No Change for Chechnya
Tuesday, August 31, 2004; Page A20

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47919-2004Aug30.html

THE RUSSIAN REPUBLIC of Chechnya got a new president
Sunday -- but congratulations to Alu Alkhanov, the
career police officer taking over the job, don't
really seem to be in order. After all, three of
Chechnya's four previous presidents have died
violently, including the last one, who perished in a
bombing in May. And Mr. Alkhanov's own selection, like
that of Akhmad Kadyrov before him, came through an
election blatantly rigged by the Russian government.
Mr. Alkhanov is promising Chechnya's long-suffering
population an economic revival, but the more likely
prospect is the grinding continuation of a war that
has destroyed the republic, bled and corrupted the
occupying Russian army, and contributed to the
crumbling of democracy and free speech in Russia
itself.

Responsibility for this debacle lies squarely with
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the army
to invade Chechnya and crush its quasi-independent,
democratically elected government five years ago. Mr.
Putin used the military campaign to fuel his own
ascent from prime minister to president in 2000, but
everything else about his war has gone wrong. Despite
repeated declarations of victory, Russian troops and
their local allies have not been able to eliminate
Chechen resistance, which increasingly has become
linked to Islamic extremism. Tens of thousands of
Chechens still languish in refugee camps; the capital,
Grozny, remains in ruins. Russian forces, which have
subjected Chechen civilians to systematic abduction,
torture and summary execution, suffer their own steady
stream of casualties, though news of them is now
mostly suppressed. Harder to hide are the large-scale
-- and repugnant -- terrorist attacks against Russian
civilians. After two days of prevarication,
authorities finally acknowledged that two civilian
airliners that crashed after takeoff from Moscow last
week, killing at least 89, were brought down by
explosions probably caused by Chechen suicide bombers.

For years liberal Russians and Western governments
have been trying to tell Mr. Putin that even if he is
justified in fighting terrorism, his strategy of
subduing Chechnya by force will never succeed. He
refuses to listen, or learn. Instead he has silenced
the Russian media that sought to report honestly on
the situation, exiled foreign observers and aid
groups, and tried to force refugees to return home.
When the president he installed through a rigged
election was killed, he simply nominated another
puppet and organized another rigged election. His
rejection of the alternative -- a broad dialogue with
Chechens, including those of the government he
overthrew -- dooms Chechnya to unchanging misery, and
his government to an endless quagmire.






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