Russians gamble on Putin's Chechen solution

"This", acting President Vladimir Putin told a Moscow radio station, "will be the last Chechen war." The statement helped him to win the hearts of a large number of Russians. Here, after a decade of confusion, was a man possessed of supreme confidence. Here, too, was a chance to solve a problem which has bedevilled Russia for centuries.

Support for a surgical policy in Chechnya is widespread. Politicians ranging from the lunatic fringe, represented by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, to the liberal leftwing intellectual Roy Medvedev believe not only that Mr Putin's war is justified, but also that it will succeed. While Russians opposed the previous war in Chechnya, they support this one strongly.

The bombings of apartment blocks late last year in which 300 people died and a spate of barbaric hostage-takings in Chechnya have made the difference. While there is no concrete evidence to show that Chechens were involved in the apartment bombings, it is enough that Russians believe this to be the case. The war climate also appears to have allowed them to overcome their natural antipathy to former KGB members.

There is a great deal of historical evidence, however, to suggest that subjugating Chechnya may not easily be achieved. The acting President, soon to become President-elect, was not, by any means, the first Russian to have promised to subdue Chechnya. Will he succeed where others have failed or will his stated policy simply propel him to the Kremlin without any hope of bringing Chechnya to heel?

When Imperial Russia moved into the Caucasus in the 1830s it met varying degrees of resistance from a collection of local nationalities so complex that the Balkans appear straightforward by comparison. Some peoples surrendered after months, others after years of resistance. The Chechens held out far longer than anyone else. They were still fighting in the 1850s and kept up a fierce campaign while St Petersburg was involved with the Crimean War.

Larger and larger Imperial forces were brought into play and finally the Chechen military and religious leader Imam Shamil surrendered, having been surrounded by superior Russian forces at Vedeno, where much of today's fighting is taking place.

But that was not the end. A long series of skirmishes, particularly along the Terek River, followed. Historic mistrust, fear and mutual hostility were spawned. Russian literature immortalised the problems between the two peoples. Leo Tolstoy's novel The Cossacks drew on the Chechens' hit-and-run tactics for a large part of its subject matter. The eponymous character in Tolstoy's Khadzhi Murat, although portrayed with sympathy, is a Chechen whose life is devoted to ending Russian rule.

In poetry, Mikhail Lermontov's Cossack Mother's Lullaby tells of the "angry Chechen crawling to the river bank, sharpening his knife".

ON the other hand, the hostility of Chechens to Russia has been barely concealed since the days of Imam Shamil and in the course of the second World War an event took place which instilled further bitterness. Accused of collaboration with the advancing German forces, the entire Chechen nation, along with its Ingush neighbours, was rounded up, packed into Studebaker trucks supplied by the US for the war effort, and transported to the desolate steppes of central Asia.

Many of today's Chechen warlords were born in exile and returned to their homeland with revenge implanted in their hearts when Nikita Khrushchev rescinded Stalin's orders in 1957. The authoritarian nature of Soviet rule managed to keep the lid on the simmering kettle until everything disintegrated in 1991.

Amid the chaos Boris Yeltsin suggested that territories within the Russian Federation should grab as much autonomy as they could. The Chechens, under the former Soviet air force general Dzhokhar Dudayev, took him at his word and began to build their own state.

This led to Moscow's intervention in late 1994 and a bloody war in which 30,000 non-combatants are believed to have died. Mr Dudayev himself was killed when federal forces homed in on his mobile phone. Russians, apart from the ruling Kremlin clique, were united in their opposition to that conflict. Peace was made in 1996 at the treaty of Khassav-Yurt, in which Mr Yeltsin implicitly recognised another former Soviet army officer, Aslan Maskhadov, as the leader of the Chechen people.

Mr Maskhadov's victory held within itself the seeds of disaster. United by war against Russia, rebel warlords went their own way in the peace. Mr Maskhadov lost control of large tracts of his country. Foreign aid workers, local and foreign journalists, ordinary visitors to the region were kidnapped and subjected to tortures and sufferings of the utmost barbarity. Three British telecommunications workers, for example, were beheaded as an example to others to whom ransom demands had been sent.

In the spring of last year Mr Maskhadov contacted President Yeltsin to ask for an urgent meeting. He needed help. Local warlords were getting out of hand. The danger of a second Chechen war in three years was imminent. He made several other attempts to arrange a meeting but the Kremlin brushed them all aside.

The arrival of the puritanical Wahhabi sect of Islam with its Saudi origins, as distinct from the indigenous mystic Sufi branch of Sunni Islam, complicated matters further. Shamil Basayev, a fierce warlord, although himself not a Wahhabi, joined forces with an Arab militant called Khattab. Their forces invaded villages in the neighbouring territory of Dagestan in early August last year.

Within days of their incursion President Yeltsin sacked the prime minister, Sergei Stepashin, replacing him with Vladimir Putin. Half-hearted measures were replaced by tough action. Mr Basayev and Mr Khattab retreated into Chechnya. Russian forces followed them. Most Chechens united in opposition to Russia. The current conflict, in which thousands have died, in which Grozny, a city the size of Belfast, has been levelled, and up to a quarter of a million people have fled their homes, had begun.

Mr Putin's unrelenting support for tough military action regardless of the cost in human lives and suffering holds out hope to Russians that there will be a final solution to the problems of the northern Caucasus which have haunted them for so long. Mr Putin's determination and ruthless efficiency are also highly attractive to a population which had to endure more than enough chaos under the shambolic regime of President Yeltsin.

But Russians voted en masse for Mr Yeltsin as president of Russia in 1991, just as they are likely to vote en masse for Mr Putin on Sunday. It remains to be seen if, as the saying goes, they are about to step into the same river for a second time.