Brian Glyn Williams, page 2
sword to the Chechens’ homeland in the late eighteenth century. It
was the Chechens’ bloody experience of “pacification” at the hands of
Russians—to use a nineteenth-century tsarist euphemism for ethnic
cleansing, scorched-earth campaigns, and a decades-long war of attri-
tion—that was to poison the relations between these two peoples. While
many nonexperts discovered the Chechens after 9/11 and see them only
in this context, one cannot claim to know the Chechens without first
being familiar with the tragic story of their conquest by Russia’s armies in the nineteenth century.
Prior to Russia’s imperial adventures in the lands of the Chechens and
neighboring tribes, this mountainous land on the distant fringes of Eu-
rope had been something of an unknown land for most in the West. West-
ern Christian civilization ended in the lowland shadows of this mighty
mountain barrier that separated Europe and the southern borders of the
empire of the Orthodox tsars from Asia and the Islamic lands of the Turks and Persians. Forming the highest mountain chain in Europe, the mighty
Caucasus range extends 650 miles from the shores of the Black Sea to the landlocked Caspian Sea, and its highest peaks are covered in snow year-round. This rugged rampart dwarfs the Alps in its scale, and its average height is over ten thousand feet.
The massive Caucasus chain has some of the most inaccessible moun-
tain valleys and highland pastures in the world and has served as a refuge 2
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for fleeing tribes and ethnic groups since the dawn of history. The hardy highlanders whose cliff-top auls (villages) clung tenaciously to the sides of the mountains lived in settlements built on the edges of sheer preci-pices and guarded by stone towers. In these impenetrable highlands, a
village could hold off an army as its warriors defended the narrow path
along a dizzying cliff.
In the misty depths of time, when the Indo-Europeans (the forebears
of the modern nations of Europe) first arrived in the region, they forced the ancient mountain people already living in the Caucasus lowlands to
flee deeper into the wooded valleys of the northern slopes. In the pro-
cess, the easily defended mountain peaks and impenetrable valleys of
the north Caucasus came to serve as a sanctuary for some of the oldest
races of Eurasia.
In the twentieth century, long after the older races had been pushed
into the mountains, modern anthropologists and linguists would find
traces of tribes that had disappeared from history long before the birth of Christ. The origins of some of these races extend back to the ancient peoples of pre–Old Testament Sumeria, Elam and Uratau.
The forest-clad mountains of the Caucasus are home to dozens of
ethnolinguistic groups and serve as a storehouse, preserving the ethnic
residue of all the passing waves of invaders who have swept through this region since the beginning of time. In some areas each village speaks
a different language that, like the pages of history, can be read back in time to provide a historical account of the various tribes of conquerors that ebbed across this tumultuous land. Similar to the rings on a tree, the layers of races in the north Caucasus tell us the history of the mountains.
The Dagestan region, which is located in the northeastern Caucasus to
the east of Chechnya, for example, is home to more than thirty different ethnic groups, most of whom speak unrelated languages. The confusing
array of languages left by previous invaders in the Caucasus led the me-
dieval Arab Muslim conquerors, who believed that fierce jinns (demons) lived in this cloud-covered realm, to name this rugged land the Jabal Alsuni (Mountain of Languages).
As history tells us, waves of horse-mounted Scythians, who drank
fermented horse milk and wine from their enemies’ skulls, Zoroastrian
Iranians bringing their ancient worship of fire, savage Huns on their
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way to ravage Rome, Arab warriors spreading their new Islamic faith,
Jewish horse-mounted Khazar nomads, world-conquering Mongol Ta-
tars, empire- building Ottoman Turks, Shiite Persians, and many others
lapped up against the mountain barrier of the Caucasus and left rem-
nants of their peoples amid the older races already ensconced in their
mountain valleys.
As a result, in the northern Caucasus today you find the half-pagan,
half-Christian Ossetians, who worship carved wooden poles in much the
same fashion as their distant ancestors, the Alans, who partook in the
great barbarian migrations that brought down the Roman Empire. You
also encounter the Cherkess, the pitiful remnants of the once-mighty
Circassians, who provided slave warriors and the most comely of women
for harems of the caliphs of medieval Baghdad. In the eastern plains of
the northern Caucasus you also find small pockets of Nogai Tatars, the
sheephearding descendents of Genghis Khan’s mighty nomadic Mongol
armies.
As one leaves the plains of the Nogai steppe and probes deeper into
the mountains, however, one finds ancient ethnic groups whose origins
are even older than these previously mentioned races. These include the
fierce Jewish highlander tribe known as the Tats, whose origin goes back to the original Old Testament dispersal of the Jews in the eighth century bc. You also find other groups who inhabit the bleak mountains of
Dagestan (a region whose name translates to “Land of the Mountains”),
such as the Dargins, Avars, Lezgins, Laks, Aguls, Rutuls, Tabassrans, and countless others, who fiercely defended their lands against outsiders
over the centuries.
