Russia’s Wars in Chechnya 1994

We are extremely satisfied. The modern Chechen republic is a peaceful and budding territory. The end of the counterterrorist operation will spur on economic growth in the republic.
– Ramzan Kadyrov, 2009

These were savage conflicts which combined at different times the characteristics of an imperial conquest, a civil war and a terrorist campaign. The impact on Chechnya itself was devastating: cities in rubble, populations fled into refugee camps, an economy shattered, communities torn apart by war and suspicion. To beat the rebels, Moscow created a new regime that international human-rights organizations routinely describe as violent and dictatorial. Meanwhile, jihad and violent Islamic extremism entered the North Caucasus, while the struggle – and the propaganda that surrounded it – contributed to a climate of paranoia and xenophobia in the rest of Russia.

Galashki, 26 September 2002: The war in Chechnya was eventually won, but insurgency spread to the rest of the North Caucasus. Here, Ingushetian OMON personnel, carrying AKM-47s instead of the AK-74s which were by then standard for Russian OMON, conduct house-to-house searches. (Anatoly Maltsev/EPA)

There still is no definitive figure for the number of civilian casualties from the two wars: anything from 70,000–200,000, out of a population of around 800,000 in 1989 (that census recorded a population of 1,277,000 for the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, and later accounts show Ingushetia having a population of around 450,000). At peak, the number of refugees reached perhaps another 400,000. Thus, of any 20 Chechens alive in 1989, by 2009, ten of them had experienced being a refugee at some point, and between two and five had died as a result of the war.

Since then, most refugees have returned home. Many of these displaced people have found work, thanks to massive injections of federal aid – in 2008, Moscow pledged $120 billion for the period to 2012 alone – not least in Ramzan Kadyrov’s grandiose reconstruction projects. These range from building ‘Europe’s largest mosque’ – if one considers Chechnya part of Europe – to an 80-storey ‘vertical city’ to be built in the capital’s Grozny City-2 complex, both of which he named after his father. Nevertheless, around a third of the adult population remains unemployed and although central Grozny is now a glittering showcase city, many of the smaller towns and villages remain impoverished and unreconstructed.

A less visible but no less tangible effect of the war is the culture of suspicion, fear and recrimination. The campaign against the insurgents and those who sympathized with them – or were suspected of doing so – led to widespread abductions, disappearances and sweeps which saw young men in their dozens and hundreds sent to the infamous filtration camps, especially Chernokozovo, Titanic and the Pyatigorsk prison in the Stavropol Region. There they often faced torture, mistreatment and demands for bribes to be released. The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch carried out an intensive investigation and reported that

Detainees arriving at Chernokozovo were met by two lines of baton-wielding guards forming a human gauntlet, and received a punishing beating before entering the facility … [They were] beaten both during interrogation and during nighttime sessions when guards utterly ran amok. During interrogation, detainees were forced to crawl on the ground and were beaten so severely that some sustained broken ribs … Some were also tortured with electric shocks.

Thousands of young Chechens disappeared during the wars, sometimes killed in the crossfire, sometimes murdered and their bodies dumped in mass graves. Those who survived often experience serious psychological trauma.

Akhmad and more especially Ramzan Kadyrov have been crucial instruments of Putin’s success in Chechnya. By installing a Chechen government – and two presidents who fought against the Russians in the First Chechen War – Moscow can claim a degree of legitimacy, even if international assessments are that the elections held to elevate both Kadyrovs were neither free nor fair. More to the point, by ‘Chechenizing’ the war and passing the bulk of the mopping-up operations to local forces, the Kremlin could minimize Russian casualties and get round the evident problems with the fitness, training and morale of many of its own troops. The Kadyrovtsy and similar Chechen forces, drawn largely from ex-rebels, knew the land and their enemies’ tactics and hideouts. They also provided an escape valve, a means whereby rebels (and especially those of the old-school nationalist variety) who had tired of the struggle or who were disenchanted by the slide towards terrorism and jihadism could defect with safety and honour.

