WIN THE BATTLE, LOSE THE WAR:

Separatist Leader in Chechnya Is Killed: Maskhadov Called Moderate by Some (Peter Finn, March 9, 2005, Washington Post)

[S]ome Russian analysts said Maskhadov, who denounced the taking of the hostages in Beslan, was one of the few relatively moderate voices in the Chechen resistance. They said his death severely damaged prospects of a negotiated settlement and appeared to leave the leadership of Chechen militants with Shamil Basayev, an Islamic radical who asserted responsibility for the Beslan attack. [...]

"Nothing good will come of this," Pavel Felgengauer, an independent military analyst, said in a telephone interview. "I expect terrorist attacks in Russia and the North Caucasus."

Maskhadov, a highly regarded artillery officer, went to Chechnya in 1992 following the breakup of the Soviet Union. In 1994, President Boris Yeltsin ordered Russian forces to invade the province. Leading a small guerrilla force, Maskhadov humiliated Russian forces by fighting them to a standstill. That war ended in a cease-fire in 1996.

Chechnya remained chaotic, however, and Putin sent troops back into the republic in 1999 after a series of apartment complex bombings that the government blamed on Chechens. Maskhadov was driven from power and into hiding.

Russian forces killed Maskhadov's predecessor as president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, in 1996 and former vice president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in 2004.

As many as 200,000 people have been killed in Chechen violence, many of them civilians and thousands of them children, according to human rights groups. As many as 25,000 Russian troops have been killed in the conflict over the past decade, more than the Soviet Union lost during its decade-long occupation of Afghanistan, according to Alexei Arbatov, a former member of the Russian parliament who is now an analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center.

The Kremlin has claimed since 1999 that Chechnya has stabilized, but a vicious low-grade conflict continues, marked by terrorism, extrajudicial killings and brutal treatment of the local population by both sides, according to human rights groups.

Maskhadov's recent standing within the fragmented and increasingly radical resistance had been unclear. Many analysts described his position as having been usurped by Basayev, his former subordinate.

Through a rebel Web site, Maskhadov had been calling on the Kremlin to discuss a settlement of the war with international mediators and recently declared a week-long cease-fire that seemed to indicate that he still held sway over other commanders, observers said.

Russian officials dismissed the cease-fire call as a stunt and said rebel operations continued.

The cease-fire expired Feb. 22, the 61st anniversary of the forced deportation of Chechens from their homeland by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Maskhadov was born in exile in Kazakhstan and did not return to his parent's home village until he was 7.

"We believe that 30 minutes of honest dialogue face to face is enough to stop this war and to explain to the president of the Russian federation what the Chechens want," Maskhadov said in an interview this month that was posted on the Kavkaz Center Web site. But he went on to say that without a settlement, "the flames of this war will embrace the whole of the North Caucasus. The Russian people will constantly experience the fear of possible retribution."

An organization of mothers of Russian soldiers, who have been among the most vociferous opponents of Russia's continued prosecution of the war, met recently in London with Maskhadov's representative, Akhmad Zakayev. They agreed that the conflict could not be settled by force and blamed the terrorism it has triggered on the "shortsighted and criminal policies" of the Russian government. The government condemned the meeting.

Speaking on Echo Moskvy radio Tuesday night, Zakayev said: "Maskhadov's death will lead to an outburst of terrorism in Chechnya and all over Russia. . . . I'm absolutely sure that this may complicate the situation even further because Maskhadov was a deterring factor preventing the spread of this conflict. Until the last moment, he had been trying to get the Kremlin to understand all the processes underway in the Northern Caucasus."

The Kremlin repeatedly rejected such overtures, but there had been some signals recently, including in remarks made by Putin in Germany, that the government might be open to international help in resolving the conflict. And implicitly, Putin understood that U.S. or European Union mediators were likely to involve Maskhadov in the process, Russian observers said.

"Privately, people in the Kremlin, even Putin, recognized that Maskhadov represented a moderate branch of the Chechen resistance, and comparing him to Basayev was just a game," Alexei Malashenko, an expert on the Caucasus at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said in an interview. "The Russian opposition, the mothers of soldiers and others have all been talking about the necessity of negotiation. The question now is: With whom do you negotiate?"

The killing represents a victory for Mr. Putin, who wants to continue the war, but yet another disastrous misstep amongst centuries of them by the Russians, who can't ever hope to succeed. All they've managed to do over the last few years is guarantee that the free Chechnyan state, when it comes, will be more radical than it might otherwise have been.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 9, 2005 9:07 AM