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THE "AFGHANIZATION" OF CHECHNYA_ 

CENTRAL ASIA-CAUCASUS ANALYST
Wednesday/February 28, 2001

THE "AFGHANIZATION" OF CHECHNYA
Svante E. Cornell

With the conflict in Chechnya as distant from a solution as ever, the risk of Chechnya developing into a zone of permanent instability is significant. In many ways, the developments there are reminiscent of what happened to Afghanistan during and after the Soviet invasion. The destruction of society's material and social fabric, the factionalization of the resistance, the increase of Islamic radicalism, are all characteristics common to the two cases. If history is of any guidance, this would indicate that Chechnya is likely to remain an area of significant concern for the foreseeable future.

BACKGROUND: Within several months, Chechnya will have reached the mark of a decade of conflict. Whether the conflict has taken a political shape, as in 1991-94 and 1996-99, or a violent one such as in 1994-96 and presently, it has put Chechen society under massive stress. The most apparent and observable consequence has been the total destruction of the means of economic livelihood in the Chechen republic. If the capital Grozny after the first war was described as a pile of rubble, it was still used as a capital city in the inter-war period; visitors to the city now agree this would be impossible - it is deemed more feasible to build a new city next to the remains of the old one. All forms of industry have been obliterated. In addition, the near totality of Chechnya's livestock has been killed, and it is questionable how much land is cultivable without major investment.

Less obvious to the outsider is the destruction of Chechnya's social fabric. With less than half of the republic's erstwhile population in the republic, the remainder either in exile or dead, the Chechens have for all practical purposes suffered a second deportation. Obviously, flight and exile have implied severe strain on social institutions such as the family and the clan - the teip. Large parts of the male population is either fighting, incarcerated or dead, and countless families have been split up or forced to flee their habitations. There being little chance of a lasting peace in the foreseeable future, an entire generation is presently growing up for which peace and stability are merely abstract concepts, if that.

At a political level, the somewhat functioning central Chechen authority that existed under Jokhar Dudayev's administration, and was later transferred to Aslan Maskhadov's, has disintegrated into armed formations with little or no acceptance of a single authority. Quest for power and ideology divide the different groups. This situation is reminiscent of what happened to Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s. The Soviet invasion, resistance to it and subsequent infighting among Mujahideen groups led to the killing of an unknown but significant proportion of Afghans, sending several million into forced exile, mainly in Iran and Pakistan. This created a situation where the fabric of Afghan traditional society, which had been the key factor providing stability in an unruly area among and between tribal groupings, disintegrated.

IMPLICATIONS: In Afghanistan, the breakdown of traditional society was instrumental in tearing down the intrinsic impediment against extremism that inherited family values and strong tribal codes had represented. The emergence of the Taliban movement and their peculiar and often largely uninformed interpretations of religion are to a certain extent a consequence of this. In Chechnya, similar tendencies can already be observed. Chechen traditional society, contrary to accepted wisdom, in fact forms a very poor breeding ground for religious radicalism.

While a deeply religious society, Islam in Chechnya has been mainly mystical in character, and customary, pre-Islamic law (adat) has historically had precedence over Sharia. The very strong codes of behavior of Chechen society, moreover, have formed a stabilizing factor. But protracted conflict and its consequences risk unraveling this, and in fact the recent advances of radical, Salafi Islam in the region can be interpreted as a consequence of the war. As the conflict continues, and society weakens further, radicalism is likely to gain increasing support among a population of ostracized, impoverished and traumatized individuals.

On another level, the continuing conflict is likely to produce other lingering side-effects. Just like in Afghanistan, foreign elements pursuing the global Islamic holy war, or the so-called 'Jihadis', have flocked to Chechnya. In lesser numbers than in Afghanistan or Kashmir, to be sure; but given Chechnya's small population and territory, their effect is already being felt. Most, the arrival of Islamic radicalism has resulted in a split among the Chechen combatants along ideological lines, with some factions espousing a hard-line attitude and refusing even to negotiate with the Kremlin. The consequence of the factionalization of the resistance is highly detrimental to the prospects for peace, as a future agreement arrived at between Moscow and the elected leader of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov, would not necessarily imply a cessation of hostilities.

CONCLUSIONS: Chechnya has already come to approximate a former UN negotiator's depiction of Afghanistan: A wound so infected that no one knows where to start cleaning it. Much like the Soviet Union was primarily responsible for Afghanistan's descent into anarchy and chaos, the post-Soviet Russian government must carry the responsibility for the creation of a similar zone of instability within its own territory. Chechnya is likely to seriously affect the security of other North Caucasian regions and other parts of the Russian Federation.

Whereas there are numerous blueprints for how a feasible and realistic settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani or Georgian-Abkhaz conflict could be arrived at, there is no realistic plan for peace in Chechnya. Russia is unlikely to be able to financially sustain its present military involvement. What will happen when Russia is forced to reduce its military activities there is anyone's guess. Irrespective of the military fortunes on both sides, Chechnya is set to remain a bleeding wound in the Caucasus, attracting extremism and spreading instability.

AUTHOR BIO: Svante E. Cornell is a visiting researcher at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, and normally teaches at Uppsala University (Sweden). He is the author of Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethno-political Conflict in the Caucasus, Curzon Press 2000.

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