Why the Cease-Fire in Chechnya Won't Hold

The Washington Post
April 05, 1996, Friday

SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A19
HEADLINE: Why the Cease-Fire in Chechnya Won't Hold
BYLINE: Graham T. Allison Jr.

BODY: The timing of President Boris Yeltsin's announcement of his secret plan to solve the Chechen conflict was ironically apt. In Russia as well as in America, April 1 is a day for spoofs and scams.

Despite the fanfare leading up to Yeltsin's speech and some positive spin in instant TV commentaries, Yeltsin's plan is destined to fail. Before many days have passed, the predictable response of Chechen rebels will expose Yeltsin's proclaimed solution as no more than a continuation of the failed policy of the past 15 months. That policy seeks to impose a military solution. That challenge has proved beyond the capabilities of Russia's military, internal security and ex-KGB forces.

What is new in Yeltsin's latest plan? He announced an end to large-scale military operations, a willingness to have intermediaries enter into negotiations with Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev and flexibility on issues of amnesty for the rebels. But the major military offensive he is ending has destroyed only towns and villages and has killed civilians.

His partial withdrawal of troops now leaves Russian military contingents attempting to preserve peace where there is no peace and exposed to attack by Chechen fighters. The proposed terms of a cease-fire that attempts to leave Russian troops controlling major cities and valleys, pushing Chechen rebels into the mountains in the Southeast, will not be acceptable to Dudayev and aligned field commanders.

The most important good news in Yeltsin's announcement assigns the implementation process to Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin, who has been clearer and more pragmatic on Chechnya than most within Russia's fragmented government. But the cards he has been given to play provide little hope for success.

Why has Yeltsin again chosen a solution to the Chechen problem that is doomed to fail? For essentially the same reason he has erred previously. He continues to rely on the power ministries' understanding of the realities on the ground in Chechnya and forecasts of Russian military capacities. These judgments have been demonstrably misguided. From a bungled covert action in the fall of 1994 and Defense Minister Pavel Grachev's assertion that "Russia's military forces can solve this problem in 48 hours," and two botched attempts to free hostages, to government claims this February and March that the Dudayev forces had been essentially defeated, Chechnya has been a tragedy of errors.

Repeated public assertions have been contradicted by simultaneous, direct television images from Chechnya. On March 6, as Yeltsin was publicly asserting that Russian troops controlled a peaceful Grozny, independent Russian television showed Russian forces under attack by up to 1,000 Dudayev fighters in a battle that Russian commanders later acknowledged caused heavy casualties.

What will be the consequences of Yeltsin's failure to find a way to stop the killing? Yeltsin has repeatedly stated his own personal judgment that he "cannot be reelected in June if the war continues in Chechnya." Americans should recall that a U.S. president's inability to find a way out of Vietnam's dead end led Lyndon Johnson to conclude that he should not run for reelection in 1968.

What should Yeltsin have chosen instead? Indeed, what should he still choose? The starting point for any viable resolution of the Chechen conflict is sober recognition that Russia's military, interior and security forces are not capable of imposing a speedy military solution. Whether a better organized, better motivated, better supplied military effort could have succeeded is debatable. That the Russian military that exists today has demonstrably failed to do so is an incontestable fact.

A specific plan that offers good prospects for ending the killing quickly was proposed by a group of Russian and international experts meeting at the Hague last weekend under the leadership of President Mintimer Shaimiyev of Tatarstan, one of the republics of the Russian Federation. The essential elements of this plan include:

Opening direct negotiations with representatives of Dudayev and other conflicting parties about implementing simultaneous withdrawal of all federal troops, disarmament of combatants, demilitarization of Chechnya and general amnesty.

Getting regional leaders from the Russian republics involved to facilitate negotiations and provide guarantees.

Expressing a readiness to postpone resolution of Chechnya's claim of independence to a binding resolution a decade hence -- a variant of the "Saarland Agreement" of 1920, in which Germany and France agreed to defer for 15 years a binding referendum on the status of the Saarland, an area along the border of France and Germany that had been disputed in three wars.

What should the U.S. government do today? First, tell Yeltsin the truth: Give him a friendly, objective analysis of the facts. Second, reaffirm the U.S. commitment to the territorial integrity of Russia and other post-Soviet states, stating publicly that the United States will not recognize a Chechnya that wins independence by war, but will recognize the results of the binding resolution a decade hence.

Third, condemn -- publicly and privately -- the Russian government's atrocious brutalities in Chechnya, specifically the practice of destroying villages in order to save them. Finally, quietly urge Yeltsin to reflect on his dilemma and on what he knows has been a seriously, perhaps fatally flawed policy. He should consider alternatives, even at this late moment.

The writer is director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.