Troop disillusionment with the war in Chechnya and fractures within the Russian force serving in the breakaway republic appear to be deepening, as the operation slogs through its third year with no obvious end in sight.

Servicemen from a northern Russian region are refusing to go to Chechnya unless they are paid "war bonuses," while others are refusing to serve new, longer tours of duty, a Russian newspaper reported Tuesday.

Meanwhile, an official in the pro-Moscow Chechen administration said Tuesday that tensions are mounting between the Federal Security Service, which oversees the military campaign, and the Interior Ministry troops, who make up the bulk of the force serving in Chechnya.

Interior Ministry servicemen complain that they do the bloodiest, most thankless work - including sweeping villages for rebels and raiding mountain hideouts - while the laurels go to the security service, the administration official said on condition of anonymity. The security service, the successor to the KGB, insists it is the only agency that can keep the troubled area under control after nearly a decade of war.

Most large-scale fighting in Chechnya died down two years ago and the military has long claimed to control the northern two-thirds of the republic.

The military has focused on searching house to house for suspected rebels. Such an operation was under way Tuesday in the Urus-Martan district, the administration official said.

Human rights groups say troops routinely torture and abuse civilians during the sweeps; the Federal Security Service says the operations are necessary to root out rebels who stage daily hit-and-run attacks that kill Russian servicemen daily.

A total of six Russian servicemen and pro-Moscow Chechen officials were killed and 13 wounded over the past 24 hours in hit-and-run attacks and mine explosions, the official said.

Some areas of Chechnya, including parts of the Itum-Kale and Vedeno districts in the southern mountains, remain so inaccessible and treacherous that the military has virtually abandoned nearly all operations despite continued rebel activity, the administration official said.

Meanwhile, 20 servicemen with the Interior Ministry's crack police unit from the northern region of Komi are refusing to go to Chechnya because the tour of duty has been increased from three months to six, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported.

And servicemen from the same police force in the Vologda region have refused for the past two weeks to take up their tour of duty in northern Chechnya unless they are paid "war bonuses," the report said. The military does not pay bonuses for service in the northern part of the republic, insisting that it is no longer at war and is as safe as other parts of Russia - even though rebels regularly attack servicemen and plant mines there.

AFP
source: http://www.ichkeria.org/