Chechen Nationalism and the Tragedy of the Struggle for Independence
by Mr. Lester W. Grau, and Dr. Jacob W. Kipp

Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS.


This article was previously published in
National Strategy Forum Review Autumn 2000
Volume 10, Issue 1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------

Introduction

The conflict in Chechnya has attracted world attention. The Chechens are a
nation in a region of many nations. Moscow views Chechen independence as a
geopolitical "domino" threatening Russia's disintegration. Chechens call
for national self-determination and Islamic revival. The conflict pits the
warriors of a small but proud and warlike nation against the regular
troops and paramilitary formations of a great state struggling to redefine
itself after seven decades of Communism. At the heart of the struggle
remain Russia's relations with those nations brought into the tsarist
empire by force and subjected to totalitarian repression. Hostilities
continue as the Chechens cannot expel the Russians and the Russians cannot
prevent Chechen raids and terrorist actions.



Following a long tradition, the Russian government has defined the
conflict as a struggle against banditry and terrorism-much as it did in
Central Asia in the 1920s and early 1930s, and in Afghanistan in the late
1970s and 1980s. This legitimizes Russia's course of actions, however
ruthless the means, as a police function in the name of public order. The
Chechens, meanwhile, refer to their war as a "struggle for national and
political liberation" and an Islamic holy war, or jihad. Neither side sees
the conflict as a civil war. Russia will not honor the Chechens with that
political legitimacy, and Chechens refuse to accept the idea that they
were ever voluntarily a part of the Russian Empire, Soviet state, or
Russian Federation.



This struggle is a manifestation of what Samuel Huntington described as a
"clash of civilizations." Like other such conflicts it has its roots in
the history of the interactions between the protagonists. Chechens have
embraced an Islamic revival to foster internal solidarity and to mobilize
a broader struggle across the region. The region itself defines the clash.



Disputed Territory and a Clash of Civilizations
Steppe and mountain, Cossack and mountaineer, Christian and Muslim,
soldier and warrior, oppressor and bandit-these dichotomies describe the
conflict between Russians and Chechens. Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov,
a colonel who served in the Soviet Army, described the current war as the
continuation of a four-century struggle. This is no exaggeration, since
the struggle between Russians and Muslims of the Caucasus began in the
seventeenth century. The unequal and bitter struggle has had a profound
impact on the character of the Chechen nation, its social organization,
and self-perceptions. Clan loyalty and personal freedom defined a Chechen
warrior culture quite distinct from that of the Cossack settlers north of
the Terek River.



Like most of the peoples of the Caucasus other than the Georgians and
Armenians, the Chechens converted to Islam by the eighteenth century.
Islamic faith linked Chechen culture to a greater identity, and provided
the basis for alliances with other Islamic peoples of the region in their
struggle with Orthodox Russia.



Clan life in a Chechen mountain village revolved around raising sheep and
raiding. The clans practiced the blood-vendetta where no offense against
clan honor could go unpunished, and feuds could go on for generations. To
supplement their meager existence, Chechen warriors frequently raided
north of the Terek, carrying off goods, animals, and slaves from Cossack
settlements.



The Coming of Russian Rule and Chechen Resistance
The Russian advance south of the Terek began in earnest after the Wars of
Napoleon. This coincided with a profound spiritual movement in Chechnya
and other Islamic areas of the north Caucasus which sought to establish a
Koran-based social order. Ultimately, the Russian military faced two wars
in the North Caucasus: in the west against the Cherkess people and in the
east against the peoples of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia.



Russian rule in the North Caucasus had been imposed by force and was thus
maintained. Following the collapse of the Russian Empire, the North
Caucasus peoples declared the formation of the Republic of the North
Caucasus Federation in 1918, under the sponsorship of the Central Powers.
Germany's defeat and the outbreak of civil war in southern Russia turned
the North Caucasus into a battleground for Reds and Whites. However, after
the civil war the Bolsheviks sent the Red Army into the region, overthrew
the existing order, and annexed it in 1922.



