Chechnya: From Nationalism to Jihad

297 Pages·2007·17.16 MB·English

by  James Hughes

Chechnya
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Chechnya
From Nationalism to Jihad
JAMES HUGHES
PENN
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
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Copyright © 2007 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly
citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written
permission from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hughes,James, 1959-
Chechnya : from nationalism to jihad I James Hughes
p. em.
ISBN: 978-0-8122-2030-8
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: The causes of the conflict-Russia's refederalization and Chechnya's
secession-A secular nationalist conflict-Dual radicalization: the making ofjihad
Chechnya and the meaning of terrorism-Chechnya and the study of conflict.
1. Nationalism-Russia (Federation)-Chechnya. 2. Radicalism-Russia
(Federation)-Chechnya. 3. Chechnya (Russia)-History-Civil War, 1944-. I. Title
DK51l.C2 H84 2007
947.5'2-dc22 2006050037
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Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt,
pacem appellant.
To theft, massacre and plunder, they give the lying name ofg overnment, and where they
create a wasteland, they call it peace.
From the speech of Galgachus before the battle of the Graupian Mountains,
A.D. 84, Tacitus. De vita et moribus lulii Agricolae 30.
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Contents
Preface IX
Maps XVI
1. The Causes of Conflict 1
2. Russia's Refederalization and Chechnya's Secession 30
3. A Secular Nationalist Conflict 56
4. Dual Radicalization: The Making ofJ ihad 94
5. Chechnya and the Meaning of Terrorism 128
6. Chechnya and the Study of Conflict 162
7. Conclusion 198
Appendixes 209
Notes 213
Bibliography 251
Index 269
Acknowledgments 277
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Preface
The wars in Chechnya of 1994-96, and 1999-present, rank alongside those
fought over Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq as the most bloody and costly
conflicts of the contemporary era. The destructive depth and sustained
nature of the violent conflict in Chechnya over the fifteen-year period
1991-2006 make it the most protracted of all the violent post-Soviet con
flicts. Much of the capital of Chechnya, Grozny, was reduced to rubble by
the fighting, mainly by Russian air and land bombardments. The modern
infrastructure of Chechnya-its economy, communications, health and
social services, and cultural institutions-was devastated. Its society was
uprooted as the conflict displaced the bulk of its people from their homes.
As we shall discuss later, the human costs of the conflict are bitterly dis
puted. Estimates of the casualties vary widely from tens of thousands to
several hundred thousand. Few Chechens escaped the trauma of suffer
ing violence personally, whether through direct war injury or as victims
of abuses by Russian forces and their local Chechen militias, and by the
loss of relatives and property.
The role of territorialized ethnicity in the drive for secession allows for
comparisons between Chechnya and some of the other violent post-Soviet
conflicts, such as the presently frozen conflicts of N agorno-Karabagh,
Transdnistria, and Abkhazia, but one of the unique features of the con
flict in Chechnya is its very location. It is the only large-scale violent con
flict to have occurred within the Russian Federation since the collapse
of the USSR. It is also the only case where Russia has employed military
power to resist secession, and it is the sole case where secessionists mili
tarily resisted Russia's attempts to reimpose its sovereignty. Moreover,
the violent conflict in and over Chechnya has caused significant spillover
attacks in Russia itself, as well as episodic violence in the neighboring
regions and republics of the Russian Federation, which increasingly
threatens to cause wider political instability in the North Caucasus region.
The conflict has seen some of the world's worst terrorist atrocities. I
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x Preface
define "terrorism" as the deliberate and indiscriminate targeting and
killing of civilians. This definition would cover those acts perpetrated by
Chechen extremists at the Budennovsk hospital, Dubrovka theater, and
Beslan school, and by the Russian military in the bombing of Grozny.
Equally, the main protagonists have engaged periodically in attempts to
reach a settlement by dialogue and negotiations. Indeed, the "peace pro
cess" in Chechnya is littered by a "truce," a "treaty," and several "agree
ments." Why has a final peace "settlement" to the conflict been so elusive?
While the study of the collapse of the Soviet Union is by now much
plowed terrain, the reasons why this collapse was followed in Chechnya
and so many other places by large-scale political violence, and elsewhere
was substantively and remarkably peaceful, are much less well understood.
Most theories and studies of conflicts tend to focus on two strata: expla
nations of the causes, and prognoses about potential solutions or forms
of managing conflict. What tends to be overlooked is the impact of how
the conflict is fought on the conflict dynamics. Studies of conflict that
seek to uncover root causes will establish the range of contributing fac
tors and then reorder them in hierarchical importance. By examining
the temporal phases of a conflict, however, we can identify more clearly
the development of the key issues and changes in the protagonists. The
focus on the dynamic of conflict is critical for understanding the para
meters of any potential agreement. For what might have been the basis
for compromise and a settlement at one stage of the conflict may be made
redundant by the conflict dynamics as new dimensions and new actors
become more salient over time, while previously established ones become
less salient.
Explanations of the causes of the surge of nationalist and ethnic con
flicts in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, as in the Balkans, tend to
follow two broad patterns. First, in the case of the conflicts in the Cau
casus region during and after the fall of the Soviet Union, some studies
reflect a historicist inclination (in the Popperian sense of historical deter
minism) and attribute the conflicts to the warlike "nature" of the peoples
of the region, and to the way ethnic "traits," "propensities," "belligerence,"
and "ancient hatreds" contributed to the conflicts. Others focus on how
the contingent factors of systemic collapse, such as the clash of interests
that characterized the post-communist transition, impinged upon the
development of conflict. What is normally studied as "the conflict," how
ever, may in fact be several conflicts, occurring in interactive simultaneity.
How the core constituents of conflict interact, oscillate, and are trans
formed over time in a dynamic process is critical for understanding causes
and providing remedies. I am not simply referring to the oft-cited "esca
lator," "ratchet," or "feedback" effects in the way that a conflict develops,
in particular as regards the intensity of violence. Rather, the protracted
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