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June 3, 2008

Exclusive: Understanding Chechnya Part III: The Caucasus Wars

Tom Ordeman, Jr.

Author's note: This is the third piece in a series on Chechnya. A remote and poorly understood component of the Russian Federation, Chechen history is dominated by secessionism and influenced in part by Islamism. In order to understand the global connections of international terrorism, one must understand Chechnya.

Following the siege of Grozny and the First Chechen War, Russian and Chechen forces had fought themselves to a bloody and frustrated stalemate. However, the war had allowed Chechen separatist groups to refine and perfect insurgent terrorist tactics. The end of the Russian campaign was in no way an end to the overall war.

In 1998, the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade was founded by Muslim militants from a number of countries. The IIPB would eventually be composed of Dagestanis, Chechens, Arabs, and Turks, and led by two emirs: Mujahid ibn al Khattab, an Arab; and Shamil Basayev, a Chechen. The IIPB sparked the Second Chechen War in 1999 by invading Dagestan, the Russian republic that neighbors Chechnya to the east.

Like Chechnya, neighboring Dagestan is predominately Muslim. Although the Dagestani population never suffered the same exile to Siberia that the Chechens faced following World War II, many of the conditions imposed by the Russians were similar. Stalin's industrialization campaign largely bypassed Dagestan, making it the poorest of the Russian republics. The Chechen and Dagestani separatist leaders believed that Dagestan would be a prime candidate for an insurrection to follow the Chechen conflict. In 1997, a radical Islamist separatist from Dagestan fled Dagestan for Chechnya. This contributed to the unification of Chechen and Dagestani separatist groups in 1998 and 1999, forming the Congress of the Peoples of Chechnya and Dagestan. In early August of 1999, the IIPB crossed into Chechnya, triggering the Dagestan War.

The actual fighting of the conflict in Dagestan was relatively short-lived. Having learned at least a few lessons from the war in Chechnya, the Russian federal army focused in the initial days of the invasion on the quick and deliberate deployment of air and artillery assets. As a result, the Russians were able to disrupt rebel supply lines early in the conflict, particularly due to the effective use by the Russians of remotely delivered mines. This bought the Russians time to assemble a counter-attack, forcing the rebels to withdraw and consolidate their forces. Following the major conflict phase of the war in Dagestan, a series of apartment buildings were bombed in Russia, killing nearly three hundred Russian civilians. While some factors indicated that these bombings may have been a "false flag" operation by Russian security forces, they led the Russians initiated a bombing campaign against Chechnya, to include targets within and adjacent to Grozny. The Second Chechen War had begun.

The land war in Chechnya began in early October of 1999. Vladimir Putin, having been recently been appointed Prime Minister, declared the Chechen parliament illegitimate and ordered an invasion of Chechnya. An initially limited invasion of the northern third of the country was soon increased, becoming a full scale crackdown. Several months of heavy fighting led to a second siege of Grozny, starting in December and culminating in the seizure of the city by the Russian army in early February. Fighting continued through mid-2000. In May, Prime Minister Putin established direct rule in Chechnya, followed a month later by the installation of Akhmad Kadyrov as head of the pro-Moscow government in Grozny. Kadyrov was killed in May of 2004, after which his son Ramzan was elevated to the role of Chechen president.

Although the formal war ended in 2000, a guerrilla insurgency has continued. These attacks have included improvised explosive devices, assassinations of federal and pro-Russian officials and security forces, suicide attacks, and hostage taking. The overall level of the insurgency has declined, but the scope has spread: in addition to attacks within Chechnya, separatists also operate within neighboring Ingushetia, as well as other areas of the Caucasus region. The conflict has included high profile terrorist attacks against Russian civilians. These attacks have included the 2003 Stavropol train bombing, a metro bombing in Moscow in February of 2004, and simultaneous airline bombings in August of 2004. The two most publicized events in the terrorist insurgency have been the 2002 seizure of hostages at a Moscow theater, and the 2004 seizure of a school in Beslan, North Ossetia.

In October of 2002, a twenty-two year-old Chechen militia leader named Movsar Barayev led a team of rebels in seizing a theater in Moscow and taking all of the occupants hostage. The rebels demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya and an end to the Second Chechen War. The siege lasted for four days before Russian special forces pumped a still-unidentified gas into the theater. This triggered sporadic gunfights between the rebels and Russian security forces, culminating in a full assault by security forces and the alleged killing of every rebel hostage-taker.

In early September of 2004, another group of Chechen rebels took control of a school in Beslan, North Ossetia. The separatists, affiliated with the aforementioned Shamil Basayev, took more than eleven hundred school children, parents, and school staff hostage. After a three-day siege, during which time the separatists killed a number of adults, Russian special forces stormed the school. The incident left a total of nearly 400 dead, with nearly 800 additional injuries.

The Beslan siege was the last major incident involving Chechen separatists. Although the conflict continues, and Chechen separatist sentiments are unlikely to dissolve, a great deal has changed with respect to the relationship between the Russian federal government and the Chechens. These changes, and their impact on the international community, will be discussed in the next installment.

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