Second Chechnya War
Mass grave in Chechnya (February 2000)
| date | 1999 to 2009, officially ended |
|---|---|
| place | Chechnya |
| output | Military victory of the Russian armed forces, liquidation of the main separatist leaders |
| consequences | Establishment of President Kadyrov, who is loyal to Russia, and ongoing guerrilla warfare at a low level |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
|
|
| losses | |
|
3,536 to 3,684 soldiers |
14,113 (1999-2002) |
The Second Chechnya War was a military conflict in the Russian Caucasus Republic of Chechnya , following on from the first , which ended in June 1996 with an agreement. It began in 1999 and ended in April 2009. Both sides were later found to have committed serious human rights violations.
background
In the First Chechen War , which lasted from 1994 to 1996, the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was able to maintain its independence.
However, on August 7, 1999, around 400 Chechen irregulars led by Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab attacked the neighboring Russian province of Dagestan . In these battles (see Dagestan War) up to August 26, 1999 around 73 Russian soldiers were killed and 259 wounded. Between September 5 and 15, 1999, around 2,000 fighters attacked the Novolaksky district in Dagestani, killing several hundred people. During the same period, over 300 people were killed in bomb attacks on residential buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities . Prime Minister Putin blamed Chechen terrorists for the crimes and publicly declared war on them.
Course of war
The Chechen war began with air force bombing near the Dagestan border, which the Defense Ministry confirmed on August 26th. Meanwhile in Russia there were explosive attacks on houses in Russia , which fueled the war mood in Russia even without evidence of Chechen perpetrators. From September 23, air strikes were carried out daily, which by September 28, allowed at least 60,000 people to flee to Ingushetia and claim civilian casualties.
On 1 October 1999, the marching Russian army in violation of the Agreement of Khasavyurt again in Chechnya to the criminal from the perspective of Russia and the rebels supporting government of Aslan Maskhadov removed from power on. The army soon conquered most of the Chechen plains and the capital, Grozny .
Aslan Maskhadov and the Islamist groups went underground and tried to retreat to the inaccessible southern mountain regions, where they believed they were safe from the Russian army. However, penetrating Russian troops included a large part of the fleeing rebels south of Grozny. While the vast majority of them escaped the enclosure after the battle for Höhe 776 , another large formation under the command of Ruslan Gelajew near Komsomolskie was wiped out.
The actual military phase of the Russian operation therefore ended in the spring of 2000. However, your troops remained stationed on the spot to prevent the rebels and the legitimate government from returning and, if possible, to drive them completely from their areas of retreat.
The remaining Chechen associations, which included international jihad fighters, then adopted guerrilla tactics by forming small combat units (10 to 50 men) and attacking the Russian army Chechen civilians often died. From 2000, female suicide bombers, the so-called " black widows ", appeared for the first time . Observers suspect foreign donors as financiers of the rebels, with Georgia being assumed to be the base of operations due to its location.
In 2001 the Russian government launched a large-scale anti-terrorist operation with the aim of smashing the Chechen uprising. In the course of this, it gradually succeeded in eliminating important leaders of the Chechen resistance, including Ibn al-Khattab , Abu al-Walid , Salman Raduyev , Ruslan Gelayev and Aslan Maskhadov . There was no success in finding the most dangerous terrorist Shamil Basayev for a long time, but his death was reported on July 10, 2006. Allegedly he was killed by a Russian secret service operation.
On September 26, 2002, Chechen irregulars under Ruslan Gelayev attacked the village of Galashki in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, killing 14 Russian soldiers and 17 civilians.
During the hostage-taking in Moscow's Dubrovka Theater from October 23 to October 26, 2002, Chechen suicide bombers, including several women, led by Mowsar Barayev, took around 700 hostages and called for the war to end and the Russian military to withdraw immediately. To end the drama, the Russian authorities used a previously untested anesthetic gas ( carfentanyl ). All 41 hostage-takers and 129 hostages died in the process: the unconscious hostage-takers from being shot in the neck by the Russian task force, the theater-goers mainly due to the narcotic drug overdose and inadequate medical care after their liberation.
