Chechen rebels called for the first ceasefire of the five-year guerrilla war in Russia’s war-torn republic on Thursday but pro-Moscow officials in Chechnya brushed the move off as a ”bluff” while the Kremlin kept silent over the announcement.
The rebel’s Kavkazcenter internet site published a statement attributed to Russia’s public enemy number one, Shamil Basayev, in which the feared warlord called on his fighters ”in Chechnya and Russia” to observe a ceasefire until February 22.
Basayev has haunted the Kremlin for much of the past decade while assembling a ruthless ragtag team of local fighters and mercenaries who patrol the southern mountains of Chechnya.
The rebel — who is known to have lost a part of his foot and was reported dead on several occasions, while also standing accused of developing links with the al-Qaeda terror network — said he received his orders from Chechnya’s unrecognised president, Aslan Maskhadov.
”Following president Aslan Maskhadov’s orders from January 14 2005 about a ceasefire by the Mujahedin, and in a sign of goodwill, we are ending all forms of war activity for the month of February,” Basayev wrote.
The internet site said it had not received Maskhadov’s initial ceasefire call and could not explain what prompted the rebels’ apparent decision to suspend hostilities.
Fighting has recently raged on in the republic, which is overrun by competing field commanders and rival pro-Moscow security groups, and at least six Russian soldiers were reported killed on Wednesday alone.
The official Russian death toll from the war stands at more than 4 500 soldiers, though independent observers claim that the true toll may be three times higher.
The rebels are believed to have suffered large losses as well and now operate in small gangs that run lawless through tough terrain they know well while reverting primarily to mine warfare and hit-and-run strikes.
Their single biggest recent attack came in the southern Russian city of Beslan where 344 people — half of them children — died in a September school hostage raid claimed by Basayev’s men.
Maskhadov at one stage was seen as slightly less radical than Basayev and the once-elected Chechen leader has called on the Kremlin to open talks in the past.
These were officially only held once in a Moscow airport and saw the Kremlin call for unconditional surrender.
But fighting continued and the rebels’ efforts to free themselves of Russian rule culminated in May with their assassination of pro-Moscow president Akhmad Kadyrov.
Kadyrov has since been replaced by Kremlin yes-man Alu Alkhanov while the pro-Russian security force is run by Kadyrov’s feared son Ramzan. Both have vowed to tame the resistance through brute force.
”This is all a bluff,” said the Chechen’s state council chief, Taus Dzhabrailov, of the ceasefire call.
Meanwhile, Alkhanov said that the rebels had made promises before they had no intention of keeping and that Maskhadov could no longer be trusted.
”Maskhadov never did keep his promises even when he was president of Chechnya,” Alkhanov told the Interfax news agency. ”We have no reason to believe that his intentions are true this time.”
Kremlin officials in Moscow issued no comments on the report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the latest war in Chechnya while still serving as prime minister in October in 1999 in an ”anti-terror” campaign that was meant to deliver a lightning strike against suspected rebel training camps. — Sapa-AFP