They put in good hours making bombs to kill bystanders, surely.

When the twin towers collapsed so did Chechen hopes at any independence. All Putin then had to do was play the "war on terrorism card" and be given a free hand to brutally crush the resistance. Blowing up Imams, Chechen civilians, invading Dagestan and allowing their country to be flooded by foreign Islamic fundementalist fighters were none too clever moves by the rebels as well. Oh I forgot! Ditto attacking musicals and rock concerts and allowing Chechens to fight in Afghanistan as it alienated domestic US opinion, with its notorious good guy/bad guy division of the world. No ground swell, equals no pressure on the executive, equals Mr Putin laughing all the way to the Russian subjegation of Chechnya. Islamic fundementalists wrecking a countries chances of survival, now where have we heard that scenario before!! As for how are they doing look at recent operations, which show greater extremism and a ill concealed frustration at the lack of any progress made by the armed struggle.

I wish Putin would stop dealing with the Chechens with kid gloves. He acts like Grozny is the only city they live in.

I wish Putin would arming Chechens to help the Russian Army fight these terrorists. It's become an ethnic war, when it should be against international criminals. As for these Chechen "patriots", they'd have a better case for favoring an Islamic Chechnya were they not always drunk when on campaign.

Chechens are terrorists and are the biggest threat to russia. i beleive that russia should take out their network in a sngle but massive blow. Put a final ebd to the conflict. (by massive blow i do NOT mean nuclear weapons)

well you know what they say, its not ethnic cleansing as long as one is left. Destroy them.

Anybody truely interested in the fight for Chechen independance should read Robert Young Pelton's book, 'Three Worlds Gone Mad'; as well as Aukai Collin's book 'My Jihad'. Vark's statement was right on the money. Putin is a slick bastard, the reason no one is hearing anything about the war is the lessons learned from the disasterous first war where a Nation of 1.2 million kicked the Big Bear's butt. Putin is using the Russian Mafia to good effect,silenced any news coming out of Chechnya, and is methodically committing Genocide. Grozney is 99%populated by Russian's. This came after Stalin deported 800,000 native Chechens to Siberia in 1944. 450,000 Chechens survivors returned alive to a country now populated by Russians. Putin was bombarding Grozny at a rate of 6000 rounds a day. The only people in Grozney are a few Chechen fighters and many poor Russians unable to escape....it's sick UH1Charlie

What you know about 1991, when General Dudayev came to power in Chechnya? The Soviet Union was falling apart, and Moscow wasnt able to do anything about this (at least without starting all-out war against ex-soviet Republics). And now many people think that could be a really good way to fight local crime lords and so called "freedom fighters". But in 1991 they were given opporunities to gain power and military strength. Sometimes it was a fault of local military commanders (threatened or bribed). This is how Dudayev became Chechen "President". The democratic Parliament, elected 1990, was virtually destroyed by Dudayevs soldiers. Many of Parliament members were thrown from 4th floor of Parliament Building. And crowd applauded... Then Chechnya became a dark land of terror, the crime state, based its economics on drugs, mass kidnapping (both for profit and for slavery), slave's labour, and money of thousands killed Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, other people and chechens, who have not accepted the new "ideals" of Independent Ichkerya. In this new Chechnya everything returned to medieval state (or even worse) - feudal fightings, bloody executions, armed people all around. In three years of this reign of terror Dudayev almost destoyed (or pushed away) most of Russian-speaking population. Dudayevs bandits enslaved thousands of people (most of them later killed - trying to escape, to weak and old to work, or just for fun). They've destroyed an educational system, and now most children in Chechnya cant read and write . They've killed teachers and medical personnel, officials and journalists, artists and actors, scientists and engineers - anybody who was cleverer and better than them. Orthodox priests were killed or crusified alive (as Jesus Chriest himself) - normal practice for sick "patriots". The same things happened in Bosnia and Kosovo - with the same "freedom fighters" involved.

Your Hero Dzhokhar Dudayev prior to is 'service' as President of Chechnya was a Soviet Air Force General sounds like pre-Soviet Afgan intrigues. Have a nice day...