Regional

Several years into the second Chechen war, Grozny and much of the republic lay in ruins. Everywhere, buildings had been demolished, and many of those still standing were missing entire walls. Few Chechen civilians believed that independence was possible, and nearly all just wished the war would end. While it continued, even the relatively lucky ones who had reasonable health and a place to live often went without heat, running water, adequate food, and basic health care. An article in a June 2005 edition of the Chechen newspaper Groznenskii Rabochii reported that five thousand children—the victims of land mines—needed artificial limbs.

Chechen boy dragging a tent at a refugee camp in Ingushetia - Ingushetia, 2004
© 2004 Getty Images, Inc.

The process of Chechenization—the transfer of political authority in Chechnya to Chechens—may have initially made life even harder for the Chechen people. In many ways, it meant the worst of both worlds for them: no independence but not much aid from Moscow either. Holding Chechen elections in which all the candidates opposed independence allowed Putin simultaneously to assert Russian sovereignty over Chechnya and to disclaim primary responsibility for rooting out corruption in local governments, enforcing the rule of law, and restoring security.

The situation changed in the second half of the decade, after Moscow put its trust in local strongman Ramzan Kadyrov. Convinced of both Kadyrov’s loyalty to Russia and his ability to crush the Chechen independence movement, the Russian government released significant reconstruction funds. While fighting between Chechen rebels and Russian troops persists, much of the region has been stabilized and Grozny’s devastated infrastructure has been largely rebuilt.

But stabilization and reconstruction have not come free; average Chechens have had to submit to intimidation and sometimes murder and torture at the hands of the Kadyrovtsi, a notorious gang of ex-military men, criminals, and opportunists loyal to Kadyrov, the Chechen president. As long as war, even in a low-intensity form, continues, Moscow is unlikely to allow anyone less thuggish to occupy that office.

The Chechens are not the only people who suffer from the continuation of the war. Russian people throughout the federation also suffer. Terrorist attacks carried out by Chechen militants have instilled fear among Russians throughout the country, particularly, but not exclusively, in Ingushetia and other republics in the north Caucasus. Several high-profile attacks have occurred in Moscow. There and in other major Russian cities, Chechens have often been hit doubly hard. Their Caucasus appearance, which gives them no special protection from terrorism, sometimes makes them victims of discrimination and racist attacks.

The young Russian men who have to fight the war are among the hardest hit of all. Veterans of the Chechen campaign are prone to alcoholism, depression, and other kinds of mental illness. Many find themselves incapable of holding down regular jobs and so are drawn to the police force, where they sometimes end up applying the brutal techniques they learned in Chechnya.

As fighting in Chechnya has continued, the strength of Russia’s democratic institutions appears to have weakened. In particular, freedom of the press has been compromised. All Russian television now falls directly or indirectly under the control of the Russian government. As a result, the news about Chechnya that Russians watch nightly on their televisions is heavily censored.

The print press has remained freer, with editorials criticizing Putin’s handling of the Chechen war appearing quite regularly. But inroads are being made into their independence, too. Five journalists working for the Togliatti Observer, a local newspaper renowned for tough investigative journalism, were murdered between 1995 and 2003. Then, after the Beslan school siege of 2004, the editor of Moscow’s most popular daily newspaper was sacked, and an investigative reporter appears to have been poisoned. The editor was fired after questioning the Russian government’s (false) claim that only 350 hostages remained in the school. The reporter, Anna Politkovskaya, was a prominent critic of the government’s handling of the war in Chechnya. She fell unconscious while sitting on a plane alongside Russian intelligence agents. (She recovered, only to be murdered in suspicious circumstances in 2006.)

Just days after the Beslan tragedy, President Putin enacted legislation weakening another institution that served as a check on his government’s authority. In a move he said was necessary to protect Russia’s territorial integrity, Putin ruled that regional governors would no longer be elected by their constituents but would henceforth be appointed by Moscow. The effect was to reduce the likelihood of regional dissent over Chechnya (Putin would hardly appoint critics of his policies) and to eliminate another counterweight to the power of the central government.

In restricting the expression of dissenting opinion, President Putin appeared to be applying a lesson that Russian officials learned during the first Chechen war, namely the importance of keeping the support of the Russian people. In rolling back press freedoms and other democratic advances, Putin was effectively using old Soviet tactics to influence popular opinion in a post-Soviet society.

Throughout the first war, the goals of the Chechen fighters were straightforward and self-contained: independence for their republic from Russia. Now, as Chechen nationalism has given way to Islamic extremism, the situation is messier. The demands of the Islamic militants, though rarely articulated precisely, appear to be centered on the creation of an Islamic state out of the entire north Caucasus region.

The spread of radical Islamic ideas threatens the stability of the whole north Caucasus region, particularly in republics with significant Muslim populations. In the ethnically diverse republic of Dagestan, for example, young Muslims who fought in Chechnya returned home to demand the implementation of sharia law, while Muslims from all over the world arrived there and in Chechnya to fight the Russians. An influx of Chechen refugees into Dagestan meanwhile has upset a precarious power sharing arrangement between two of the nation’s biggest ethnic groups.

Muslim women protest the presence of the Russian military in Chechnya - Grozny
© 1995 Getty Images, Inc.

The unifying power of radical Islamic ideas was tragically displayed in the Beslan school massacre of 2004. While the hostage-takers’ demands focused on Chechen independence and Russian troop withdrawal, the participation of Ingush Muslims and the decision to attack a predominantly Christian town in North Ossetia suggested something larger was at stake. Indeed, most of the Beslan villagers’ anger and numerous calls for revenge were directed not at the Chechens but at Ingush living in North Ossetia.

More attacks by Islamic militants occurred during the second half of 2005. In mid September, violence rocked the region, as militants shot several soldiers dead in Chechnya and Dagestan, and bombs destroyed a courthouse and a police post in Ingushetia and derailed a train in North Ossetia. A month later, militants killed Dagestani civilians in multiple raids on police stations in Kabardino-Balkaria. These casualties would have been far worse, said Shamil Basayev, if the “infidels” (Russian security forces) hadn’t been tipped off.

The longer violence goes on in Chechnya, the more young men and women will likely join militant Islamic groups. This trend will almost certainly result in more terrorist attacks, which will inevitably provoke the kind of brutal responses from security forces that fertilize the soil in which terrorism grows.