The following Guardian article probably comes as much from economic considerations as political. In order to maintain the central integrity of Russia and to dominate the strategic oil area of the Caucasus, Putin played the Chechen card and won the presidential succession to Yeltsin. The coordinated bombing of blocks of Russian flats was very helpful for this project His exit strategy however needs more calculation. Having large numbers of troops in Chechnya is a cost liability because they are targets. Reframe the problem as purely one of terrorism and it is obvious that the successor to the KGB, the FSB, is the agency to control the situation. It is of course Putin's firm. They will mimimise the target they present to the enemy; they will know best how to destabilise the leadership of the resistance, and how to work with "constitutional" forces to set up a peaceful government within the Russian Federation. They will cause fewer random atrocities to the civilian population, torture fewer people but more efficiently, and with less damaging reports leaking out to interfering western human rights monitoring agencies. Perhaps he will pull it off and the governance of Chechnya will merge imperceptibly with the total social management that is the frame of thinking of most governments today. It will be interesting to see the cautious congratulatory comments from western agencies. >>> Putin puts KGB's successors in charge of war to crush guerrillas Special report: crisis in Chechnya Ian Traynor in Moscow Tuesday January 23, 2001 Sixteen months into Russia's savage war of attrition in Chechnya and with no end in sight, President Vladimir Putin yesterday stripped his army generals of their command of the campaign and put the domestic security service, the main successor to the KGB, in charge of the Chechnya war. In what appeared to be a vote of no confidence in the generals' ability to tame the Chechen rebels, despite repeated bragging that they have been crushed, Mr Putin put a close ally, Nikolai Patrushev, head of the FSB (domestic security service), in command and ordered him to report on his progress by mid-May. Moscow says it has 80,000 troops in Chechnya struggling to contain what it puts at 1,000 guerrillas. But by the official tally, widely seen as too low, the Russians are being killed at the rate of more than 160 a month, with almost 500 being wounded as the rebels use ruthless hit-and-run tactics. Its principal garrison Gudermes, long under ostensible Russian control and the headquarters for the civil administration of Chechnya, is the latest battleground, according to Russian media yesterday. Guerrillas attacked the main hospital on Sunday, keeping Russian troops under fire for eight hours before melting away into the darkness. According to the Chechens, they left 20 Russian soldiers dead. Moscow admitted losing four soldiers and confirmed that many were injured in a cafe bomb blast in Gudermes. The guerrillas are also targeting "collaborationist" members of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration and its local supporters every week. The lightning speed of the attack highlights the vulnerability of the Russian conscripts, who hole up each evening in converted schools and public buildings, surrounded by mines and barbed wire. They live in fear of the rebels who attack checkpoints, mine roads and ambush Russian convoys. Sergei Ponomarenko, a Russian who recently resigned as a local government chief in Chechnya, told the newspaper Izvestiya that the guerrillas - who routinely ignore curfews and distribute propaganda leaflets "to show who's really boss" - have seized the initiative. When Chechen snipers hit a Russian, Moscow's forces commonly respond with indiscriminate artillery barrages which maim and kill civilians or launch "cleansing" raids on villages and towns, dragging away males of fighting age. "This has turned into a war against an entire civilian population. That's a fact, that's the reality," Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former Russian parliamentary leader and himself a Chechen, told the Russian government recently. Russian or loyalist Chechen administrators and military officers, meanwhile, are using their positions to line their pockets, Mr Ponomarenko said, an assertion echoed by Mr Khasbulatov who said the generals wanted the war to go on because of the opportunities for plundering and profiteering. Mr Putin's move yesterday may be an attempt to break this cycle of viciousness and seal a victory in Chechnya. But it also seems a counsel of despair. The president recently described Chechnya as the source of "Russia's national shame". It also propelled him to power in 1999. Yesterday's move was a snub to the army generals who, according to Mr Khasbulatov, are deliberately prolonging the war to enhance their clout in Russian politics and to exact retribution for their defeat in the last Chechen war of 1994-96. In a decree that took immediate effect, Mr Putin put Mr Patrushev, who succeeded him as head of the FSB in 1999, in charge. The transfer of command was seen as another sign of the growing power of the security services under Mr Putin, a former career KGB officer. The Kremlin also announced troop cuts in Chechnya, making it plain that the emphasis would be on the use of elite "anti-terrorist" FSB and crack army units. All the signs are that there will be a strong Russian spring offensive to end the war by May and proclaim victory. With no political solution in sight and scant effort made to find one, public support for the war is ebbing and Mr Putin may be calculating that he needs to settle. Mr Putin has instructed that the troops numbers be cut. "I have decided today on a partial withdrawal from the republic," he declared yesterday. "This does not mean the end of the counter-terrorism operation. On the contrary it will be continued, not less intensively, but with different means and forces and with a different emphasis." The war would now be waged by "FSB and interior ministry forces and defence ministry special units". A motorised infantry division of 15,000 men and a 7,000-strong brigade of interior ministry troops would remain deployed. It was not clear how many troops were being pulled out or when. Mr Putin also talked up the possibilities of implementing new civil administration plans to revive the economy. The plan is to plough £60m into Chechnya reconstruction this year. But Russian civilian administrators are currently quitting their posts in frustration at the Kremlin and the military, complaining that no money is available for the restoration of the most rudimentary services and that anything of value in Chechnya is plundered by the Russian troops. Mr Putin stated recently that his priority in Chechnya was "social rehabilitation and economic recovery", but a senior Kremlin aide told Mr Ponomarenko: "There is no programme yet for restoring the republic, so there's no point putting any money in." The president said the command was being passed to the FSB since constitutionally this is the body charged with combating terrorism. It is true that by law the army is for fighting foreign wars and defending against external aggression rather than to crush domestic insurgency, but in Chechnya such niceties have been ignored for the past 16 months.
