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Who Are the Chechens?The war highlanders |
By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor
6th of September 2007, 21:11 GMT
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"Theater of a continuous war". This is how an English historian described the Caucasus region two hundred years ago.
In 1832, the Russian poet wrote about the Chechens: "Their most priced right is their freedom; their law and the war". The will of breaking off any yoke and the readiness for combat helped the Chechens fight against any foreign occupant.
"Mother Russia is big because there is always somebody fighting in one of its boundaries", said the general Yakov Kulnev during the Napoleonic wars.
The Chechens are an indigenous people of the Caucasus, speaking a language that is not even Indo-European (nothing to do with the Russian). The people are organized in clans and the importance of the blood bond has been maintained till today.
The Chechen capital Grozny (the Russian name; the Chechens call it Yohar) was founded by the Russian general Alexander Ermolov in 1818. It is the symbol of the martyrdom: in 1999, at the beginning of the Second Chechen War, the Russian aviation, following Putin's orders, wiped out the city.
The 1989 census counted 1.2 million Chechens, of which 70 % were herdsmen and farmers. The local terrain also has allowed along the time the less orthodox meaning of life for some of the people: kidnapping, extortion and weapon traffic.
Checheny's basic economic activity is derived from its geostrategy: it is located in the middle of the oil duct transporting the petroleum coming from Azerbaijan.
The country declared its independence at 2nd of November, 1991, during the dissipation of the former Soviet Union and in March 1992, Chechenya proclaimed its own constitution. But the article 65 of the Russian constitution says Chechenya is part of the Russian Federation and this means the Russians never accepted the country's independence.
Initially, the Chechens were Orthodox Christians, like the Russians, but the Chechen tribes converted to the Sunni Islam during the 17-19th century, due to the Turkish influence. Many are
adepts of the Sufi sect.
Along the centuries, the Chechens were conquered by the Alans and Mongols, but in 1783 Russia started its systematic campaign of the occupation of the Caucasus. By 1859, the whole Caucasus was part of Russia.
After the Bolshevic revolution of the 1917, in May 1918 the people of Dagestan (northeastern Caucasus) and north Caucasus (Chechenya is located in north central Caucasus) formed the independent Northcaucasian Republic. But in 1923, the Bolshevik troops occupied and divided the region, creating the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic.
During the purges ordered by Stalin in 1936-1938, thousands of Chechens were executed or sent to jail. In 1944, thousands of them were deported to Kazakhstan, being considered suspect of having collaborated with Germany. 30 % of them died.
The Nobel winner Alexandr Solzenitsen regarded the Chechens as a symbol and a guarantee of resistance against the Soviet dictatorship. In 1956, Khruschev apologized to the Chechens and other victims of the deportations. In 1957, the exiled Chechens went back home.
In 1991, Yeltsin sent troops to the Checheny but when they faced local resistance, the Russian soldiers retired.
The first Chechen war (1994-1996) started when Moscow operated under the pretext of "restoring the constitutional order". In 1995, 10,000 Russian troops occupied Grozny and the Chechen president Dudayev died.
A total of 45,000 Russian troops participated in this campaign. In 1996, 5,000 Chechen troops counter-attacked and recovered Grozni. Yeltsin ordered the Russian troops to retire. About 70,000 victims were estimated, dead or wounded, but most of them were civil people.
In 1997, Aslan Maskhadov was elected president of the Chechenya. (He was killed in Tolstoy-Yurt, a village in northern Chechnya, in March 2005).
The anarchy prevailed, the country being dominated by bandits and rebel warlords, like Shamil Basayev. In 1999, an array of bloody attacks in Moscow and other Russian cities produced 300 victims. During this time, extremist forms of Islam, like Whahabism (promoted by Bin Laden) invaded Chechenya.
Yeltsin accused the Chechen paramilitaries and sent 100,000 troops in Chechenya. This second Chechen war called an anti-terrorist action. The Russians occupied most of Chechenya, wiped out Grozny and cornered the rebels in the mountains.
A huge exodus of 250,000 refugees took place. The war is still on. At least 4,500 Russian troops died till 2002.
A dirty war, in which all methods are employed, from torture to blood and fire repression, cold blood killings and kidnapping. In this conflict, British engineers, journalists, ONG envies, missionaries, business men died. Bodies were found beheaded. Many ask themselves where the frontier between jihad, the holy war and banditry is.
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