GROZNY, RUSSIA — GROZNY, Russia -- Kadijat Zelinhanova was an unlikely messenger in a very unlikely meeting between Chechen guerrillas and Russian troops.
Her floral skirt rustled in the summer breeze as she scurried in her house slippers across the broken glass, spent ammunition and crumbled plaster of war's destruction. The 35-year-old city employee was the go-between Wednesday for one of the first joint Russian-Chechen operations called for in last week's truce between the two sides in Russia's bloody civil war.
There were few formalities.
"Meet Lieutenant Colonel Viktor on the steps of the government building at 11," she breathlessly told Magomed Musaev, the rebel deputy battalion commander in control of downtown Grozny, on Wednesday morning.
The 30-year-old rebel is a former boxer who says his hero is Mike Tyson.
With the $800 Kalashnikov assault rifle he bought in a village market, the green-bereted Musaev peeked around the corner of the bombed-out shell of the Russian- sponsored government building. There was the Russian "Lieutenant Colonel Viktor," dressed in fatigues, unarmed and dejectedly kicking his boot into the rubble.
Resting his automatic rifle against the bullet-pocked government building, Musaev approached, rubbing the stubble of his beard with one hand. The Russian commander, who seemed almost too embarrassed to give his full name, told the rebel soldier he wanted to get his 150 Interior Ministry troops out of downtown Grozny and he wanted Musaev's men to protect their rear as he did this.
A deal was struck, though a handshake on it would be "too much," Musaev said. Similar impromptu agreements were going on all over Grozny and the surrounding countryside last week.
It was the closest the two sides had come to a peaceful settlement in the 20-month war. But it proved good enough by yesterday for Russian security chief Alexander Lebed and the top separatist commander, Aslan Maskhadov, to declare the war over. The conflict has cost 30,000 lives, stained President Boris N. Yeltsin's democratic reputation, and left Russians feeling powerless and cynical.
Rebels appeared to control all of Grozny and many parts of the nearby countryside, and by asking for rebel support, the Russians seemed to acknowledge the victory young rebels are claiming.
Russian forces withdraw
Under cease-fire agreements signed by Lebed and Maskhadov a week ago, Russian troops were withdrawing from mountain battlefields and from the Chechen capital, Grozny, which the rebels overran last month. Lebed and Maskhadov held days of meetings to solidify the peace between the Chechens, mostly Muslims who fiercely want their independence, and a Russian leadership determined to prevent secession.
Lebed said he had won a promise from the Chechens to put off discussions of independence for five years.
About 4,000 Russian troops and 2,000 rebels withdrew in long convoys from battlefronts last week, and by yesterday Grozny was being policed by joint Russian-Chechen patrols. Each side was to leave about 250 fighters in the capital to keep order and enforce the truce.
The first lasting truce of the war generated a sense of giddiness among the ghastly ruins of this shattered city and the nearby countryside.
Chechen rebels were jubilant. They thought they had won the war for independence. Daggers in their belts and automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, they cruised streets and highways with their green, hand-stitched separatist flags whipping triumphantly from car antennas.
"In our hearts and souls we want to believe that it's over, but I won't relax until all the Russian troops are gone because the person who cheated once is capable of cheating again," said Musaev, referring to several earlier truces that always seemed to be broken by Russian forces.
But many rebels weren't so cautious.
Cheered everywhere by children screaming "Allah akbar," God is great, the rebel rank and file obviously felt victorious.
Smiles of relief
Only two weeks ago, the fighting in Grozny between Russians and rebels was some of the most brutal in the war. A week later, rebels were riding jauntily with Russian troops atop withdrawing tanks. Even the usually sullen teen-age Russian draftees, whose fatigues are as tattered as their morale, could hardly contain their smiles of relief.
From behind sandbagged and camouflaged watch posts in and around Grozny as they waited to withdraw, Russian soldiers said they may finally be going home.
They hoped to leave behind the war and the military commanders they curse about as crudely as they do their Chechen enemies.
