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| RUSSIA BOMBS CHECHNYA | |
 October 25, 1999 
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Heavy fighting between Russian military forces and rebels in the breakaway republic of Chechnya escalated Monday as Russian troops advanced toward Chechnya's capital city.
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JIM LEHRER: Russia bombs Chechnya. We start with this report from Mark Webster of Independent Television News.
JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill takes it from there. |
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| The war in Chechnya | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHAEL McFAUL, Carnegie Endowment: Well, what's going on is Russia is reinvading Chechnya. This is a frontal assault; it's a full conventional war. They are poised to take Grozny again. In my opinion, they are repeating the mistakes of the last Chechen war from 1994 to 1996, but most Russians don't see it that way; they want to carry this war out to the end, and they look poised to do it. GWEN IFILL: Mr. Ury, is that true? Are they repeating the mistake that they made before, is there some other ending in sight for this? WILLIAM URY: No. I think actually what's going to happen is again there is going to be a lose/lose outcome here, where it's an eye for an eye and we all go blind. The Russians look -- they look poised to win; they're confident of victory, but I think, as before, they're going to find that they wouldn't be surprised if there are spectacular acts of terrorism; as soon as they pause, as winter sets in, if they go into the mountains, or if they make the mistake of going into Grozny, I think they're going to find a very determined resistance that will punish them, will leave all sides losers. |
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| A political advantage to war? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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WILLIAM URY, Harvard University: Probably both, but the last war showed that, in fact, the morale went down sharply among Russian troops as the war prolonged. You saw Russian mothers coming down to negotiate directly with Chechens to free their sons, and, in the end, a battered Russian army chose to withdraw. GWEN IFILL: Mr. McFaul, Vladimir Putin, obviously, is a politician in all this. He's seen his popularity rise. He was someone no one had ever heard of last August when Boris Yeltsin appointed him. Is there a political part of this as well? MICHAEL McFAUL: There's no doubt in my mind that there's a political
part. The people in the Kremlin today, people that served Mr. Yeltsin,
before Mr. Putin, did not have a presidential candidate. Elections are
going to be GWEN IFILL: Does that put him in position to be the likely successor to Boris Yeltsin? MICHAEL McFAUL: That all depends on how the war goes. Right now, they haven't had very many casualties; they are about to take Grozny. But, remember, they took Grozny last time; it didn't mean anything. They were there for two more years after taking the capital. The Chechens are going to fight a guerrilla war, not a conventional war. And the longer the war goes on, the more casualties there are, and the more likely his numbers will start to fall. |
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| The international community responds | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHAEL McFAUL: Well, there's no doubt in my mind there's going to be a quagmire no matter what. This is not going to be a short operation. If the Russians decide to stay, the Chechens are going to fight not years, perhaps decades. GWEN IFILL: Mr. Ury, Boris Yeltsin, he is -- we've been watching his health go up, go down, and we can't tell whether he's in the middle of this or on the sidelines. What is his role? WILLIAM URY: I don't think he's that much involved in this. I think he's frail and ill, and I think he's leaving this to Mr. Putin, who's advancing his political prospects by trying to show an iron fist here, and I do think that in the end, as Mr. McFaul indicated, it will be a quagmire. And the only -- the parties, themselves, can't get themselves out of this. I think it's going to be up to the surrounding community, to the third side, as it were, which is people like President Auchepa in Gusetia, President Chiniav of Tatarstan, backed by the international community, including ourselves, if there's ever going to be a peaceful way out. GWEN IFILL: Well, you talk about the international community. You just heard Madeleine Albright's words somewhat tougher than they were even a week ago. Is that just talk, or is there a role for the United States in this? WILLIAM URY: Well, I think there is a real role for the United States. One is to show our disapproval, but more constructively, it's to get the United Nations or the OSCE, the Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe, involved to convene an ongoing conference on the Caucasus, not just on Chechnya, because all these issues are interrelated, and this war could very likely lead to unrest in Dagestan, in Gusetia, and even in the heart of Russia. |
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| The causes behind the conflict | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHAEL McFAUL: Well, I think there were two precipitants; one was the bombing that you just mentioned in Moscow, where 300 innocent Russians were killed and terrorized the city of Moscow for the first time really in this century. The second was when Jamael Basaef and a group of so-called Islamic militants invaded Dagestan, the republic that borders Chechnya, with the intention to liberate Dagestan and to create a greater Islamic republic in the Caucasus. Mr. Putin then, I think, was right to respond. That was a terrorist act; there's no other way to describe it. And he counterattacked with a Russian military offensive; however, then they got cocky; then -- they had a few victories; it was easier than they thought; and they decided let's go for broke, let's take back Chechnya full stop. GWEN IFILL: Are the Chechens fighting back, Mr. McFaul, or are they pretty much just sitting back and digging their heels in?
