Second Chechen War

Putin’s Presidency began in 1999, he came into office two days after a radical group of Chechens started an attack on the Dagestan. They wished to establish the “Independent Islamic State of Dagestan”. They did so to hopefully cause an Islamic Anti-Russian uprising. This caused Putin to respond after five days of waiting. The Russian Bomber Jets arrived in Chechnya, which symbolized what was going to come. The result was that tens of thousands of Chechens died, who were mostly Chechen citizens. The Russians did not come into this war with thoughts of having an easy quick battle in Grozny, they planned a massive and devastating attack. The Second Chechen War caused a massive rate of fatalities, and Grozny promising to return with a vengeance.This…

ethnic-nationalist Chechen conflict was made more complicated and deadly with the introduction of Arab mujahideen. Emboldened by the Soviet-Afghan War, mujahideen flocked to Chechnya; bringing with them Wahhabism as well as criminal and terroristic behavior like drug smuggling, kidnapping and suicide bombing. The modern conflict has spanned from 1994 to the present, covering two official wars and numerous terror attacks against military, political and civilian targets. Driven by a desire for…

years. After the extreme violence experienced during the two Russo-Chechen wars in the 1990s and early 2000s, recent news of increased stability in the North Caucasus are quite welcome. Ethnic conflict in Chechnya goes back much longer than the start of the first Russo-Chechen war in 1994, and tensions in the region were not soothed when the second war ended in 2009. However, with the advent of Vladimir Putin’s strategy of “chechenization,” or giving payments and power to Chechen elites in…

The continuous struggle of powerful Russian interests attempting to impose control on the restive North Caucasia region, define the Russian-Chechen relationship and associated policies. Since the beginning of the 10th century, Russian influence has been resisted by the indigenous Chechen people. The persistent militancy in Chechen opposition leaves little room for doubt in the general wishes for independence and autonomy. Despite this, Russian governments ranging from the Tsarist rulers of the…

to the occurrence of war in Chechnya in 1994. Yeltsin felt increasing threatened by the security problem that Chechnya became for its neighbors. Banditry in Chechnya became a virtually legal form of income and a matter of civic pride. Although Dudayev was the leader of Chechnya, he could not prevent the cross-border raids, which left ethnic Russians and Chechens vulnerable to intimidation. Ruslan Khasbulatov’s increasing popularity as a powerful leader of anti-Dudayev opposition also played…

The establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922 helped to reduce the role of Islam in Chechnya by forcing adaptations to Soviet centralization. During World War II, a large number of Chechens were deported, further fragmenting the Chechen population, culture, and religion and reducing Islam’s role in the rise of the 1994 conflict as religion was a less central focus in Chechen lives due to their effective refugee status following deportation. Instead, Islam was pushed to the background as…

discontent with central governments in Moscow. Given the low number of Russians in the region (less than 2% in the 2010 census), high opposition to federal rule, and rise of Islamic radicalism within the republic, it is puzzling as to why Russia has had extensive military intervention in Chechnya as to deny its secession. Why was Russia so adamant upon refusing Chechen independence? In this essay, I will try to identify the foremost reason for this intervention, primarily in regards to the First…

Genocide of the Bosniak people. The Conflict was caused in part by the splitting of Yugoslavia, during the early 1990s near the end of the cold war. The Bosnian Genocide coincided with Bosnian War, the genocide was a mass killing or ethnic cleansing of the Bosniak people and their culture, which occurred shortly after the dividing the of Yugoslavia. The Conflict began in mid-1992 and ended in late-1995, The conflict lasted a little over 3 years.In that time period, more than 38,200 civilians…

The Chechens fiercely opposed the Russian conquest of Transcaucasia during the nineteenth century (Shah). Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Chechnya’s first attempt at declaring its independence was met with Russian occupation (Shah). Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chechen interest in independence was renewed, and eventually erupted into bloodshed in 1994 with the Russian invasion of Chechnya. The Chechen people have been struggling for independence for centuries,…

language? The Chechen language, or Tsjetsjeens, is a branch of Vainakh of the Northeast Caucasian language family (Nakh-Daghestanian) and has an approximate number of 1.2 – 1.5 million speakers. According to Thompson (2013), the language can be found in the Republic of Chechnya (Russia), Dagestan, Georgia, and can also be found in Central Asian countries like Turkey and Jordan as a result of the Chechen diaspora. 2. What historical events led to the physical threats that the language faces?…