Russia and Chechnya: A gaping hole

After the killing of Chechnya's president, who will be popular, capable and sane enough to take over?

WHO but a masochist would want to run Chechnya now? Akhmad Kadyrov, assassinated on May 9th, was the third of the province's four post-Soviet presidents to meet a violent end. Jokar Dudaev, who led Chechnya's first bid for separatism from Russia, was killed by a Russian missile in 1996. Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, his successor, was blown up last February in Qatar, where two Russian agents are on trial for his murder.

Mr Kadyrov was the Kremlin's main hope for solving the mess Chechnya has become over the course of two wars between Russian forces and separatist rebels. A former mufti of Chechnya and ally of the rebels, he switched sides, becoming the Kremlin-appointed administrator in 2000. Last October he “won” a presidential election in which turnouts were inflated and other serious runners excluded. For Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, the task of Mr Kadyrov was to validate the policy of “Chechenisation”: the idea that putting the region in Chechen hands, with a bit of autonomy (not independence), could succeed where brute force failed.

The assassination has scuttled that idea. It showed signs of having inside help. A bomb had been embedded in concrete, apparently during renovations, below the VIP stand in the stadium in Chechnya's capital, Grozny, where Mr Kadyrov was presiding over second world war victory celebrations. It was detonated either by a timer or by remote control through a wire; the culprits apparently knew not to use a radio-controlled device, since the stadium reportedly had jamming equipment to foil such attacks. They also killed two bodyguards, a photographer and a child - and badly hurt the Russian commander in Chechnya, General Valery Baranov.

It was only the latest of something like 15 assassination attempts, for Mr Kadyrov had no shortage of enemies. Many officers still hated him from his rebel days, when he called for a jihad against Russia's army. Various rebel warlords loathed him as turncoat. His chosen instrument for subduing the province was a brutal militia, known as the kadyrovtsy, commanded by his son Ramzan; they are accused of killing, kidnapping and looting at will. Some Russian nationalists said Mr Putin was handing Mr Kadyrov too much power. He was also said to have alienated the local Russian garrison, by muscling in on some of the scams - such as illicit oil refining - that have made the conflict less a struggle over politics than a scrabble for profits.

A hard act to follow

Few, one might think, would mourn such a man. Yet human-rights workers agree that in recent months, under Mr Kadyrov's heavy hand, a thin veneer of normality had started to return to Chechnya. Shamil Beno, a former Chechen foreign minister and now a social activist, says that the kadyrovtsy had brought the multitude of checkpoints scattered through the republic “under some kind of control”; there were fewer explosions and rebel attacks. War refugees had begun getting compensation from the federal government, albeit paying bribes to do so. Cafes and shops were beginning to open among Grozny's ruins.

Whether Mr Kadyrov would have made much further progress is debatable. But one of his advantages to Mr Putin, who became president on a promise to subdue Chechnya swiftly, was the fact that “Chechenisation” allowed him partly to wash his hands of the resulting mess. He is not likely to opt for direct presidential rule again, as some nationalist politicians are now urging.

The problem is who could succeed Mr Kadyrov. Elections will be held on September 5th. Like last time, Mr Putin will probably not leave their outcome to anything so unreliable as the electorate. Still, many of those who had hoped to run against Mr Kadyrov last October may feel they have a chance again. Some, according to polls at the time, could have beaten him in a fair election, most notably Malik Saidullaev, a Chechen businessman living in Moscow. In the tribal world of Chechen politics, people tend to have local power bases (Mr Kadyrov's was his home village of Tsentoroi, Mr Saidullaev's is the town of Alkan-Yurt) but often lack wider support. Most have spent too long outside Chechnya. Mr Kadyrov was more credible than average: his background as mufti, his time with the rebels and his experience as administrator gave him a unique mixture of levers of influence.

The biggest such lever was the kadyrovtsy. Estimated to number anywhere from 1,500 to 5,000, they are a nasty mix of convicts, ex-rebels and ex-soldiers, only loosely under control. Ramzan Kadyrov is too young, at 27, to be president, but whoever takes over will need him and his militia on side to avoid adding another layer to the conflict. In a nod to that, he was made deputy prime minister of Chechnya after his father's death. A Kremlin aide has already described Ramzan as “de facto” leader of Chechnya pending the election of a new head of state.

That will leave the next president hemmed in on all sides by the kadyrovtsy, the army, the rebels and the Kremlin, with precious little room for manoeuvre. He will be highly vulnerable: Mr Kadyrov's assassination was only the latest in a series of attacks, among them a car-bomb in December 2002 that destroyed the Chechen government headquarters in Grozny. If he has any sense, he will avoid making enemies; and if he avoids making enemies, he has no hope of making progress in resolving the conflict.

After the killing of Chechnya's President, Akhmad Kadyrov, who will be popular, capable and sane enough to take over?