Most of these ancient groups, who continued to fight with sabers,
shields, and medieval-style armor up until the late nineteenth century,
were unknown to the Western world, whose ethno-geographic hori-
zons ended in the more familiar lands of the Orthodox Russians and
Ukrainians.
Among the oldest and most powerful of the north Caucasian races
are a farming and cattle-breeding people known as the Vainakh, who
have inhabited the forested slopes of the northeastern Caucasus for
millennia. Made up of dozens of independent teips (clans) and known for their industriousness, refusal to submit to any authority, skill in the 4
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time-honored sport of cattle raiding, and love of freedom, the unruly
Vainakh were divided into two separate tribes by the Russians, who first began to encroach on their lands in the late 1700s. The Russian Cossacks, the “cowboys of Russia,” and later Russian imperial administrators called the western Vainakh the “Ingush.” Those Vainakh residing in the east,
near a village known as Chechen Aul, were called “Chechens.” Over time,
the two Vainakh tribes, who spoke mutually comprehensible languages,
internalized these ethnonyms and became distinct groups. Today the
Chechens and the much smaller Ingush people are recognized as sepa-
rate nations in spite of their close ethnolinguistic links.
When the Russians first shared their accounts of the mysterious
Chechen highlanders to the outside world, they spoke of a primordial
mountain people who were ruled over by a council of tribal elders known
as the Mehq-Qel (the Council of the Land). These wise elders were chosen by their clans ( teips) to represent their interests in community councils.
Councils of the people were called to mediate blood feuds, organize the
defense of the ka’am (the “nation,” or more precisely “people” in a pre-modern sense), and uphold the ancient traditions of the people, which
were based on a blend of ancient pagan customs and the later imposition
of Islamic law. Traditionally, the Chechens have given great respect to
their clan elders, and all Chechens direct their loyalty to their clan first and then to their tukhum (their larger tribal alliance).
Interestingly, there was no class of nobility among the egalitarian
Chechen people, and one observer noted:
The equality among the people of the Eastern Caucasus is clear-cut.
They all possess the same rights and enjoy the same social position.
The authority with which they invest their tribal chiefs grouped within
the framework of an elected council is limited in time and power . . .
Chechens are gay and witty. Russian officers nicknamed them the French
of the Caucasus.1
Islam, it should be mentioned, arrived late in the lands of the Chechen
and Ingush, and many of this people did not convert to the religion of
the Prophet Mohammed until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. Even then, Robert Schaefer writes, “Chechnya was not particu-
larly devout.”2 Prior to the advent of Islam, this people worshipped Yalta, 5
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the god of wild animals and patron of hunters; Seli, the god of fire; and myriad other supernatural denizens of the snow-covered alpine peaks
and forested slopes of the Caucasus. Among the woodland sprites wor-
shipped by the Chechens were ghostly forest creatures called almas, who lived in springs and rivers. Lesser gods included Khi-Nama, the “Mother
of Water”; Darsta Nama, the “Mother of Snowstorms”; and Moh Nama,
the “Mother of Winds.”
The Chechens and Ingush owe their submission to Allah to the neigh-
boring tribes of the northeastern Caucasus region known as Dagestan.
Dagestan, a foreboding mountainous tableland that separates the more
gentle slopes of Chechnya from the shores of the Caspian Sea, had been
conquered by the Arabs during their great period of Islamic expansion
in the eighth and ninth centuries. For this reason the people of Dage-
stan were familiar with the preaching of the Prophet Muhammad from
an early date. In Dagestan, mullahs (Islamic clerics) who spoke Arabic
and Persian delved into the scriptures of the holy Qur’an, the chant of
the muez zin (the prayer caller) drifted from the minarets across the
mountain valleys, and camel caravans brought the goods of the greater
Dar al-Islam (the Islamic Realm) to the villagers inhabiting their well-
fortified mountain auls.
Over the centuries, mystic Islamic holy men wandered from Dagestan
into the neighboring forestlands of the animistic Chechens and preached
their tolerant, frontier version of Islam, known as Sufi Islam. Many of
these Muslim mystics were purported to have worked miracles in order
to convert the pagan Chechens to Islam. The sites of these miraculous
events subsequently became places of pilgrimage, although some of
these sacred spots were clearly pre-Islamic holy places. The Chechens
converted to this mystical Sufi version of Islam, in part, because it allowed them to keep many of their ancient, pre-Islamic traditions.
Muslims from the Middle East who visited the vales of Chechnya in
the late nineteenth century found that Chechen women did not wear
the full veils worn by women living in Wahhabi-dominated Arabia. On
the contrary, the laws of the land were dominated by adat (ancient, pre-Islamic custom) more than shariah (Islamic law). In the Caucasus, mystical chants and dances known as zikirs were performed to assist the Chechens in attaining Allah’s grace and imitate the movement of the cosmos. In this 6
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frontier region, tolerance toward neighboring Christian or pagan peoples (such as the Orthodox Christian Cossacks or the animist Ingush, who did
not convert to Islam until the mid-nineteenth century) was widespread.
