Chechnya

Breakaway part of the former Russian autonomous republic of Checheno-Ingush, on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains; official name Noxcijn Republika Ickeriy from 1994; area 17,300 sq km/6,680 sq mi; population (1990 est) 1,290,000 (Chechen 90%). The capital is Grozny. Chief industries are oil extraction (at one of the largest Russian oilfields), engineering, chemicals, building materials, and timber. Most of the inhabitants are Sunni Muslim.

After decades of resistance, the region was conquered by Russia in 1859. It was an autonomous region of the USSR 1922–36 when it was joined to Ingushetia as the Autonomous Republic of Checheno-Ingush. Many Chechens were deported to Central Asia by Stalin in 1944 for alleged collaboration with the Germans. Since 1994, Chechnya has been in a state of war following its secession from the Russian Federation. The territory's declaration of independence did not receive international recognition.

Separatism and conflict In November 1991, following the seizure of power by General Dzhokhar Dudayev, the region declared its independence. After a brief, unsuccessful attempt to quell the rebellion, Moscow entered into negotiations over the republic's future, and in 1992 Chechnya became an autonomous republic in its own right. Later the same year fighting broke out between separatist rebels loyal to Dudayev and anti-separatist opposition forces, backed by Russia. Civil war developed during 1994 and in December Russian forces entered Chechnya and bombed Grozny. By March 1995 an estimated 40,000 civilians had been killed and 250,000 had been made refugees. By June 1995 Russian forces had overrun most of the republic's urban centres, and the Chechen rebels resorted to guerrilla warfare tactics; that month around 2,000 people were taken hostage by rebels led by Shamil Basayev, in the town of Budennovsk. Following negotiations between Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Basayev for the hostages' release, peace talks began in Grozny and an agreement was signed in July 1995. Fighting broke out again in December 1995 as rebels attempted to disrupt local elections, and in January 1996 a further hostage crisis occurred in southern Russia. As at Budennovsk, the Chechen rebels appeared to have won safe passage home until ambushed by Russian troops at the border town of Pervomayskoye, where they were subjected to massive artillery and rocket bombardment. Many of the rebels and their hostages escaped under cover of darkness. General Dudayev was killed in a Russian rocket attack in April 1996. In August 1996, in an assault designed to undermine Boris Yeltsin's inauguration as president of the Russian Federation, the rebels stormed Grozny. At the end of August a further peace deal was negotiated by Aslan Maskhadov with Russia, under which it was agreed that a decision on Chechnya's status would be postponed until 2001, and in November 1996 President Yeltsin decreed the withdrawal of all Russian troops from the region.

In January 1997 Maskhadov claimed an outright victory in Chechnya's presidential elections, with 63% of the vote, and made it clear that he wanted Chechen independence recognized by the rest of the world as well as by Russia.

In July 1998, Maskhadov, who was struggling to suppress armed Islamist factions, narrowly survived a car bomb assassination attempt. A month earlier, a state of emergency and curfew had been imposed in an effort to establish some order. The continuation of hostage-taking in the republic and clan-based conflicts spread instability to the neighbouring Islamic regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia.

Fighting broke out in Chechnya again in autumn 1999. In December, despite claims by Chechen separatists that they had made some advances, Russian forces maintained they had surrounded Grozny and issued an ultimatum to civilians to leave or risk being killed.

By the end of January 2000, despite stiff resistance and heavy losses, Russian forces were reported to have taken control of much of Grozny, including the city centre. United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with the acting president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, at the end of January, but failed to bring about a peaceful end to the conflict. In February Putin sent 20,000 more troops to Grozny, to replenish the army after the 5,000 casualties since autumn 1999. In response to increasing international criticism of mass arrests, torture, and killing by the Russian army in Chechnya, Moscow ordered an official investigation into possible war crimes, which was put into place in April 2000. Permission was also given for the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, Alvaro Gil-Robles, to go to the region and investigate the allegations. The UN Human Rights Commission also criticized Russia for using disproportionate force and for attacking civilians during the war, and requested that UN investigators be permitted to investigate the area.

President Putin (who had been confirmed as president in the March 2000 elections) imposed direct presidential rule over Chechnya. Violence continued in the region, and in July there were five suicide bomb attacks on Russian-controlled towns, with numerous casualties. A month later, the leader of the Chechen defence of Grozny until February, Lechi Islamov, was arrested by Russian forces. In October, 17 people were killed in a car bomb explosion in Grozny, blamed on separatists. In the same month, the human rights group Human Rights Watch released a report stating that arbitrary detention, torture, and extortion were common in Chechnya.

In July 2001, Russia's chief military officer in Chechnya, General Vladimir Moltenskoi, admitted that Russian troops had committed widespread crimes in searching two villages, beating and torturing some 1,500 inhabitants. This was the first time such a degree of official contrition had been shown by army commanders for the behaviour of Russian forces during the Chechen war.

Violent backlash Although the Russian government claimed victory in the Chechen war, major terrorist attacks against Russian targets by Chechen separatists continued. In August 2002 a Russian military transport helicopter was shot down outside Grozny, killing 115 soldiers. In October, Chechen rebels took 700 people hostage in a Moscow theatre for three days before troops stormed the building in a gas attack which killed not only the terrorists but also over 100 of the hostages. A further 100 people were killed in December 2002 when suicide bombers crashed dynamite-laden trucks into the Chechen government headquarters in Grozny. Suicide bomb attacks in May and August 2003 claimed another 130 lives; and in September 2004, during a three-day seige at a school in Beslan in the Russian region of North Ossetia, 330 people died, many of them children.

Constitutional and electoral developments On 23 March 2003, Chechen voters in a referendum approved a new constitution keeping the republic within the Russian Federation, but with greater autonomy under a new president and parliament. In subsequent presidential elections, held under martial law on 5 October, the Moscow-appointed head of the Chechen administration for the previous three years, Akhmad Kadyrov, claimed victory with over 80% of the popular vote, though it was widely believed by observers and human rights groups that the elections were rigged. Kadyrov was assassinated in a bomb blast in Grozny in May 2004, apparently by Chechen separatists. He was followed by another pro-Moscow candidate, Alu Alkhanov, who was installed in (again suspect) elections in August 2004. A self-proclaimed separatist government headed by former president Aslam Maskhadov, also claimed legitimacy. Maskhadov was killed in a confrontation with Russian forces on 8 March 2005.