GWEN IFILL: Mr. Ury, as you know, the international community mostly gets involved when they feel that there's a strategic interest at stake. Obviously, in the Caucasus region there's access there is access to oil. This is a nuclear-capable region. Are these enough reasons to spur other people to the bargaining or to make the two combatants feel that they have to sit down to work out some sort of deal? |
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| Mr. Putin's possible strategy | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Mr. McFaul, it sounds like Mr. Putin is interested very much in splitting up, playing, dividing and conquering among Chechens themselves. Is that something which might be able to work for him politically as well as militarily? MICHAEL McFAUL: Well, so far it's definitely the strategy. What they want to do is the following: They want to occupy as much Chechnya as they can, hold parliamentary elections in December of this year and then say those that win from the parliamentary elections, they now can constitute the new representatives of Chechnya and those will likely to be pro-Moscow forces. It's definitely what he's trying to do now, and it's very, very popular. I think it's important for our viewers to understand that the vast majority of Russian citizens now support this operation. That was not the case in 1994. Most dramatically in my opinion are Russian liberals, those that were out there demonstrating against the war back in December of 1994 are now supporting Mr. Putin. GWEN IFILL: But, does that begin to turn once the first body bags come back with actual Russian soldiers in them?
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| The outlook for peace and stability | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: So what do you think will happen, Mr. Ury? Do you think there will actually... do you think they're going to invade Grozny proper, or do you think they are pretty much going to stay outside wait and see what happens and try and make this work?
GWEN IFILL: Is that a short term or a long term or even a possible solution? Mr. McFaul? MICHAEL McFAUL: It's definitely a solution and I agree with all the points, but I would also point out that right now the Russian government and the Russian people are not prepared to do those sorts of negotiations. The one thing they say time and again, driving over here I was having a debate with my Russian colleague on the phone, a liberal, a close friend of mine. And I was shocked by what he was saying in terms of the support. And he said one thing to me, he said, listen, Michael, there's a fascist regime in Chechnya; we are liberating the Chechens as much as we're fighting terrorism. And while that's the mindset I don't think you're going to see negotiations. GWEN IFILL: Gentlemen, thank you both very much. |
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MARK
WEBSTER: Massive Russian troop reinforcements continue to pour into
the area around Chechnya. Some 100,000 men have now been sent giving
the Russians and overwhelming superiority of forces. Yet as the last
road out of the breakaway republic was closed off, Moscow was clearly
still nervous about launching an all-out assault on the rebels' remaining
strongholds. Instead, Russia has continued to pound villages with their
heavy guns, attacks which the Chechens say have caused numerous civilian
casualties.
Here
President Yeltsin's meeting with Prime Minister Putin was called to
discuss the next phase in the conflict. The prime minister's popularity
in Russia has soared since the military action began, because it followed
a spate of apartment bombings in Russian cities which Moscow linked
to Chechen militants. Now that the break-away republic has been completely
sealed off from the outside walls, the stage does seem set for an all-out
attack on the Chechen capital, Grozny. Meanwhile Russian soldiers have
been putting on demonstrations to encouragement young Russian conscripts.
If Russia is not to suffer another humiliating reverse in Chechnya,
the morale of its troops will be crucial.
