A Time Line of Events at the Tumultuous Turn of the Twenty-first Century

1991 Economic and political decline lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the communist mutation of tsarist Russia. One after another, the Soviet Empire’s conquered territories declare independence. One of the first to do so, before the formal break-up of the empire, is Georgia. In revenge, and to defend its dominions to the last, Russia incites the dependent Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to rebel against Georgia. Only days after Georgia’s declaration of independence, a ruinous, fratricidal civil war erupts. In the fall, following the example of other conquered territories, Chechnya declares independence from Russia too. Russia, which, with no alternative, has recognized the independence of the other territories that formed the Soviet Union, refuses to acknowledge Chechnya’s autonomy, claiming that it was not a Soviet Republic as Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Belarus were, but part of Russia itself. But the main reason for Russia’s objection is the Kremlin’s concern that agreeing to Chechnya’s independence will prompt an avalanche of withdrawals, and that the Tatars, Bashkirs, Buryats, Yakuts, Kalmyks, Avars, Lezgins, and Circassians will all follow the Chechen example and demand their own autonomy, which will lead to the disintegration not just of the Russian Empire (of which the Soviet Union was the final incarnation), but of Russia itself.

The fall of communism and the end of the Cold War era prompt many Western leaders to declare the ultimate victory of free-market liberalism. In response to the Iraqi army’s attack on Kuwait and its oil fields, the United States, the last world superpower, invades Iraq, landing its troops in Saudi Arabia.

1993 Civil war erupts in Afghanistan among the mujahideen, who in the 1980s caused the Soviet army heavy losses, hastening the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union and communism. Muslim volunteers, thousands of whom have arrived in Afghanistan for the holy war, are disappointed by the querulous, small-minded Afghans and leave the Hindu Kush mountains. They return to their countries of origin, where they try to incite and wage their own holy wars (in Algeria, for instance, and Sudan) or enlist for other wars involving Muslims (in the Balkans and in Kashmir). The uncrowned king of the “knights of the holy war,” the Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, regards the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia as a desecration of the fatherland of the Prophet and declares war on the West.

1994 In deep crisis, Russia decides to send an armed punitive expedition to the Caucasus to crush the Chechens, who have declared independence. The invasion is a fiasco and develops into a long and bloody guerrilla war that attracts Muslim volunteers from the Middle East to the Caucasus in support of the Chechens.

1996 Failing to beat the Chechens, Russia signs a cease-fire, which is regarded as a victory for the insurgents. The Kremlin agrees to postpone the issue of Chechnya’s status for five years. In Chechnya, as in Afghanistan, the victorious insurgents quarrel and fight one another for power. Opponents of the insurgent authorities appeal to Islam to win themselves the aid of super-rich Arab sheikhs from the Persian Gulf.

In Afghanistan, the civil war is won by the Taliban, radical Muslims who take power in Kabul. Not recognized by the world (except for Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates), they are the only authorities to give official recognition to Chechnya’s independence. At the Taliban’s invitation, Osama bin Laden, with warrants issued for his arrest, settles in Afghanistan and establishes the headquarters of his international terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, in the Hindu Kush.

1999 Without waiting for the five-year truce to elapse, Russia invades Chechnya again, claiming that under its rebel governments, it has become a den of world-threatening jihadists, terrorists, and human traffickers. This time, insurgents from groups that invoke Islam and slogans of the holy war are dominant within the Chechen resistance movement. The Russian military mission is commanded by the previously unknown Vladimir Putin, who, to the surprise of many, is promoted to the post of prime minister. Toward the end of the year, the Russians win the high-speed war, in which this time they have avoided ground battles, applying a scorched-earth strategy instead. The victory brings Putin both great popularity and the presidency, left vacant by the forced resignation of his predecessor, the ailing and unpopular Boris Yeltsin.

In the Middle East, Osama bin Laden makes war on the reviled West. His supporters blow up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and attack American targets in the Middle East. In the Balkans, the last of the local wars erupts in Kosovo, where the West gives military support to the Kosovan Albanians against Serbia, Russia’s ally. Russia regards this as treachery on the part of the West. Muslim volunteers, who earlier supported the Muslims in Bosnia, fight on the Kosovan side too.