Stalinism and Chechnya
Joseph Stalin, the Bolshevik Commissar of Nationalities and a Georgian,
adapted the class struggle to the traditional policy of divide and rule.
Soviet federalism provided a national veneer to a centralized state,
controlled by the Communist Party, where Russians staffed the key party
posts within the various republics. The Chechens proved a difficult people
to subdue. In 1929 they revolted against collectivization, leading to a
decade-long struggle. Russians arrived to manage the oil industry with the
development of Chechen oil fields.



During World War II, when the German Army advanced into the Caucasus,
there were more signs of Chechen unrest and collaboration with the enemy.
In late February 1944, Lavrenti Beria's NKVD carried out Stalin's
"solution" to the Chechen Question-the mass deportation of Chechens to
Central Asia. Over 70,000 Chechens of the 450,000 expelled died during
transit or on arrival. Chechnya ceased to exist. The exile became the
defining event for succeeding generations of Chechens. In 1957 Nikita
Khrushchev decreed that the Chechens could return to their ancestral
homelands. Chechnya and Ingushetia were joined administratively into the
Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic. This arrangement joined the rebellious
Chechens with the traditionally loyal Ingush in a clear continuation of
Moscow's policy of divide and rule. Inside Chechnya, Soviet officials made
their own arrangements with local clans while keeping an uneasy eye open
for signs of resistance to Communist rule.



Chechnya and the Struggle for National Self-Determination
When Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on his ill-fated attempt to save the
Soviet system via glasnost and perestroika, Chechen nationalists saw an
opportunity for national self-determination. In the chaos and collapse of
the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin led a resurgent Russian Federation and
championed greater self-rule within the Union Republics. In his political
struggle for control of Russia, Yeltsin encouraged the national republics
within Russia to seek greater autonomy. The Chechens exploited this
opportunity. On November 27, 1990, the Soviet of the Chechen-Ingush
Republic unanimously dissolved the union of Chechnya and Ingushetia and
declared their independence and sovereignty.



In the aftermath of the August Coup of 1991 and the collapse of efforts to
reform the Union, Chechens voted for independence and overwhelmingly
elected General Dudayev as their president. The Yeltsin government's
ham-handed tactics to thwart independence convinced most Chechens that
whoever was in power in Moscow was an enemy of self-determination.

Between Peace and War
At this juncture in the struggle for Chechen independence, Moscow was
weak, and Grozny drifted into chaos. Crime and corruption grew at a
staggering pace. Although Yeltsin viewed Chechen independence as a threat
to Russia's territorial integrity and sovereignty and a magnet for other
disgruntled Caucasian peoples chafing under Russian rule, his
administration focused its efforts elsewhere. Russia was preoccupied with
dissolving the Soviet system, trying to create a viable Russian
government, and transforming the economy through privatization and
marketization. The Chechens seized arms from corrupt and incompetent
Russian officials, but did not create an effective regular military.



In 1994, fearing that a Yeltsin rival would emerge, Russia abandoned
efforts to ally with Chechens opposed to their own increasingly arbitrary
and corrupt government. Russia then attempted to overthrow the Chechen
regime by covert action with disguised Russian military personnel. The
attack failed dismally. The Yeltsin government compounded the mistake by
then mounting an overt and ill-prepared military intervention. Their
failure to take Grozny by coup de main and the resultant protracted
struggle reinforced the anti-Russian core of Chechen nationalism and led
to an Islamic revival.



Chechnya: From War to War
Following the initial battle for Grozny and other cities, the war in
Chechnya became a classic insurgency. The Chechens fell back to the hills
south of the Terek to conduct partisan operations against Russian columns
and garrisons. Russian forces occupying the villages of the south were
undisciplined and quickly fostered a spirit of resistance among the
civilian population. Russia found itself in a protracted and unpopular
war. The Yeltsin government failed to develop a convincing case for the
war and was embarrassed by the ability of the Chechens to mount raids into
Russian territory.



