Brian Glyn Williams, page 13
from the Russian Federation/ussr come true.
But it must be clearly stated that the independent nation that the So-
vietized Dudayev was working to create had nothing to do with the sort
of harsh shariah-based theocracy that would later emerge in distant
Afghanistan under the fanatical Taliban fundamentalist tribesmen. The
Chechen leaders who gathered around Dudayev tended to be motivated
by secular nationalism, not strict Islamic fundamentalism of the sort that was traditionally alien to their society. They were products of a Soviet system that had trained them to define themselves by their natsional’nost (officially recognized national identity), not their long-repressed, nonpo-liticized Sufi faith. Russian scholar Valeriy Tishkov clearly states:
The young and middle-aged elements of the population became atheists
[under the Soviets]; they no longer read the Qur’an (since it could not be 82
Williams - Chechnya.indb 82
7/15/2015 7:21:36 PM
t h e f i r s t r u s s i a n - c h e c h e n w a r reprinted or sold), said daily prayers, or observed regular religious rites.
By the beginning of perestroika, in all of Chechnya, only thirteen mosques and one Muslim school remained.13
This source was also to state emphatically:
Religion played little part in the forming of the new Chechen identity
during perestroika (i.e., before the first Chechen war). Apart from some ritual mentions of Islam, the Chechens did not identity themselves as an
“Islamic people.” I agree with G. Derluguian that “there is no ground for using the Islamic religion to explain the extremely strong and painful
national conscience among the Chechens.” Furthermore, the religious
factor bore little connection to the original Chechen “national revo-
lution.” Collective suffering, rather than religion, culture, or language, cemented Chechen identity.14
It was thus the collective memory of the deportation, rather than any
concept of “jihad” with the Russian “infidel,” that drove the secularized Chechen leadership into a secessionist war with the Russians for national independence. Chechen historian Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov summed
up the reasons for the “Chechen revolution” as follows:
What is happening now in Chechen-Ingushetia is, in my opinion, a revolt
by the children to revenge the deaths of their fathers and mothers in
the hellish conditions of the deportation in distant, cold and hungry
Kazakhstan and Kirghizia. It is a protest by the whole people.15
With Soviet central power collapsing in late 1991 as the Russian Feder-
ation president Boris Yeltsin clashed with the Soviet Union head Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin told various Soviet republic leaders to “seize as much sovereignty as you can swallow!” The Chechen secessionists were only
too willing to oblige to escape their historic enemy.
Then, on December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved.
It was a day of rejoicing across the former Soviet space as the fifteen
full Soviet Socialist Republics (i.e., the Russian Federation, Ukraine,
Belorussia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbek-
istan) declared their sovereignty. Chechnya was, however, the only
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic located inside the post-Soviet
83
Williams - Chechnya.indb 83
7/15/2015 7:21:36 PM
i n f e r n o i n c h e c h n y a
Russian Federation to demand full independence from the rump Rus-
sian state. (Tatarstan played a game of brinkmanship with Moscow to
gain more rights and autonomy, before finally agreeing to remain in the
Russian Federation.) While there were many other small autonomous,
ethnic-based republics in the transcontinental Russian Federation, es-
pecially in the north Caucasus, only Chechnya chose the path of outright confrontation with Moscow.
The Chechen secessionists did not limit themselves to words. In
February 1992, Dudayev’s armed followers surrounded a former Soviet
base on Chechen soil, the 173rd Training Center for the North Caucasus
Military District in Grozny. Leading them was a charismatic Chechen
soldier of fortune named Shamil Basayev, who had already made a name
for himself fighting as a mercenary in the breakaway region of Abkhazia
in Georgia. One of the Russian generals from the surrounded base later
recalled, “Shamil Basayev sat constantly in my office, a real bandit who kept asking me to give him a machine gun.”16 This Basayev would later go on to become one of the most effective of all the Chechen commanders
in the upcoming war with Russia.
After ordering the Russian Federal troops out of Chechnya, Dudayev
had his followers seize the weapons in the various bases left on Chechen soil. Their seizure amounted to 40,000 automatic weapons and machine
guns, 153 cannons and mortars, 42 tanks, 18 Grad multiple rocket launch-
ers, 55 armored personnel carriers, and 130,000 hand grenades.17 The
Chechen leadership also purchased weapons from neighboring regions,
making the Chechens one of the most heavily armed people in the for-
mer Soviet Union.