"No one ever thought we'd see this," said Andrei, 19, a blond private gesturing to a carload of rebels whooping it up near his sandbagged bunker by a Grozny airport. He wouldn't give his last name. "They wouldn't dare go by here like that [before]."
Andrei and the six other young Russian privates have been here a year and have lost many from their battalion. On Wednesday, they shared this post with rebels who sat in folding chairs just a few yards away.
The sides weren't talking to each other much. But the Russians seemed as buoyant as the rebels, dreaming of hot showers and the first new uniforms they might get. These Russian youths unanimously said Chechnya should have its independence and Russia should go home.
At another Russian post near a complex of government buildings leveled when the war started in December 1994, a "joint command" started last week.
A view from sandbags
A rebel sat atop the Russians' sandbags with a Kalashnikov across his lap listening to Russian Capt. Alexander Ryashin's pleas for a rebel escort to find his commanders and get some orders.
In what seemed to be a reflection of the demolished morale of the military forces of the once-great superpower, the 29-year-old Ryashin's soldiers rolled their eyes as he talked.
"We've received practically no orders or food since Aug. 6 [when the last rebel assault on Grozny started]," the captain said. "I'm entirely unhappy with my command. We're confused. But on the other hand, the boys are happy because we think the war is at least closer to being over than ever and we're going home."
Even skeptical battle-worn civilians here felt the change.
Thousands of Grozny residents fled in terror two weeks ago when Russian forces threatened to bomb the capital, but the city still full of survivors from nearly two years of thunderous destruction and broken truces.
They live in a high-rise nether world with no running water or electricity. Through shards of jagged window panes they watch the sky light up with rocket flares each night and see broken gas mains torching into the air for hours.
Calm over Chechnya
Civilians -- both Chechen and ethnic Russians -- rarely venture to hope for the future because their city and livelihoods have been destroyed. But they expressed a great relief in the calm that had fallen over Chechnya for the moment.
Ali Kukushev, 14, said, "If Lebed does his job, I'll get to go to school in September again." He lives in a quiet little neighborhood in the southern area of Grozny where houses are built around patios; many have been scorched and torn by artillery shells.
Ali is philosophical about the current peace and possible return of war. About war he quotes Dzhokhar M. Dudayev, the rebel leader and former president of Chechnya who was killed by Russian rocket in April: "It's only scary for 15 minutes and then it doesn't matter anymore."
Vishan Chalayev, who lives on the northern edge of town, is 53 and was just an infant during Josef Stalin's 1944 deportation of all Chechens to Kazakstan for their alleged cooperation with the Nazis in World War II. But he remembers the long simmer of emotion and the uprooted Chechens who had been transported in cattle cars across Russia.
Chalayev is sick of the war, he said, pointing to the artillery shell gash that killed his potato plants and his kitten a few weeks ago.
"It doesn't matter if it's a Chechen with a rifle or a Russian with a rifle, it's bad," he said. If a referendum shows most Chechens want independence, then they should have it, he said.
But if they don't, they should learn to live with Russia, which has always supported Chechnya financially.
Reason for optimism
Vera Mikhailova, 46, is an ethnic Russian living in Grozny. She said that last week there were more peaceful nights around her high-rise apartment than she can remember in a long time. It's reason for some optimism, she said as she took the opportunity to hang laundry outside. But, she added, "no one believes there's going to be peace -- this is just a break before the winter."
Born and raised here, Mikhailova said she feels trapped. The sting of Chechen hatred toward Russians is growing, she said. But she can't leave because she and her husband have all their money invested in their apartment.
But the brief peace so far hasn't been complete. On a road out of Grozny on Wednesday, a group of rebels -- tears in their eyes -- was lifting a brightly colored roll of a Caucasian carpet. Tightly bound in the carpet was the body of a 32-year-old woman -- a rebel medical doctor fatally wounded by a Russian grenade early in the first days of the truce.
She languished for four days but would never savor the peace, said rebel captain Magomed Yahyayev on his way to help bury her in the foggy, velvet-green mountains they've been fighting to take from the Russians.
Pub Date: 9/01/96