With his popularity at rock bottom in a presidential election year, Boris
Yeltsin needed to defuse the war in Chechnya. He negotiated a cease fire
in the spring of 1996. When assured of re-election, Yeltsin renewed the
fighting and promptly lost Grozny. This led to an internal debate in
Russia, weighing the continuing damage to the army in continuing the
conflict against the possibility of national dismemberment if the Chechens
were allowed to secede. The peacemakers won, and the Russian Army
withdrew, signing the Khasavyurt Accords on August 31, 1996.



Chechen military and political success strengthened the political hand of
Colonel Aslan Maskhadov, who engineered the victory in Grozny. Maskhadov
was elected President of Chechnya in early 1997, but his power base was
quite limited. Personal and ideological/religious conflicts projected an
image of a bandit republic with no one in charge. Law and order collapsed,
and kidnapping and extortion became widespread. Varying Islamic factions
produced further splits among the Chechen leadership.

For its part, the Russian government proved utterly incapable of
developing a coherent political strategy regarding Chechnya. Some Russians
wanted revenge or had personal reasons to stoke the fires of ethnic hatred
with a well-financed media campaign. Even Russian moderates came to view
Chechnya as a criminal land and a source of chaos. By 1998, both sides
were preparing for a confrontation.



War Renewed without Decision
Events in the spring and summer of 1999 encouraged the resumption of
hostilities. The NATO intervention in Kosovo, which bolstered the
separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, disheartened the Russians and
emboldened the Chechens. In August 1999, the Chechen military, with or
without the support of President Maskhadov, led formations into Dagestan
to ignite an Islamic insurgency. The Russian government moved to counter
the insurgency. Yeltsin fired his latest prime minister, Sergei Stepashin,
and replaced him with the new head of the Security Council, Vladimir
Putin.



A series of bomb blasts in Russian apartment buildings brought the war
home to the Russian people. Putin took the war deep into Chechnya, seeking
to overthrow the Maskhadov government, vowing to eliminate the
bandits/terrorists wherever they were found. Later, in London in March
2000, Putin cast the conflict as a fight against radical Islamic
terrorism. He claimed that the West should support Russia.



After a deliberate advance to the Terek a well-prepared Russian assault
took Grozny once again, but only after flattening much of the city with
air, artillery, and rocket strikes. The Chechen resistance was forced from
the city. The war reverted to insurgency.



The longer the war in Chechnya, the greater the risk of the territorial
expansion of the conflict, and of external intervention. The war is a
profound tragedy for Russian democracy and for Chechen nationalism.
Violence drives out any chance for dialogue and compromise. General
Alexander Lebed, a veteran of Afghanistan and one-time head of the
Security Council, once remarked: "I have had occasion to see a lot of
combat, and I affirm this fact: There are enough scoundrels in war on both
sides-rape and sadism-all of this is present on both sides."



Future Prospects for Chechnya
Prudence suggests leaving predictions to tarot card readers, but one can
forecast four alternative futures for the Russian-Chechen imbroglio:
Chechnya and Russia separate; Russia continues to prosecute a protracted
guerrilla war; Russia goes for the knock-out punch expanding the war
beyond the borders of Chechnya; or Russian and Chechen leaders seek
grounds for a compromise solution that leaves Chechnya autonomous but
inside a federated Russia.



Should Russia and Chechnya agree to go their separate ways and Chechnya
attains her full independence, Chechnya is likely to revert to the same
situation that plagued the land between the 1996 cease fire and the
current fighting. Russian intervention is the single unifying factor among
most Chechens, and in the absence of a Russian threat, the various Chechen
clans will re-establish control over their traditional territory and clash
violently over disputed areas. Criminalization of the state and the great
game developing over Caspian oil and gas will make foreign intervention
more likely.