At this time, Dudayev and his followers, who were described as re-
ligious “nonbelievers,” wrote up a constitution for the new state.18 It is important once again to note that it had little to do with shariah Islamic law. Valery Tishkov states:
Local intellectuals prepared a constitution for the Chechen Republic
(Ichkeria) imbued with the spirit of representative democracy and secular law. Islam was relegated to a minor ritual role; the constitution made no mention of Islam or Allah, and religious liberty was recognized for all
84
Williams - Chechnya.indb 84
7/15/2015 7:21:36 PM
t h e f i r s t r u s s i a n - c h e c h e n w a r citizens. The constitution placed no restrictions on its citizenry on the basis of ethnicity or religion.19
In his superb book on the Chechen Wars, Allah’s Mountains, Sebastian Smith, who spent considerable time with Dudayev’s fighters, wrote
of the Chechen president, “He had served in Afghanistan, taking part
in the merciless bombing of civilians and was by his own admission, a
somewhat lapsed Moslem.”20 Dudayev once warned “Where any religion
prevails over the secular constitutional organization of the state, either the Spanish Inquisition or Islamic fundamentalism will emerge.”21
Similarly, Anatol Lieven, who lived with the Chechen rebels during the
first war reported:
The Chechen struggle of the 1990s has been overwhelmingly a national
or nationalistic one. In so far as it has taken on a religious coloring, this was mainly because Islam is seen, even by irreligious Chechens, as an
integral part of national tradition and of the nation’s past struggles
against Russian domination. As Soviet officers, neither General Dudayev
nor Colonel Maskhadov can previously have been practicing Muslims;
even Shamil Basayev, while always a convinced Muslim, did not give me
the impression before the war of being a particularly strict one. Islam
seems less of a motive force in itself than something which has been
adopted both by the Dudayev regime and individual Chechen fighters as
spiritual clothing for their national struggle.22
Thomas de Waal, who also spent considerable time with the Chechen
fighters during this period, similarly stated:
Proclaiming independence from Moscow in 1991, Chechnya’s first rebel
president, Jokhar Dudayev, declared a secular state. Dudayev, a former
Soviet general, was so ignorant about Islam that he once famously ad-
vised his citizens that, as good Muslims, they should pray three—and not five [as Muslims are required]—times a day.
Dudayev’s cause was a nationalist one—freeing Chechnya, as he put
it, from “two hundred years of persecution” by the Russian state. For him, the key date in Chechen history was Stalin’s mass deportation of the
Chechen people to Central Asia in 1944. Dudayev frequently said he was
85
Williams - Chechnya.indb 85
7/15/2015 7:21:36 PM
i n f e r n o i n c h e c h n y a
ready to have close economic and political ties with Russia, so long as
“historical justice” was restored to his people.23
If there were any doubts about the secular origins of Dudayev’s
Chechen state, Lorenzo Vidino further stated:
The first Chechen War represented a quintessential nationalist conflict
where an Islamic dimension was almost nonexistent . . . Dudayev, the
undisputed leader of the first war, was a former Soviet general whose
knowledge of Islam was minimal. His aim was to build a state preserving
Chechnya’s social structure and Islamic identity within a rigidly secular state framed by a modern constitution with freedom of religion and the
preservation of rights for both Chechens and Russians.24
For all these reasons, James Hughes has written, “It was difficult to tar Dudayev with the brush of Islamic radicalism”; while Emma Gilligan has
written, “Dudayev’s ultimate aim was a constitutional secular state for
Chechnya.”25
But for all the fact that the new Chechen constitution made no re-
strictions based on ethnicity or religion and was “an almost entirely secular affair” with “no significant Islamic content,” it was clear to all that Chechnya was to be for Chechens, not Russians who had been settled in
the republic by the Russian and Soviet authorities.26 At this time, thousands of Russians who had played a key role in the republic’s oil industry emigrated voluntarily or were forced out from the breakaway republic.
This had a devastating effect on the oil industry. Unemployment, which
already had been high in the Soviet period, soared in Chechnya. The se-
cessionist republic was filled with young armed men who did not have
jobs, but were committed to the “Chechen revolution.” Criminality, espe-
cially counterfeiting, surged in the republic at this time.
For its part, Moscow kept the Chechen secessionists at arm’s length.
It was clear that Chechen President Dudayev wanted to meet personally
with Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin to discuss the issue of
Chechen independence, but Yeltsin refused to meet with him. In response
Dudayev sent a personal letter to Yeltsin in March 1993, which stated:
Dear Mr. President! I express my deep respects, I wish you health and
good fortune to you and your family, peace and prosperity to the people
86
Williams - Chechnya.indb 86
7/15/2015 7:21:36 PM
t h e f i r s t r u s s i a n - c h e c h e n w a r of the Russian state. I appeal to you in the name of all the Chechen people on a question that has fateful significance for mutual relations between our two states. I appeal to you to discuss the question of the recognition by the Russian Federation of the sovereign Chechen Republic. Resolution
of this question would remove all barriers in the path to overcoming
the many problems in the mutual relations of our states. The Russian
Federation would acquire in the Chechen Republic a reliable partner and
a guarantee of political stability in the entire Caucasus.27
By this time (1993), however, an opposition to Dudayev had grown in
Chechnya, and Yeltsin was loath to further legitimize the seemingly ec-
centric Dudayev in his quixotic quest for independence from the Russian
Federation. For this reason, Russian scholar Tishkov reports, “Through-
out the crisis not a single top [Russian Federation] government leader
contacted President Dudayev directly to listen to his position and pro-
pose a way of solving the conflict.”28
It was at this time that the idea of invading the secessionist statelet
in a so-called “Small Victorious War,” similar to President Bill Clinton’s September 1994 intervention in Haiti which had led to the overthrow of
that country’s president, Raoul Cedras, began to be seriously discussed in Moscow. President Yeltsin had already tried once to overthrow Dudayev
with a relatively small unit of Interior Ministry troops, but this attempt had failed when Dudayev’s own fighters surrounded Yeltsin’s troops and
forced them to withdraw in humiliation.
