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Author(s): Emil Souleimanov
Article title: An ethnography of counterinsurgency: kadyrovtsy and Russia’spolicy of Chechenization
Article no: RPSA 900976
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An ethnography of counterinsurgency: kadyrovtsy and Russia’spolicy of Chechenization
Emil Souleimanov*
Institute of International Studies, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
(Received B; accepted 24 February 2014)
Exploring the case study of the Moscow-led counterinsurgency in Chechnya,this article shows the crucial importance of culture – understood in anethnographic sense in terms of patterns of social organization, persisting valuesystems, and other related phenomena – in the relative success of theeradication of the Chechnya-based insurgency. Using a range of first-handsources – including interviews by leading Russian and Chechen experts andinvestigative journalists, and the testimonies of eyewitnesses and key actorsfrom within local and Russian politics – the article explains the actualmechanisms of Moscow’s policy of Chechenization that have sought to breakthe backbone of the local resistance using local human resources. To this end,the study focuses on the crucial period of 2000–2004, when Moscow’s keyproxy in Chechnya, the kadyrovtsy paramilitaries, were established andbecame operational under the leadership of Akhmad Kadyrov, which helpedcreate a sharp division within Chechen society, reducing the level of populace-based support for the insurgents, thereby increasing support for thepro-Moscow forces.
Keywords: Chechnya; Caucasus; Russia; counterinsurgency; ethnography;paramilitary
In the wake of the September 11th events, and of subsequent developments in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and elsewhere, culture has again come to the forefront of the interest
of policymakers, scholars, and military leaders concerned with the theory and
practice of counterinsurgency. It soon became apparent that culture matters. Those
patterns of social organization, the customs, values, and perceptions of peoples
who reside outside what is considered the Euro-Atlantic space, may well differ
significantly from those of the people who are in charge of forging
counterinsurgency policies and of putting them into operation. Yet, it is these
patterns that shape the everyday decisions of millions of people – people who may
turn into adversaries, or allies, depending upon the contingencies of particular
counterinsurgency policies. The idea of cultural relativity, which has reasserted
itself since the beginning of the last decade, has served to problematize the very
notion of normalcy and rationality, these being key assumptions for strategic
planners, military commanders, and others concerned with combating insurgents.
q 2014 Taylor & Francis
[Q1]
*Email: arslanlik@yahoo.com
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Vol. 00, No. 0, 1–24, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2014.900976
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Indeed, the inability on the part of such strategic planners and military
commanders to properly comprehend the mindset of those involved in insurgency
by means of armed resistance – or the mindset of those who simply reside in an
area subject to counterinsurgency – renders the crucial task of anticipating the
behavior of insurgents extremely difficult.
Insurgencies and counterinsurgencies rank among what are termed asymmetric
conflicts. In such conflicts, one of the belligerents, usually the weaker side, will be
characterized by the conscious non-employment of techniques related to
conventional warfare. In such circumstances, the absence of established armies
(with their hierarchized command, recruitment, and logistics related to control
over territory) coupled with the general avoidance of pitched battles in favor of hit-
and-run operations based on popular support, as well as the blurring of clearly
identifiable distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, all act so as to
turn the social terrain (the way a human society is organized) into a massive
battlefield, with individuals deciding whether to join, to defect from, or to avoid
insurgent groups altogether, depending upon an array of motivations. This, in turn,
elevates cultural aspects into the realm of practical knowledge that is of military
relevance, inasmuch as cultural aspects shape the way people organize, think, and
fight.
Structure of the study
This article proceeds in the following manner. The introductory part seeks to place
the notions of counterinsurgency and culture within the current body of theoretical
scholarship. In the second section, an ethnographic approach is adopted so as to
create a picture of Chechen society that focuses on phenomena such as its
organization (clans) as well as its prevailing values (such as the concepts of honor,
hospitality, and the blood feud), all of which are crucial for exploring the
peculiarities of Chechen insurgency and Russian-led counterinsurgency. The third
section then briefly sets the issue of Russian conquest and Chechen resistance into
a historical context. The fourth section explores the initial army-led attempts at
counterinsurgency, which were accompanied by massive human rights violations
in the newly occupied territory – this provides an understanding of the societal
background against which the Chechenization policy came to be applied. Two
subsequent sections then scrutinize the emergence of Chechenization, this being
the key component in Moscow’s pacification of the republic: one that implied a
gradual transfer of counterinsurgency to the newly established pro-Moscow
Chechen paramilitary forces during the crucial period of Akhmad Kadyrov’s
leadership, in 2000–2004. Here, there is an emphasis on the aspects of culture.
Culture and counterinsurgency, culture in counterinsurgency
That cultural aspects are being taken seriously by current policymakers and
military commanders is attested by the establishment, in 2007, of the Human
Terrain System (HTS) – a military intelligence support system run by the
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Pentagon, which is worth $200 million. It seeks to actively engage anthropologists
and ethnographers, primarily those specializing in the Greater Middle East,1 with
the stated aim being to
address cultural awareness shortcomings at the operational and tactical levels bygiving brigade commanders an organic capability to help understand and dealwith ‘human terrain’ [ . . . ] HTS will provide deployed brigade commanders andtheir staffs direct social-science support in the form of ethnographic and socialresearch, cultural information research, and social data analysis. (Kipp et al.2006)
In fact, the awareness of the growing salience of cultural aspects of
counterinsurgency has developed to a degree that has allowed some generals to
call for “culture-centric warfare” (Scales 2004); this has led in the meantime to the
introduction of a broadly accepted term: “warrior-intellectuals.”2 Since then,
dozens of contradictory publications have appeared within the scholarly
community of (predominantly American) anthropologists and ethnographers,
with a recurrent concern over ethics and the morality of what has been termed
militarist anthropology or mercenary anthropology.3
Despite these developments, little evidence has been made public of how
particular cultural aspects – or awareness thereof – have impacted upon the
strategic planning of contemporary counterinsurgency operations on the ground.
In an analysis devoted to the role of anthropology and anthropologists in the Iraq
war, Robben (2009, 1) reminds us of the fact that during the crucial period of the
Iraq counterinsurgency (2006–2008), of the 1800 panels (11,000 papers)
organized by the American Anthropological Association, just one paper dealt with
that war, while the share of the published studies which addressed the cultural
aspects of the Iraq counterinsurgency as such was even smaller. Indeed, at present
a negligible amount of the currently available anthropological and ethnographic
literature focuses on the cultural aspects of insurgency and counterinsurgency, this
being a field that remains largely taboo within the humanities.4 Likewise, given
the fact that cultures are highly variable, political scientists and specialists in
international relations and security studies have also been notably reticent in
exploring the cultural aspects of counterinsurgency in general – and in exploring
the mechanisms of how cultural aspects shape counterinsurgency operations, in
particular. In addition to the general shortage of in-depth empirical data and the
lack of first-hand knowledge of related case studies, the process of constructing
theories related to the role of culture in counterinsurgencies – a domain of study
for which students of contemporary social sciences have recently shown particular
affection – is impeded by the very context-laden essence of cultural knowledge,
which makes generalizing largely infeasible. This is another factor that is held
accountable for the lack of (theoretical) studies relating to this matter.
The reluctance of those anthropologists and ethnographers who have been
involved in the Pentagon-backed fieldwork within the zones of counter-
insurgencies to actively address the issue of culture publicly is in large part a
consequence of, as one anthropologist has put it, “security-led demands on our
services” (Robben 2009, 1). Moreover, the equally obvious reluctance on the part
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of policymakers and military commanders to shed light on the nuances of the
anthropologists’ collaboration with the generals – and vice versa – can be
accounted for by the very nature of military planning, which requires secrecy.
