Souleimanov, Emil A., „An Ethnography of Counterinsurgency: Kadyrovtsy and Russia's Policy of...

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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: [email protected]

RPSA 900976—15/3/2014—KARTHICK.T—476976———Style 2

Post-Soviet Affairs, 2014

Vol. 00, No. 0, 1–24, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2014.900976

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mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2014.900976

Author Query

Please supply received date.

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


E. Souleimanov2

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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


Post-Soviet Affairs 3

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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


E. Souleimanov4

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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


E. Souleimanov6

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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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Author Query

Please check the sentence ‘During individual mop-ups carried…’ for clarity.

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


E. Souleimanov12

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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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Author Query

Please check the sentence ‘Once members of the pro-Moscow Chechen…’ for clarity.

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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