Russia, on the other hand, will discover if there is truth to the domino
principle: that other peoples will take Russia's defeat as a sign to
secede as well. The potential dismemberment of Russia would precipitate a
major Eurasian crisis that would inevitably draw in neighboring nations
and provoke other realignments of peoples and clans.



Should Russia continue to stay and fight it out, she may eke out a costly
win. Despite the massive efforts required to win the war and rebuild the
area, the Russians may have to re-fight the independence-minded Chechens
in fifty years or so. Fighting a civil war over decades will recast the
Russian state, society, and armed forces, giving greater power to organs
of internal security.



Faced with these two gloomy futures, the Russian leadership might consider
expanding the war to inflict a decisive defeat on the Chechen resistance.
Chechens now cross into Russian Dagestan and Ingushetia and independent
Georgia for medical treatment and supplies. The Chechens currently receive
foreign aid (money, weapons, supplies, and warriors) from outside
(predominately Islamic) countries. Russia might interfere significantly in
the internal affairs of its own republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia by
imposing martial law. Russia has conducted air strikes and hot-pursuit
ground penetrations on Georgian territory, and could consider mounting a
major incursion into Georgia in an attempt to wipe out the Chechen
resistance. Such a move might blow the top off the entire region. Outside
assistance could mount. Neighboring nations could react militarily and
economically to an attack on a sovereign state.



Russians and Chechens deserve a better future. The best possible answer is
a political settlement based on the limited ability of each side to impose
its will upon the other. However, having mobilized their public opinion
against the "enemy," neither leadership now is in a position to engage in
serious negotiations. Unfortunately, at this juncture, it doesn't seem to
be in the cards

Chechen Nationalism and the Tragedy of the Struggle for Independence
by Mr. Lester W. Grau, and Dr. Jacob W. Kipp

Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS.


This article was previously published in
National Strategy Forum Review Autumn 2000
Volume 10, Issue 1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------

Introduction

The conflict in Chechnya has attracted world attention. The Chechens are a
nation in a region of many nations. Moscow views Chechen independence as a
geopolitical "domino" threatening Russia's disintegration. Chechens call
for national self-determination and Islamic revival. The conflict pits the
warriors of a small but proud and warlike nation against the regular
troops and paramilitary formations of a great state struggling to redefine
itself after seven decades of Communism. At the heart of the struggle
remain Russia's relations with those nations brought into the tsarist
empire by force and subjected to totalitarian repression. Hostilities
continue as the Chechens cannot expel the Russians and the Russians cannot
prevent Chechen raids and terrorist actions.



Following a long tradition, the Russian government has defined the
conflict as a struggle against banditry and terrorism-much as it did in
Central Asia in the 1920s and early 1930s, and in Afghanistan in the late
1970s and 1980s. This legitimizes Russia's course of actions, however
ruthless the means, as a police function in the name of public order. The
Chechens, meanwhile, refer to their war as a "struggle for national and
political liberation" and an Islamic holy war, or jihad. Neither side sees
the conflict as a civil war. Russia will not honor the Chechens with that
political legitimacy, and Chechens refuse to accept the idea that they
were ever voluntarily a part of the Russian Empire, Soviet state, or
Russian Federation.



This struggle is a manifestation of what Samuel Huntington described as a
"clash of civilizations." Like other such conflicts it has its roots in
the history of the interactions between the protagonists. Chechens have
embraced an Islamic revival to foster internal solidarity and to mobilize
a broader struggle across the region. The region itself defines the clash.



Disputed Territory and a Clash of Civilizations
Steppe and mountain, Cossack and mountaineer, Christian and Muslim,
soldier and warrior, oppressor and bandit-these dichotomies describe the
conflict between Russians and Chechens. Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov,
a colonel who served in the Soviet Army, described the current war as the
continuation of a four-century struggle. This is no exaggeration, since
the struggle between Russians and Muslims of the Caucasus began in the
seventeenth century. The unequal and bitter struggle has had a profound
impact on the character of the Chechen nation, its social organization,
and self-perceptions. Clan loyalty and personal freedom defined a Chechen
warrior culture quite distinct from that of the Cossack settlers north of
the Terek River.



