{"id":6904,"date":"2010-12-13T14:22:20","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T11:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/?p=6904"},"modified":"2019-08-11T14:28:07","modified_gmt":"2019-08-11T11:28:07","slug":"the-chechen-struggle-independence-won-and-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/2010\/12\/the-chechen-struggle-independence-won-and-lost\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chechen Struggle: Independence Won and Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>The Chechen Struggle: Independence Won and Lost<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Writer:<\/strong> Miriam Lanskoy, Ilyas Akhmadov, Zbigniew K. Brzezinski<br \/>\n<strong>Publisher:<\/strong> Palgrave Macmillan (November 15, 2010)<br \/>\n<strong>ISBN-10:<\/strong> 0230105343<br \/>\n<strong>ISBN-13:<\/strong> 978-0230105348<br \/>\n288 pages<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Russian-Chechen war has been the longest, cruelest, and bloodiest  conflict in Europe since World War II, surpassing even the level of  destruction of Bosnia and Kosovo. Told from the perspective of its  former Foreign Minister, this uniquely candid account of Chechnya&#8217;s  struggle for independence and its two wars against Russia will revise  our understanding of the conflict and explain how it continues. Ilyas  Akhmadov delivers a comprehensive history including new details about  the start of the first war against Russia, the crises within Chechen  society, the splintering and radicalization of the Chechen leadership,  the incursions into Dagestan, and his own efforts to bring about peace.  Akhmadov provides intimate portraits of key personalities including  General Dzhokhar Dudayev Chechnya&#8217;s first charismatic president; Shamil  Basayev who was transformed from a talented rebel fighter into radical  who was responsible for many terrorist attacks including the hostage  takings in the theater Nord Ost and the school in Beslan; and the tragic  personality of Aslan Maskhadov, the principled president who tried to  maintain unity and coherence despite enormous difficulties.  The book  shows the impossible dilemma of the moderate nationalists in post-Soviet  societies, who are challenged by radical Islamic ideology, social  deprivations, Russian aggression, and international neglect.  By giving  voice to the moderates, the book seeks to shift the balance in their  favor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>About the Authors<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">ILYAS AKHMADOV was the Foreign Minister of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria during the second war with Russia where he represented the legitimately elected government of Aslan Maskhadov. He authored a peace plan, launched a negotiations process, and sought to bring attention to the tragic fate of his nation through a variety of international forums. His work has appeared in The Washington Post and in The Boston Globe.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">MIRIAM LANSKOY works at the National Endowment for Democracy on programs in Eurasia.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">ZBIGNIEW K. BRZEZINSKI served as National Security Advisor to the President of the United States from 1977-81. He is a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a professor of American foreign policy at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced.<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?lt1=_blank&#038;bc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;fc1=000000&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;t=waon-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;m=amazon&#038;f=ifr&#038;md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&#038;asins=0230105343\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Chronicle Of a Lost Cause <\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Autocratic rule, dreaded security forces, benefactors in the Kremlin: so much for the dream of Chechnya as an independent, democratic state.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The center of Grozny is intersected by grand,  tree-lined boulevards  and anchored by an exquisite mosque. In June, I sat at a new caf\u00e9 on  Prospect Putin, sipping a cappuccino. It was not an unusual way to pass  an afternoon in a European capital\u2014Grozny is the capital of [<em>the Russian  republic&#8211;<strong>Waynakh Online:<\/strong> Grozny is the capital of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria<\/em>] Chechnya\u2014except that the scene had the eerie serenity of a  Hollywood back lot: People with lost, vacant eyes shuffled along under  the shadow of freshly painted apartment blocks empty of life or noise.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A decade ago, Grozny was largely a mound of  rubble. It had been the  site of two vicious wars as  Russia  countered a Chechen <em>separatist movement<\/em><em> <\/em>[<em><\/em><strong>Waynakh Online:<\/strong> <em>There is no seperatist, because of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is an independent state according to the international law rules<\/em>]\u00a0 after the fall of the Soviet Union. The conflicts left   Chechnya&#8217;s infrastructure in ruins and much of its  population dead or  in refugee camps. Rebuilding began under Akhmat Kadyrov\u2014the mufti, or  religious leader, of the Chechen rebels before he switched sides to   support the  Russians\u2014who was installed by Moscow as Chechnya&#8217;s  [<em>puppet<\/em>] president in 2003. He was killed by a bomb a year later; his son,  Ramzan, now 34 years old, has been [<em>puppet<\/em>] president since 2007. Under the  younger  Kadyrov&#8217;s  autocratic rule, Chechnya has  regained at least a  fa\u00e7ade of security and economic growth.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6906\" src=\"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/chechenstruggle.