Rajan Menon: Russia's Hot Spot in the North Caucasus
[Rajan Menon is a professor of international relations at Lehigh University.]
The suicide bombings of two Moscow subway stations that killed 39 people Monday appear to have emanated from a place that few people could find on a map: Russia's North Caucasus region, a sliver of land wedged between the Black and Caspian seas that is home to 7 million people.
Russian czars annexed the North Caucasus in the latter part of the 19th century after wars that lasted several decades, but the people in the region were reluctant Russians. No sooner did the Soviet colossus start wobbling than the region, particularly the breakaway republic of Chechnya, descended into chaos.
The results have been gruesome. Russia has fought two full-scale wars to retain control of Chechnya (from 1994 to 1996 and from 2000 to 2009), though Moscow has tried to cast its role as fighting terrorism. In 2009, Russia proclaimed victory by declaring an end to its "counter-terrorism operations" in Chechnya and turned over full control to the republic's president since 2007, Ramzan Kadyrov, who has ruled with an iron fist and has tried to use economic reconstruction to weaken the insurgents. The results have been mixed at best.
Violence continues to rock Chechnya, and the perpetrators have grown increasingly militant in their fundamentalism, fighting not just for independence from Russia but also to establish an Islamist state based on Sharia law in the North Caucasus, which also includes Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Adygea and Dagestan....
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The suicide bombings of two Moscow subway stations that killed 39 people Monday appear to have emanated from a place that few people could find on a map: Russia's North Caucasus region, a sliver of land wedged between the Black and Caspian seas that is home to 7 million people.
Russian czars annexed the North Caucasus in the latter part of the 19th century after wars that lasted several decades, but the people in the region were reluctant Russians. No sooner did the Soviet colossus start wobbling than the region, particularly the breakaway republic of Chechnya, descended into chaos.
The results have been gruesome. Russia has fought two full-scale wars to retain control of Chechnya (from 1994 to 1996 and from 2000 to 2009), though Moscow has tried to cast its role as fighting terrorism. In 2009, Russia proclaimed victory by declaring an end to its "counter-terrorism operations" in Chechnya and turned over full control to the republic's president since 2007, Ramzan Kadyrov, who has ruled with an iron fist and has tried to use economic reconstruction to weaken the insurgents. The results have been mixed at best.
Violence continues to rock Chechnya, and the perpetrators have grown increasingly militant in their fundamentalism, fighting not just for independence from Russia but also to establish an Islamist state based on Sharia law in the North Caucasus, which also includes Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Adygea and Dagestan....