Like most of the peoples of the Caucasus other than the Georgians and
Armenians, the Chechens converted to Islam by the eighteenth century.
Islamic faith linked Chechen culture to a greater identity, and provided
the basis for alliances with other Islamic peoples of the region in their
struggle with Orthodox Russia.



Clan life in a Chechen mountain village revolved around raising sheep and
raiding. The clans practiced the blood-vendetta where no offense against
clan honor could go unpunished, and feuds could go on for generations. To
supplement their meager existence, Chechen warriors frequently raided
north of the Terek, carrying off goods, animals, and slaves from Cossack
settlements.



The Coming of Russian Rule and Chechen Resistance
The Russian advance south of the Terek began in earnest after the Wars of
Napoleon. This coincided with a profound spiritual movement in Chechnya
and other Islamic areas of the north Caucasus which sought to establish a
Koran-based social order. Ultimately, the Russian military faced two wars
in the North Caucasus: in the west against the Cherkess people and in the
east against the peoples of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia.



Russian rule in the North Caucasus had been imposed by force and was thus
maintained. Following the collapse of the Russian Empire, the North
Caucasus peoples declared the formation of the Republic of the North
Caucasus Federation in 1918, under the sponsorship of the Central Powers.
Germany's defeat and the outbreak of civil war in southern Russia turned
the North Caucasus into a battleground for Reds and Whites. However, after
the civil war the Bolsheviks sent the Red Army into the region, overthrew
the existing order, and annexed it in 1922.



Stalinism and Chechnya
Joseph Stalin, the Bolshevik Commissar of Nationalities and a Georgian,
adapted the class struggle to the traditional policy of divide and rule.
Soviet federalism provided a national veneer to a centralized state,
controlled by the Communist Party, where Russians staffed the key party
posts within the various republics. The Chechens proved a difficult people
to subdue. In 1929 they revolted against collectivization, leading to a
decade-long struggle. Russians arrived to manage the oil industry with the
development of Chechen oil fields.



During World War II, when the German Army advanced into the Caucasus,
there were more signs of Chechen unrest and collaboration with the enemy.
In late February 1944, Lavrenti Beria's NKVD carried out Stalin's
"solution" to the Chechen Question-the mass deportation of Chechens to
Central Asia. Over 70,000 Chechens of the 450,000 expelled died during
transit or on arrival. Chechnya ceased to exist. The exile became the
defining event for succeeding generations of Chechens. In 1957 Nikita
Khrushchev decreed that the Chechens could return to their ancestral
homelands. Chechnya and Ingushetia were joined administratively into the
Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic. This arrangement joined the rebellious
Chechens with the traditionally loyal Ingush in a clear continuation of
Moscow's policy of divide and rule. Inside Chechnya, Soviet officials made
their own arrangements with local clans while keeping an uneasy eye open
for signs of resistance to Communist rule.



Chechnya and the Struggle for National Self-Determination
When Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on his ill-fated attempt to save the
Soviet system via glasnost and perestroika, Chechen nationalists saw an
opportunity for national self-determination. In the chaos and collapse of
the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin led a resurgent Russian Federation and
championed greater self-rule within the Union Republics. In his political
struggle for control of Russia, Yeltsin encouraged the national republics
within Russia to seek greater autonomy. The Chechens exploited this
opportunity. On November 27, 1990, the Soviet of the Chechen-Ingush
Republic unanimously dissolved the union of Chechnya and Ingushetia and
declared their independence and sovereignty.



In the aftermath of the August Coup of 1991 and the collapse of efforts to
reform the Union, Chechens voted for independence and overwhelmingly
elected General Dudayev as their president. The Yeltsin government's
ham-handed tactics to thwart independence convinced most Chechens that
whoever was in power in Moscow was an enemy of self-determination.

