Russia has warned the inhabitants of the Chechen capital Grozny to leave by today or die. An expert on the Caucasus, author of Chechnya: tombstone of Russian power, has just returned from visiting Ingushetia on the Chechen border. He explains how attitudes on both sides have changed since the war of 1994-96 (see leading article). ANYWHERE else, Manaz, the new capital of Ingushetia, might seem a bit of a joke, yet another Third World presidential folly: three large buildings ? presidential office, government and parliament ? with columns and gold-tinted plastic domes stand in the middle of empty fields stretching away towards the foothills of the Caucasus. The style can only be described as neo-Islamic airport hotel.

But this is the North Caucasus on the borders of Chechnya and close to half a dozen lesser conflicts, and in these circumstances the new capital has a very different emotional and moral weight: as a symbol of construction and of rational collective effort in a region of war, bloodthirsty criminality and politics which tend to veer from the hysterical to the utterly cynical, often succeeding in being both simultaneously. Manaz and indeed the whole history of the Ingush in recent years are a tribute to the President of Ingushetia, General Ruslan Aushev, and to the pragmatism and good sense of the Ingush people ? helped by the fact that if there are only 300,000 of you, you cannot afford to make too many mistakes.

If I go on in this perhaps uncharacteristically gushing style about the Ingush, it is because Ingushetia provides such a pleasant contrast to the disaster which has unfolded in neighbouring Chechnya over the years, culminating in the latest bloody Russian invasion. Several times during my stay I heard Chechen refugees say, If only we had had a President like Aushev, all these disasters could have been avoided. And certainly everything that has happened has shown both the Russian and the Chechen leaderships, and even to an extent the Russian and Chechen peoples, in the worst possible light. The Ingush for their part alternate between bitterly cursing the Russians for their invasion and the bombardment of civilians, and blaming the Chechens for generating the anarchy of recent years, especially the kidnappings which have claimed so many victims among Ingush businessmen.

This phenomenon has also caused strong hostility to the Chechens among their other Islamic neighbours, the Daghestanis ? particularly the modern and relatively secular intelligentsia which desperately fears both the anarchic violence of Chechnya and the way in which it has become a base for Islamist extremism. One representative of this class in Daghestan, Dr Enver Kizriev, said in London recently: Last time, the Daghestani Government and people were strongly against the Russian war in Chechnya. One hundred and fifty thousand refugees were housed in Daghestan. This time the situation is totally reversed. Not merely have Daghestanis refused to allow new Chechen refugees, but they are expelling former ones. In this war, there is a good attitude to the Russian soldiers; people bring them food and visit them in hospital. Dr Kizriev said that this turnabout was due to the Chechen and Islamist attack on Daghestan in August, but also to the criminality emerging from Chechnya in recent years.

The hostility of local peoples to the Chechens ? and indeed, the tendency in Chechnya of cruelty towards non-Chechens ? is linked to the intense national arrogance which helps give the Chechens their fighting spirit but which is also one of the less pleasant features of Chechen society. As a chance-met acquaintance from the Chechen mafia told me, with a certain honest ruthlessness: Anywhere in Russia, a Chechen can only be number one, everyone else has to take second place. That may be bad but that?s the way it is. Naturally other people don?t like it.

An added complication is the tradition of the blood feud, which applies when a Chechen kills a Chechen but not when a non-Chechen is killed, except in the case of the closest personal guests. This has successfully limited the internal political violence which might otherwise have ripped Chechnya apart in recent years. On the other hand, several refugees told me that the reason why President Aslan Maskhadov of Chechnya had been unable to crack down on the well-known kidnapping gangs was precisely that he feared that their deaths would create a whole series of disastrous blood feuds directed against his followers and him personally. The practical result is that the life of the most worthless Chechen is considered in Chechen society to be more valuable than that of the most useful and valuable foreigner ? whether British Telecom engineers, UNHCR officials or aid workers, all of whom have been kidnapped and in some cases murdered in recent years. Resentment at these features of Chechen society has, however, not stopped the Ingush with great humanity and generosity taking in more than 150,000 Chechen refugees ? around three quarters of the total in the present war ? into their own homes.

