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VLADIMIR VELENGURIN/KP for TIME
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ON DUTY: Moscow hopes Chechen police, like this one in Alkhan-Kala, will take over security |
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No Way Out? |
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Putin hopes to declare victory in Chechnya — then leave. A visit to Grozny shows why it won't be easy |
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By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE | Grozny |
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Posted Sunday, September 28, 2003; 12.48BST
At first light, Russian troops in combat gear move slowly along one of Grozny's ruined main streets, past makeshift crosses erected to their fallen comrades. Hugging the edge of the road to avoid snipers, they peer into the bushes, looking for radio-controlled mines and booby traps laid overnight by Chechen separatists. The soldiers — young conscripts fresh from the provinces and professionals here for the money — are tense, but they barely glance at most Chechens passing by. And the Chechens ignore them. The Russian minesweepers don't find any mines this morning, and at a concrete-and-barbed-wire checkpoint, Russian soldiers inspecting cars and buses don't catch any rebels. They occasionally rough up the drivers and often demand bribes — and the guerrillas know very well how this game is played. "Stick some money out the window and they don't check anything," says one self-described mujahid. Ordinary residents like Zinaida, a clerical worker with a teenage son, are just happy to see another dawn. "Night is our hell," she says, a time when soldiers descend on homes, beat down doors and take away young men suspected of rebel activities. Most are never seen again.
Welcome to "gradual normalization," the name that Russian President Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine has come up with to describe what passes for life in Chechnya. When a mine blew up recently near the campus of Grozny University, a student looked at his watch and quipped: "Normalization is early today." This weekend normalization enters a new phase, as Chechens — a few of them, anyway — go to the polls to elect a President. Turnout is likely to be low, and those who actually cast a ballot will find they have little choice but to vote for Putin's handpicked nominee, Akhmad Kadyrov, head of the Moscow-appointed administration in Chechnya. The 52-year-old former mufti, or chief Islamic legal authority, of Chechnya was once an anti-Russian guerrilla fighter. He rallied to the Russian cause in late 1999 because, as he tells it, he disapproved of the growing influence of radical Islamists among the rebels. It was a dangerous move — Kadyrov has since survived many attempts on his life — but a politically advantageous one. Today he is virtually the only candidate left in the race; most of his serious rivals have been disqualified on technicalities, dropped out for "personal reasons" or been suddenly awarded plum jobs in Moscow. In August, Kadyrov's Press Minister, Bislan Gantemirov, estimated that in a fair election his boss would get 3-5% of the vote. Gantemirov was fired a few days later; his replacement now claims that Kadyrov commands 55-60% support.
After the elections, the new Chechen President will be given broad powers to run the republic, Putin recently told a group of U.S. journalists, including TIME. A local legislature will also be elected. Then the Kremlin plans to announce that the war is over, reduce its troop numbers to a small permanent garrison and hand over pacification duties to the 13,000 men in the Chechen police force, which is widely viewed as Kadyrov's private army, and an undisclosed number of his personal security guards.
This "Chechenization" strategy — intended to remove the war as an issue in Putin's own re-election campaign next spring — is reminiscent of America's attempts to declare victory and get out of Vietnam three decades ago. It also has echoes in the U.S.'s current predicament in Iraq, as Bush seemed to acknowledge at a news conference with Putin last weekend, when he said that terrorists "must be opposed wherever they spread chaos and destruction, including Chechnya." In Chechnya, guerrillas have fended off a superior military force, and use terror tactics to bring the battle from Grozny to the streets of Moscow.
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