MOSCOW: Before Sept 11, it took a stretch of the imagination to agree with Russia that an anti-terrorist operation could require 80,000 troops, create a quarter of a million refugees, lead to thousands of casualties and the levelling of cities and go on for two years.

The Kremlin made that claim. It consistently has labelled its opponents in the Chechen conflict as terrorists, except when it has collectively referred to them as bandit formations. But to just about everyone else, the operation looked less like anti-terrorism and more like a straightforward war against Chechnya.

Then, last month, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declared that the Russians indeed were fighting terrorists in Chechnya. In response, the Kremlin has embraced the United States, suddenly sympathetic European leaders have said they must rethink the nature of the conflict and the United States has started to mount a vast military attack on terrorist targets in Afghanistan.

During the past few weeks, Moscow has made more allegations of Osama bin Laden's involvement in Chechnya. Similar charges were first trotted out when the latest round of fighting began, in 1999. But they do not define the nature of the fighting in the Caucasus.

"We call it an internal armed conflict," says Alexander Petrov of Human Rights Watch. That, he says, is a polite way of pointing out that there has been a concentrated use of weaponry, a high level of human rights violations and the mass shooting of civilians. "Indiscriminate use of aviation and artillery, and cases when columns of refugees have been bombed," says Alexander Cherkasov of the Memorial Human Rights Centre.

It still looks like a war, in other words, against Chechens. Recently, both sides have shown an interest in finding a way to stop the fighting. Tentative contacts were renewed last week when Akhmed Zakayev, the peace envoy for the Chechens, called the Russian president's representative for the region, Viktor Kazantsev.

Kazantsev said last week that the two agreed to meet and that their talks probably will start before Wednesday in Moscow. These would not be "talks with bandits," Kazantsev added, but a meeting to discuss "a number of questions."

The barely disguised willingness on Moscow's part to pull back from what has become a long-term, draining military operation - and to negotiate with those Chechens it deems worthy - has made the claim that this is an anti-terrorist operation ambiguous at best.

The conflict in Chechnya, in fact, seems to fit several different descriptions. But whether it is a war or a police action or a special operation, one thing that stands out is the large number of civilian casualties. Although it is impossible to know how many people have been killed since the fighting began, estimates place the number at between 8,000 and 30,000.

The troubles in Chechnya began with a first round of war in 1994. Russian troops marched in to re-establish Moscow's control over the breakaway republic. Casualties were enormous; the Russians, in the end, were all but defeated. They withdrew from Chechnya with an agreement that the status of the republic would be decided later.

Chechen fighters under Shamil Basayev, a warlord entered neighbouring Dagestan and captured some mountain villages. Moscow gained its pretext: Russia could not allow attacks on territory outside the troublesome republic. Russian troops began preparing to enter Chechnya's northern steppe.

Once federal forces entered northern Chechnya, they kept going; today they occupy, precariously, most of the republic. Federal forces began what they call 'clean-up' operations, going from village to village. These consisted primarily of extortion, rape and looting; men younger than about 50 disappeared. Tens of thousands went through so-called filtration camps, where they were beaten and tortured.

The overwhelming impact of the war has been on civilians. "Whether we consider what has been happening in Chechnya as an internal armed conflict or a counter terrorist operation or a police operation, we still document mass and gross violations of human rights. Some of these incidents are crimes against humanity," says the Memorial Human Rights Centre's Cherkasov. "Russia's leaders say that Russia's experience is important for this new anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan. Yes, really, it is important - as a negative example, as an example of how it should not be done."

By Will Englund, Dawn/LAT-WP News Service
(c) The Baltimore Sun