President Vladimir Putin has been claiming for some time that the situation in Chechnya has been returning to normal. Clearly, his assertions do not ring true after the recent explosions there, hardly a "normal" occurrence in areas at peace. Also disturbing is the claim, made by Chechen militant press outlets, that warlord Shamil Basayev was behind the attacks. It brings to the forefront that, even if the government's plan to amnesty militants who lay down their arms goes through - and if many militants choose to cooperate with it - there are some who can neither be amnestied, or would indeed likely accept such an offer.

It is a matter of dispute as to what extent Basayev, the one remaining big-name Chechen field commander, is a religious zealot who ascribes to a perverted variety of Islam, a Chechen nationalist with strange ideas of what it means to help one's own people, or just a simple mercenary taking foreign money. He is quite likely a mixture of all three. In any case, it is doubtful to the point of utter implausibility that someone like Basayev would ever accept an amnesty and stop fighting, even if it were possible or desirable for the Kremlin to come to terms with such an internationally known odious figure.

Also, we must recognize the presence of foreign mujaheedin in Chechnya, many affiliated with international Islamist terrorist organizations (both the Kremlin and Chechen militants themselves have stated that there are about 200 such people in the republic at any given time, mostly engaged in training operations and/or propagation of religious ideology). Such people, mostly from the Middle East, preach a version of Islam hostile to Caucasian culture. However, despite the fact that their ideology is an alien one, their skills - and considerable financial resources - have moved them into the center of the conflict. We must remember that the Second Chechen War, after all, was started when Basayev, under the influence of an imported pan-Islamist ideology, invaded Dagestan in order to form a trans-Caucasian Islamic state sun according to the Wahhabi interpretation of Sharia law. Such a move, which brought the wrath of Russia down upon Chechnya and even more misery to the republic, is hardly in the interests of Chechen nationalism - but it does fit in with the worldview of the lunatic fringe of Middle Eastern religious culture.

Such people, who hijacked what was an understandable if ill-fated and short-sighted movement for national independence in a land that is not even their own, are unlikely to give up fighting, being in their own minds they are soldiers in a holy, undefeatable cause. And they cannot easily flee, for no government would take them; they have nowhere to go but the lawless hills of Afghanistan or Pakistani villages. Nor do they have any interests in a referendum or even, clearly, what the people of Chechnya themselves think.

The referendum and calls for amnesty are steps - small steps - on a long, long road to peace. Expecting that they can solve terrorism or bring a cease-fire for all parties overnight is as absurd as Western statements that Russia has no right to use its military against provocations directed against it and its citizens from within its own borders. In the real world, the forces arrayed against a peaceful resolution of the situation are far more powerful and intractable than many would like to think.