Much of Chechnya’s history is based on its location. It is located in the Caucasus region, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.

This region is mostly mountainous and has been difficult to pass for centuries. Like most mountainous areas, this isolation led to lots of different ethnic groups.

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The Caucasus region can be divided into a north and southern area.

The northern area, closer to Russia, is very fragmented with various cultural, religious pockets. The northern region includes Chechnya, Ossetia, and Dagestan and is mostly Muslim.

The southern region, closer to Persia, is much more stable and has been easier for large outside forces to control. Southern region includes, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and is mostly Christian, but with large Muslim populations.

Azerbaijan is an exception and is mostly Shiite Muslim.

Even though they have a history of conflict going back almost 300 years, Chechens and Russians are ethnically different. They share a culture and language similar to Dagestan, Armenia, and Ingushetia, which are closer to Persian than Russian.

In the early 1700’s the Russian Empire began to expand its political military influence. It started by conquering land from the Persian Safavid Empire.

Like Afghanistan, another mountainous region, the Caucasus were difficult to conquer. The Russians would spend the next 200 years trying to fully subdue this area but never fully succeeding except by brute force.

The did conquer the area but would do so at the cost of lots of lives both military and civilian. These mountain people would just keep fighting.

There are really three Caucasian ethnic groups in this story: Chechen, Ingush, and Dagestan.

Islam began to enter these areas when the Muslims conquered the southern Caucasus region during Uthman’s Caliphate. Over the next 200 years, Islam spread slowly through the different mountainous areas in the north.

For the most part, these regions remained primarily Christian and pagan with small Muslim communities. Islam did not become the majority religion in the northern regions until the Russians started invading.

Islam was attractive as it was seen by the local people as a tool to resist Russian occupation. Mostly Sufi Muslim sheikhs used Islam to unite the various tribes and regions in their fight against Russia.

There wasn’t homogeneous form of Islam over the entire region, but for the most part, it was Sunni Islam, and most Sufiism.

Sufiism is a mystical interpretation of Islam. This means that almost anything in Islam has a deeper, sometimes hidden meaning. This mystical interpretation can vary and has many different levels.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Salafism, which is more of a literal interpretation. A derogatory term for Salafism is Wahhabism.

When taken to the extreme, both have their faults.

Sufiism to the extreme doesn’t really resemble Islam and everything is up for interpretation.

Salafism to the extreme is very inflexible and turns Islam into something very unattractive and primitive.

This culminated in a Caucasian Imamate in the mid 1800’s that fought against the Russian Empire until 1859 when it finally surrendered.

This shows that:

1. Islam was not brought to this region by force; in fact, the southern regions that were conquered by Muslims remain mostly Christian to this day
2. Islam spread in the northern Caucasus mostly through preaching and against a Christian nation that was trying to forcefully conquer them.
3. Contrary to popular opinion, the Chechens did not just begin fighting against the Russians recently; they’ve been fighting for centuries.

Before the Russian invasions into the Caucasus, there wasn’t any unified Chechen nation. But the different Caucasus peoples did unite in their struggle against the Russians.

The Russians maintained nominal control over this region until 1917. Russia fared badly in World War I and the Czar was overthrown by the Bolsheviks. Czar comes from the word Caesar and basically means Emperor.

The ruling Russian dynasty was replaced by a Communist government and for a while there was a civil war and confusion in Russia.

The Russian Caucasus states of Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan used this conflict to break away from Russia and declared its independence. They formed an independent federation called the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus.

Three years later, the conflict in Russia ended, the communist Soviet state was established, and they attacked the Caucasus Republic. The independent state was defeated and forced back under Moscow’s authority.

But the people of the Caucasus continued resisting Soviet rule. They waged an insurgency, mostly fighting from the mountains, for another twenty years. The fighting didn’t cease until after World War II and Joseph Stalin was the leader of Russia.

In 1944 Stalin had 60% of the Chechen population deported and moved to the cold, barren steppes of Kazakhstan. At that time, Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet Union also.

Hundreds of thousands of people were loaded into train cars, with only the possessions they could carry, and shipped over a thousand miles. From that point on, the Chechens had an innate hatred for the Russians.

The Chechens remained in exile for over ten years. During this period, Stalin moved ethnic Russian settlers into these empty Chechen regions.