Furthermore, given the controversial practices employed in any counterinsurgency
(which often go beyond the politically correct “hearts-and-minds” attitudes to
which official military documents usually allude), civil authorities and military
commanders alike have naturally had little interest in the details of campaign
planning being circulated outside the narrow circles of those immediately engaged
in counterinsurgency – this in order to avoid public controversy.
Nonetheless, several studies – nearly all of them policy papers – have
concentrated on the notion of cultural knowledge and the need to utilize it in
ongoing counterinsurgencies. For instance, in a policy paper dealing with the Iraq
counterinsurgency, a group of authors called for the emulation of the divide-and-
rule policy, which was applied effectively in the country’s tribal niveau during
Saddam Hussein’s reign as it “exploits tribal honor and competition over limited
resources” (Todd et al. 2006). “Competition between tribes,” the argument
continues, “can be a compelling way to secure the cooperation of one tribe at the
expense of the other. A tribe is likely to cooperate to keep another tribe from
getting the benefits” (Todd et al. 2006). In another policy paper authored by
Montgomery McFate, an anthropologist serving for the HTS, the divide-and-rule
policy implemented in mandatory Iraq by the British (1920–1932) is praised, as it
sought to “keep the [Iraqi] monarchy stronger than any one [Iraqi] tribe but weaker
than a coalition of tribes, so that British power would ultimately be decisive in
arbitrating disputes between the two” (McFate 2008, 296). In this rather
exceptional piece in terms of genre and authorship, the author makes suggestions
in an oblique manner, seeking to avoid drawing clear-cut conclusions that might
be found controversial. Here, there is no real examination of the mechanisms by
which cultural aspects are utilized in a counterinsurgency.
A few accounts dealing with modern counterinsurgencies have touched on
cultural peculiarities of the war-torn areas, the sectarian divide in Iraq being a
particularly recurrent case. In this instance, what is largely considered to be an
example of successful counterinsurgency is explained by some as an outcome of
Al Qaeda-affiliated groups forcibly imposing fundamentalist Salafi rules on the
tribal Sunni culture: this eventually led to the latter’s rebellion against Al Qaeda
after years of support (Phillips 2009). Meanwhile, others have explained the
“Sunni surge” in terms of the Americans (and Iranians) arming the militias of the
country’s Shiite majority, after decades of Sunni-imposed discrimination: this
turned members of the Shiite community, who were accused of collaboration with
the occupants, into targets for Al Qaeda-affiliated Sunni groups, prompting
massive Shiite retribution primarily in the Baghdad area. This, in turn, encouraged
the leaders of influential Sunni tribes to strike a deal with the Americans, dropping
their support for Al Qaeda in exchange for the Americans’ pledge to halt the
advance of the Shiites. However, as Dasgupta (2009) has pointed out, “[n]o
account of the war suggests that America deliberately ignited the Shia-Sunni
conflict to take advantage of it.” This can be at least partially explained by the
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scarcity of verifiable in-depth data from the conflict zone, a fact that holds true
particularly with regard to the mechanisms by which ethnographic knowledge is
utilized in counterinsurgency operations.
Similarly, with regard to Russia, no official document has ever been published
by the Russian military or civil authorities concerning the country’s counter-
insurgency strategy in the North Caucasus in general or in Chechnya in particular.
This is, in fact, in accordance with established Russian military custom dating
back to the Soviet era, which seeks to avoid making strategic documents public –
an approach that has only been partially disrupted by a recent trend toward the
publication of military doctrines. Moreover, Moscow has been eager to profile the
Chechnya conflict as being an all but internal issue: an “anti-terrorist campaign,”
whose aim was merely to restore peace and order to an integral part of Russia’s
sovereign territory, and to bring “bandits,” “extremists,” and “terrorists” to justice
(Russell 2005). Thus, the authorities have sought to avoid accentuating the cultural
otherness of the Chechens – a “titular people” of a multiethnic nation, which
further explains the lack of strategic documentation concerning the violence that
has been shaking the republic since the mid-1990s. Accordingly, no official
document has ever been issued by the Russian authorities relating to the cultural
aspects of the Chechnya counterinsurgency.
Yet, this is not to say that the Russian authorities have lacked strategic thinking
with regard to the armed conflict in this North Caucasian republic. As revealed in
the pages that follow, this is not to imply that cultural determinants have not
shaped the counterinsurgency policies of the Kremlin and its local proxy, the
kadyrovtsy paramilitaries – just as they clearly did in the case of the allied strategy
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Importantly, since the very beginning of the
Second Russo-ChechenWar in 1999, Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of Grozny’s pro-
Moscow administration, was widely regarded as “a man of the FSB”
(Politkovskaya 2003), this being the Russian security service of which Vladimir
Putin, a former KGB officer, had headed in 1998–1999 prior to becoming Russia’s
prime minister (1999) and president (2000). Because Putin’s power has largely
rested on the Federal Security Service (FSB), and because no significant decision
was taken in or on Chechnya without Putin’s consent, and with FSB officers
having being in charge of the newly occupied republic during the period studied
here (2000–2004), it comes as no surprise that a discernible Russian
counterinsurgency strategy did exist, and was approved of in Moscow and
Grozny. Given the peculiarities of the organization and persisting cultural values
of Chechen society, they soon came to shape the very essence of
counterinsurgency.
The Chechens: an ethnographic portrait
Along with neighboring Ingushetia and Dagestan, Chechnya is one of the most
traditionalist areas of the former Soviet Union. Notwithstanding the gradual
erosion of traditionalism, which has gained momentum, particularly in recent
decades, Chechen society remains marked by the prevalence of archaic social
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organization and by a complex set of values that have shaped the lives of ordinary
Chechens until the present day. Aside from a strong ethnonationalism that is of
relevance particularly with regard to interactions with out-group members,
Chechens identify themselves as part of around 150 teyps, or clans, of which the
largest number around a 100,000 members (i.e., nearly one-tenth of the entire
Chechen population). Teyps are subdivided into branches (gar), which are further
subdivided into patronymic families (nekye). These patronymic families are then
sub-divided into groups of related families ranging up to seven generations
(shchin-nakh), and then groups of related families into atomic families (dozal). An
individual is thus never perceived without regard to his or her fellow clan
members: whether he or she desires so or not, teyp or more broadly clan identity is
projected onto the individual by public consciousness. Interestingly, in the case of
larger teyps, where individuals may lack awareness of each others’ clan identity,
the sense of teyp solidarity is usually weaker, and smaller categories – such as
gars and nekyes – gain greater salience.5 Over time, the sense of collective
identity – along with the concomitant sense of collective responsibility – has
shrunk from teyps to smaller subdivisions, particularly nekyes, as subsequent
pages demonstrate, even though an awareness and sense of teyp identity, though
generally diminished in practical terms, has persisted.6
Given the absence of social stratification (with episodic exceptions, the
Chechens have never possessed a landed nobility or bourgeoisie) and the absence
of written laws imposed by state authorities, which have marked most of Chechen
history, the customary law – called adat – has come to play an immense role in
the lives of ordinary Chechens. To this day, customary law based on the archaic
concept of honor (siy) continues to constitute an important component of Chechen
society, regulating the relationships between males and females, young and old,
and between individuals. Siy also implies a strict etiquette that is embedded in the
related social code, called nokhchalla (Chechenness): this is based on principles of
self-restraint, sobriety, and respect for the individual. Even though the efficacy of
norms related to this body of customary law has gradually weakened with the
advent of industrialization, urbanization, and modernization in the aftermath of
WorldWar II and during the post-Soviet decades, some remnants of it (centered on
the notion of honor and of honor-related obligations) still persist, shaping the
socio-cultural landscape of Chechnya.
