Abstract
This chapter deals with the way in which the period between the two Chechen wars (1996–1999) was sabotaged by spoilers. Maskhadov, who was head of the Chechen army in Ichkeria—though elected President of Chechnya in 1997—was rapidly weakened by other Chechen ex-combatants, grouped mainly around the Islamists. Taking into account Moscow’s influence on the young independent state of Chechnya and its possible collusion with spoilers inside the country, this chapter attempts to analyze how the nonreintegration of ex-combatants into the postwar social and political framework fostered the spread of violence and undermined the authority of the newly elected president. All this in a context of quasi-total destruction and the absence of a political tradition of the state in Chechnya, along with the growing power of the Islamists.
“After the war, the worst thing was not the destruction, it was not even the dead and the injured…it was the veterans.”
Usam, Chechen youth, Nazran, March 2000
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Notes
See in particular John Russell, “Mujahedeen, Mafia, Madmen: Russian Perceptions of Chechens during the Wars in Chechnya, 1994–1996 and 1999–2001” in R. Fawn and S. White (eds.), Russia after Communism, (London: Routledge, 2002), 73–93. We would like to thank Nathalie Duclos and the anonymous referee for their advice, patience, and stimulating remarks.
The difficulty in dating the end of the second war, despite the official announcement of the end of the anti-terrorist operation by Russian President Medvedev on April 16, 2009, raises a major epistemological problem. Indeed, while reconstruction is real and has caused many deep changes in Chechnya since war resumed in 1999, there has been no negotiation between the warring parties and the political and historical dispute, which largely led to the first war, is denied today. See A. Merlin, “Tchétchénie, un après-guerre sans paix,” in A. Merlin and S. Serrano (eds.), Ordres et désordres au Caucase, (Bruxelles: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2010).
See A. Le Huérou, A. Merlin, A. Regamey, and S. Serrano, Tchétchénie, une affaire intérieure? Russes et Tchétchènes dans l’étau de la guerre, (Paris: Autrement, 2005) and the bibliography.
As explained in this chapter, the “social order” that existed before the first war was already very fragile, in the context of the Chechen declaration of independence in 1991 and of the collapse of the USSR giving birth to newly independent Russia. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the social organization in Checheno-Ingushetia was already very distinctive, strongly marked by the colonial dimension in a fringe of the Empire where sovietization was never fully accepted. The history of Russian-Chechen relations (up to the present day) cannot be understood without considering the colonial heritage, in particular the brutality of the conquest by the Russian Army in the nineteenth century, which met strong resistance, and of the memory of the 1944 deportation of the whole Chechen people to Central Asia. See M. Vatchagaev, L’aigle et le loup. La Tchétchénie dans la guerre du Caucase au XIX e siècle (Paris: Buchet Chastel, Paris, 2008)
on deportation, see A. Campana, S. Tournon, and G. Dufaud (eds.), Les Déportations en héritage. Les peuples déportés du Caucase et de Crimée, hier et aujourd’hui (Rennes: PUR, 2009)
A. Nekritch, Les peuples punis (Paris: Maspero,, 1982), in particular “La situation dans le Caucase du Nord et la politique d’occupation allemande,” pp. 38–65
J.-J. Marie, Les peuples déportés d’Union soviétique (Paris: Questions au XXe siècle, Editions Complexe, “Questions au XXe siècle,” 1995)
J. Otto Pohl, Ethnic cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1944 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999).
A. Malasenko and D. Trenin, Vremâ Ûga, Rossiâ v Čečne, Čečnâ v Rossii (Moscow: Gendal’f, 2002).
This agreement planned the end of the conflict, the liberation of detainees, the disarmament of Chechen forces, the gradual withdrawal of the Russian Army, and the cessation of terrorist and diversionary acts. See Stasys Knezys and Romansas Sedlickas, The War in Chechnya (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 196–197. The agreement was signed in the context of negotiations initiated after the taking of hostages in a hospital in Budennovsk in June 1995 by a group of fighters led by Basayev. The Russian Prime Minister of the time, Chernomyrdin, had then negotiated with Basayev in order to put an end to hostage taking. Several texts of ceasefire were later signed, the first one on June 21, 1995.
