homeauthor press reviews campus praise guest lecture FAQsbuy the booklinks

Q: Where is Chechnya?
A: Chechnya is located in southern Russia, in a region known as the Northern Caucasus. Many scholars consider the area the crossroads of Christianity and Islam.

Q: How big is Chechnya?
A: Chechnya is approximately the size of Connecticut. A mountainous region, its current population is 500,000. Before Russia’s first military invasion in 1994, the population was 1 million.

Q: Who are the Chechens?
A: The Chechens are a clan-based people who speak a language that bears no resemblance to Russian. They adhere to their own ancient code of behavior called the Adat, based heavily on the reverence of elders.  Chechens are muslims though the Islam Chechens practice is called Sufism, a moderate branch that differs from the Islam of the Middle East.

Q: How deep is the conflict between Chechnya and Russia?
A: It goes back centuries. Peter the Great and Tsar Alexander I both attempted to conquer the highland territory to open a corridor between Russia, Persia and India. During World War II, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin deported the entire Chechen population to Central Asia.  Crowded into cattle cars, one third perished during the journey.  In the late 1950s, Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev allowed the exiled population to return. Many found their homes occupied by Russians and other nationalities.

Q: Why couldn’t Chechnya break away like the other republics after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991?
A: Chechnya was not a Soviet republic like Armenia or the Baltic states. During the Soviet era, Chechnya was designated a semi-autonomous district within Russia’s borders. After the rapid break-up of the USSR, the newly emerged Russian Federation hardened its borders in a bid to maintain territorial integrity and to retain a major oil refining center and pipelines, several of which run through Chechnya.

Q: Why did Russia first invade Chechnya?
A: In 1991, Chechnya declared independence, established a free-trade zone and courted Western oil companies. Such conduct raised Russia’s ire and Russian President Boris Yeltsin invaded with a force of 300,000 men. But the incursion ended two years later in humiliation for the Russian army, driven back by a much smaller, but fiercely determined, force of Chechen guerrilla fighters.

Q: What led to the second invasion?
A: Following  a promising peace agreement in 1996,  the Russians accused Chechnya of terrorism after several apartment buildings were bombed in Moscow and other cities. Some observers believe the bombings were orchestrated by the secret police to help Vladimir Putin’s election. These bombings, along with an incursion into the neighboring Russian province of  Dagestan by Chechen extremists, served as an  excuse for President Putin to order a full scale invasion of Chechnya for a second time in  the fall of 1999. Today, Russian officials claim the war is over but Russian troops remain in Chechnya and sporadic fighting continues along with kidnappings and widespread corruption and crime.

Q: Is al-Qaeda driving the fight in Chechnya?
A: In aligning itself with America’s war on terrorism, the Russian government has repeatedly insisted a relationship exists between Chechen rebels and al-Qaeda. President Vladimir Putin casts the conflict – once strongly criticized by the U.S. government – in terms of civil strife inflamed by international terrorism. That assessment, for the most part, goes unchallenged by the West. While Islamic extremism has predictably colored parts of this conflict, the core of Chechnya’s struggle has always been its long-held dream of independence.

click on images to enlarge