GWEN
IFILL: For more on the war in Chechnya we turn to MICHAEL McFAUL, a
senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and
Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University -- he
returned from Moscow last month; and William Ury, Associate Director
of Harvard University's program on negotiation and author of "Getting
to Peace;" he participated in negotiations between Russia and Chechnya
in 1997. Mr. McFaul, there are a hundred thousand Russian troops at
last count in Chechnya, many of them surrounding Grozny sort of like
a noose, the capital city. What's going on, and what happens next?
GWEN
IFILL: Mr. Ury, we just saw that morale building exercise going on,
with Russian troops. Is that to build up the morale of the Russian troops,
or to send a good message to Russian folks at home?
held
next summer; they searched around; they did not -- they went through
several prime ministers to find one. They arrived at Mr. Putin, and,
like you said, two months ago, he had a 4 percent approval rating; nobody
even knew who he was. This war has put him on the map; he's shown himself
to be a hard-liner; he wants victory, and the majority of people in
Russia, unfortunately, I believe, support him in that.
GWEN
IFILL: And the more likely a quagmire develops.
GWEN
IFILL: Mr. McFaul, what do we really know about what caused this conflict?
We understand from the Russians, which is where we're getting most of
our information from, that their feeling is they're going and they're
putting down terrorism right now in Chechnya. It's retaliation for the
-- bombings which happened in Moscow and other places, who state they
are being caused by a band of Islamic militant terrorists. Is that true,
and, if it's not, is there any other way of knowing what the truth is?
MICHAEL
McFAUL: So far, we've seen little resistance to the Russian military
moving in, and that's to be expected. They're guerrilla fighters; they're
not conventional fighters. They're going to wait till the Russians come
in; they're going to settle in for a long, long fight, and I mean years,
not just months, and terrorize through guerrilla attacks the Russian
occupying force in Chechnya.
WILLIAM
URY: I think so. I mean, after all, you're talking about the possibility
of severe instability if this spreads -- in a nuclear-armed federation
that has its nuclear weapons aimed at us, actually -- can land a nuclear
warhead within 30 minutes of us right now. You're talking about an area,
which is not just a remote part of the area. This is right next to,
you know, the next Middle East, the single greatest, biggest source
of oil where there are oil pipelines... a lot depends on if you have
terrorism there, it's going to affect all of us. And that's not to speak
of the moral issue here which is you have close to 200,000 refugees,
you have thousands of people dying again, you have 60,000 people who
died in the first round. And I think we have an interest, a strategic
interest and a moral obligation to intervene constructively to try to
produce a more peaceful outcome.
MICHAEL
McFAUL: Well, I think it does over time but there's another missing
element in comparing the first Chechen war with this one and that's
the independent media. In December of '94 and throughout the war we
had independent coverage that brought home those pictures of body bags
to the Russian people. That's absent today in Chechnya. 
WILLIAM
URY: Well, I don't have a crystal ball. They'd be sadly mistaken if
they invaded Grozny again because they did this twice before and were
knocked out twice before so I think they're probably going to... they
will invade Grozny but only on an opportunistic basis, if they really
see it as an opportunity. I think they probably pretty much learned
their lesson there. I do think that it's going to grind on, and I do
think that morale will start to plunge as winter starts. And I do think
that it's really up to us in the surrounding third side, as it were,
to really get involved to do three things. One is to contain the violence
by trying to negotiate some kind of ceasefire, by putting in international
observers, possibly even international peacekeepers if the parties consent.
The second is to try to resolve the outstanding issues, and that's not
going to be easy. But through organized negotiations, through a conference
of the Caucasus I mentioned, through a council of the elders - which
is an old Caucasian tradition for settling disputes -- they might be
able to make progress. And, thirdly, very importantly is long-term prevention.
I mean, the economy has been devastated. That's what's providing the
recruits for these raids on Dagestan and for terrorism. And I think
- you know -- the outside world can do a great deal to help rebuild
the Chechen and in general the economy of the Caucasus and to rebuild
a shattered society to make sure that war doesn't happen again.