Between Peace and War
At this juncture in the struggle for Chechen independence, Moscow was
weak, and Grozny drifted into chaos. Crime and corruption grew at a
staggering pace. Although Yeltsin viewed Chechen independence as a threat
to Russia's territorial integrity and sovereignty and a magnet for other
disgruntled Caucasian peoples chafing under Russian rule, his
administration focused its efforts elsewhere. Russia was preoccupied with
dissolving the Soviet system, trying to create a viable Russian
government, and transforming the economy through privatization and
marketization. The Chechens seized arms from corrupt and incompetent
Russian officials, but did not create an effective regular military.



In 1994, fearing that a Yeltsin rival would emerge, Russia abandoned
efforts to ally with Chechens opposed to their own increasingly arbitrary
and corrupt government. Russia then attempted to overthrow the Chechen
regime by covert action with disguised Russian military personnel. The
attack failed dismally. The Yeltsin government compounded the mistake by
then mounting an overt and ill-prepared military intervention. Their
failure to take Grozny by coup de main and the resultant protracted
struggle reinforced the anti-Russian core of Chechen nationalism and led
to an Islamic revival.



Chechnya: From War to War
Following the initial battle for Grozny and other cities, the war in
Chechnya became a classic insurgency. The Chechens fell back to the hills
south of the Terek to conduct partisan operations against Russian columns
and garrisons. Russian forces occupying the villages of the south were
undisciplined and quickly fostered a spirit of resistance among the
civilian population. Russia found itself in a protracted and unpopular
war. The Yeltsin government failed to develop a convincing case for the
war and was embarrassed by the ability of the Chechens to mount raids into
Russian territory.



With his popularity at rock bottom in a presidential election year, Boris
Yeltsin needed to defuse the war in Chechnya. He negotiated a cease fire
in the spring of 1996. When assured of re-election, Yeltsin renewed the
fighting and promptly lost Grozny. This led to an internal debate in
Russia, weighing the continuing damage to the army in continuing the
conflict against the possibility of national dismemberment if the Chechens
were allowed to secede. The peacemakers won, and the Russian Army
withdrew, signing the Khasavyurt Accords on August 31, 1996.



Chechen military and political success strengthened the political hand of
Colonel Aslan Maskhadov, who engineered the victory in Grozny. Maskhadov
was elected President of Chechnya in early 1997, but his power base was
quite limited. Personal and ideological/religious conflicts projected an
image of a bandit republic with no one in charge. Law and order collapsed,
and kidnapping and extortion became widespread. Varying Islamic factions
produced further splits among the Chechen leadership.

For its part, the Russian government proved utterly incapable of
developing a coherent political strategy regarding Chechnya. Some Russians
wanted revenge or had personal reasons to stoke the fires of ethnic hatred
with a well-financed media campaign. Even Russian moderates came to view
Chechnya as a criminal land and a source of chaos. By 1998, both sides
were preparing for a confrontation.



War Renewed without Decision
Events in the spring and summer of 1999 encouraged the resumption of
hostilities. The NATO intervention in Kosovo, which bolstered the
separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, disheartened the Russians and
emboldened the Chechens. In August 1999, the Chechen military, with or
without the support of President Maskhadov, led formations into Dagestan
to ignite an Islamic insurgency. The Russian government moved to counter
the insurgency. Yeltsin fired his latest prime minister, Sergei Stepashin,
and replaced him with the new head of the Security Council, Vladimir
Putin.



A series of bomb blasts in Russian apartment buildings brought the war
home to the Russian people. Putin took the war deep into Chechnya, seeking
to overthrow the Maskhadov government, vowing to eliminate the
bandits/terrorists wherever they were found. Later, in London in March
2000, Putin cast the conflict as a fight against radical Islamic
terrorism. He claimed that the West should support Russia.