A bomb attack on the Chechen government building in Grozny on December 27, 2002 left 72 people dead. In February 2003, the United States imposed sanctions on Chechen rebel groups and placed them on its list of terrorist organizations , including following the bombings in Moscow. Bank accounts were also frozen. According to the official results of a referendum in Chechnya on March 23, 2003, 95.5% of the population voted to remain in the Russian Federation. Separatist observers, however, questioned the legitimacy of the election result.
On October 5, 2003, presidential elections were held in Chechnya. Russian President Vladimir Putin , who ordered these elections, succeeded in getting his candidate Akhmad Kadyrov , the head of the administrative authority, through by ensuring that all candidates who were ahead of Kadyrov in the polls did not run. In exchange for withdrawing his candidacy, Aslambek Alsakhanov was given a post as Putin's representative on Chechnya issues, while Malik Saidullaev's candidacy was declared invalid by the Supreme Court. The election, to which the OSCE had not sent any observers for security reasons, was described as a farce by both Western politicians and human rights organizations. Kadyrov announced that he would take even tougher action against his opponents.
Seven months later, on May 9, 2004, Kadyrov was killed in a bomb attack. Putin then appointed the Chechen head of government Sergei Abramov as provisional president.
After a radio interview with the underground rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, who was not recognized by Moscow , in June 2004, in which he announced a change in tactics among the separatists, Chechen rebels attacked again on June 22, 2004 - on the emblematic anniversary of the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 the neighboring republic of Ingushetia. According to eyewitness reports, around 200 heavily armed rebels surrounded several police stations, traffic police posts and a barracks of border guards and shot all the police officers, soldiers and employees of the public prosecutor's office and the FSB's domestic intelligence service . 90 people died in the bloodbath, including 62 local security forces, the Ingushetian interior minister Abukar Kostoyev, one of his deputies and the health minister.
According to official information, 338 civilians and security forces as well as the 30 or so hostage-takers died when they were taken hostage in a school in North Ossetian Beslan. On the day of school enrollment, the command took control of a large number of schoolchildren, teachers and parents and threatened to blow up the gym where they were with the hostages if Russia did not withdraw from Chechnya. The action was preceded by the hijacking and later demolition of two Russian passenger planes with around 90 people on board, as well as an attack on a station on the Moscow metro with 12 fatalities. The Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev assumed responsibility in each case .
On March 8, 2005, the Russians succeeded in arresting the unrecognized rebel president Maskhadov at Tolstoy-Yurt and killing him during the unsolved operation. While warnings were issued in the West against a radicalization of the Chechen resistance, many Russian observers, whom Maskhadov considered to be the mastermind and co-organizer of numerous attacks, assumed a reduction in the number of terrorist acts and a stabilization of the situation. In fact, the few remaining rebels withdrew more and more from plans to wage war against Russia. Depending on the source, their number has been estimated at around 100–200 men who operate in small groups of 2–4 and at most 10–15 men. In order to finance their own survival, the groups have increasingly switched to drug trafficking.
On July 11, 2006, the Russian domestic secret service, the FSB, stated that on the night of July 10, 2006, Basayev had been liquidated as a result of a long-planned operation by the Russian secret service near Ekashevo in Ingushetia (North Caucasus). Chechen rebels confirmed his death on the same day but claimed that it was an accident. FSB boss Nikolai Patrushev stated, however, that special forces of the army attacked and killed Basayev while transporting an explosive device, which would have prevented a planned terrorist attack, according to the official version from the Russian side. In a later genetic examination of the body, the identity of Basayev was confirmed.
On April 16, 2009, on the instructions of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Chechnya 's status of "anti-terrorist operation zone" was revoked. With the withdrawal of around 20,000 Russian military personnel, the power to govern lies increasingly with the President of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov , who was sworn in in 2007 .