However, the irony is that in order to defeat the rebellion, the Kremlin may have granted Chechnya more autonomy in practice that it has had in the past two centuries. Kadyrov never fails loudly to proclaim his loyalty to President Putin. He also knows when to make good on that support. In the 2012 Russian presidential elections, for example, Chechnya reported an unparalleled 99.59 per cent turnout, with 99.82 per cent of voters backing Putin and 0.04 per cent for his next closest rival, the Communist Gennady Zyuganov. If this were not dubious enough, one precinct even recorded a 107 per cent turnout. At the same time, though, Kadyrov enjoys a level of freedom no other local leader in Russia enjoys. In part he has used that to eliminate precisely those agencies Moscow had hoped to use to balance and control him. That was, for example, one of the reasons why they kept the Yamadayevs and their Vostok Battalion outside Kadyrov’s personal control. In 2003, though, Dzhabrail Yamadayev was killed by a bomb in his house; in 2008, Ruslan Yamadayev was shot dead in Moscow and the Vostok Battalion disbanded; the last Yamadayev brother, Sulim, fled to Dubai, where he was murdered in 2009. Kadyrov also uses it to rule as an absolute and violent despot: the US State Department has noted ‘compelling evidence that the government of Chechnya, under the control of Mr. Kadyrov, has committed and continues to commit such serious human rights violations and abuses as extrajudicial killing, torture, disappearances and rape’. Nevertheless, so long as he appears useful, then Moscow is willing to support, bankroll and protect Kadyrov. Indeed, given the extent to which he has brought the security forces under his own control and eliminated potential rivals, it is hard to see how the Kremlin could replace him without turning once again to force.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is met by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov as he arrives in Grozny, 19 June 2012. When Medvedev was president (2008–12), his relationship with Kadyrov was rather less positive than Putin’s. (Dmitry Astakhov/RIA Novosti/EPA)

Fire in the Caucasus

The guerrilla war in Chechnya may be all but over, but the rest of the North Caucasus is increasingly unstable, as a combination of unemployment, corruption and mismanagement spark nationalist insurgencies that may use the rhetoric of Islam and formally be part of the Caucasus Emirate but, as of writing, have not yet begun to follow the same jihadist path as the Chechens. This belies the initial triumphalism of many close to the Russian government. In 2005, Sergei Markov, director of the Russian Institute for Political Studies and a figure with close Kremlin ties, was talking up the success of the campaign: ‘This war was a colossal success: the army of radical Islamists and separatists was crushed, peace and calm arrived. Americans and other countries should very carefully study the Chechen campaign carried out by the Kremlin and take lessons from it.’ However, more sober observers were already looking at the spill-over effects. Former Ingush president Ruslan Aushev – a decorated veteran of the Soviet–Afghan War – warned that ‘a huge cauldron is simmering there, in which there is Chechnya, and Dagestan, and Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria and Georgia, and each will be seeking its own interests’.

Ramzan Kadyrov

Born in 1976, Ramzan Kadyrov was loutish and inattentive at school but an eager and effective student of the lessons in realpolitik he learned from his father, Akhmad Kadyrov. During the First Chechen War, Ramzan served as a junior officer in Kadyrov’s own militia, in effect as his father’s aide-de-camp. During the inter-war period, he effectively took over as his father’s field commander, and when his father decided to switch sides in 1999, Ramzan duly followed. He appears to have flourished as a field commander and although some accounts suggest he lacked a certain tactical skill, his ferocity and determination were unquestioned. On his father’s death in 2004, Ramzan was only 27 and too young to succeed his father as president, for which the minimum age was 30. Nevertheless, that was clearly Moscow’s intent. The next president, Alkhanov, was never seen as more than a stopgap figure and Ramzan was appointed deputy prime minister. In February 2007, after his 30th birthday, Kadyrov became president. His Kadyrovtsy are now formally integrated into the Chechen MVD, but continue to swear personal loyalty to him.

Kadyrov is an outspoken supporter of Vladimir Putin, who, in turn, has reciprocated by making him a Hero of Russia. At home, though, he arouses strong and contradictory passions. He brought peace to Chechnya but often through brutal means and he is also a ruthless and self-indulgent ruler. His rivals have all been eliminated or forced out of Chechnya and his and his father’s personality cult has reached almost ludicrous proportions as pictures of the two dominate Chechnya’s skyline. Tales of his antics abound, from his response when still prime minister to the arrest of his sister in Dagestan – he led over 100 Kadyrovtsky to Khasav-Yurt and forcibly freed her at gunpoint – to the way the keen boxer forced his culture minister into a ring and proceeded to pummel him in what he afterwards referred to as an ‘educational conversation’ to express his dissatisfaction with the minister’s performance.

