still trapped in the besieged and devastated city, without food, water, electricity or fuel supplies. Despite Russian claims of safe corridors to allow them out, very few have managed to escape the relentless bombardment.
Fleeing refugees have also been subjected to a diktat from Moscow branding all Chechen males between 10-60 years suspected terrorists and therefore liable to detention.
Guerrilla tactics
Chechen fighters are sustaining fewer losses in battle, mainly because not only are they using superior tactics in defending their towns but are, at the same time, enticing the Russians into a guerrilla war in the mountains of the South.
In fact, this is the scenario the Russians most hoped to avoid, with its echoes of their disastrous and for them humiliating defeat by the Chechens in 1994-96.
"Putin’s War", as it has been dubbed by the Russian press, was supposed instead to boost the popularity of the new "tough on terrorists" president at home.
At the same time, it was to rehabilitate Russia’s standing in the outside world as a still powerful military and political power, able to maintain the unity of the Federation and to police its own spheres of influence.
This after the West’s expansion of NATO to include the former Soviet satellites of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and its war against Yugoslavia, during which Russia was marginalised.
If Russia loses control of Chechnya, it also loses control of the present and vitally important oil pipeline from the Caspian. Here again, the USA has been planning to cut Russia out by proposing a new pipeline to go instead through Turkey.
At the start of the war, some Chechens, disillusioned with the present Grozny regime and dreading more bloodshed, were resigning themselves to Russian occupation. Now the brutality of the invaders has turned the majority against them, and more and more are once again joining the guerrillas.
Mothers
In Russia, protest against this present war has previously been small. Now, the anti-war movement has re-emerged, including such groups as the Soldiers’ Mothers’ Committees, who are currently claiming a death toll of over 5,000 Russian soldiers, with another 6,000 wounded.
(In the 1994-96 war Russian women organised and linked up with Chechen women to find their missing sons and call for an end to the conflict).
The Russian media has also begun to criticise the growing casualties and apparent blunders of the military, and politicians such as Yavlinski and Zyuganov have voiced criticisms.
Internationally, London, Warsaw, Madrid, Paris and Beirut have all see protests against the war, and opposition continues to grow.