While the honor of an unwed female is bound up with her sexual “purity,” and
that of a wed female in her fidelity, a male’s honor has much broader connotations
that extend beyond the patriarchal perception of sexuality. Most notably, a
Chechen male’s honor consists of his courage, his hospitality, his generosity, his
respect for the elderly, his ability to safeguard the honor of women related to him
by means of blood kinship, as well as his ability to ensure the dignified lives of his
family members. Additionally, a male’s honor implies his capacity to avenge in
due manner any offense inflicted either upon him or upon his clan members. Such
offenses include verbal humiliation, physical injury leading to invalidity or death,
murder, and rape. In the case of substantial wrongdoings, called yukh’yagor (blood
insult) in Chechen, the norms of behavior required by customary law and
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necessitated by public opinion prompt the imposition of ch’ir (blood feud) by the
male members of an offended clan (usually gars or nekyes presently) toward either
the immediate offender or his male relatives – typically his brother or his cousins,
or, less commonly, his sons or his father. In order for the honor of an offended
individual or clan to be restored, blood has to be taken – or “washed off” – by
either the individual immediately offended or by his male relatives. Women and
male children below the age of around 16 are exempt from datsa ts’iy (blood-
taking).
Any unwillingness or inability to respond to an insult by means of retaliation
will lead to one’s defamation within a clan. Upon certain occasions, marked by the
gravity of an insult – most commonly a blood insult – a failure to retaliate by
means of blood feud will dishonor not only the individuals immediately involved
in the incident, but also entire clans. In practice, this results in the public ostracism
of the members of the disgraced clan, making them vulnerable to humiliation and
to attacks by others. Significantly, the blood feud has no time limit, and can be
extended to successive generations, particularly in instances where the offender’s
male relatives in turn suffer offenses (e.g., as soon as a clan member of theirs is
murdered) and they therefore seek to retaliate. This is, in fact, a rather common
scenario, as the failure or unwillingness to avenge is usually deemed as being a
sign of weakness, and may lead to the depreciation of the prestige of the clan in
question, or to its outright defamation.7 In many cases, therefore, a blood feud
continues for decades, involving dozens of individuals who may be related only
distantly in terms of blood kinship to the initial offender or offended, and who may
sometimes lack awareness of what exactly caused the onset of blood feud in the
distant past.8 In this social context, an individual’s honor is closely interwoven
with the honor of his or her clan; a clan’s honor is in fact constitutive of the honor
of each of its individual members. Accordingly, the capacity to defend individual
clan members is key to the honor of a clan, which in turn helps to cement in-group
solidarity within clans, and this in turn serves as the main guardian of the safety of
individuals.
Dater is another key constituent of nokhchalla. Close in meaning to the South
Italian omerta, it is a strict code of silence that obliges individual members of a
clan to refrain from disseminating information about the clan’s internal affairs
outside the clan. This implies non-collaboration with outsiders in general, and with
authorities in particular, regarding a clan’s internal issues; it also demands at the
same time the non-interference of outsiders within the internal affairs of a given
clan. The failure to comply with this code also results in the defamation of the
individuals concerned, while also harming the reputation of their clan, which in
turn has severe repercussions throughout the community.9
A brief history of the conflict
The Russian state and the Chechens have had a long history of conflict dating back
to the end of the eighteenth century. Following a series of Russian military
victories over the Ottoman Empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
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centuries, the vast and fertile areas of the North Caucasus, populated by a range of
small principalities, tribes, and village communities, turned into an immense
battlefield as St Petersburg sought to gain a foothold in this strategic area. In fact,
while areas to the south of the Greater Caucasus mountain range had been largely
acquired by the Russian state in a series of wars with Turkey and Persia at the turn
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, paving the way for the Romanov
Empire’s long-desired thrust to the southern seas, the restless tribes of the North
Caucasus continued to mount a resistance whose intensity was proportionate to the
Russians’ increasing efforts to subjugate the region. The Caucasus highlanders were
credited with maintaining a stiff and effective resistance to Imperial armies, despite
the latter’s vast superiority in technology and manpower. This was due to the
highlanders taking full advantage of the area’s rugged terrain: this disadvantaged
offense over defense and hampered large and rigid conventional armies, thus
favoring small and flexible insurgent units. Prominent among the highland tribes
were the Chechens, whose organized defiance lasted for decades, causing dozens of
counterinsurgency campaigns to fail. Even after the period of 1859–1864, when the
North Caucasians’ organized resistance was eventually put down, the Chechens still
mounted a number of spontaneous rebellions against Russian authority – rebellions
that lasted until as recently as 1944, when they, along with their fellow Ingush and a
number of other North Caucasian ethnicities, were collectively accused of
collaboration with the Nazi armies and deported to the steppes of Central Asia.
During the entire period of this counterinsurgency, the Russian – and subsequently
Soviet – armies often used controversial methods, annihilating entire defiant
populations and devastating the countryside, along with the woodlands that
provided shelter to the insurgents. During the 1944 deportation alone, around a
quarter of the entire Chechen population is believed to have perished.
A period of relative stability began in 1957, when the Chechens were allowed
to return to their historical homeland. This lasted until the end of the 1980s, and
was marked by the gradual societal liberalization of the Gorbachev era. It was
during this period that anti-Communist Chechen elites, led by Jokhar Dudayev, a
former Soviet general and a Chechen nationalist, began to agitate for
independence from Moscow. They formally declared independence in 1991,
establishing a state of their own that lasted until 1994. Eventually, the Russian
army invaded Chechnya in December 1994; this invasion turned into a bloody war
with dozens of thousands of fatalities and hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Despite the devastation of the tiny republic of only 17,300 square kilometers, the
Russian Army failed to break down the resistance. This failure was largely caused
by the Russian military’s incapacity to effectively combat an insurgency, and by
its own low morale that was a consequence of the general unpopularity of the war
effort, coupled with the effective insurgency tactics implemented by the
Chechens, the determination of the Chechens, and the strength of the support of
the local population for the insurgents. Consequently, Chechen separatist leaders
and the Moscow authorities came to sign a peace accord in 1996, which marked
the end of the war – but with the regulation of Chechnya’s legal status being
postponed until 2001.
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Chechnya enjoyed a period of de facto independence between 1996 and 1999,
during which time various factions of insurgent leaders contended for power and
for control over the republic’s limited economic resources. By 1997, a conflict
between the republic’s secularist president Aslan Maskhadov, and an increasingly
extremist faction represented by Shamil Basayev and his jihadist entourage, had
emerged. This was to push Chechen society to the brink of armed conflict in the
years that followed. In an attempt to overthrow Maskhadov’s regime, and to
bolster his own authority within the country by means of a small victorious war,
Basayev and his associates sought to provoke an anti-Russian jihadist rebellion in
the neighboring republic of Dagestan. They invaded the western areas of Dagestan
in August 1999, with the support of local jihadists. However, instead of mounting
a massive anti-Russian rebellion, the Dagestanis quickly allied themselves with
the federal army and police units, successfully pushing the jihadists back to
Chechnya within a few weeks. In September of that year, a wave of apartment
building bomb blasts shook Russian cities, inflicting hundreds of casualties. At the
time, the Chechens were commonly held accountable for these terrorist attacks;
this in turn provided the Russian authorities with a pretext to launch a renewed war
on Chechnya in the fall of 1999. During the course of the ensuing invasion,
Vladimir Putin, the country’s prime minister at the time, capitalized greatly from
the militarist mood that came to dominate the country. He presented himself as a
strong leader, which helped him to win the presidential elections in March 2000.
