Following the news from Chechnya has become like watching a very bad and very depressing movie, one where the plot never seems to develop. In every report from the republic, we witness the same lack of progress on the military and humanitarian fronts, the same devastation of the republic's economy and society, and the same pointless and squalid loss of human life.

Then something unusual happens. This week, the Russian government announced that its special forces had succeeded in locating and killing notorious Chechen field commander Arbi Barayev. This was later confirmed by the separatist Chechen forces themselves, who called the slain rebel leader a "martyr."

Few in Russia or elsewhere, outside of the rebels themselves, are likely to mourn Barayev's passing. This is a man reportedly responsible for the murders of 170 Russian citizens, as well as the notorious beheadings of four Westerners in 1999 – who, according to the British doctor who examined their bodies, had been starved and tortured before their deaths. Some martyr.

We hope that this recent success, which stands in stark contrast to the military's generally dismal record in establishing order in both Chechnya and its own ranks, is a sign of a positive trend. It has seemed for a long time that the idea that progress might be made in the war, that the future might hold anything other than a further descent into bloodshed and violence, was a pipe dream. The plan to withdraw Russian troops has stalled and the rebel forces have, if anything, become even more aggressive.

Moreover, the surprisingly high level of efficiency of this latest operation seems to vindicate the government's decision to transfer control in Chechnya from the Army to the FSB. There are few people so naive as to believe that the Russian military is not in bad shape – underfunded, with its lower ranks manned for the most part by poorly trained conscripts who understandably suffer from low morale, and the presence of corruption among its upper-echelons. This is not a recipe for effective operations.

Whatever one thinks of the justification for the war in Chechnya, it has been marked by extraordinary hardship among the civilian population. We would like to think that this is due more to the presence of a deepened fog of war brought about by the state of the Russian military and the nature of urban warfare, rather than any deliberate policy of terrorizing the population. But it is hard to believe it.

Hence, any strategy that focuses its efforts on neutralizing specific forces, rather than engaging in all-out subjugation of the territory, is to be highly praised. Perhaps the success against Barayev actually indicates a move in policy toward targeting acknowledged criminals – and recent statements by the Kremlin's Chechnya spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, seem to bear this out – and away from assaults on poorly defined "rebel strongholds."

But it is tragic that such a course of action was not effectively implemented earlier. Everybody knows that without some trust on the part of Chechen civilians, the present fighting could turn into a decade-long conflict; one marked by endless guerilla attacks on the Russian military and police installations and personnel, with interminable misery for the population at large and the threat of further bombings of civilian targets in Russia.

What is called for is a reasonable, efficient military campaign that pays more than just lip service to the concerns of noncombatants, even if they do, from the point of view of military commanders, have the annoying tendency of "getting in the way." While the term "humanitarian war" is an oxymoron, despite certain prominent official statements to the contrary, one can at least hope for some restraint in the savagery.