RUSSIA: The Russian army has been mired in Chechnya for over three years, reports Chris Stephen
Russia forces first invaded Chechnya, a rebellious southern province, in the summer of 1999. More than three years later, they are still there, unable to either smash the rebels or pull out - for fear the Chechen guerrillas will storm back into power.
The trigger for the 1999 offensive was a series of spectacular apartment bombings which ripped through Moscow and other cities, killing more than 300 civilians.
Responsibility for the bombings remains a mystery, with the Chechens denying they did it, but the blasts gave Mr Vladimir Putin, then an untried prime minister, the rationale for launching the offensive.
Russian forces quickly battered their way into suburbs of the capital, Grozny, but rebel forces held out for two months before finally pulling out in March 2000 - with most of the city by then in ruins.
Since then, Russia has been mired in the kind of guerrilla war that the Americans encountered in Vietnam and the British and French in their former colonies - and which Moscow last experienced in the 1980s in Afghanistan.
While tanks and jets hunt for targets, nimble, highly motivated guerrillas use the mountains, forests, and safe bases in neighbouring Georgia to outwit the security forces.
And the reaction, from both sides, has been ugly. Chechens often execute and mutilate Russian captives.
And Russian units have often overrun Chechen villages to find custom-built "kidnap pits" underneath the houses, used for holding hostages, be they soldiers or any other outsider - a practice that predates this war.
In return the Russian army has been accused of savage brutality. Russian human rights groups have documented random executions and torture and they have evidence that paramilitary death squads roam the streets, arresting civilians who are never seen again.
Last year a mass grave of executed Chechen men was found outside the perimeter wire of the Russian army headquarters outside Grozny.
And other reports say Russian army units, often underpaid, have taken to "shaking down" local Chechens, ransoming innocent villagers to their families.
Among the casualties has been the reputation of the once-feared Russian army. Every few months since the start of the war, the high command has announced that victory is in sight - only for the rebels to launch fresh attacks on isolated army posts.
Last year Mr Putin, now the Russian president, and popular despite being seen as the architect of the war, in desperation placed Mr Sergei Ivanov, former chief of the FSB - the renamed KGB - in charge of the armed.
Meanwhile, the FSB took command of the war itself. But the move changed nothing, and the war dragged on.
This summer Chechen rebels demonstrated their bravado by using a bazooka-launched missile to down a giant transport helicopter as it was coming into land. The first shock for the Russians was that this took place not in some remote mountain hideout, but on the outskirts of supposedly "safe" Grozny. The second shock was the death toll - 116, only two less than the loss of sailors from the Kursk submarine disaster two years before.
The rebels have had their own reverses: After September 11th, their connections with the al- Qaeda network, through so-called Wahabists, or volunteer Islamic fighters, lost them sympathy from the West. In January US forces arrived in Georgia, ostensibly to train Georgian forces to attack Chechen bases in the Pankisi Gorge. But this month came news that the US forces have made commando raids netting 14 al-Qaeda suspects, all likely to be flown from Georgia to Guantanamo Bay.
The rebels also lost their second-most famous commander, Saudi Arabian Khatab, killed in fighting a few months ago. But their chief, Shamil Basayev, remains active. And despite their losses, the Chechens have given no sign they will accept anything less than full independence from Russia - a demand Mr Putin refuses to consider.
Moscow's anxiety extends beyond the province itself - it worries that allowing independence for one province would encourage other national minorities spread across what is the world's largest country to follow suit with their own demands for separation.