By then, the Chechen resistance based in Grozny and in the towns across the
breakaway republic had been largely suppressed, with the backbone of the
Chechen army broken, and the remnants of insurgent units scattered across
the country.
Mop-ups: army-led counterinsurgency and its consequences
By 2000, after a series of pitched battles, the Russian military had taken de facto
control over much of Chechnyan territory. However, as might have been expected,
this failed to lead to a clear-cut victory, or to the end of the armed conflict in
Chechnya. The military soon came to experience once again that in
counterinsurgent warfare, conventional methods often prove largely ineffective
– a fact that had already been acknowledged during the First Russo-Chechen War.
Indeed, it transpired in the mid-1990s that even though army units ultimately did
gain a foothold across the countryside, securing a range of checkpoints and
garrisons, their control remained largely confined to limited areas, usually those
under their immediate physical control. While, after nightfall, even these areas
were often contested by the insurgents, who by day took full advantage of the
country’s rugged terrain with its plentiful supply of woods, gorges, and caves.
Another problem was posed by the local Chechen population, some of whom still
provided support to the insurgents in terms of shelter, food, medication,
ammunition, and recruits – a factor that was aided not only by the political
loyalties of the Chechens, but also by the prevailing customs of hospitality and
clan-based solidarity.10 This, in turn, rendered the task of securing territory even
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harder for the Russian military. Moreover, some insurgents would pose as peaceful
citizens by day, only to mount attacks upon the Russians by night, something
which further hampered the federal troops’ ability to effectively combat the
enemy. Hence, the need arose to make the Chechen populations realize that
backing the insurgents would be too risky an undertaking to pay off.
In order to cope with these problems, the Russian Army in 2000 came to
develop new tactics, which included the deployment of armed forces within the
villages and the increased use of zachistkas, or mop-up operations, which aimed at
identifying the members of insurgent units as well as locating stores of weapons
and ammunition. While, as a preemptive measure, garrisons were installed within
the centers of villages and towns, because
local populations are tied with the bandits and can influence their behavior. Hence ifthey are afraid [of reprisals], they would stop the bandits. [ . . . ] In their own village,they will surely lack the audacity to explode bombs and shoot. (Goltz andKovalskaya 2011, 12)
Indeed, this deployment of army units as close to the local population as possible
was carried out with the precise aim of implementing the principle of collective
responsibility: mop-ups were marked by particular brutality following attacks
upon closely located units of the Russian Army. Indeed, in the end, mop-ups came
to be implemented even preemptively in nearly all of the villages and towns of the
republic, with the specific exception of the traditionally pro-Russian Nadterechny
district in the north. Such mop-up operations were usually accompanied by
indiscriminate torture, executions, pillaging, and even rape of real – and alleged –
members of the resistance as well as of their relatives and supporters, both true and
alleged. Under these circumstances, regardless of his or her political conviction,
nearly every inhabitant of the republic potentially became a target of a mop-up
operation (International Federation for Human Rights 2002).
In practice, mop-ups entailed the encirclement of entire villages so as to
prevent the locals from leaving. To this end, armed vehicles and tanks
accompanied by hundreds of soldiers were deployed, occasionally supported by
military helicopters. In the course of inspections, civilians were murdered by
federal troops for apparently trivial reasons, while the impunity that the army
enjoyed hampered any further investigation of such cases. Quite to the contrary,
any action taken against the federal troops by the Chechen population would
subject the Chechens to further retaliation from the authorities, who showed no
desire to carry out any such investigation. This further discouraged Chechens from
reporting human rights abuses.11 During individual mop-ups carried out in the
period between 2000 and 2004, thousands of Chechen males of military service
age were, according to Memorial, a leading Russian human rights organization,
kidnapped by federal troops, and dispersed to filtration camps scattered across the
country – only to disappear without trace or be found in mass graves years later.12
Additionally, thousands were later released after ransoms were paid by their
relatives. Eventually, despite the concerted efforts by the Russian authorities to
impede investigations of mass graves, and following a series of reports by Russian
[Q2]
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NGOs and after mounting international pressure, the Chechen government had to
acknowledge the existence of around 50 mass graves in the country by 2005 –
some of which contained hundreds of crippled bodies of young men (Walsh 2005).
By 2003, an estimated 20–30 filtration camps were known to have existed in
Chechnya,13 whose semi-legal status as a state exempted these camps from
oversight by either national or international authorities. Entry for outsiders to these
facilities was strictly forbidden. The main mission of the filtration camps was to
identify alleged members of insurgent units; yet as a rule, according to numerous
testimonies, many non-combatants were detained as well, along with the relatives
of true and/or alleged insurgents and suspected local supporters of the insurgency.
To extort confessions from inmates, cruel forms of interrogation were routinely
employed. A Russian human rights activist Aleksandr Cherkasov noted that:
[w]ith the indiscriminate arrests and the absence of preliminarily compileddocumentation and of evidence of any kind, it was even unclear as to what set ofquestions detainees should be asked. The testimony of detainees thus became theonly possible evidence. Interrogators therefore obtained personal confessionsprimarily through beatings, torture and brutal treatment. The lack of materials otherthan testimony obtained through interrogation has allowed federal law enforcementofficials to treat detainees extremely arbitrarily from the time an investigation isstarted until the detainees are released. (Cherkasov 2003)
In one of its numerous reports on Chechnya, Human Rights Watch confirmed that:
[t]orture and ill-treatment are most prevalent in unofficial places of detention [ . . . ]Due to their unofficial status, these detention centers are immune from internationalscrutiny; neither the International Committee of the Red Cross nor the EuropeanCommittee for the Prevention of Torture has visited them. Methods of torture mostfrequently described by detainees include prolonged beatings, often with rifle butts,straps or clubs, electric shock, and asphyxiation. (Human Rights Watch 2003)
Incidents of sexual abuse of detainees were also documented.14 Those who were
ultimately released from the filtration facilities often emerged physically and
psychologically crippled. No access to formal investigation according to valid law
was ever permitted for the former detainees.
Despite these repressive measures, the actual capacity of the Russian Army to
effectively combat the insurgency was hampered from the very beginning of the
Second Russo-Chechen War by a number of factors. First, the Russian military
lacked appropriately trained units with the capacity to identify terrorists and
insurgents on the ground. Conventional army units usually did what they were
trained to do – fight pitched battles; they lacked the skills of counterinsurgent
warfare. Hunting down criminals was a task largely unsuited to federal troops,
who reacted to attacks upon their number by the only method available to them –
by punishing those suspects whom they were able to catch, of whom by no means
all were actually insurgents. Advocating the replacement of Russian Army-led
mop-up operations by kadyrovtsy units, Akhmad Kadyrov himself once asserted
that “when [Russian] soldiers arrive at a village with [their] military hardware, it
causes panic and frightens people. Furthermore, such measures are entirely
ineffective. The soldiers just arrest everybody indiscriminately, including the
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completely innocent” (Riskin 2003, 7). Second, given the fact that to inform
authorities of internal (clan-based) issues was in any case taboo within Chechen
society, the federal troops experienced a critical lack of local intelligence, which
further reduced their capacity to effectively combat the insurgents.