His words were more prophetic. Local terrorist and insurgent cells known as jamaats emerged across the region and proved less ambitious but far more active than the Chechens. They essentially focus on small-scale bomb and gun attacks on police, judges and officials, representatives of the state, although in a few cases they have united for major attacks. In October 2005, for example, some 200 militants from across the region attacked government buildings in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, and for two days virtually controlled the city before the security forces retook it. Such major attacks are rare, though, but still the centre of gravity of resistance to the Russians and their local governments has clearly shifted out of Chechnya, with Dagestan now experiencing the greatest violence. In 2010, for example, the Kabardino-Balkarian and Ingushetian jamaats killed roughly as many government police and troops as the Chechens, while the Dagestanis killed more than all three put together.

Umarov tried to unite the IK in the name of a global jihad. In October 2010, for example, he aligned himself with ‘those mujahedin who are carrying out Jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and many, many other places’. While he described Russia as the ‘most despicable’ of them all, he placed the Chechen struggle in the context of a global war against ‘the army of Iblis’, the devil, combining ‘the Americans, who today confess Christian Zionism, and European atheists, who do not confess any of the faiths’. This has, though, little traction among the jamaats; they are still motivated primarily by local practical and political concerns, not a vision of a global struggle.

As the focus of insurgency spreads elsewhere in the North Caucasus, suicide bombs have become an increasing threat. Security officers look on as locals begin to clear up after a suicide car-bomb attack on the central market in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, on 9 September 2010. The attack killed 17 people, and over 120 were wounded. (Kazbek Vakhayev/EPA)

Russia after Chechnya

The wars also had a serious impact on the rest of Russia. The official casualty figures for the first war were 5,500 federal police and soldiers dead, with a further 5,200 for the second, although these tallies have been questioned, not least as they may omit those dying of their wounds later in hospital. Beyond these figures, though, are the many less seriously wounded or those traumatized by what was an especially vicious and disturbing conflict, which saw atrocities committed by both sides. Beyond that, even though the public was more supportive of the Second Chechen War, a fear of ending up being sent to Chechnya during either conflict was one of the factors behind massive levels of draft-dodging. In 2000 alone, following the invasion, it rose by 50 per cent. The wars also contributed to the rise of movements such as the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, which campaigned to force the Kremlin to address issues of indiscipline, dedovshchina and the poor treatment of draftees, often with only limited success.

Indeed, the wars had a significant impact on the military as a whole. The First Chechen War in particular was a disaster in almost every respect. Looting, rape, murder and rampant crime were a constant factor (rebels would often re-arm themselves simply by buying guns from soldiers desperate for some food or drink). Morale hit rock bottom: some 540 NCOs and officers – including at least a dozen generals – resigned rather that serve in the war, or on receiving especially objectionable orders. Lieutenant-General Rokhlin, one of the few commanders to come out of the first battle of Grozny with any credit, refused the Hero of Russia medal – Russia’s highest military honour – saying that he saw nothing glorious in fighting a war on his native soil. Although the Second Chechen War was less catastrophic, and allowed some units, especially the MVD VV and the VDV, the chance to build up some combat experience among their cadres of professional soldiers, it could not be said to have been a great boon, either. There is little public enthusiasm or sympathy for the veterans and the lacklustre performance of the Russian Armed Forces in the three-day war with Georgia in 2008 overshadowed the Russians’ ability to beat the Chechens the second time round.

In their characteristic blue urban-camouflage uniforms, the OMON special police forces are a common site in Russia’s towns and cities, carrying out duties ranging from regular street patrols and crowd control to armed raids on organized-crime targets. They were widely used as front-line combat troops in Chechnya, something which critics suggest has led to a more militant approach once they returned to Russia. (© Mark Galeotti)

The conflicts also became something of a testing ground for the new Russian media. There were courageous journalists who risked their lives – and lost them – reporting on the realities of the realities on the ground. Anna Politkovskaya, an unflinching observer of the horrors meted out by both sides, was murdered in Moscow in 2006, in a killing widely believed to be because of her stand on Chechnya. On the other hand, an awareness of the extent to which critical media coverage undermined public support for the First Chechen War meant that Putin made great efforts to control the story during the Second, putting further limitations on media already under considerable state pressure.