After Stalin died, the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev ended the exile and allowed the Chechens to return to their homes. But of course, now they found their farms and houses and businesses occupied by Russians and there was mostly no way to get them back.

In addition to having to start over, the Chechens also faced institutionalized discrimination as they were now a minority in their own lands. Chechens were not allowed to speak their language in public and had to conform to Russian culture and norms.

The Chechen population did not become a majority again until the 1980’s.

In 1991 the Soviet Union broke apart. Brief history of the Soviet Union, also known as the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

• The word Soviet means “council” and comes from a Slavic word meaning “to advise” and is related to the English word “wise.”
• Before the Soviet Union it was the Russian Empire.
• The last Emperor of Russia was Nicholas II. He was a brutal dictator and an incompetent leader.
• Russia lost to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. This was surprising since Japan was so much smaller and Russia had always been a strong European power.
• Nicholas lost further approval when Russia entered World War I and lost millions of lives and large amounts of territory to the Germans.
• Also, the Russian people were living in near famine which led to massive riots.
• Nicholas was overthrown by the rebellion and he and his family were eventually killed.
• The Bolsheviks, i.e. communists, overthrew the provisional government that overthrew the Nicholas II.
• During this time, the Bolsheviks established political organizations called “Worker’s Councils” or “Soviets” in the non-Russian parts of the former Empire.
• Civil war broke out between the Red Army (Bolsheviks) and the White Army (various groups who did not agree with the Bolsheviks).
• The Red Army won and established the Soviet Union which brought together Russia and several Soviet states into one government entity.
• In 1985 the Soviet Union was mired in war in Afghanistan and Mikhail Gorbachev was the new General Secretary.
• The Soviet economy was suffering from the war and trying to keep up with America. To fix this, Gorbachev began instituting political and social reforms.
• These reforms led different Soviet states to begin pushing for independence. By 1989, most of the Soviet republics had demonstrations, elections, and petitions demanding independence from the Soviet Union.
• In 1990 Gorbachev allowed these Soviet states to hold elections to choose their own officials. They were still part of the USSR, but for the first time, they could choose their own leaders.
• Russia was one of these Soviet states and Boris Yeltsin, a former protégé of Gorbachev, was elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet, the governing body of Russia. This position would eventually morph into the President of the Russian Federation.
• Gorbachev did not want to break up the Soviet Union; just wanted to enact reform. He tried to propose a new government structure that would keep the Soviet states as one federation, but with much more local control.
• In August 1991, several of Gorbachev’s opponents held a coup, and placed him under house arrest. But it only lasted three days.
• When Gorbachev was released, he dissolved the Central Committee governing the Soviet Union and resigned as the General Secretary. This began the final dissolution of the USSR.
• From August to December 1991, ten Soviet states declared independence.
• Yeltsin was effectively in control of Russia which also withdrew from the Soviet Union.

In October 1991, Chechnya joined the fray and also declared independence. Former Russian Soviet general and Chechen politician Dzhokhar Dudayev became its first President. This was called the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

Unlike the other former Soviet republics, Russian president Boris Yeltsin refused to recognize Chechnya’s independence. Chechnya was too valuable strategically for Russia to just let it go.

But at the time, Yeltsin and Russia were too weak with the fall of the Soviet Union to do anything about it. So for the next three years, Chechnya operated independently.

Dudayev was not a very good leader and allowed Chechnya to descend into chaos. He wanted to turn Chechnya into a global arms dealer but all this did was attract a rampant criminal culture. Chechnya’s economy also suffered as prices soared along with unemployment.

By 1994, Russia had stabilized and Chechnya was very unstable. Boris Yeltsin used this as an opportunity to reassert Russian control over the Caucasus.

In October 1994 Yeltsin sent Russian special forces to back Chechen opposition fighters to overthrow Dudayev. However, the coup failed and several Russian soldiers were captured and paraded on national television.

This was a huge embarrassment for Boris Yeltsin and Russia who decided to go all in and fully invade Chechnya.

In December 1994 Russia began launching airstrikes against Chechnya.

He also sent three military columns to invade the Chechen capital of Grozny. However, only one Russian actually made it to the capital. The Russians had poor intelligence and poor maps of the area. They also underestimated the Chechen people’s dislike of foreign invaders.

