Some of the bodies found in a common grave are unwrapped at a Chechen cemetery about 15 km (9 miles) south of the shattered republic’s capital Grozny

MOSCOW, September 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Dozens die daily, as they have for nearly three years now. But now the surviving Chechen fighters also feel let down and accuse the West of dropping them in favor of Russia after the September 11 attacks.

Moscow gained more diplomatic capital than most from the terrorist catastrophe that befell the United States, after Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed his whole-hearted support for the war on terror and the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

As a result the ferocious gunmen, once referred to as freedom fighters by both Western governments and rights groups, of Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Chechnya have fallen out of favor since September 11.

“Russians killed Chechens before and continue to do so today. But now they are doing it under cover of the U.S. anti-terror campaign,” Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov’s personal spokesman Akhmed Vachigayev told AFP.

“The West has decided to completely ignore what is happening in Chechnya,” he charged. “They are in solidarity with the murder by Russians of Chechens.”

The accusation may sound harsh. But then so is the contrast in comments made by leaders like U.S. President George W. Bush - then and now.

“The bombing of women and children in Chechnya is unacceptable. And the United States should not be giving aid to the Russian government so long as ... they continue bombing women and children,” Bush said on November 18, 1999.

By last May, the tone had changed radically: “I understand full well that the people of Russia suffered at the hands of terrorism as have we,” Bush said of the Chechen conflict at his Moscow summit with Putin.

Few observers deny that Washington has gone a long way to accepting Russia’s argument that it was fighting terrorists in Chechnya when it opened a frightening rocket assault on the rebels’ capital Grozny in October 1999.

To this day, no one knows how many civilians died in those first days of fighting. Thousands remain unaccounted for.

Now Putin’s administration proudly points out that it was the first to warn the West of the regions' dangers to others. The United States today admits to possible links between some of the Chechen rebel leaders and Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

So Putin appears to have free rein in Chechnya.

But questions remain: Can Russia actually win, or end, a war after having claimed to have killed nearly 20,000 people but still seeming unable to call back its troops home?

Are the fighters in fact on their knees? And will the West not turn more critical of the war once its own “anti-terror” campaign ends?

Some Chechen leaders express frustration and hint at compromise. “I think that it is imperative to say this: direct (Russian) presidential rule is essential” in Chechnya, said Maskhadov’s top negotiator Akhmed Zakayev.

“Today, at this stage, when no laws apply in Chechnya, not Russian, not international laws... This is just lawlessness,” he said.

But this is only a negotiating maneuver. Zakayev stresses that Chechens are still fighting for independence. They would simply prefer to negotiate directly with Putin, rather than the local pro-Russian Chechen administration which the fighters hate even more than Moscow’s troops.

Conventional wisdom in Moscow says that Putin can count on silence from Washington over Chechnya as long as the problem of unseating the regime of Saddam Hussein remains in Iraq.

“I think this benevolence from the West over Chechnya can continue for some time -- in part because of the planned operation in Iraq” which would prove to be deeply unpopular in Russian military circles, said Carnegie Moscow Center analyst Andrei Ryabov.

“Chechnya is a negotiating chip in the Iraqi war,” Ryabov said, referring to Moscow’s strongly voiced objections to apparent U.S. plans to attack Iraq.

And Western investors here agree. They are banking on Moscow’s warm relations with Washington, and a lack of Western carping over Chechnya, as long as the United States feels obliged to keep Moscow at least neutral, if not exactly onside, over the planned campaign.

“Russia can count on the Bush administration continuing to subordinate general concerns on Chechnya to its anti-terrorist, hence Russia-friendly, perspective," said Christopher Granville, chief analyst at Moscow’s United Financial Group investment bank.

With the political game continuing between the current super power and Russia, once a super power, a mass grave containing the bodies of 15 people arrested by Russian troops has been uncovered in Chechnya in a new blow to Moscow’s human rights record that coincides with a U.N. decision to resume its activities in the war-torn republic.

The rights group Memorial said the bodies were discovered on Friday, September 6, at a location that had been previously controlled by Russian troops on the border between Chechnya and the neighboring republic of Ingushetia to the west, AFP reported.

It said seven of the bodies had been identified and all were Chechen men arrested by Russian forces in Chechnya earlier this year.

Memorial said relatives of the victims had been tipped off about the mass grave after paying the Russian military large sums of money. They then contacted police in Ingushetia who uncovered the burial site.

The report was confirmed by the press service for Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, which released the same seven names of the Chechens identified by Memorial.

Some of the bodies had plastic bags wrapped over their heads and showed signs of “violent death”, according to Maskhadov’s statement.

Maskhadov’s office said the 15 were arrested during “mopping up” operations by Russian troops in northwestern Chechnya in mid-May but Memorial said the arrests began two weeks earlier.

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