Beslan, 1 September 2009: five years on, families grieve at a memorial for the adults and children killed in the 2004 school siege. The Beslan terrorist attack remains one of the most serious in modern Russian history. (Sergei Chirikov/EPA)

After all, there was one clear beneficiary. In 1904, Russian Interior Minister Vyacheslav von Plehve had advocated hostilities with Japan because ‘a nice, victorious little war’ was, he felt, just what Russia needed to regain its cohesion and self-esteem. Disaster in the Russo-Japanese War brought Tsarist Russia the 1905 Revolution, international contempt and bankruptcy. However, victory in the Second Chechen War was the making of Vladimir Putin, a perfect opportunity for a still-unknown figure to construct his image as the tough-talking and decisive defender of Russian national interests. From his early visits to the North Caucasus to be seen with the troops, to his street-slang references to the Chechens (in 1999 he memorably warned that ‘if we catch them on the toilet, we’ll whack them in the outhouse’), he used it masterfully to his political advantage. It may have led to widespread international condemnation, but domestically it allowed him to show a strong hand.

This memorial near the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow commemorates the airborne troops who fell during both Chechen wars. (© Mark Galeotti)

One price of this, though, has been a string of terrorist attacks in Russia. Mass attacks such as Dubrovka (2002) and Beslan (2004) have increasingly given way to suicide bombers. The most serious of these were bombings in Stavropol (2003), on the Moscow metro (2004) and two passenger airliners (2004), in the Moscow metro again (2010) and at Domodedovo airport (2011). Although these have not yet shaken Russia’s resolve – if anything they have simply heightened traditional xenophobia towards people from the North Caucasus – they do reflect a continuing threat.

Dreams of peace?

Is it too soon to talk about conclusions? After all, even if for this generation of Chechens the will and ability to fight has largely been extinguished, Chechnya has been here before. If past experience is anything to go by, a future generation would be expected to pick up the struggle. This was certainly the assumption of General Kvashnin, architect of Russia’s blundered first attack on Grozny and of its brutally effective second one. Speaking to prominent military journalist Pavel Felgenhauer in 1995, he said:

We will beat the Chechens to pulp, so that the present generation will be too terrified to fight Russia again. Let Western observers come to Grozny and see what we have done to our own city, so that they shall know what may happen to their towns if they get rough with Russia. But you know, Pavel, in 20–30 years a new generation of Chechens that did not see the Russian army in action will grow up and they will again rebel, so we’ll have to smash them down all over again.

Not only is it easy to believe that Chechnya cannot escape this vicious cycle, it is also the case that while Chechnya may now largely be pacified, the rest of the North Caucasus is experiencing rising local nationalist and jihadist insurgency, which could yet blow back into Chechnya.

However, there are a few grounds for possibly thinking that Chechnya and Russia are not destined to stay in this spiral of rebellion and repression for ever. A new generation of Russians seem much less interested in being an imperial power, especially if that status proves costly. In a 2013 poll, almost a quarter of Russians favoured independence for Chechnya, not so much out of sympathy for the region but because they were reluctant to see Russian blood and treasure spent on keeping it. One of the slogans of the anti-Putin opposition, after all, has been ‘Stop Feeding the Caucasus’, complaining about the money spent on subsidizing corrupt local regimes and maintaining substantial security forces there. They might sympathize with the words General Mikhail Orlov wrote in 1820: ‘It is just as hard to subjugate the Chechens and other peoples of this region as to level the Caucasian range. This is not something to achieve with bayonets but rather with time and enlightenment, in such short supply in our country. The fighting may bring great personal benefits to Yermolov, but none whatsoever to Russia.’

Movsar Barayev (1979–2002), the head of the terrorist group which seized Moscow’s Nord-Ost Theatre in October 2002, was the nephew of notorious Chechen warlord and kidnapper Arbi Barayev. In part, he was probably avenging the death of his uncle at Russian hands the year before. (© Reuters/CORBIS)

It is true that a few Russians did gain from the almost two decades of war, but many more suffered. Likewise, though, while the Chechens are unlikely to be beaten into submission, in the future they may themselves look to something other than armed insurrection. After all, Chechens are changing. In many ways the resurgence of the traditions of teip and adat in the late 1980s and early 1990s were a short-lived phenomenon, as Chechens reacted to the collapse of the Soviet order by turning to the past to find a new identity. But not only did this sit uncomfortably with the rise of jihadist Islam, it is also an increasing anachronism in an age when Chechens are beginning once again to travel, to see other cultures, to go to university, to embrace modernity. Looking beyond Kadyrov, there is no reason why the Chechens could not take advantage of the autonomy he has carved out within the Russian Federation and build for themselves the kind of country they want to see – and to be able to do so without another round of murderous war and rebellion.