THE WAGES OF THE WAR

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 630.

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Since the hostage affair, Mr Putin has vowed to strike against terrorists "no matter where they arc" and hints at expanding the army's powers. But it is unclear what he will do about Chechnya itself. Many observers think that he will favour some sort of renewed military campaign. But it is hard to see what else the Russian army could do, since after three years and with 80,000 troops it has still not brought Chechnya under its thumb. More likely, perhaps, is a renewed effort to track down warlords like MrBasaev; but the internal security service, the FSB. has been hunting him for years without success. And the Moscow attack showed that there are always more militants in waiting: Movsar Baraev, the 25-year-old chief hostage-taker, was the nephew of a notorious Chechen warlord reportedly killed by the Russians last year.

Moreover, though support for a military campaign has jumped since the hostage-taking, that may not last. Until then it had been falling steadily, from about two-thirds of Russians when the war started to one-third this summer. Desertions and draft-dodging are already chronic problems for the Russian army, and a new war would make them worse.

Its consequences for Chechnya would be more severe still. Besides the thousands of deaths, 300,000-400,000 people have fled their homes since the wars began, out of a population of a little over a million. Rebel forces kill and torture both Russian officials and Chechens suspected of collaborating with them. As for the Russian troops, according to a recent report by Amnesty International, their treatment of prisoners includes rape of men, women and children, electric shocks and cutting off ears and fingers. And since the end oflarge-scale military manoeuvres the Russian campaign has turned into a series of so-called zachistki or "clean-ups" - searches for rebel troops that turn into orgies of murder and looting.

Which is why a second option — Russia's total withdrawal from Chechnya, as the hostage-takers in Moscow demanded — is equally implausible. Russian troops make a good deal of money out of the war, and not just by stealing. There is a steady trickle of press reports about soldiers caught selling weapons to the rebels. The trade is impossible to quantify, but Mr Basaev, now the most powerful Chechen warlord, once boasted that he got 90% of his arms from Russian troops. Two years ago a Moscow daily quoted an FSB general as saying that most of the Chechens' weapons were Russian-made. There are other forms of corruption, too: last year the government's accounting board found nearly $45m, most of it soldiers' salaries, missing from the war budget.

Another nice little earner is the illegal oil trade. According to a report in September by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a London-based non-profit organisation, over half a million tons of oil extracted in Chechnya each year are illegally turned into low-grade petrol at thousands of home-made micro-refineries. The trade began after the end of the first Chechen war, when the rebel commanders divided up the region's oil wells among themselves; but now soldiers and police often extort a cut from the refiners in return for turning a blind eye, or even helping transport and sell the petrol. Waste from the refineries poisons rivers and gives even small towns air pollution worthy of an industrial city.An alternative to home-brewing petrol is to become a rebel fighter.

There are bounties to be had for killing Russian troops and blowing up their vehicles. Some of the money comes from Islamic extremist groups that began to flourish in Chechnya during the first war. Press reports have suggested that up to $30m for the invasion of Dagestan in 1999 came from Osama bin Laden, and some money from Islamic charity organisations that

collect for Chechnya may have wound up in rebel hands. The rebels also keep a tight rein on other illegal sources of income, such as drug-trafficking and kidnappings.

In short, the war is profitable for all concerned. And for the Chechens who want to stay in their ruined country, there is no other way to make a living. Jabrail Gakaev, a Chechen historian at the Russian Academy of Sciences, calls the profit motive the major driving force of the continuing violence. Withdrawing the army suddenly would hurt a great many vested interests. Moreover, Chechnya is too ruined and anarchic simply to be left to fester on Russia's doorstep.

So how about peace? The closest the two sides have ever come to negotiating was last year, when an envoy from Mr Putin met an envoy from Mr Maskhadov at a Moscow airport and told him that there could be talks but only if the rebels first laid down their arms. Since this was like asking Yasser Arafat to shave his beard and don a pink skirt to negotiate the final

status of Jerusalem, there was no further progress.

Constantly sidelined by Moscow since he was elected, and rapidly losing his remaining grip on power, Mr Maskhadov over the summer did what many think was inevitable: he reunited the rebel factions and gave government posts to radical commanders who had previously broken with him. That step may have put him on firmer ground at home, but it lost him ail stock with the Russian government and the American one, which publicly distanced itself from him. The hostage-takers claimed that Mr Maskhadov took part in the planning, or at least knew of it.

Yet no other credible leader exists. Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of the unpopular, Moscow-imposed Chechen administration, is a likely candidate for the next presidential election, due in January; but even if he wins as the least-bad of the bunch, he will find it at least as hard to rule as Mr Maskhadov did. And the election may not even take place, since legally the Chechens first need to hold a referendum adopting a new constitution. The first article of that constitution will be about the status of Chechnya. In current drafts, it says that Chechnya remains part of the Russian Federation. What the Chechens in Chechnya (never mind those in the diaspora) want right now is anybody's guess. It may be that after so many years of war, the majority 90 would trade independence for peace at least until the country is somewhat restored. The tragedy is that nobody with the power to give them peace wants to; and nobody who wants to has the power.