Akhmad Kadyrov: the making of a local proxy
In July 2000, after Russian troops had seized control over much of the breakaway
republic, Akhmad Kadyrov15 was installed as the leader of Chechnya’s pro-
Moscow administration. Strategic considerations were foremost among the
factors that influenced the Kremlin’s decision to appoint Kadyrov. At the time,
the Kremlin had few candidates to choose from.16 Indeed, as a Russian political
scientist put it at the time, “it’s hard to find Chechens in Chechnya on whom you
can rely: they are either loyal to Moscow, but have no influence in Chechnya, or
have influence and support in Chechnya, but are not loyal to Moscow” (Kaliyev
2000, 3). Besides Kadyrov, two other figures had been seriously considered by
the Moscow authorities: Bislan Gantamirov and Malik Saydullayev. Bislan
Gantamirov was an experienced rebel who had, with Moscow’s active support,
been opposing Chechnya’s separatist governments since the early 1990s.
However, he had the reputation of a thief and a criminal in Chechnya, having
being widely accused of fraud and of the manipulation of budgetary funds.
Alternatively, Malik Saydullayev, a Moscow-based Chechen businessman
popular among the great many apolitical Chechens, was also considered.
However, he was believed to possess insufficient influence within the republic,
and was generally deemed rather unpredictable as far as his political behavior
was concerned. Also, almost without exception, Saydullayev, Gantamirov, and
the vast majority of military leaders in the ranks of the pro-Moscow forces had
previously been members of Chechnya’s anti-separatist forces before Kadyrov’s
installation.
Yet, somewhat paradoxically, it was Kadyrov’s controversial past that had
made him a strong candidate for the Kremlin strategists. As a figure who had been
linked to the separatists, yet who came to openly disassociate himself from them
later – allying himself instead with the invading Russian Army – he represented
the image of a “reformed separatist” upon which it seemed appropriate to
capitalize. Additionally, he still enjoyed some popularity among ordinary pro-
secular Chechens who had known him from the 1990s, and who appreciated him
as a staunch opponent of “Wahhabism”: an imported and alien ideology whose
advocates were blamed by many Chechens for the renewed war. Even more
importantly, as a long-standing insider within the separatist movement, Kadyrov
still retained personal contacts with some leading warlords, a fact of which Putin
was very much aware as he asserted that “his [Kadyrov’s] contacts with the people
who were still putting up resistance against us in Chechnya [ . . . ] will be positive”
(Gevorkyan 2001, 15). Moreover, the fact that Kadyrov was in a state of blood
feud with some jihadist leaders further ensured that he would not be in a position to
reverse his loyalty to the Kremlin should the circumstances change.17
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Additionally, Moscow’s investment of trust in Kadyrov, a clergyman and a
veteran of the separatist movement, was thought to convince both the Chechens
and the outside world that Russia was sincere in its stated intent to engage in the
widely declared “dialogue with the Chechen people” across all strata, and that the
ongoing “anti-terrorist campaign” had no religious overtones. As Putin somewhat
boastfully pointed out in 1999 with regard to the former mufti’s controversial past,
Kadyrov “is not pro-Russian by any means” (Interfax 1999). Against this
backdrop, the ironic statement made by a Chechen intellectual, Shamsuddin
Mamayev, seems to tally with the Kremlin’s logic: “according to this logics the
best candidate for the position of Chechnya’s leader would be its main initiator,
Shamil Basayev” (Mironov 2000). In fact, Putin’s choice might have been a more
controversial figure of the separatist movement, had such a figure been available.
However, at the outset of the formation of the Chechnyan administration, in
2000, Kadyrov was not placed as the first man in charge – something that signaled
a certain lack of trust on the part of the Kremlin, as well as some uncertainty with
regard to its intention to utilize Kadyrov and his clan18 as a tool within the system
of checks and balances. Along with Gantamirov, three influential military leaders
in charge of three parallel power bases were simultaneously retained in position by
the Kremlin in order to counterbalance Kadyrov. Each of these military leaders
was located within their respective clans so as to counterbalance the power of
Kadyrov’s clan. These leaders were, respectively, the commander of the Chechen-
manned OMON (special police force), Musa Gazimagomadov, with his power
base lying in his native Shatoy district in the southern part of the republic; the head
of the Chechen-manned Spetsnaz battalion (elite military force) Vostok (East),
Sulim Yamadayev, with his power base in his native Nozhay-yurt district in the
eastern part of the country; and the head of the Chechen-manned battalion Zapad
(West), Said-Magomed Kakiyev, with his power base to the northwest of Grozny,
from where he and his clan originated. While the battalions of Yamadayev and
Kakiyev came under the command of the Russian military secret service (GRU),
all of the aforementioned military commanders were highly suspicious of
Kadyrov, and saw him as their main antagonist.19
As regards the hierarchy of formal institutions, Kadyrov was obliged to share
power with Chechnya’s prime minister, an ethnic Russian appointed directly by
Moscow from outside the republic, who enjoyed close ties to the Kremlin, and
who, through contacts with FSB, possessed solid influence on the ground. As a
Russian journalist put it in 2000, “[o]nly the directors of counties are subordinated
to the leader of the Chechen administration, and never the federal structures with
all relevant financial flows.”20 Initially, Kadyrov’s role was indeed designed as
largely decorative, as he lacked substantive executive power. Symptomatic in this
regard was the very formal title of Kadyrov’s position: he was appointed by Putin
as the acting head of the Chechnya administration until well into October 2003,
when he was finally elected president in the (massively Kremlin backed and
fraudulent) election, which ultimately cemented his standing. From 2000 on, the
republic was still largely run by the Russian security services, with financial issues
being dealt with outside the remit of the Chechnyan administration (BBC News
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2000). Instead of being a sovereign ruler, Kadyrov was but one component within
the complicated overall system of federal institutions, which were commonly
headed by appointees who answered directly to Putin. For a long period, the
Interim Administration of the Chechen Republic, manned predominantly by loyal
Chechens, coexisted simultaneously with the Moscow-appointed Directorate of
the Government of the Russian Federation, with the “open discrimination of the
first [of the two organs being the case]” (Turpalov 2000, 3). In addition, a range of
county administrations and military comandatures was established that only
acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff of
the Russian Army in the Chechen Republic, with military affairs being largely
supervised by the United Group of Armies, the GRU, and the FSB.
This coexistence of a range of civil-administrative and military-security
institutions within post-2000 Chechnya seems to have been put into place
intentionally. Even Vladimir Putin’s wager on Akhmad Kadyrov was somewhat
uncertain during the initial period, since Moscow had never abandoned its tried
and trusted system of checks and balances. For example, Bislan Gantamirov,
perhaps the most noteworthy anti-separatist leader in modern Chechen history,
along with some pro-Russian political figures, was long maintained by Moscow
within Chechnya as a trump card that could be played as needed if Kadyrov, the
former mufti, were to become unmanageable. Gantamirov, along with
Gazimagomadov, Kakiyev, and the Yamadayev brothers in charge of their
respective clans, had been promised a brilliant future in politics, but each was told
for the moment that their time had simply not yet come. At election time, Kadyrov
and his backers had no real guarantees until the very last minute as to whether or
not the Kremlin might be leaning toward one or another of his opponents.
Obviously, Kadyrov himself was very much aware of his vulnerable position,
something that is evidenced by his hushed remark in the wake of his victory in the
2003 presidential election: “Nobody is going to call me Putin’s puppet anymore”
(Sukhov 2004, 9). To achieve that goal, Kadyrov still had a long way to go: he had
still to prove his continuing loyalty to the Kremlin, which was a formidable task,
given his past history as a former member of Chechnya’s separatist establishment.