Russia thought it would be a quick overthrow, but instead they were now mired in a vicious battle against an entire nation.

Remember, over the years, thousands of ethnic Russians had settled and moved into Chechnya. The Russians killed just as many of their own people as they did the Chechens in this campaign.

This was the beginning of the First Chechen War.

On New Year’s Eve 1994, Russia sent in even more troops and tanks to support the first wave of attacks. Most of these soldiers were young conscripts hastily trained and rushed into the frontlines.

Furthermore, Chechnya had operated for almost three years as a half-cocked global arms dealer. Advanced weaponry was freely available to the common man.

Even though Chechen President was a horrible leader and most of his people hated him, they hated Russia even more. So Russia was not just fighting against the Chechen military; they were fighting against the Chechen people.

The Russian tank assault failed badly. The Chechens, firing from apartment buildings and hidden alleys, ripped them apart with anti-tank weapons and armor piercing bullets.

The Russian tanks would come rumbling through the city streets and then get immediately paralyzed by anti-tank shells.

The Russian soldiers had two choices: get out of the tank and fight in the open, or stay inside and burn to death.

Many did get out and fight, but when they did that, Chechen snipers would pick them off. Many soldiers wound up burning alive in their tanks without ever firing a shot.

The entire Russian tank brigade was wiped out. It was another huge embarrassment for Boris Yeltsin and the Russian government.

Boris Yeltsin now decided to change tactics. At first, the impression Russia put to the world was that they just wanted to remove Dudayev and reinstate Russian authority. They promised to limit civilian casualties.

But after these first few embarrassments, Russia began doing things the old-fashioned way: Genocide.

Over the next several weeks Russia poured over 15000 artillery rounds into the Chechen capital of Grozny. There was no more trying to avoid civilian deaths; their plan was to flatten everything in Grozny and then send in their troops to wipe out whatever remained.

And that’s what happened.

Over the next five weeks, 35000 Chechen civilians were killed as Russia moved in. The Russians would flatten a couple of blocks using artillery and aerial bombardment. Then Russian would advance and engage Chechen fighters in brutal urban warfare.

As the Russian arm began to occupy Grozny, the Chechen fighters moved into the mountains. These were the same mountains their ancestors had fought the Russians Empire’s invasion 250 years earlier.

Just like the Russians had learned from their mistakes, the Chechens did also. They knew they couldn’t take on the Russian military in head to head combat, so they began using guerrilla tactics.

As the Russian military followed them into the mountains, the Chechens staged ambushes and hit and run attacks. The Russian assault on Grozny had also hardened the Chechens who adopted a take no prisoner mentality.

When they disabled a Russian convoy and the Russians surrendered, the Chechens would usually kill them on the spot. In 1995, handheld video cameras were widely available and these Chechen assaults found their way to VCR’s and television screens all over the Muslim world.

And this is when the resistance began to take on a more religious meaning. Donations and financial support began to pour into Chechnya from Muslims around the world and even some Muslim governments, like Saudi Arabia.

About 5000 Arabs and other non-Chechen Muslims traveled to Chechnya to partake in the fighting. For the most part, the fighting was mostly done by ethnic Chechens.

But despite all this, the Chechens were beginning to be overwhelmed. The Russian military had occupied all the major cities and almost 60% of the entire nation.

The Chechen fighters began to resort to more unconventional means. On June 14, 1995, Chechen militant leader Shamil Basayev led an invasion of a nearby Russian city called Budyonnovsk.

After some fighting, the Chechens eventually garrisoned themselves inside a hospital taking everyone inside hostage. Shamil then delivered an ultimatum demanding the Russian government start peace talks.

In one interview during the hostage crisis, Shamil is recorded saying: “We won’t hurt the women and children; we aren’t maniacs. If our demands aren’t met, I’ll leave that up to the glorious Russian army.”

There were about 2000 hostages in the hospital including 150 pregnant women and new mothers in the maternity ward. Shamil’s group knew that if the Russians attacked, they would inevitably harm some civilians.

And three days later, the Russians did attempt a rescue. And it ended badly.

