Earlier this week, suicide bombers were responsible for the deaths of at least 34 people in the southern Russian city of Volgograd, in attacks on a railway station and a trolley bus. In October, a woman from Dagestan killed seven people in a suicide bus blast in the city.
The bombings raise fears of further attacks before Russia hosts the Winter Olympics in Sochi in less than six weeks. Volgograd, the former Stalingrad, the city made famous in World War II, lies about 650 kilometres northeast of Sochi and is the main gateway to the Black Sea resort.
Evidence in the two recent blasts points to Islamist terrorists, most probably Chechens. In July, Chechen jihadist leader Doku Umarov pledged that his militants would disrupt the Sochi games. Sochi itself lies not far from the restive republics of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, in the northern Caucasus, the sites of ongoing Islamist terrorism.
“We know that on the bones of our ancestors, on the bones of many, many Muslims who died and are buried on our territory along the Black Sea, today they plan to stage the Olympic Games. We, as the Mujahedeen, must not allow this to happen by any means possible,” Umarov declared.
The most restive of the numerous peoples living in the Caucasus, the Chechens have chafed under Russian domination for 150 years. In the recent past, they have fought two bloody wars, in 1994-1996 and 1999-2000, for independence. The conflict left at least 100,000 dead and the capital, Grozny, a wasteland. Most ethnic Russians living in Chechnya at the time fled. Umarov fought in both these wars.
Following prolonged resistance during the 19th century, the Russians in 1859 finally overcame the forces of Chechen leader Imam Shamil, who had created the first state structures that Chechens had ever known, and they claimed the Caucasus region for the tsarist empire. The Chechens were incorporated into the new Soviet Union following the collapse of the empire after the World War I.
More than a half million Chechens were deported to Siberia in 1944, on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, officially as punishment for collaboration with the invading German forces in the Caucasus during World War II, and their autonomous republic was abolished. Only after Stalin’s death were they given permission to return to their homeland. Their republic was also restored, in 1957.
In 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the Chechens again saw a chance to gain their freedom. Although they lost the two wars, a new constitution granted Chechnya in 2003 did give the republic more autonomy within the Russian Federation.
Since then, Chechnya has been governed by Russian-approved puppets. The current head of the republic is a onetime Chechen rebel, Ramzan Kadyrov, son of a former Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in 2004.
Since the attacks on New York and Washington by Al-Qaeda on Sept. 11, 2001, Russia has emphasized the role of international Islamists in Chechnya and tried to link the repression in Chechnya to the broader context of fighting international terrorism.
Still, foreign radicals did arrive in Chechnya in the 1990s to help in what they believed was a religious struggle. Once these foreign fundamentalists, with their money, war tactics, and outside connections, became more established, calls for the establishment of an Islamic Caucasian Emirate became louder.
By 1999, the then Chechen president, Aslan Maskhadov, was forced to introduce Islamic law and had lost control over radical forces led by Shamil Basayev — in fact he joined them. The incursion into neighbouring Dagestan, which triggered the second war in Chechnya, had the declared aim of establishing an Islamic state in the North Caucasus, much like the one Imam Shamil himself had tried to create.
This dream has not died.
In 2007, Umarov proclaimed himself emir of a Islamic Caucasian state ruled by Sharia law. “Today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, our brothers are fighting,” he said. “Everyone who attacked Muslims, wherever they are, are our enemies, common enemies. Our enemy is not Russia only, but everyone who wages war against Islam and Muslims.”
Shamil’s image is publicly displayed in Chechnya today, with a memorial complex built in his capital, Vedeno, in southeastern Chechnya. After all, the most important aspect of Shamil’s legacy for Chechen identity is their tradition of “continued resistance.”
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.