Russian and Chechen forces once again fought a battle for Grozny last week. It was much shorter than the one last year and once again the Russians won, but the overall picture seems even more inconclusive. The Russian forces and the Chechen separatists seem to be equally incapable of winning the war.
It is obvious that the Chechens hardly hoped to capture Grozny and force the Russian military out. This year, the secessionists have far fewer men and heavy weapons than a year ago. However, Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, Aslan Maskhadov and many other Chechen commanders studied in Soviet military academies, where they learned in detail about the Soviet-backed Cold War guerrilla campaigns in Algeria and Vietnam. Many a pundit who remembers the Vietnam war will immediately notice the striking similarities between the latest Chechen attack on Grozny and the 1968 Vietcong Tet offensive.
In 1968, the Vietnamese Communists attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and seized the old imperial capital of Vietnam, Hu?. But the reckless courage of the attackers was not enough to overcome their opponents' superior fire power and numbers. The Saigon embassy and Hu? were retaken.
Nonetheless, American troops also suffered losses of up to 100 men a day. (More than 50,000 Americans were killed and 250,000 wounded in Vietnam.) American society, as the French before, demanded the withdrawal of troops. The military defeat of the Tet offensive turned out to be a complete political victory for the Vietcong.
It is clear that the Chechen leaders also hope that the attack on Grozny causes a storm of indignation in all of Russian society and forces President Boris Yeltsin to withdraw the troops.
Dudayev's supporters in Chechnya, however, are significantly weaker and less organized than the Vietnamese were. At the beginning of 1968, there were up to a million North and South Vietnamese pro-communist fighters in South Vietnam. Today, an optimistic estimate of the Chechen fighters (by their own accounts) is 5,000.
Moreover, the Chechen leaders are constantly at odds with one another. Several days before the attack on Grozny, there were reports that Chechen leader Salman Raduyev was killed and, after the fighting in Grozny began, that the Chechen chief of staff, Aslan Maskhadov, was wounded.
The second battle for Grozny lasted only a few days, and then the fighting dissolved into skirmishes. The Chechens were unable to take any significant strong point from the federal troops. True, they managed to disable the city's electric stations, destroy the water supply and burn an oil refinery in Grozny, but this hardly increases their popularity among the city's inhabitants.
So the Chechens lost the second battle for Grozny. But the showing of the Russian forces was equally unimpressive. The federal troops suffered heavy casualties -- several hundred killed and wounded -- mostly because of poor organization and extremely bad coordination between the various armed services.
The Russians do not have the manpower to defend the perimeter of Grozny: They can only block major incoming roads, which allows lightly armed enemy infantry to infiltrate the city. Like the Chechens last year, the Russian troops just intend to defend strong points. Then the plan is to launch counterattacks against their lightly armed enemy. The best defended points in Grozny were the main army base at Khankala and the region around the civilian airport Grozny-North. The idea was to rush in airborne reinforcements, if necessary, through the Khankala and Grozny-North airstrips and then to move out in force.
Basically, this plan worked. But the army did not move quickly enough, and in the course of two days, March 6 and 7, the lightly armed OMON forces and other special units of the Interior Ministry fought independently, which brought great losses.
Russian Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov was furious. But the Interior Ministry is not liked in the army. Army officers consider that the Interior Ministry troops sat out the fighting last winter and are displeased that the number of Interior forces is growing when the army is being cut back.
Internal squabbles and the lack of political will and any clear strategy have frustrated Russian efforts in Chechnya. But the separatist leaders appear to be equally confused and out of touch with reality. Which makes an early end to the fighting seem as remote as ever.
Pavel Felgenhauer is defense and national security editor for Segodnya.
It is obvious that the Chechens hardly hoped to capture Grozny and force the Russian military out. This year, the secessionists have far fewer men and heavy weapons than a year ago. However, Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, Aslan Maskhadov and many other Chechen commanders studied in Soviet military academies, where they learned in detail about the Soviet-backed Cold War guerrilla campaigns in Algeria and Vietnam. Many a pundit who remembers the Vietnam war will immediately notice the striking similarities between the latest Chechen attack on Grozny and the 1968 Vietcong Tet offensive.
In 1968, the Vietnamese Communists attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and seized the old imperial capital of Vietnam, Hu?. But the reckless courage of the attackers was not enough to overcome their opponents' superior fire power and numbers. The Saigon embassy and Hu? were retaken.
Nonetheless, American troops also suffered losses of up to 100 men a day. (More than 50,000 Americans were killed and 250,000 wounded in Vietnam.) American society, as the French before, demanded the withdrawal of troops. The military defeat of the Tet offensive turned out to be a complete political victory for the Vietcong.
It is clear that the Chechen leaders also hope that the attack on Grozny causes a storm of indignation in all of Russian society and forces President Boris Yeltsin to withdraw the troops.
Dudayev's supporters in Chechnya, however, are significantly weaker and less organized than the Vietnamese were. At the beginning of 1968, there were up to a million North and South Vietnamese pro-communist fighters in South Vietnam. Today, an optimistic estimate of the Chechen fighters (by their own accounts) is 5,000.
Moreover, the Chechen leaders are constantly at odds with one another. Several days before the attack on Grozny, there were reports that Chechen leader Salman Raduyev was killed and, after the fighting in Grozny began, that the Chechen chief of staff, Aslan Maskhadov, was wounded.
The second battle for Grozny lasted only a few days, and then the fighting dissolved into skirmishes. The Chechens were unable to take any significant strong point from the federal troops. True, they managed to disable the city's electric stations, destroy the water supply and burn an oil refinery in Grozny, but this hardly increases their popularity among the city's inhabitants.
So the Chechens lost the second battle for Grozny. But the showing of the Russian forces was equally unimpressive. The federal troops suffered heavy casualties -- several hundred killed and wounded -- mostly because of poor organization and extremely bad coordination between the various armed services.
The Russians do not have the manpower to defend the perimeter of Grozny: They can only block major incoming roads, which allows lightly armed enemy infantry to infiltrate the city. Like the Chechens last year, the Russian troops just intend to defend strong points. Then the plan is to launch counterattacks against their lightly armed enemy. The best defended points in Grozny were the main army base at Khankala and the region around the civilian airport Grozny-North. The idea was to rush in airborne reinforcements, if necessary, through the Khankala and Grozny-North airstrips and then to move out in force.
Basically, this plan worked. But the army did not move quickly enough, and in the course of two days, March 6 and 7, the lightly armed OMON forces and other special units of the Interior Ministry fought independently, which brought great losses.
Russian Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov was furious. But the Interior Ministry is not liked in the army. Army officers consider that the Interior Ministry troops sat out the fighting last winter and are displeased that the number of Interior forces is growing when the army is being cut back.
Internal squabbles and the lack of political will and any clear strategy have frustrated Russian efforts in Chechnya. But the separatist leaders appear to be equally confused and out of touch with reality. Which makes an early end to the fighting seem as remote as ever.
Pavel Felgenhauer is defense and national security editor for Segodnya.
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