#9 - RW 268
Moscow Times
August 7, 2003
Combatants or Criminals?
By Pavel Felgenhauer

Last week in Grozny, Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev handed over to Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov overall control of anti-rebel operations in Chechnya. Gryzlov and Patrushev told reporters that it is not appropriate anymore to describe the conflict as an "antiterrorist operation." Instead it is an operation to "maintain public order in Chechnya" -- a police job.

Gryzlov and Patrushev's rhetoric painting a rosy picture of an almost fully pacified Chechnya was devastated only a few days later by a truck-bomb explosion in Mozdok in nearby North Ossetia. The bomb flattened a four-story military hospital that treated solders wounded in combat in Chechnya, killing 50 and injuring many more -- mostly military personnel and military medical staff.

Mozdok is the main supply and air support base for anti-rebel operations in Chechnya. In Soviet times, Mozdok was an air base for Tu-95 "Bear" strategic and shorter-range Tu-22-3M "Backfire" bombers. During the early stages of the first war in Chechnya in 1994-96, Mozdok was still used by the strategic nuclear forces. (In April 1995 I witnessed from above, coming in from Chechnya on a helicopter, the takeoff of three heavy Tu-95 bombers on some mission.)

The Tu-95s (the Soviet equivalent of the U.S. B-52s), their nuclear bombs and nuclear-tipped cruse missiles were later moved from Mozdok to the Volga region. The air base, with its extended concrete airstrips and large infrastructure that serviced the strategic 5th Soviet Air Force Army, became a vital springboard for the Chechen campaigns.

The troops occupy two concrete airstrips inside Chechnya: in Khankala in the northeast outskirts of Grozny (built as a Soviet military jet pilot training center and now the main headquarters of the occupation forces) and the Soviet-built Grozny civilian airport north of the city. But no planes are permanently based inside the war zone.

Helicopters transfer solders from Mozdok to Khankala and other destinations, while fixed-wing aircraft do not land on Chechen soil at all because of the threat posed by the rebels. Almost a year ago the rebels shot down a large military Mi-26 transport helicopter as it approached Khankala from Mozdok with the loss of some 130 lives. Since then only smaller Mi-8s that carry up to 10 passengers fly inside the republic.

The Mi-8s in Chechnya are old, typically in service for 20 or so years, and prone to technical failure, and there is a shortage of spare parts to do proper maintenance. The occupying troops are in effect pinned down to the ground, with air trips reserved mostly for the top brass. Thus there has been a disproportionate loss of colonels and generals when these choppers go down because of technical mishap or enemy fire.

All air support sorties flown today over Chechnya take off from Mozdok. Troops leave the war zone and reinforcements or replacements are flown in by transport plane to Mozdok or arrive via the railroad to be transferred into Chechnya proper in convoys of trucks and APCs. (Sometimes part of the travel inside Chechnya is also by rail and then convoy.)

Wounded servicemen and the remains of the dead also pass through Mozdok -- a small town around the air base that the rebels believe is vital for Russian operations. In June, a female suicide bomber attacked a bus carrying military personnel from the tactical 4th Air Army, which has bombed Chechnya since 1994 and continues to do so. Eighteen people, including the bomber, died.

The deliberate attack last week on the military hospital is a clear violation of the Geneva conventions and a war crime. But in Chechnya the Russian authorities also do not observe international rules of war. Wounded rebels are randomly killed; field camps set up by the rebels to treat their wounded have been deliberately attacked (state television has shown the results of such attacks, portrayed as "great victories").

The Russian authorities have not allowed international humanitarian NGOs to set up hospitals to give aid to the wounded. Chechen doctors have been prosecuted as criminals for treating the rebels.

Moscow considers the rebels to be not combatants but criminals. So the rebels face the same legal jeopardy if they attack a military base or a military hospital.

President Vladimir Putin has called the Mozdok hospital bombing "yet another confirmation of the inhumanity and cruelty of the bandits." In fact, the Kremlin has been inviting such attacks by fighting an inhumane war itself.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.

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