A Self-fulfilling Prophecy: The Seeds of Islamic Radicalisation in Chechnya

Abstract

The Russian invasion was extremely cruel under the famous Russian General Ermolov, who destroyed village after village, massacred, expelled and tortured the population. His campaign of terror in fact fuelled the Chechens' hatred of the Russians, as well as their desire for freedom and their willingness to fight and die for it. The Russian invasion had completely disrupted the traditional way of life. The people were about to lose their independence as well as their identity to the Russian anti-Islamic policies. Moral decadence increased under influence of Russian habits. The ruling house of native Dagestani princes had compromised itself in the eyes of the population by choosing to hold on to their titles in return for their allegiance to the Russians. In short, the beginning of the 19th century in the North Caucasus was marked by social and political turmoil, which constituted a fertile ground for the ideas of the Naqshbandiya. The Naqshbandiya rose up again in the 1820s under Sheikh Efendi, which marked the start of the famous 'Caucasian wars' that would last until 1856. (Hertog, 2001, p. 29) With some changes to names and dates, this description of an episode of almost two centuries ago would be wholly applicable to the situation in Chechnya just before and during the first Russian invasion in 1994. The atrocities committed by the Russian army during the war are widely known by now and have been regularly condemned by human rights organisations: villages were levelled to the ground, people burned alive in their own houses, the inhabitants executed after surrender, hospitals attacked despite a white flag displayed, market-places bombed with fragmentation bombs and nail bombs, the now notorious filtration camps were set up in order to 'filter' fighters from ordinary people. The further away the expected easy, quick victory seemed, the more determined the Russian forces became not just to win the war, but also to break the entire Chechen population, which was sustaining its fighters with bases, food and support, through terror. The losses and horrors of the war radicalised the Chechen national identity, alienated the Chechen people even more from the Russians and strengthened their determination to resist. The radicalisation of Islam that took place