2001 With Osama bin Laden’s blessing, terrorists kidnap commercial passenger planes and use them to attack New York City and Washington. In retaliation, the United States invades Afghanistan, where the international terrorist organization Al Qaeda has established its headquarters.

In the Caucasus, the Chechen insurgents routed by the Russians hide in the mountains and travel across to neighboring Georgia, which has not yet recovered from the decline following the civil wars of its first few years of independence. The West, which until now has sympathized with the Chechens, turns its back on them because it has a greater need of Russia’s help in the third world war known as the “war against terrorism.” With no support from the West, the Chechen insurgents join the jihadist camp in ever greater numbers.

2003 Wishing to bring pro-Western order to the Middle East, and to guarantee their own security, the United States and its Western allies invade Iraq, falsely accusing the Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein of building nuclear weapons and of supporting bin Laden’s terrorist organization. The American notion is of a new order in Iraq to serve as an example to other Muslim countries in the Middle East.

The West regards the Afghan war as a victory at last and transfers its troops, money, and entire focus to the Middle East. The Afghan Taliban take advantage of this to rebuild their insurgent army and attack Afghanistan from the border with Pakistan.

In Georgia, the “Rose Revolution” occurs in the streets of Tbilisi with Western support, ousting the weak, corrupt government and promoting in its place politicians who declare themselves pro-Western. The Georgian revolution is modeled on the one that took place earlier in Belgrade, which deposed Serbia’s president, who was hostile to the West. In the wake of the Rose Revolution, similar street revolutions, also backed by the West, take place in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, bringing down the governments in those countries and empowering factions that favor integration with the West. Russia regards the “color revolutions” as a hostile act by the West, an attempt at political interference in territories that the Kremlin has not ceased to regard as its own exclusive sphere of influence.

The Caucasian insurgents more frequently and readily apply terrorist tactics. In 2002, they attack the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow and take hostages to force Russia to withdraw its troops from Chechnya. In 2004 they carry out a similar terrorist raid on a school in Beslan, North Ossetia.

2006 Instead of being a victorious high-speed war, the American invasion of Iraq morphs into a long and violent occupation. Muslim volunteers pour into Iraq from all over the world to enlist in the holy war against the Americans. In the Iraqi desert, a local branch of Al Qaeda is formed, though previously not present here. It is joined by battle-seasoned soldiers from the ousted Hussein’s army, which the Americans have dissolved. Gradually, the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda becomes increasingly independent of the central command, and finally regards itself as a separate group known as Islamic State.

2007 When the Russians kill Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen president who led the fight for autonomy, the Caucasian insurgents give up the fight for Chechnya’s independence, but they declare the Caucasus an Islamic emirate and announce their intention of joining Al Qaeda.

2008 In response to promises made by the West to admit Georgia to its military and economic alliances, Russia provokes and wins a five-day border war against Georgia, routs the local army, and officially recognizes the rebel provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries.

2009 Barack Obama, the new president of the United States, declares an end to the American wars instigated by his predecessor in Afghanistan and Iraq and promises to restore friendly relations with Russia.

2011 In the Middle East, the Arab Spring occurs, leading to the deposing of the dictators ruling Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Yemen, all of whom were on good terms with the West. In Syria, the local dictator refuses to yield to urban riots, and civil war erupts nationwide.

After eight years at war, the American troops vacate Iraq, leaving behind in Baghdad a government dominated by Shi’ites, who represent the majority of the country’s population. Though complaining of persecution, the Sunnis declare their allegiance to Baghdad, but the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda, now named Islamic State, takes action in their name and defense. The civil war in Syria increasingly acquires the character of a conflict between the Sunnis and the ruling coalition of Shi’ites, Alawites, and Christians, regarded by their enemies as infidels and traitors.

In Pakistan, Osama bin Laden is killed by American commandos, and Al Qaeda, its members deprived of leadership and hunted down, is decimated by the Americans and gradually loses significance among jihadists.

2013 In Iraq, an armed Sunni insurgency erupts, led by Islamic State. Its soldiers are also fighting in neighboring Syria, where the West, battered by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in deep economic recession, is unable to force the warring sides to reach a truce or to protect the civilian population from slaughter. It is estimated that by now almost a quarter of a million people have died in the Syrian war. Thanks to the helplessness and passivity of the West, Muslim volunteers from all over the world, including the West, head for Syria. From Europe alone, some fifteen thousand Muslims who hold European passports, the offspring of political and economic migrants, enlist for the Syrian war. Unable to stand up to the Russian army, insurgents from the Caucasus also leave for Syria.