Russian state police, National Guard, and special forces stormed the hospital and got stuck in a drawn out battle with the Chechens. Several hostages were killed in the fighting before the Russians called off the attack.

During negotiations, the Shamil’s group released about 220 hostages.

A few hours later, the Russians attacked again, and again failed to break the siege. They tried a third time and failed once again. Each time the Russians attacked, more hostages were killed.

By June 18, the hospital was in flames and at least 140 hostages had been killed. The Russian public was up in arms at the failure of the government to work something out and avoid so many deaths.

Finally, the Russian government agreed to a temporary ceasefire and peace negotiations. As part of the agreement, Shamil and his group were allowed to return to Chechnya.

The ceasefire did not last long, but it did save the Chechens from certain defeat. Before the hospital hostage crisis, the Chechen resistance was on its last legs. They had lost most of their territory to the Russians.

But with the temporary peace, they were able to regroup and prepare for the next round. The Chechen President Dudayev hailed this as a victory, but he only had a short time to celebrate. On April 21, 1996 a Russian laser-guided missile locked onto Dudayev’s satellite phone signal and killed him.

Even though Dudayev was gone, the fighting continued. But now the Chechens had used the lull to restock and reorganize and launched several successful attacks against the Russians.

In July 1996 the Russians walked away from the negotiating table and resumed all-out war in Chechnya. They began a large-scale operation to quell resistance in the southern regions of Chechnya. To do so, they had to pull forces out of the capital Grozny which the Russians had conquered a year earlier.

In August 1996, the Chechens launched a major attack against the Russian military stationed in Grozny.

Even though the Russians had moved shifted lot of soldiers out of Grozny to the fight in southern Chechnya, they still had over 12000 troops inside the city.

Meanwhile the Chechens were invading with only 1500 soldiers.

The Chechens were heavily outmanned, but they knew the city very well and were able to use that to their knowledge.

The Chechen soldiers quietly infiltrated the city, avoiding Russian checkpoints, and began placing bombs and booby traps in strategic locations. Their goal was not to fight the Russians head-on; instead they wanted to separate them into various small isolated groups.

The Chechens would place bombs near entrances to Russian barracks or police stations and mines on roads leading into the city. This would prevent the soldiers inside from escaping and any outside help from coming in.

Then they would begin firing on the Russians until they were all killed or surrendered. Within a few hours, the Russians were literally trapped inside of Grozny. And with the Russian forces pinned down, thousands of Chechen fighters joined the battle bringing their numbers closer to 7000.

This siege continued for about a week. During this time, the Russian military did attempt to break the Chechen blockade several times. But each they were repulsed or destroyed.

Finally, the Russians resorted to shelling Grozny. This only resulted in destroying even more of the city and killing hundreds of civilians.

Boris Yeltsin was under intense pressure to bring this conflict to an end. Russian casualties kept mounting and it was getting to be very embarrassing for Russia. Russian public opinion was solidly against the war in Chechnya.

With Grozny blocked off from the outside world, and the public against the war, Russian agreed to reenter peace talks with the Chechens.

Less than a month after the Chechens attacked Grozny, Russian general Alexander Lebed signed peace treaties with the Chechen separatist leaders. The Russians agreed to withdraw all of their forces from Chechen territory.

This marked the end of the First Chechen War.

Chechnya was now a semi-autonomous state within the Russian Federation. Neither Russia nor any other country recognized them as an independent nation. But at the same time, Russia did not exert any political control over it.

Unfortunately, just like when Russia pulled out of Afghanistan in the 80’s, Chechnya descended into chaos.

After two years of devastating warfare, Chechnya was in shambles. Thousands of people had been killed and many more were living as refugees. There was no central government over the land. The economy, infrastructure, and society as a whole was nearly destroyed.

The Chechen soldiers did not lay down their guns. The militias who had worked together to fight against the Russians now turned on each other. Each group scrambled to claim their own piece of territory.

New divisions began to grow between the formerly united militias. Their success against Russia attracted foreign fighters and money from the Middle East.

With these newcomers came a more strict, Salafi brand of Islam. As mentioned before, the Islam practiced in Chechnya was Sufiism and much more mystical.

But that was replaced with the more rigid interpretation of Islam.

This would ultimately lead to the Second Chechen War.