No Way Out?

VLADIMIR VELENGURIN/KP FOR TIME
Chechen policemen loyal to Moscow raid a home in Alkhan-Kala

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Putin's Plan B may work, at least as far as Russian public opinion is concerned. Most Russians prefer not to think about the war, and hostility toward Chechens and other people of the Caucasus is endemic. Plus, Putin has been relentless in enforcing a media blackout. The war appears on TV only when there is an incident too large to ignore like the Chechen suicide bombing in the neighboring republic of Northern Ossetia in August that killed 50 people and destroyed a military hospital or when ministers boast that the rebels are on their last legs. Russian media owners know that critical coverage of Chechnya is the quickest way to get shut down, and foreign media are officially allowed there only on closely controlled government trips.

While Russian leaders claim that the republic is gradually returning to normal, the conflict is in fact spreading. To the west, in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, Chechen guerrillas are stepping up operations against Russian troops. Chechen fighters have reached north into the Russian heartland as far as Moscow. Suicide bombings at a Moscow rock concert and an attempted bombing on the capital's main thoroughfare in July have unnerved the public. In Chechnya the guerrilla movement is split between traditional separatist fighters loyal to Aslan Maskhadov, the last elected president of Chechnya, and newer, deeply fundamentalist militants backed by Arab money and a sprinkling of volunteers from the Islamic world. Among them are radicals affiliated with al-Qaeda, some of whom slipped across the border from their hideaway in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge after the Georgians shut down a base there last year. Much of the worst damage, though, is inflicted by young local radicals whose leaders were strongly influenced by Wahhabi preachers in the mid-'70s.

When the Kremlin put Kadyrov in charge of Chechnya in June 2000, many assumed he would be a transitional figure. But he has consolidated his position with the Kremlin, in part by arguing forcefully that only Chechens can wipe out the anti-Russian insurgency. To help him with this, the Russians have built up the Chechen police into a well-armed force that needs to be expanded, Kadyrov told TIME in a brief interview in Grozny. "The main task is to get the [police] up and running," he said.

The Russians suspect that many of Kadyrov's Chechen police are legalized guerrillas who actively fight with or provide intelligence to the insurgents charges that Kadyrov's aides shrug off as unproved. According to a Russian officer, these so-called loyal Chechens regularly feed information on troop movements to the rebels. When his unit helicopters into the field, this officer is supposed to inform the area commandant's office, which is staffed by Chechens. But he never lets his chopper land at the planned destination. "I always order the pilot to land some two or three hundred meters away and open fire at our supposed landing site," he says. "Then we find dead rebels who have been waiting to ambush us there."

With two-timers in his ranks, can Kadyrov possibly make good on his pledge to put down the guerrillas? The Kremlin has so far tried to crush the revolt with air strikes and house-to-house sweeps and now, its critics assert, by abducting suspected separatists in the night. These tactics have changed nothing, and the new Chechenization policy probably won't either. What it will provoke, says Ruslan Khasbulatov, former speaker of the Russian parliament and a Chechen, is civil war as the guerrillas turn their guns on Kadyrov's men, Moscow's Chechen proxies.

Many doubt the Russians will ever leave. "Russian generals have zero enthusiasm" for Chechenization, says Deputy Prime Minister Doshukayev, because there's too much money to be made in Chechnya. The arms and explosives that kill Russian troops come straight from the Russian bases, according to local people and foreign observers. Russians deal the weapons on the black market even though they will be used to kill fellow soldiers. Guerrillas don't have to smuggle arms into Chechnya, says pro-Kadyrov newspaper editor Lechi Magomayev, because "they can buy them at the nearest base." Chechen officials say the military is also involved in oil smuggling and other rackets.