In other words, many of the austere facets of puritanical Wahhabi Islam
of the sort being spread by the Saud family in nineteenth-century Arabia were not found on this fluid mountain frontier between Islam, Christian-ity, and traditional native animism. It was only in response to the Russian conquest that an increasingly xenophobic form of warlike Islam spread
among the outnumbered warriors of this tolerant Sufi mountain people.
In addition to their adherence to an indigenous, mystical version of
Islam, the Chechens also were known for their fighting skills. In a land where blood feuds (known as kanli), raids, and clan warfare were a way of life, Chechen boys grew up mastering the deadly sharpshooter’s rifle, the wicked kinjal blade, and the hardy mountain steed. The swaggering Chechen highlander who arrived in the Russian lowlands for trade, with
his saber dangling from his side, rifle over his shoulder, breast pocket bandoleers brimming with bullets, and tall fur hat placed rakishly on the back of his head, was given a wide berth.
Not surprisingly, this people’s culture glorified feats of combat and
bravery. Highlander raiders known as abreks proved their manhood by engaging in dangerous raids on the neighboring people. While the Russians deplored the highlanders’ “evil deeds, raids and robbery,” the Chechens lionized famous abreks, who proved their daring by slipping past the enemy’s patrols and seizing booty. In his analysis of abreks in the Caucasus, Russian scholar Vladimir Bobrovnikov writes, “The main hero
of their culture—the so called abrek, i.e., professional bandit—was a figure who was praised for engaging in a profession that was seen as noble
and honorable, in the fashion of Robin Hood.”3
Another quality recognized among the Chechens was the supreme
importance they placed on providing hospitality. A visitor was consid-
ered family, and an injury done to a protected guest could lead to a blood feud. In many respects, the premium placed on hospitality by this warlike people, who at the same time prided themselves on their raids on their
neighbors, resembles the tradition of hospitality manifested by the Aryan Pashtun tribes of distant Afghanistan.4
Thus this proud, warlike, Sufi mountain people may have remained,
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living in relative isolation on the edges of Christian Europe, engaging in their timeless pursuits of raiding lowlanders and farming. But in the nineteenth century the “White tsars” living in far-off St. Petersburg, Russia, decided to include the Chechens’ homeland in their expanding empire
and “civilize” the region’s wild inhabitants. In so doing, the Russians were to plant the seeds for centuries of violence and begin a war that continues in various forms to this day.5
Contact Russia’s Initial Probes
The Russians first became involved in the Caucasus following their con-
quest of the last remnant of the once-mighty Mongol Tatars, the Black Sea state of the Crimean Khanate. After absorbing this troublesome raiding
state in 1783, the Russians moved eastward from the Crimean Peninsula
and into the plains north of the Caucasus.6 It was this inexorable progress, which was motivated largely by the urge to gain new lands and glory, that was to leave a bitter legacy between the Caucasian Muslim highlanders
and the modernizing Russian Empire.
After the fall of the Muslim bastion of the Crimean Khanate, the Rus-
sians began a series of advances into the Caucasus Mountains that culmi-
nated in their bold crossing of this range and annexation of the Christian land of Georgia on the southern flanks of the Caucasus. Soon thereafter, Russian settlers began to pour into the foothills of the northern Caucasus and to displace the region’s indigenous inhabitants. The first Caucasian people to flee the relentless advance of the Russians were the Nogai Tatars shepherds of the north Caucasian plains. Taking handfuls of soil from the graves of their ancestors, this Turkic Mongol herding people abandoned
their native steppes in Europe’s last great nomadic migration and settled in the sheltering lands of the Ottoman sultan.7
As the Russians probed deeper into the dark forests of the lower slopes
of the Caucasus Mountains known to the Chechens as the Bash Cam
(Melting Mountains), they clashed with fierce local tribes, who were
quick to react to Russia’s incursions. It was at this time that the Russians encountered ferocious resistance from the two largest tribal conglomera-tions inhabiting the north Caucasus flank, namely, the Circassians (in the west) and the Chechens (in the east).
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In the initial periods, Russian warfare with the Caucasus’s two great
raiding peoples took on an almost sportsmanlike quality. Tsarist officers in search of glory, such as the great Russian authors Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Lermontov, cut their teeth in clashes with their respected highlander adversaries. This conformed with the flamboyant highlanders’ traditional
form of warfare, which consisted of raids, daring skirmishes, personal
duels, and martial proofs of manhood that were recounted in the high-
landers’ colorful epics.
In many ways, the Chechen mountaineers’ ritualistic form of warfare
resembled the cattle raids of the ancient peoples of Europe, such as the Celts or their descendants the Scottish highlanders. The mountaineers’
