Fumbling In Chechnya

Bombings and gunfire are daily features of life in Chechnya. But even by those sorry standards, last week marked a low in its recent history. On Monday, a truck bearing explosives equivalent to two tons of TNT rumbled into a residential and office compound in Znamenskoye, a township in the Nadterechny district, and exploded, killing 59 people and injuring 200. Two days later, a bomb at a festival near the capital, Grozny, killed at least 18 and injured more than five times as many. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had just landed in Moscow, called the bombings barbarous. Standing by his side, Russian President Vladimir Putin equated the Chechnya conflict to the "war on terrorism" and the bombings to those that rocked Riyadh last week.

Yet although al-Qaeda has infiltrated Chechnya, there's no evidence that it orchestrated the latest bombings. In fact, the growing chaos in the war-torn republic may have less to do with Osama bin Laden than with Putin. Political analysts in Russia and abroad say the country's leader may have exacerbated the conflict.

The Russian President rode to power in 1999 on the promise that he alone could bring peace to Chechnya. To that end, he compelled Chechens to vote on a political solution to the conflict last March, an exercise widely dismissed as a sham because it was conducted by force. Putin did pull a token number of troops out of Chechnya and promised that he would put an end to the routine abductions and executions of Chechen civilians. Yet more than 200 people have been abducted since the vote took place. "We know for a fact that the reprisals have grown much worse after the referendum, contrary to what the Russians promised," says a senior U.S. diplomat. "We raised this issue with them and told them they must do something to shore up their pledges."

A faltering economy has, meanwhile, taken a toll on Putin's approval rating, which has declined from 75% to 48% over the past three months. An increasingly violent Chechnya won't help his political fortunes. "Putin has manacled himself to a hell-bound train and can't get off," says Salambek Maigov, the official representative of rebel Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. "He has made himself a hostage to the situation."