MOSCOW (CP) - War-weary Chechens head to the polls Sunday to elect a new parliament that the Kremlin hopes will permanently cement the wayward republic into Russia's constitutional system.

The campaign, which has seen 353 candidates from eight political parties competing in a relatively free atmosphere, will give Chechnya its first elected legislature since the current war began in 1999.

"These polls are for external consumption, to convince the West that all is normal in Chechnya," says Malik Saidullayev, a leading Chechen businessman and critic of the pro-Moscow local government.

"Until there are negotiations with the rebels, any parliament will be a sham that can never represent all the Chechens," he says.

In one sign that conditions remain far from normal in Chechnya, several dozen human-rights activists demonstrated in the capital of Grozny last week to demand that Russian forces limit their use of armoured vehicles in urban areas and dismantle hundreds of military checkpoints that still impede daily life throughout the republic.

The protest was sparked by a Nov. 16 rampage by Russian troops in Staraya Sunzha, near Grozny, in which three Chechen civilians were shot dead.

"Servicemen in Chechnya drink to excess and behave badly," Chechen human-rights commissioner Nurdi Nukhazhiyev told the independent Mosnews press agency. "If they decide to kill civilians, they just go ahead and do it."

The new bicameral legislature will complete the Kremlin-designed system of local government, which includes a republic constitution, elected president and parliament, cemented under Moscow's rule. A constitutional referendum and two presidential elections - the first leader was assassinated by rebels - in the past two years drew charges of official manipulation and voter coercion from human rights monitors.

"Real elections are not possible in this environment," says Oleg Orlov, chairman of Memorial, the only Russian human rights movement with a presence in Chechnya.

"Russian authorities have imposed stability through terror, and now they are imposing a governing structure based on the same methods."

Russian officials insist the Chechnya conflict is winding down and the few remaining separatist guerrillas are increasingly isolated from the war-weary population.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin recently said Russian military deaths in Chechnya have fallen from 1,397 in 2000 and 485 in 2002 to 161 last year. The number of rebel attacks against Rusian forces so far this year is just 28, compared with 130 in 2004, he added.

Sergei Khaikin, director of the Moscow-based Institute of Social Marketing, which conducts public opinion surveys in Chechnya, says Chechens are exhausted after a decade of turmoil and most appear ready to embrace Moscow rule if it will deliver peace.

"According to our surveys, 86 per cent of Chechens accept the idea of remaining within Russia, compared with 67 per cent three years ago," he says.

But Khaikin adds that only 48 per cent believe Sunday's legislative elections are likely to be free and fair.

"People are worried about the way votes will be counted, and possible falsifications," he says.

Opinion polls put the pro-Kremlin United Russia party in the lead with 47 per cent support, followed by the Communist party with 17 per cent. The liberal Yabloko party, which opposes Moscow's policies in Chechnya, is a distant third.

In recent years instability has spread from Chechnya to several of the surrounding mainly-Muslim ethnic republics of Russia's volatile northern Caucasus region.

Islamist rebels in neighbouring Dagestan have launched almost 100 attacks on Russian forces so far this year, while some experts describe the situation in Ingushetia, a kindred ethnic republic to Chechnya's west, as near-disastrous.

Last month Chechen-linked local Islamists staged a major raid against Nalchik, capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, leaving more than 100 dead.

"Russia has nearly 300,000 troops based in the north Caucasus, and yet its grip on the region is fading with each passing month," says Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent security expert.

Russian authorities usually explain the growing unrest as arising from post-Soviet poverty and economic inequity, which drives young men into the arms of Islamist extremists.

But they have lately begun admitting they face an "ideological" problem in the region as well.

"The Nalchik events showed that many of the attackers were young men with higher educations and good jobs, not from poor families at all," says Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament.

"Unfortunately, many of them have fallen under the spell of extreme Islam, with its anti-human views, and are pursuing these alien goals," he says.

The candidates in Sunday's polls include three former Chechen rebels who have accepted a Kremlin anmesty.

But no one who currently opposes Chechnya's status as a republic within the Russian Federation was allowed to run.

"These elections will change nothing," says Yury Korgunyuk, an expert with the independent InDem Foundation, a Moscow think-tank.

"Chechnya is an unlivable place, a totally different country from the rest of Russia. It's our own little corner of hell."
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/051124/w112428.html

That many dead? And what were the figures pre-2000?