After a deliberate advance to the Terek a well-prepared Russian assault
took Grozny once again, but only after flattening much of the city with
air, artillery, and rocket strikes. The Chechen resistance was forced from
the city. The war reverted to insurgency.



The longer the war in Chechnya, the greater the risk of the territorial
expansion of the conflict, and of external intervention. The war is a
profound tragedy for Russian democracy and for Chechen nationalism.
Violence drives out any chance for dialogue and compromise. General
Alexander Lebed, a veteran of Afghanistan and one-time head of the
Security Council, once remarked: "I have had occasion to see a lot of
combat, and I affirm this fact: There are enough scoundrels in war on both
sides-rape and sadism-all of this is present on both sides."



Future Prospects for Chechnya
Prudence suggests leaving predictions to tarot card readers, but one can
forecast four alternative futures for the Russian-Chechen imbroglio:
Chechnya and Russia separate; Russia continues to prosecute a protracted
guerrilla war; Russia goes for the knock-out punch expanding the war
beyond the borders of Chechnya; or Russian and Chechen leaders seek
grounds for a compromise solution that leaves Chechnya autonomous but
inside a federated Russia.



Should Russia and Chechnya agree to go their separate ways and Chechnya
attains her full independence, Chechnya is likely to revert to the same
situation that plagued the land between the 1996 cease fire and the
current fighting. Russian intervention is the single unifying factor among
most Chechens, and in the absence of a Russian threat, the various Chechen
clans will re-establish control over their traditional territory and clash
violently over disputed areas. Criminalization of the state and the great
game developing over Caspian oil and gas will make foreign intervention
more likely.



Russia, on the other hand, will discover if there is truth to the domino
principle: that other peoples will take Russia's defeat as a sign to
secede as well. The potential dismemberment of Russia would precipitate a
major Eurasian crisis that would inevitably draw in neighboring nations
and provoke other realignments of peoples and clans.



Should Russia continue to stay and fight it out, she may eke out a costly
win. Despite the massive efforts required to win the war and rebuild the
area, the Russians may have to re-fight the independence-minded Chechens
in fifty years or so. Fighting a civil war over decades will recast the
Russian state, society, and armed forces, giving greater power to organs
of internal security.



Faced with these two gloomy futures, the Russian leadership might consider
expanding the war to inflict a decisive defeat on the Chechen resistance.
Chechens now cross into Russian Dagestan and Ingushetia and independent
Georgia for medical treatment and supplies. The Chechens currently receive
foreign aid (money, weapons, supplies, and warriors) from outside
(predominately Islamic) countries. Russia might interfere significantly in
the internal affairs of its own republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia by
imposing martial law. Russia has conducted air strikes and hot-pursuit
ground penetrations on Georgian territory, and could consider mounting a
major incursion into Georgia in an attempt to wipe out the Chechen
resistance. Such a move might blow the top off the entire region. Outside
assistance could mount. Neighboring nations could react militarily and
economically to an attack on a sovereign state.



Russians and Chechens deserve a better future. The best possible answer is
a political settlement based on the limited ability of each side to impose
its will upon the other. However, having mobilized their public opinion
against the "enemy," neither leadership now is in a position to engage in
serious negotiations. Unfortunately, at this juncture, it doesn't seem to
be in the cards.

http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/fmsopubs/issues/chechnatism.htm

Chechen Nationalism and the Tragedy of the Struggle for Independence
by Mr. Lester W. Grau, and Dr. Jacob W. Kipp

Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS.


This article was previously published in
National Strategy Forum Review Autumn 2000
Volume 10, Issue 1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------

Introduction

The conflict in Chechnya has attracted world attention. The Chechens are a
nation in a region of many nations. Moscow views Chechen independence as a
geopolitical "domino" threatening Russia's disintegration. Chechens call
for national self-determination and Islamic revival. The conflict pits the
warriors of a small but proud and warlike nation