Sadly but not unexpectedly, their President expressed little optimism for a settlement of the latest Chechen war, and none at all that Russia would ever be able to impose stable rule on the Chechens. The Russians may be able to suppress the Chechens for a year or two, General Aushev said, but rebellion will always reappear. Chechens will always remember the Russian crimes committed against them in the past. Yes, the Russians can drive the Chechen detachments into the mountains, they can garrison the country, but what then? The Chechens who support Moscow are a very small minority; the population doesn?t support or respect them. I had the same impression, very strongly, on talking to Chechen refugees, who treated with complete contempt the stooges whom the Russians are trying to introduce.

Surprisingly, perhaps, these mixed sentiments about what has happened in Chechnya were echoed by many Chechen refugees themselves. They alternated between bitter hatred of Russia on the one hand and on the other furious condemnation of leading Chechen commanders and especially the greatest hero of the last war, Shamil Basayev. To my astonishment, out of all the refugees I interviewed, only one expressed any sympathy for Basayev ? in total contrast to the views of similar people in the last war. According to one elderly former lorry-driver from the village of Samashki, We admired Basayev then, but when peace came and for three years he did nothing good for the people, we lost all faith in him. We are tired of fighting, we can?t fight any more. The man added: This time is very different from 1995. Then it was an invasion, a clear fight. People hoped for better from independence. This time, because of what has happened over the past three years, the mood is very different. We don?t know what independence means. We would be glad to have our own state where we could be prosperous and peaceful, but if we can?t have a normal life and good relations with our neighbours, then independence is pointless. We don?t trust any of our leaders any more.

Also in contrast to the last war was the firm statement of most of the refugees that they do not support the fighters who are resisting the Russian invasion and did not allow them to base themselves in their villages. The reasons for this changed mood, the refugees told me, were twofold: on the one hand the criminality and violence of Chechnya in recent years, and secondly fear of the Islamist extremists who have based themselves in Chechnya and allied themselves to Basayev.

From these statements by the refugees, I surmised that compared to the last war, there will be a considerably smaller flow of ordinary Chechens to fight against the Russian forces and the Chechen resistance will be forced to rely much more heavily on the hard-core fighting groups. Not merely are these relatively small, but after the events of the last two years, their leaders often hate each other. It is very difficult, for example, to see President Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev, who have been bitterly at odds for two years, working together in the way that they did between 1994 and 1996.

As a result, sheer lack of numbers could be one reason why the Chechens have given up so many places without a fight ? though the struggle is obviously intensifying enormously as the Russians close in on Grozny itself. The Russians are conducting this war much more carefully and systematically than the last one, using overwhelming firepower against any defended positions. They are also, it seems, using the sporadic bombardment of civilian targets to drive most of the population from their homes and create free-fire zones like the Americans in Vietnam and the French in Algeria. But as in those wars, this ruthless policy is beginning to diminish the apathy of the Chechens and lead to stronger resistance as young men whose relatives have been killed and homes destroyed join the resistance to seek revenge. It is also true that, through sheer incompetent brutality, the Russians have often bombed and attacked the very roads on which Chechen civilians are seeking to leave Chechnya.

To judge by what I saw, it would also be a grave mistake to exaggerate the fighting spirit and quality of the Russian armed forces ? as the Russian media are now doing all the time. Undoubtedly their spirit is higher than in the last war. Thanks to the various Chechen attacks on Russia, culminating in the attack on Daghestan and perhaps (this is unproven) the terror campaign in Moscow in September, ordinary Russian troops do have a better idea of what they are fighting for: soldiers in the front line at least appear to be better paid, clothed and fed ? though my evidence for this is second hand since the Russian forces this time are observing a strict policy of refusing to allow Western journalists through to the front.

This better picture, however, is emphatically not true of most of the Russian forces. The posts we visited in the Russian second line along the valley of the Assa river on the Chechen-Ingush border were the same old Russian Interior Ministry conscripts ? miserable, thin, badly clothed 19-year-olds. Even to a military amateur like myself, their posts were undermanned and appallingly positioned, too far apart for mutual support and immediately overlooked by wooded hills. In the fog of a Caucausian winter, they will be virtually isolated and acutely vulnerable.