Human rights situation
Serious human rights violations were also committed in this war by Russian units (soldiers, troops from the Interior Ministry, “ OMON ” special units) and rebels. Since the war began, thousands of civilians, mostly young Chechen men, have been abducted, tortured and murdered on charges of terrorism. Rape, looting and extortion of the civilian population by the security forces continue at the numerous checkpoints. Since 2002, the paramilitary units, mostly made up of ethnic Chechens, have been increasingly responsible for this. These are controlled by Ramzan Kadyrov , son of the President of the Republic, Akhmad Kadyrov , who was installed by Moscow in 2003 and killed in an attack in 2004 .
In 2003, Yuri Budanov was sentenced to ten years in prison for the murder of 18-year-old Chechen girl Elsa Kungajewa , of which he served a good half. Budanov was the first Russian officer to be tried for a crime in the Chechen war.
In May 2013, the newspaper Die Welt researched the influx of refugees from the Russian Federation to Germany. The newspaper learned from German "security circles" that these were mainly people from Chechnya. In an article in Die Welt, a member of the Russian NGO “Civil Aid” reported that human rights violations such as kidnapping, torture and rape were still going on. Many cases have shown that Chechens have to pay protection money from their compensation for destroyed houses. In addition, President Ramzan Kadyrov, who is supported by the Russian government, is ruling the country by force. The situation of women is particularly bad, since "every young woman [...] can be forcibly married to a man close to Kadyrov, if he wants," said the member of the "civil assistance".
Others
The Georgian Pankisi Gorge was repeatedly suspected Chechen - Islamist terrorists to house.
See also
literature
- Heiko Sauer, Niklas Wagner: The Chechnya conflict and international law. Chechnya secession, Russia's military interventions and the reactions of the international community to the test of international law . In: AVR , Vol. 45 (2007), pp. 53-83.
- Martin Malek: Russia's wars in Chechnya. "Restoring constitutional order", "anti-terrorist operation" or genocide? . From: Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung No. 5/2 2004, pp. 101–129
- Anna Politkovskaya : Chechnya. The truth about the war . (German translation of the Russian edition Вторая Чеченская = The Second Chechen War ), Dumont Literature and Art Publishing House, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8321-7832-5
- Hans Krech : The Second Chechen War (1999-2002). A manual . Publishing house Dr. Köster, Berlin 2002, (Armed Conflicts after the End of the East-West Conflict, Vol. 11), ISBN 3-89574-480-8
- Johannes Rau: The Dagestan conflict and the terrorist attacks in Moscow in 1999. A manual. Publishing house Dr. Köster, Berlin 2002, (Armed Conflicts after the End of the East-West Conflict, Vol. 10), ISBN 3-89574-470-0
- Yuri Felshtinsky , Alexander Litwinenko : Blowing Up Russia: Terror from within. Acts of terror, abductions, and contract killings organized by the Federal Security Services of the Russian Federation. SPI Books, New York 2002, ISBN 1-56171-938-2
- Elisabeth Gusdek Petersen: Grozny - Zurich and back. Portraits of five young people from Chechnya. Orell Füssli Verlag AG, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-280-06105-3
- Anthony Marra: The low heavens. Suhrkamp, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-518-42427-8
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Thousands of Russians killed in Chechnya
- ↑ On losses in Russian army
- ↑ Deaths in Ukraine Aren't Putin's Priority , Bloomberg, May 29, 2015; 3,684 dead by 2008
- ↑ Russia: December 25, 2002 . Strategypage.com. Retrieved October 17, 2011.
- ↑ Russia put 750 militants out of action in 2009 - Interior Ministry , RIA Novosti, October 1, 2009
- ↑ Sarah Reinke: Creeping Genocide in Chechnya. Disappearances - Ethnic Persecution in Russia - Failure of International Politics. Society for Threatened Peoples, 2005, p. 8 ( PDF ( Memento from August 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ))
- ↑ Russia acknowledges bombing raids in Chechnya - August 26, 1999 ( Memento from September 19, 2000 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Anti-Russian atrocities spur support for Chechen airstrikes , CNN, September 28, 1999
- ↑ special status canceled; Chechnya pretends to be idyllic , welt.de, April 16, 2009.
- ↑ Karsten Kammholz, Julia Smirnova: Immigration: The asylum rush from Chechnya is growing. In: welt.de . May 16, 2013, accessed October 7, 2018 .