Kadyrovtsy: the making of Chechen paramilitaries
Kadyrov’s main task was deemed by Moscow to be that of disrupting the
resistance movement from within. Yet, before there could be any question of the
insurgents laying down their arms and joining the ranks of Chechnya’s pro-
Moscow forces, a legal and institutional framework first had to be established.
Therefore, an amnesty – the first in a wave of amnesties that continued until 2007
– for the former Chechen insurgents was declared, at Putin’s request, by the
Russian parliament as early as December 1999. As might have been expected,
given the ongoing situation of armed clashes with Russian forces and mop-up
operations against Chechen civilians, the amnesty was met with skepticism by a
great many Chechens. As far as the Chechen insurgents themselves were
concerned, the prospect of handing in one’s weapons and openly declaring oneself
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to have been on the insurgent side was simply considered too risky. Indeed, among
those insurgents who were still engaged in fighting, the amnesty was greeted with
virtual indifference. Yet, as subsequent months were to show, it was gradually
welcomed by those who were inclined to consider a return to peaceful life. Hence,
eventually, some hundreds of the Chechen insurgents – among whom were field
commanders who had known Kadyrov personally – laid down their arms.
Personal contacts with Kadyrov proved to be indispensable in furthering this
process: it was the former mufti’s personal reputation among the Chechen fighters,
and the ties he had previously established, that persuaded former resistance leaders
to entrust their fates – and the fates of their colleagues-in-arms – to the republic’s
pro-Moscow administration. Indeed it was occasionally the case that, when former
insurgents sought amnesty without Kadyrov’s personal warrant, their lives did end
violently – a pattern that persisted until Kadyrov’s son Ramzan came to power in
Chechnya. An additional factor in this regard was the fact that some sections of the
law on amnesty stipulated that the assessment of applications for amnesty was to
be handled on an individual basis by the police and the courts. This was a
prerequisite that was set in place in order to prevent those accused of felonies and
the implementation of terrorist acts from being pardoned under the terms of the
amnesty.
While this state of affairs did dramatically reduce the number of those seeking
pardon in the formal manner, it was Kadyrov who benefited principally from it, by
means of effectively transforming the pardoned individuals and their co-
combatants into his personal clientele.21 According to some estimates, by as early
as in 2003, around two-thirds to three quarters of the kadyrovtsy units were
manned by former rebels (Yugov 2003). The fact that the relatives of Akhmad
Kadyrov and the pardoned rebels figured as each other’s mutual hostages in case
of any hypothetical treason made both sides’ commitment to the common cause
reciprocal.
Incentives to switch sides were manifold; often, they were apolitical. First, the
intense warfare of 1999–2000 broke the backbone of the once-formidable
Chechen army: in the wake of two devastating wars that had inflicted huge losses
in manpower, and with prospects of outright victory out of sight, many Chechen
fighters increasingly yearned for a peaceful life. Second, some Chechen fighters
had made enemies in the resistance movement during the interwar period of
1994–1996, so to now join the ranks of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration
would give them carte blanche to settle scores with their personal enemies.
Significantly, these animosities had, as a rule, developed beyond the lines of the
nominal separatist/independentist division. Third, pressure on the relatives of
some reputed insurgent leaders – and of ordinary insurgents whose identities were
known to the pro-Moscow Chechens – intensified after 2000.22
Those seeking to join the ranks of the Chechen paramilitary units23 were
motivated by various factors. First and foremost, many Chechens sought
membership in the kadyrovtsy units as a means of ensuring simple physical
survival for themselves, as well as their families, within a chaotic situation in
which little security existed otherwise, given the impunity enjoyed by the Russian
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Army and security services. During this period, as detailed above, virtually any
Chechen male from around the age of 15–60 could easily become a victim of the
mop-up operations that were sweeping the country. By joining the paramilitaries, a
youngster would find himself on the “right side” of the battlefield, having placed
himself effectively under the protection of the head of the republic’s provisional
government and his associate – even though the protection accorded in these cases
was not as all-encompassing as in the case of the insurgent commanders and their
fellow fighters, who were given a pledge of security by Kadyrov himself. Also, in
the light of the enormous economic decline that had struck Chechnya as the result
of the two devastating wars, service in the Chechen paramilitary was seen by many
as the best way of earning one’s living, and of supporting (usually large) Chechen
families. In fact, ordinary members of the Chechen paramilitary units could earn
many thousands of rubles, something that was a powerfully persuasive factor for a
great many Chechen youngsters living in a war-torn society that was scarred by
nearly total unemployment. According to a Chechen author:
[f]or a great part, it’s young men who because of the turmoil shaking Chechnya sincethe early 1990s have no education, and whose single occupation has been servicewith arms. Given the choice between criminal activities that bring a regular incometogether with a feeling of power from having access to plentiful supplies and fromthe general atmosphere of fear of Kadyrov’s units that prevails in Chechnya on theone hand, and investigations, trials and years of imprisonment on the other hand, theformer choice is clear, even if the latter outcome can occur at any time. (Dikayev2003)
Most significantly, the act of joining a military community that was supposed to
work on the principle of mutual protection for fellow members was regarded as
essential, inasmuch as it served as a substitute for the traditional clan-based
security networks that had now failed to function under the extremely harsh
conditions of the Russian occupation. In a situation in which established teyp
bonds failed to provide individuals with protection, the need for alternatively
delineated groups that could offer real security on the basis of reciprocity became
irresistibly attractive.
The mechanism of enlistment in the Chechen paramilitary worked in the
following manner:
[ . . . ] somebody comes to Ramzan claiming that he is being hunted by bloodenemies and “Wahhabis,” and he doesn’t have anywhere to turn, and he wants to betaken in. Ramzan’s people check out whether he is lying. If everything checks outand the recruit really is under a death threat, they offer him to bring along three morepeople, usually relatives. They give him an ID card, a weapon, and often even a car,and they tell him: “Nobody will touch you now, but you must obey all commands.”If something does not check out, they kill not only the recruit, but also his threerelatives. These newcomers, who have a knife at their throat, become so-called“werewolves.” They are in charge of the physical liquidation of Kadyrov’s enemiesand other “delicate” tasks. After all, what other choice do they have?24
The custom of blood ties outlined above came into play when a person linked to
Kadyrov, or to his close associates, would recommend a potential recruit, along
with perhaps a relative if his, to the leaders of one of the kadyrovtsy units: in either
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case, total loyalty to the Kadyrov clan was ensured. As a Chechen political
scientist has pointed out, “[i]n return for your life, you went to police, and to prove
that you parted your ways from the insurgents, you had to take blood on yourself,”
which implied carrying out an “initiation” murder of a true or alleged member of
the insurgency or his family member. Gradually, this had turned thousands of
primarily apolitical Chechen youngsters into a “class of murderers, who have no
way back, so they would fight for their rights until the very end.”25 Given the fact
that the kadyrovtsy units are believed to now comprise around 7000 members in
total, this translates into at least 100,000 Chechens, or roughly one-tenth of entire
Chechen population, being related to the Kadyrov clan in terms of clan-related
blood kinship.
Likewise, Chechen youngsters who had been newly recruited into the
kadyrovtsy units found themselves increasingly deployed in counterinsurgency
operations, consisting of both military operations against the insurgents, as well as
preemptive strikes against their real or alleged backers and/or their family
members. According to testimony dating from as early as 2002, “both local and
Russian police forces had to be included in carrying out mop-up operations [in
Chechnya]. Recently, however, only Chechens tend to be on incursions with
divisions of the district military command” (Aliyev 2002). By the mid-2000s,
following the Russian Army’s gradual withdrawal from the active phase of the
armed conflict in Chechnya, kadyrovtsy units were widely held accountable for the
vast majority of counterinsurgency-related human rights violations in the republic,
including summary executions, torture, rape, and racketeering (Gesellschaft fuer
bedrohte Voelker 2006).