See also Isabelle Astigarraga, Tchétchénie, Un peuple sacrifié (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 285–287.
Anne Le Huérou, “L’opinion russe face à la guerre en Tchétchénie” in P. Hassner and R. Marchal (eds.), Guerre et Société: État et violence après la guerre froide, (Paris: Karthala, 2003) 165–191.
Sandrine Lefranc (ed.), Après le conflit, la réconciliation? (Paris: Michel Houdiard éditeur, 2006), 13.
This event, whose preparation was never secret, perplexed some observers. If the civilians were warned of the necessity of leaving Grozny, why Russian servicemen did not try to prevent this offensive more actively? We find a very detailed description of the troubles of spring and summer 1996 and all the initiatives taken thereafter to prepare peace in the chapter by A. Cherkasov in T. Lokshina (eds.), Chechnya, Inside Out (Moscow: Demos, 2007).
Malashenko mentions a contingent of 15,000 fighters in the Army of Ichkeria at the beginning of 1995 and of 10,000 to 11,000 at the beginning of 1999, adding that in both cases, 30,000 potential fighters could be raised to support this army. A. Malasenko and D. Trenin, Vremâ Ûga, Rossiâ v Čečne, Čečnâ v Rossii (Moscow: Gendal’f, 2002), 133.
For a narrative on the capture of Grozny by Chechen fighters on August 6, 1996, see Sebastian Smith, Allah’s Mountains: The battle for Chechnya (London/New York: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 2001).
See S. J. Stedman, “Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes,” International Security 22, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 5–53.
See, for example, A. Cherkasov, “Stolen victory” in T. Lokshina (ed.), Chechnya, Inside Out (Moscow: Demos, 2007), 47–54.
Interview with M. V., Chechen historian and former spokesman of Maskhadov, February 1, 2009, Paris. See also I. Akhmadov, and M. Lanskoy, The Chechen Struggle, Independence Won and Lost (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
See the definition in the general introduction. See Stedman, “Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes,” and by the same author “Negotiation and Mediation in Internal Conf licts” in M. E. Brown (ed.), The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
Interview with the economist M. B., Paris, February 2002. See also Zura Altamirova, “Zizn’ v poslevoennoj Cecne” (Life in Chechnya after the War) in D. Furman (ed.), Chechnia i Rossiia: obshchestva i gosudarstva, (Moscow: Publication of the Andreï Sakharov Museum, 1999), 308–309
and the interview of Aslan Maskhadov by M. Perevozkina, “Vive la Tchétchénie libre!,” Politique internationale 75 (Spring 1997): 148.
Chechen society is divided into teips, communities of extended families among which solidarity plays out (in particular in economic matters). Marriages take place between members of two different teips and children will belong to the teip of the father. The teip was the object of a certain mobilization on the political level under Dudayev in particular. See M. Vachagaev, “Chechen Society Today, Myths and Reality,” Central Asia and Caucasus, 2 no. 20 (2003): 14–21
and E. Sokirianskaia, “Families and Clans in Ingushetia and Chechnya,” Central Asian Survey, 24, no. 4 (December 2005): 453–467. See also Huérou, Merlin, Regamey, and Serrano, Tchétchénie, une affaire intérieure?
C. H. Fairbanks, “Weak States and Private Armies” in M. Beissinger and C. Young (eds.), Beyond State Crisis? Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective, (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 138–139.
On the word “Wahhabi,” see Huérou, Merlin, Regamey, Serrano, Tchétchénie, une affaire intérieure?; and A. Merlin, “Des usages de l’islam en Tchétchénie post-soviétique” in F. Nahavandi (ed.), Mouvements islamistes et Politique, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009), 115–134.
Jean Hannoyer (ed.), Guerres civiles: économies de la violence, dimensions de la civilité (Paris: Karthala, 1999).
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Merlin, A. (2012). The Postwar Period in Chechnya: When Spoilers Jeopardize the Emerging Chechen State (1996–1999). In: Duclos, N. (eds) War Veterans in Postwar Situations. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137109743_11
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