2014 With its thousands of volunteers, its combat fitness, and the armaments it has captured from the Iraqi army (American weapons) and the Syrian army (Soviet and Russian weapons), Islamic State takes the lead in the civil wars in Iraq and Syria. The jihadists invalidate the border between Iraq and Syria, and in the territory under their control (one third of Iraq and more than half of Syria), they declare the establishment of a caliphate, with its own terrain, government, laws, courts, police, and army. It is headed by the leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who regards himself as the caliph Ibrahim. The caliphate declares its branches in Nigeria, the Maghreb countries (in North Africa), Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia. The small number of insurgent commanders still fighting in the Caucasus declare their readiness to join the caliphate too.

After a thirteen-year war, the longest in U.S. history, the United States and its Western allies withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.

In Kiev, another street revolution, supported by the West, overthrows Ukraine’s pro-Russian government and brings to power politicians who favor integration with the West. Russia responds by annexing Crimea and by supporting Russian separatists who incite an armed uprising in Eastern Ukraine. President Putin, who started his career by winning the war in Chechnya, declares that the Kremlin claims the right to military intervention anywhere in the world where the rights and liberty of Russians are under threat.

2015 The expansion of the caliphate, which now rules over almost ten million people, means that first the Americans and soon after their Western and Arab allies, including France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, and Jordan, launch air attacks against the one-hundred-thousand-strong jihadi army. The aim of this airborne assistance is to stop the victorious advance of the caliphate army and also to reinforce the pro-Western insurgent troops fighting against Syrian president Bashir al-Assad. In revenge, the jihadis launch suicide bomb attacks in major Western cities, including Paris (2015); Nice, Brussels, and Berlin (2016); and London and Manchester (2017). Russia also becomes involved in the Syrian war, joining Iran and Hezbollah (the Lebanese “Army of God”) on Assad’s side. At first Russia sends only its air force to Syria, but shortly after, Russian instructors land at the post-Soviet military base at Tartus, on the Mediterranean, which Russia has leased for another fifty years. With them come veterans of the Russian invasions of Crimea and the Donbass, recruited by the private security firm the Wagner Group, which provides services to the Kremlin; and also Chechen soldiers, sent by Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader raised to power in Grozny by Putin and staunchly loyal to him. Kadyrov’s men have taken part in previous Russian military expeditions in Georgia and also in Ukraine.

2016 Iraqi government troops supported by the Americans launch a counterattack on the jihadis in Iraq, while with the help of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, the Syrian army launches one in Syria. Toward the end of the year, the Syrian army captures Aleppo.

2017 In the summer, Iraqi troops take Mosul, and in the fall, Syrian and Kurdish insurgent units supported by the United States and its Western allies drive the jihadis out of their capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

2018 After breaking up the caliphate, the Russians and Americans, the former supporting the Syrian authorities and the latter the opposition, set about fighting for influence in Syria and the Middle East. At the beginning of the year, Russian mercenaries recruited by the Wagner Group and fighting for a salary and a commission from the Syrian oil fields captured for Russian oil companies, mistakenly attack an American base in the nearby desert city of Deir ez-Zur, close to the Iraqi border. The Americans repel the attack, decimating the attackers. About a hundred Russian mercenaries are killed in the nighttime battle, and as many are wounded. Lasting for several hours, the desert battle, though accidental and indirect, is regarded as the first armed clash of the superpowers as rivals for dominance since the Second World War kept the world in a state of cold war for almost half a century. Fought according to cold war rules, the surrogate war in Syria ends in a win for Russia. Her protégé, President Assad, retains power and regains control of the Syrian state, and thanks to its military and political successes, Russia regains its status as a global superpower.

2019 In February, whether consciously lying or with no knowledge of the actual state of affairs, Donald Trump (who in 2017 succeeded Barack Obama as president of the United States) announces ultimate victory over the caliphate. In fact, the war continues until the end of March, when the insurgents allied with the West capture the caliphate’s final stronghold in the town of Baghuz, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.