Weirdly enough, these soldiers were actually worse housed than the Chechen refugees in the camps we visited: the latter were in solid, warm Russian army tents; many of the Russian conscripts by contrast appeared to be sleeping in trenches under tarpaulins. I suspect that the reason ? apart from some desire to win hearts and minds and impress Western public opinion ? is that Russian Interior Ministry officials have gone on selling off their troops? equipment on the black market, whereas the Russian Emergency Ministry is now headed by Sergei Shoigu, head of the Government?s new Unity Block in the December parliamentary elections and a likely future prime minister if the present incumbent, Vladimir Putin, becomes President next year. Shoigu doubtless wants to show off his efficiency to Russian voters.

The miserable state of the Russian second line suggested strongly to me that the Russians are at the very least going to suffer some severe local defeats in this war ? and may indeed have begun to do so, if unconfirmed reports from Chechnya are to be believed. The most important question for the outcome of this war and perhaps for the whole future of Russia and Russian nationalism is what effect this will have on Russian public opinion. In 1994?96 disasters such as the bungled storming of Grozny in January 1995 and Basayev?s seizure of the town of Budyonnovsk in June 1995 led to a strong wave of popular opposition in Russia to the war. This was critically important in bringing the Yeltsin regime to seek a ceasefire with the Chechens, which allowed the latter to regroup and resupply their forces, and later successfully to counter-attack. This time the mood of the Russian public and above all the Russian media appears to be very different ? partly in the case of the media because so many Russian journalists have been kidnapped by the Chechens. Ordinary Russians have been truly infuriated by Chechen behaviour ? not only by the Moscow bombings (which a surprising number of Russians are willing to concede may not have been the work of the Chechens) but by the more than 1,300 kidnappings, often accompanied by torture and mutilation.

In the words of Dr Sergei Markov, a former liberal, now turned very hard-line indeed as far as the Chechens are concerned: For three years the Chechens were practically independent, and how did they use their independence? To attack us in every way possible. That is why this war is so different from the last one. I don?t believe that public opinion will change if Russia suffers defeats. Instead, support for the Russian Government and the war will grow even stronger. Vladimir Putin undoubtedly launched the invasion in part to capitalise on this mood and has indeed seen his popularity ratings shoot up as a result from virtually zero to a level where (if Yeltsin does not sack him first) he stands an excellent chance of being elected by popular vote in the presidential elections of June 2000. Of course, really heavy Russian casualties over a long period and a d?b?cle or two like Budyonnovsk could change this mood, but it is very difficult for the Russian public and for Western observers to know what the Russian casualty figures actually are. At the end of November, the Russian military admitted to 300 dead but the real figures ? including died of wounds, missing and so on ? could already be more than three times that.

It is even more difficult to assess the level of Chechen civilian casualties. As of 20 November, however, Human Rights Watch had counted 182 wounded in hospitals in Ingushetia. Five days later, the largest Ingush hospital told me they had treated 133. Given the collapse of the Chechen hospital system, Chechens are trying to carry as many civilian wounded as possible to Ingushetia, which suggests that the numbers there, though of course only a fraction of the total wounded, are quite a large fraction. Going by the usual ratio of two or three wounded to every person killed, this suggests a Chechen civilian death rate in the hundreds rather than thousands ? though of course this figure is rising all the time.

Inevitably, it sounds hard-hearted to add up figures in this way but it is part of the responsible journalist?s job to report accurately and analyse carefully on the basis of the available evidence. Otherwise there is a permanent tendency for us to become Caucausian (or Balkan-style) journalists, minimising the number of victims of causes with which we sympathise, relentlessly magnifying those of our perceived enemies. The barrier against this is partly journalistic ethics and partly sheer journalistic legwork. In the long run these are also values of importance for mankind alongside peace and human rights. They will endure even when the present war in Chechnya is over ? and that, alas, will not be for a very long time to come.

Back to homepage