In October 1994, Moscow sent troops to support Chechen opposition
forces who were trying to overthrow the increasingly eccentric and au-
thoritarian Dudayev, but this attempt also had failed. In an embarrass-
ment for Yeltsin, as many as seventy Russian troops were captured in
the failed operation and paraded before cameras by a defiant Dudayev
before being released.
There were fears at this time that Chechnya might be the first dom-
ino to fall in a parade of secessions of small ethnic republics in the north Caucasus, but these fears were overblown, and no other ethnic republic in the Russian Federation appeared willing to confront Moscow. But
this perception, and the increasing anarchy in Chechnya, which was still considered by Yeltsin to be a part of the Russian Federation, led to the 87
Williams - Chechnya.indb 87
7/15/2015 7:21:36 PM
i n f e r n o i n c h e c h n y a
fateful decision to invade Chechnya and overthrow its secessionist gov-
ernment. As the war clouds appeared on the horizon, a concerned Duda-
yev told the Kremlin that “if only Yeltsin calls” he would make terms. But by then the Russians let it be known that it was “too late,” war had been decided upon.29
The Siege of Grozny
On November 29, 1994, Yeltsin ordered the Russian Federal army to “re-
store constitutional order” in Chechnya, and on December 1, Russian
Federation bombers began bombarding targets across Chechnya. It was
to be Moscow’s largest military operation since Afghanistan, and thou-
sands would die in the bombings that destroyed villages and neighbor-
hoods in Grozny. The transcontinental Russian Federation was at war
with Vermont-sized Chechnya in what was expected to be a short war
that would boost Yeltsin’s ratings in Russia.
Dudayev and his small “National Guard” of several thousand followers
were seen as an unworthy opponent of the mighty Russian Federation.
The Russian General Staff seem to have entertained the notion that they
could launch a bombing blitz, then march into Grozny and quickly restore order. In the process, they would overthrow the rebellious Dudayev government, much as the Soviets had previously done in Budapest, Hungary,
in 1956 and Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1968. The Russian military, including Interior Ministry troops, numbered some 2.4 million, while the entire ethnic Chechen population in Chechnya came to just 900,000.30 The
general tasked with overthrowing the Chechen president and his regime,
Pavel Grachev, famously stated he could carry out the operation in “a
bloodless blitzkrieg that would not last any longer than December 20th.”31
It was now time to brutally put an end to the Chechens’ quixotic re-
bellion. On December 11 the Russian Federal troops launched a three-
pronged invasion of the Chechen Republic. But one of the columns was
momentarily stopped by civilians blocking the road in the neighboring
republic of Ingushetia, and the commander of the main column resigned
in disgust at being told to shoot civilians. Another Russian column was
also blocked as it tried to invade from the Russian republic of Dagestan to the east.
88
Williams - Chechnya.indb 88
7/15/2015 7:21:36 PM
t h e f i r s t r u s s i a n - c h e c h e n w a r Morale remained low among the Russian conscripts, who made up the
bulk of soldiers invading the breakaway republic. As the Russians pro-
ceeded across the open plains of the north, one account stated: “Russian commanders seemed to have been unwilling to directly attack Chechen
positions, probably in the reckoning that, man for man, the Chechens
would be able to defeat the conscript forces which made up the bulk
of the Russian armed forces. Instead they relied on artillery and air
bombardment.”32
But clumsy Russian bombardments caused civilian casualties and
drove thousands of Chechens to create their own ad hoc citizen defense
militias to fight the invaders. One account of this informal process de-
scribed the mobilization of village defense units as follows: “When the
war began the lads in our village got together. ‘What shall we do?’ We
decided to fight. ‘Who will be our commander?’ We agreed, ‘He’ll do it.’
And off we went.”33
While Dudayev was not uniformly popular, the senseless killing of
Chechens by invading Russian Federal forces drove many villagers to
support his rebellion. For example, Chechen militiamen repelled Rus-
sian forces in the village of Dolinskoye and caused considerable losses
for the enemy, who seem to have expected that a show of force might
cause the defenders to lose heart. This area was not, however, a strong-
hold of support for Dudayev.
But the larger Russian force of roughly forty thousand troops nonethe-