In order to survive in the situation of the blood feud, Chechen paramilitaries
were obliged to stick even closer to the Kadyrov clan, thus finding themselves in a
trap from which there was no escape. This, too, explains the increasingly brutal
treatment of their fellow countrymen by the members of kadyrovtsy paramilitaries,
as well as the indiscriminate use of violence by the insurgents against Chechen
paramilitaries and their relatives across the country. In fact, the kadyrovtsy’s terror
is “perhaps even more horrible than the federals’ terror, since for the latter, all
Chechens look the same, whilst [the Chechens] know everyone, and know
everyone’s relatives” (Ruzov 2004, 25). This dramatically increased the amount
and quality of intelligence coming from villagers, most of whomwere the relatives
of the Chechen paramilitaries. While intelligence was scarce during the initial
period of the army-led counterinsurgency, later on, “all of a sudden, ordinary
Chechens started to rat on their blood enemies as they became personally involved
in the war.”26 Similarly, the Chechen villagers in general did tend to provide the
insurgents with shelter and basic supplies: this as a consequence of the prevalence
of the adat-related norms of behavior, combined with the severe human rights
violations carried out by the Russian army units.27
However controversial its methods may have been, the policy of
Chechenization ultimately turned out to be quite effective. By 2004, the backbone
of the insurgency was largely broken, with the insurgents increasingly turning to
terrorist attacks, for which, unlike population-based insurgency, they needed no
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support from the locals. This shift was accompanied by a growing number of
suicide attacks, for which, of course, no exit routes had to be secured, and to
attacks carried out outside Chechnya’s borders, particularly in the less strongly
controlled areas of west-central Russia. This was clearly a sign of weakness,
indicating that the insurgents had lost the capacity to wage a successful guerilla
war. During the period from 2000 to 2004 alone, the share of attacks carried out by
the Chechen insurgents dropped by roughly a half,28 establishing a pattern that
would continue in the years that followed. Here, Ramzan Kadyrov, the de facto
head of the republic since his father’s assassination in 2004 (formally president
since 2007), effectively followed the example of his father by ameliorating his
counterinsurgency policy even further (e.g., by offering the insurgents additional
incentives/inducements to cease hostilities).29
Conclusion
This study has illustrated the crucial role of cultural knowledge and its successful
utilization by federal and Chechen authorities in the counterinsurgency operations
in Chechnya during the period 2000–2004. Given the very context-laden nature of
ethnography, no generalization for the sake of expanding counterinsurgency
theories can be extrapolated from the case study of the Moscow-led policy of
Chechenization. Yet, as this case study has demonstrated, the peculiarities of local
social organization and value systems feature prominently in counterinsurgencies.
While this study explicitly warns against replicating the highly controversial
means exploited by federal authorities and their Chechen allies in the local
counterinsurgency that have inflicted enormous suffering on thousands of
Chechens, it illustrates that the employment of cultural knowledge has contributed
significantly to the weakening of the insurgency in this part of the North Caucasus.
Specifically, by supporting Kadyrov, the Kremlin succeeded in establishing a
power base within the structure of the Chechen clans, while seeking to use
Kadyrov’s personal reputation and contacts within the separatist camp to disrupt it
from within. Nevertheless, in the initial stage of Chechenization, the Russian
authorities never put their strategic trust in Kadyrov (and his clan) alone; rather
they sought to counterbalance Kadyrov’s clan by means of their simultaneous
backing of the alternative power centers represented by Khakiyev, the Yamadayev
brothers, Gazimagomadov, and Gantamirov (and their respective clans), while at
the same time maintaining an essential federal-based military, administrative, and
secret service presence within the republic. Along with the constant threat
stemming from the insurgency, this presence, in turn, created a situation of
political instability and uncertainty within Chechen society – which served to
increase the dependency of the pro-Moscow Chechen factions in general, and of
Kadyrov in particular, on the power of the Kremlin. Meanwhile, the general
instability within Chechnya, coupled with the ongoing mop-up operations being
carried out by detachments of the Russian army (accompanied as they were by
extrajudicial executions, torture, and rape), served to aid recruitment into the
newly formed paramilitaries (kadyrovtsy units). Against this turbulent and violent
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backdrop, both former rebels and Chechen youngsters with no experience in the
resistance movement sought to join the Chechen paramilitaries in an attempt to
ensure physical survival for themselves and their relatives, while others sought to
make a living for themselves in a war-torn country lacerated by absolute
unemployment rates. In the face of the occupation forces’ immense superiority
(and judicial impunity), the principle of clan-based mutual protection deeply
embedded within Chechen society had demonstrably failed to provide the
Chechens with basic security.
Meanwhile, cultural factors influenced the counterinsurgency in a number of
other ways, as well. In fact, it was Kadyrov’s word of honor – and the fact that he
put his head on the block for the security of those who were pardoned – that
encouraged a great many former insurgent leaders to change sides, along with their
comrades-in-arms. The peculiarities of the Moscow-declared amnesties
contributed to a legal chaos and a prevailing social atmosphere that prompted
individual separatists to capitulate not to the federal authorities, which would have
put them in danger, but to seek Kadyrov’s personal guarantee of safety, with the
goal of then serving in his newly formed paramilitary detachments, which would
then ensure their physical survival. By means of thus guaranteeing the security of
defecting former separatists, Kadyrov was able to benefit from the opportunity of
increasing his power base by means of acquiring a reserve of skilled and devoted
military commanders and soldiers, while the pardoned separatists became so close
to Kadyrov as to be capable of assassinating him in the event of his treachery.30
However, this was very much a hypothetical possibility, given the fact that the
relatives of the pardoned separatist fighters would have had to pay with their lives
had the former separatists changed sides once again. Hence, the notion of clan-
based collective responsibility ensured an equilibrium that proved effective.
Yet, joining a paramilitary unit was intimately involved with the act of blood-
tying, as the one who recommended a recruit to Kadyrov’s associates was
expected to put his own safety at risk as guarantor of the recruit’s loyalty; in a
similar fashion, the relatives of an adept at membership in the kadyrovtsy units
were expected to guarantee his loyalty with their own lives. Once members of the
pro-Moscow Chechen paramilitaries, new recruits were deployed in counter-
insurgency operations – either against the relatives of the insurgents, or against
true or alleged backers of the insurgents – which then encompassed them within
the cycle of blood feud with the offended clan. In order to survive, they therefore
had to stick even more closely to the kadyrovtsy units – their newly acquired
“clan” – which further cemented their loyalty to Akhmad Kadyrov and to his clan
on the one hand, and pitted them against those of their fellow Chechens who still
sided with the insurgents.
The establishment and rise of the pro-Moscow Chechen paramilitary forces
was highly instrumental in the field of counterinsurgency, as well. First, the
prevalence of customary law, with its honor-centered notions of hospitality and the
code of silence, ensured that Chechens – even those not necessarily siding with
insurgency – provided the insurgency with material aid in the form of supplies
(food, ammunition, medication, warm clothing), recruits, and intelligence, while
[Q3]
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simultaneously denying federal troops vital intelligence on the movements and
identities of the insurgents. This was a source of immense concern for the Russian
military leadership. Second, the deployment of the pro-Moscow Chechen
paramilitaries helped to sew division between the various clans. Being directly
involved in the system of the blood feud, some Chechens did not hesitate to
provide their fellow kin with crucial intelligence on the insurgents, while others
found themselves engaged in counterinsurgency operations in their own villages.
