Party. The Chechen autonomous province (oblast) was established in 1922 and Chechnya and neighboring Ingushetia were made autonomous Soviet republics in 1936. However, during World War II, German troops occupied Chechnya in 1943 and 1944, and Chechen leaders allegedly collaborated with the Nazis.8
Stalin used the charge of collaboration as justification for dissolving the Chechen-Ingush autonomous republic in 1944 and in what can only be described as ethnic cleansing, three-quarters of the Chechen population (more than a half-million people) were rounded up and physically removed from their homeland—deported in boxcars to Kazakhstan. Nearly half the deported Chechens (between one and two hundred thousand) perished en route; others were killed by Stalin's firing squads. Many of the survivors ended up as slave labor in the mines of Karaganda in Kazakhstan.9 Survivors were finally allowed to return after Stalin's death in 1957.
It was against this historical backdrop that intense feelings of nationalism and xenophobia developed among the Chechens, reinforced by traditional tribal and family structures. The Chechen clan (teip) endured and perpetuated Chechen culture even under the direst circumstances. The teip system also bolstered the authority of tribal chiefs, headmen, and, within the family, fathers and husbands. A system of blood feuds (kanli) ensured that even the slightest transgression was never forgotten. No wrong could go unpunished and a vendetta culture developed. “The oral tradition abounds in tales of feuds sparked by the theft of a chicken, culminating in the death of an entire teip.”10 The young were trained rigorously in the art of warfare as honor and strength became highly prized. It was said, “No Chechen girl would consent to marry a man unless he had killed at least one Russian, could jump over a stream twenty-three feet wide, and over a rope held at shoulder-height between two men.”11
With the dissolution of the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev and the balkanization of the Russian empire, Chechnya followed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in its quest for autonomy. Under the leadership of Dzhokhar Dudayev, the all-national congress of the Chechen people stormed a session of the Chechen-Ingush parliament with the aim of asserting independence. The Chechen nationalists pulled down the statue of Lenin in the main square in the capital city of Grozny, drove the KGB out, and threw the first secretary of the Communist Party, Vitaly Kutsenko, out of a third-story window. Dudayev declared Chechnya's independence in 1991. Unable to control the situation and end the violence in the region, Gorbachev's successor, Boris Yeltsin, declared a state of emergency on November 8, 1991.
Dudayev's support surged among Chechens while Yeltsin was criticized by all sides: Russian reformers accused him of going too far, conservatives of not going far enough. The average Russian was angered by stories of Chechen abuse of local Russians and saw Chechnya as a dangerous center of mafia activities. As ethnic Russians fled the region, the economy and industry suffered. In February 1994, Russia signed a treaty with Tatarstan affirming Russian sovereignty in exchange for domestic autonomy. Tatarstan had been the only republic other than Chechnya that had refused to sign the March 1992 federal treaty. Dudayev refused to enter into negotiations until Russia recognized Chechnya as an independent state.
Dudayev's erratic and authoritarian behavior, the severe economic slump, and increasing crime, corruption, and clan rivalry led to political infighting, attempted coups, countercoups, and mounting opposition to his leadership. He finally dissolved the Chechen parliament and introduced direct presidential rule. On November 29, 1992, Yeltsin issued an ultimatum to all the warring factions in Chechnya ordering them to immediately disarm and surrender. When the government in Grozny refused, the Russian president ordered his army to restore constitutional order by force.
In December 1994, Russia began aerial bombardment of Chechnya, including the capital city of Grozny. Russian forces assumed that every Chechen was the enemy and no one was spared. Thousands of civilians died as a result of carpet bombings and rocket artillery barrages. As civilian losses mounted, the Chechen population—even those opposed to Dudayev—became increasingly hostile to the Russian forces. Highly mobile units of Chechen fighters caused severe losses to Russia's demoralized troops. By summer 1996, the Chechen rebels had managed to split the Russian forces into a dozen isolated pockets. Over a period of one week, the rebels were able to fend off the Russian forces and send them fleeing.
The First Chechen War culminated in the Battle of Grozny, also known as Operation Jihad, in August 1996, a bloody siege in which more than 27,000 Chechen civilians died in the first five weeks (some estimates suggest the number exceeded 35,000, including 5,000 children). The bloodbath shocked Russians and the outside world, resulting in severe criticism of the war and waning domestic support among Russians. The total number of civilian deaths in the war is estimated to have been between 30,000 and 100,000, with as many as 200,000 more injured and more than 500,000 people displaced by the fighting. Yeltsin finally called for a ceasefire in 1996 and signed a peace treaty, the Khasav-Yurt Accord, the following year.
The peace agreement was short-lived. In August 1999, Yeltsin nominated Vladimir Putin, a relatively unknown former security service agent, to head the government. Shortly thereafter a series of bomb attacks destroyed several apartment blocks in Moscow and other Russian cities, claiming hundreds of victims. Although the perpetrators were never properly identified and there were many indications that the FSB was responsible, Putin used the bombings as an excuse to once again undertake a full-scale military mobilization against Chechnya. Appealing to Russian chauvinism, Putin's Unity Party swept into office on a wave of nationalist rhetoric and hyperbole.
In the period between the peace treaty and the resumption of hostilities, Chechnya had become the new focal point of the global jihad. As the Taliban consolidated their control of Kabul, many mujahideen fighters migrated to Chechnya, bringing with them the same techniques that had succeeded against the Russians in Afghanistan. Arms and money flowed to Chechnya as Arab mercenaries were integrated into the separatist units. Secular nationalists embraced Islam as a means of exploiting the new allies and resources. Warlords like Salman Raduyev and Arbi Barayev emerged in a region increasingly characterized by its lawlessness. Those Chechen groups not taking money from the jihadis engaged in campaigns of kidnapping and hostage-taking; more than 1,300 people were kidnapped and held for ransom. In August and September 1999, Chechen leader Shamil Basayev (in association with an Arab jihadi, Ibn Al Khattab) led two armies of two thousand Chechen, Dagestani, Arab, and international mujahideen and Wahhabi militants from Chechnya into the neighboring Republic of Dagestan and so precipitated the Second Chechen War.
Putin responded with massive aerial bombardments intended to wipe out the militants and flatten Grozny. The air campaign was followed by a new ground war. In the notorious zachistka (mopping-up) operations, Russian units would cordon off a village and prevent anyone from entering or leaving. In Chechnya, it was normal for people to disappear. The disappearances would take place either during the mopping-up operations or at the police checkpoints, which were set up on the roads leading in and out of every city. Over the course of several days, the Russians would violently interrogate Chechen civilians. Often the men and boys were killed and dumped in open pits that were subsequently blown up to obliterate all trace of the bodies.12 The women who found themselves in police custody were vulnerable to sexual predation.13 Tens of thousands were arrested, tortured, or disappeared. According to the 2001 annual report by Amnesty International:
There were frequent reports that Russian forces indiscriminately bombed and shelled civilian areas. Chechen civilians, including medical personnel, continued to be the target of military attacks by Russian forces. Hundreds of Chechen civilians and prisoners of war were extra judicially executed. Journalists and independent monitors continued to be refused access to Chechnya. According to reports, Chechen fighters frequently threatened, and in some cases killed, members of the Russian-appointed civilian administration and executed Russian captured soldiers.14
The Chechens began to use suicide terrorism against government targets in 2000. Russian troops had been instructed to focus their attention on men between the ages of seventeen and forty, so Basayev opted to use female bombers. Two women, one aged twenty-two and the