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"262\" height=\"394\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/chechenstruggle.jpg 262w, https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/chechenstruggle-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 262px) 100vw, 262px\" \/>The republic&#8217;s  embattled post- Soviet history is the subject of &#8220;The  Chechen Struggle,&#8221; a bleak chronicle of, as the subtitle has it,   &#8220;independence won and lost.&#8221; The  author is Ilyas Akhmadov, a former  Chechen <em>separatist<\/em> who was a  government minister during Chechnya&#8217;s  short-lived  autonomy from Moscow. His book,  written with Miriam  Lanskoy, is an  on- the-ground account of how Russia&#8217;s indiscriminate  violence and infighting within the rebel movement destroyed any hope for  a negotiated end to the long-simmering conflict.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It is a bitter irony for Mr. Akhmadov that Chechnya today has managed  partly to divorce itself from Russia, though not in the way that the  separatists once  envisioned. [Puppet] President Kadyrov, guided by his own   garbled vision of Chechen tradition and Islamic code, has turned the  republic into his personal fiefdom. In an attempt to outflank the  region&#8217;s growing Islamic  militancy and to present himself as a  protector of  religious observance, Kadyrov has introduced an   Islamic tinge to his governance. He has demanded, for example, that  women wear headscarves in government buildings and has instituted  periodic bans on alcohol. He has allowed many aspects of family law to  be  decided by shariah, or Islamic law.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">An unofficial amnesty policy has brought into the Chechen security forces thousands of former rebels, known as the <em>kadyrovsty<\/em>,  who are loyal not to the Kremlin but to Kadyrov. Perhaps even more   worrying for Moscow, Kadyrov runs his own  foreign policy. He  visits Persian Gulf countries with all the fanfare of a head of state,  and his regime has been linked to assassinations in Austria, Dubai and  Turkey.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Yet in the ways that matter most to  the Kremlin, the republic remains very much within Moscow&#8217;s orbit:  <em>Chechnya is still part of the Russian Federation<\/em> [<strong>Waynakh Online:<\/strong> <em>Chechnya is still under military occupation of Russian Federation<\/em>], and Kadyrov\u2014who  maintains a stranglehold on Chechen  politics\u2014is loyal to his  benefactor, Russian Prime  Minister Vladimir Putin, who has steered  billions of  rubles in reconstruction funds to the republic. Mr. Putin  and Dmitry Medvedev, Russia&#8217;s president, tolerate Kadyrov&#8217;s excesses  because they fear the Islamist  fighters who oppose him and the power  vacuum if Kadyrov were to fall.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For Mr. Akhmadov, who lives in the U.S. as a  political refugee,  Chechnya&#8217;s post-Soviet history is an especially personal tragedy. He was  a sergeant major in the  Soviet army but then took up arms during the  First Russian-Chechen War in 1994. When a ceasefire ended fighting two years  later, Mr. Akhmadov became a close adviser to <em>separatist<\/em> leader Aslan  Maskhadov, who was elected Chechen  president. However  unrealistically\u2014given Russia&#8217;s  willingness to use extreme violence and  its determination to retain a hold over the republic\u2014Mr. Akhmadov  dreamed of  Chechnya&#8217;s national self-determination.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Hostilities flared anew in 1999, this time with a Chechen resistance  that had become infused with  radical Islamism. Still, Mr. Akhmadov  clung to the hope that the United Nations would recognize the legitimacy  of the Chechen bid for independence and send help. As the government&#8217;s  foreign minister from 1999 to 2005 (he fled abroad in 1999), he met with  representatives from the European Parliament and the U.S. State   Department, most of whom offered little hope of Chechnya&#8217;s rescue.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Then came the news in 2004 of the grotesque terror operation\u2014directed  by Shamil Basayev, Mr.  Akhmadov&#8217;s onetime mentor\u2014against an elementary  school in Beslan, Russia, that left more than 300 dead. The &#8220;deliberate  killing of children,&#8221; Mr. Akhmadov says, was &#8220;evil beyond any moral  code.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">After Beslan, he writes, &#8220;the Chechen  cause lost all of its supporters overnight.&#8221; The insurgency has  continued, but it has replaced the goal of Chechen national   independence with the creation of an Islamic &#8220;emirate&#8221; in the Caucasus.  Mr. Akhmadov feels disgusted by both  Ramzan Kadyrov&#8217;s rule and the  jihadists who hijacked the independence movement. He nurses a vision of  the Chechen people one day resurrecting the idea that  animated their  initial revolt in 1994: the establishment of Chechnya as a secular,  democratic state.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He may have a long wait. When I was in Grozny a few months ago, I  didn&#8217;t meet a single person with any  interest in fighting for  independence. Instead,  Chechens seemed preoccupied with keeping their  sons alive and safe from abuse at the hands of the  [<em>puppet<\/em>] president&#8217;s   kadyrovsty.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">13.12.2010 &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704594804575649232062957078.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Joshua Yaffa<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>*Mr. Yaffa, an associate editor at Foreign Affairs, traveled to Chechnya this summer with researchers from Human Rights Watch. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Chechen Struggle: Independence Won and Lost Writer: Miriam Lanskoy, Ilyas Akhmadov, Zbigniew K. Brzezinski Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (November 15, 2010) ISBN-10: 0230105343 ISBN-13: 978-0230105348 288 pages<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookshelf"],"views":2890,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6904"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12255,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6904\/revisions\/12255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}