Against this backdrop, Akhmad Kadyrov was able to improve his own reputation
within Kremlin circles as an effective and loyal counterinsurgency leader, thus
paving the way for his subsequent Moscow-backed victory in the 2003 presidential
election in Chechnya.
Notes
1. Collaboration of social anthropologists and ethnographers with the military is notnovel; since their very beginnings, anthropology and ethnography, largely Euro-centric academic disciplines, were often accused of being both a tool and legitimizerof Western colonialism. The need to utilize cultural aspects in a counterinsurgencywas acknowledged already by Lawrence in his “Twenty Seven Articles” (1917).
2. US Army General David Petraeus, a successful military commander in Iraq with aPh.D. in international relations from Princeton University, is considered one of thosewarrior-intellectuals, as he, among other things, gathered a group of social scientiststo assist him in turning the tide in the Iraq counterinsurgency.
3. For an overview, see Kelly et al. (2010).4. As a matter of the fact, cultural information confined to anecdotal evidence has
resurfaced in some papers (e.g., soldiers should never show Iraqis the soles of theirfeet, refrain from making the OK sign, never reject offers of hospitality, and avoidcontact with females), the banality of which has made them irrelevant for thescholarly investigation of how ethnographic knowledge shapes mechanisms ofcounterinsurgency.
5. Usually, the relevance of larger subdivisions such as teyps and gars still hold in theisolated rural areas of mountainous Chechnya, which are on average moretraditionalist.
6. For an in-depth analysis of the social relevance of contemporary Chechen teyps andclans, see Sokirianskaya (2005).
7. A specific exception justifying forgiveness may occur in cases in which death iscaused by accident, but for cases of violent assault or death (i.e., murder andparticularly rape) forgiveness is extremely rare.
8. Importantly, if circumstances require, blood may be taken years after the originaloffense occurred.
9. For a more detailed analysis of these and related phenomena, see Souleimanov(2007, 17–41).
10. Insurgents tended to operate in their native areas, which meant they would operatewith the members of the same family or clan.
11. Interestingly, according to a journalistic investigation carried out by the influentialRussian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta in 2001, out of 800 criminal cases pursuedagainst Russian army personnel in Chechnya, only five had been taken as far as thecourtroom (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, May 4, 2001).
12. It is important to note that Memorial, due to harsh restrictions imposed on its work inChechnya, only had the opportunity to monitor less than one-third of the republic’s
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territory, primarily the areas in its northern and central parts. Additionally, manyChechens whose relatives were abducted, raped, tortured, or killed by federal troopschose to not approach Memorial.
13. Information provided by the Germany-based Gesellschaft fuer bedrohte Voelker(2005).
14. For more detail, see Human Rights Watch (2004).15. Akhmad Kadyrov was a graduate of Islamic theology in Soviet Uzbekistan and
Jordan, who took active part in the re-Islamization of Chechnya at the beginning ofthe 1990s, advocating for the establishment of Sharia courts, among other things.During the First Russo-Chechen War, he fought in the ranks of the Chechenseparatists, declaring jihad on Russia. In the interwar period, he was appointed thegrand mufti of Chechnya, profiling himself as a tenacious opponent of Salafists and adefender of traditionalist (Sufi) Islam. After the invasion of Dagestan in August 1999by the detachments of Chechen and Dagestani jihadists, he distanced himself fromthe Chechen leadership, handed over Chechnya’s second largest city of Gudermes tothe Russian Army without resistance, seeking a “peaceful solution” with Russia forthe sake of “saving the Chechen people from annihilation,” which furtherantagonized the leaders of the Chechen resistance.
16. On the use of indirect rule in the North Caucasus (via local proxies from therespective titular group), see Siroky, Dzutsev, and Hechter (2013).
17. A few months before the outbreak of the Second Russo-Chechen War, in May 1999,the assassination of Akhmad Kadyrov resulted in the death of five of his bodyguards,among whom were his three nephews.
18. Contrary to popular belief, the fact that Kadyrov belonged to Benoy, the largestChechen teyp (with up to a 100,000 members), seems to have played no role in theKremlin’s considerations due to the vast number of teyp members and the relativelyloose sense of solidarity among them. Instead, Kadyrov’s clan is based around thenekye called Onzhbi, a subdivision of the Benoy teyp.
19. Intriguingly, in the subsequent years and with the exception of Kakiyev, all of thesepro-Moscow warlords were liquidated by Akhmad Kadyrov’s son Ramzan.
20. Russian journalist Ilya Maksakov, quoted in Kedrov and Shaburkin (2000).21. Kadyrov’s side was taken by the former commander of the special force of the
Chechen president Boris Aydamirov, the commander of the president’s guard ShaaTurlayev, the head of the security council Artur Akhmadov, and other high-rankingChechen insurgents.
22. For instance, Magomad Khambiyev, the minister of defense in the separatistgovernment, who was considered Aslan Maskhadov’s right-hand man, turned intothe target of a manhunt by Chechen paramilitary and federal forces. After efforts tocapture Khambiyev failed, according to various estimates 40–200 relatives of thegeneral were captured and threatened to be killed by the Chechen paramilitaries,which in the end forced Khambiyev to surrender in March 2004 after consultationswith the clan’s elders.
23. Initially, Chechen paramilitary units were established within the framework of theAkhmad Kadyrov-led Presidential Security Service, lacking any formal legal status,with detachments of Chechen OMON and other armed units controlled by pro-Moscow Chechen warlords existing simultaneously. Since 2003, Chechenparamilitary units controlled by Kadyrov had seen gradual incorporation into aseparate and formally legal institution, the Ministry of Interior of the ChechenRepublic, with the Chechen OMON and other Chechen-manned units coming underthe grip of Akhmad, and since 2004 his son Ramzan Kadyrov. By and large, it is fairto assert that the structural patterns of counterinsurgency operations in Chechnyahave remained largely unchanged since 2000, even though the gradualmonopolization of Chechnya’s political and security spheres under the reign of
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Ramzan Kadyrov (and his close personal ties with Putin) coupled with theweakening of the local insurgency have enabled him and kadyrovtsy to operate in amore ruthless way irrespective of the federal authorities.
24. Testimony of an anonymous member of the Chechen paramilitary, presented inVenyaminov (2004).
25. Interview conducted by the author with the Jamestown Foundation’s MairbekVatchagayev, 18 October 2013.
26. Interview conducted by the author with a former member of Chechen paramilitaries,Paris, France, September 2011.
27. Interviews conducted by the author with Chechen refugees in Oslo, Paris, andVienna, 2007–2013.
28. This information is based on the author’s research.29. This was one of the factors that ultimately contributed to the significantly weakened
Chechen insurgents’ decision in 2007 to extend the geography of the insurgencyacross nearly all ethnic autonomies of the North Caucasus, establishing the so-calledCaucasus Emirate, a virtual jihadist theocracy.
30. Similarly, coercion in the form of torture and murders (or threat thereof) carried outagainst the relatives of some notorious separatist leaders forced some to capitulate,weakening the separatists’ power base even further.
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Walsh, Nick Paton. 2005. “Chechen Government Admits Civilians Buried in MassGraves.” The Guardian, June 16.
Yugov, Andrey. 2003. “Prezidentskiy spetsnaz [The President’s Spetsnaz].” Strana.Ru,December 15. http://www.memo.ru/hr/hotpoints/caucas1/msg/2003/12/m15978.htm
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