Russia pays price for its lie about winning the war

Just over two years ago a Russian general, with a self-satisfied smirk on his face, told President Vladimir Putin at a ceremony in the Kremlin that the army had won the war in Chechnya.

It was never true. The Chechen conflict raged on in a war which equals anything seen in the Balkans for savagery, though Russian restrictions on reporting and Chechen kidnappers ensured that it largely disappeared from television screens and newspapers in the West.

The Chechens have succeeded in drawing attention to their cause, but at the price of deepening the hatred felt by ordinary Russians towards them.

The only surprise about rebels taking an entire theatre audience in Moscow hostage is that such a high-profile attack did not happen sooner. At some point the rebels were likely to try to remind Russia that the war had never ended, as they did during the first war in 1994-96. The start of the second war in 1999 was always connected for the battle for political power in Moscow during the last days of President Yeltsin. Chechen Islamic rebels invaded Dagestan to the east of Chechnya, but the true cause of the war was a series of ferocious bomb attacks on apartment buildings in Russia which killed 300 civilians.

Nobody knows who was responsible for the bombings, but Mr Putin was their greatest beneficiary. On 10 October 1999 the Russian army advanced cautiously into Chechnya. As Chechen resistance crumbled, Mr Putin, hitherto an obscureofficial, became a popular war leader who was unstoppable at the polls.

The war was always different from its portrayal on Russian television. Chechnya's three years of de facto independence had been a disaster for Chechens. Kidnapping was the only growth industry. The heroic guerrilla commanders of the first Chechen war became professional criminals, preying on their own people.

But the Russian army soon made themselves equally hated. It drove the rebels out of the ruins of Grozny, the Chechen capital. They suffered heavy losses. Then, over the next two-and-a-half years, the army failed to build on its success. The occupation was brutal and corrupt. Russian checkpoints on the roads were more like toll booths, extracting bribes at gunpoint. Chechens who were arrested stood a good chance of being tortured, murdered or only released after a large pay-off.

It was the ferocity of the Russian occupation, not links between the rebels and al-Qa'ida or Islamic sympathisers abroad, that sustained the rebellion. Villagers would often say they detested the rebel commanders, often little more than bandits, but that the Russians had left them no choice but to fight.

The Russian army had its victories. Last year Russian troops, acting with Chechens who had blood feuds with Arbi Barayev, a warlord responsible for beheading a group of British telephone engineers, tracked him down and killed him. His nephew Movsar Barayev is said by a Chechen website to be leading the group, which took over the theatre in Moscow this week. He said the hostage-takers came "to die, not survive".

Mr Putin miscalculated. He believed that Russians and the outside world paid little attention to the war in Chechnya. The Russian media was largely under his influence. After 11 September, foreign criticism of Russian excesses was muted. The rebels could be portrayed as one more arm of international terrorism.

This was always a dangerous strategy. In the 1994-96 war the Chechens had twice staged raids outside Chechnya to take hostages. Russian security in and around Chechnya is incompetent and corrupt. It is no surprise that the gang that took over the theatre was able to reach Moscow.

There is a tragic inevitability about the attack. Despite the premature declaration of victory in April 2000, Mr Putin has failed to win the war. He never sought to negotiate. The backlash against Chechens after this latest outrage may make it impossible to do so in future.