The Fate of the Chechens

Peter Jarman and his wife Roswitha were British Quaker representatives in Russia 1991-94. They continue with contacts and support of North Caucasian peoples. Jarman is Clerk of Friends House Meeting in London and of Quaker Social Action. He and his wife were Friends in Residence at Pendle Hill, Fall 1999.

The Chechens, who know themselves as the Vainakh people of Ichkeria, are the largest of diverse Sunni Muslim ethnic groups that live on the Northern side of the great Caucasian mountains that separate the Russian Federation from the Trans-Caucasian republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Before the first Russian-Chechen war of 1994-96, about 1.2 million people lived in Chechnya including a substantial Russian minority. The Chechens were the last to succumb to the domination of imperial Russia in the last century--their famous leader Imam Shamir was eventually captured after fierce resistance but was allowed to live and die in the luxury of a palace near Saint Petersburg.

After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the North Caucasian peoples sought to establish a confederation of peoples of mountainous areas but this was eventually thwarted by the Communists who imposed their rule through small-nation ethnic republics such as the Chechen-Ingush, Khabardin-Balkari, Karachai-Cherkess, and Kalmuk republics. The Ossetians whose territory is split by the mountains between North Ossetia in Russia and South Ossetia in Georgia are not predominantly Muslim and their allegiance to Moscow has been stronger than their Muslim neighbours. Stalin was half Ossetian and this is thought to have saved Ossetians from deportation in 1944. Five other North Caucasian peoples including the Chechens and Ingush were deported to Soviet Central Asia on the pretense that they were collaborating with Nazi invaders. Only one-third of them survived until 1957 when Krushchev allowed them to return. Chechens found that part of their territory had been given to Dagestan which is a republic of several ethnic groups bordering the Caspian Sea and Azerbaijan. The Ingush lost part of their territory to North Ossetia: Ossetians, displaced from South Ossetia in 1944, had settled in what became a disputed territory that led to the inter-ethnic war of October 1992, when Ossetians aided by Russian forces displaced most of the Ingush there into Ingushetia.

The Ingush had placed some trust in the Russian government to restore the territory lost to Ossetians and had consequently not supported the Chechen declaration of independence from Russia. Chechnya and Ingushetia became separate republics in 1991.

Chechens and Ingush are half-sisters, half-brothers, who speak similar languages which, like the languages of North Caucasian peoples, are very different from Russian. Indeed the languages, religion, and culture of these peoples are quite distinct from the Slavic traditions of the Russians. Roughly 30 of the 150 million people of the Russia Federation are not Russian. Inter-ethnic disputes were sublimated during the Soviet era, but afterwards long-simmering conflicts errupted.

The Chechens' sense of hurt was particularly strong. Under their President, Dzhokhar Dudayev, they voted in 1991 for independence, an act more idealistic than realistic, and in Dec. 1994 Yeltsin's government launched a savage onslaught on Chechnya to bring it to heel. Although Russian forces occupied Grozny for several months, the Chechen guerilla forces fought back with such determination that the Russian forces were defeated. This humiliation has fueled a strong urge for revenge and a need to restore pride among Russian officers. Pride and revenge underlie some of the current relentless ferocity of the Russian onslaught.

A peace treaty was signed in August 1996 after 18 months of fierce fighting in which at least 50,000 people were killed including many raw Russian conscripts. The behaviour of often drugged and drunk contract soldiers of the Russian forces, especially in Chechen villages, caused a great loss of life and livelihoods. At the beginning of the current war in September 1999, safe water and reliable energy supplies had not been restored.

The first war left a legacy of despair, hurt, and degradation. Chechen soldiers were left with no employment: even much of the excellent agricultural land in Chechnya was rendered infertile because of landmines. It is hardly surprising that some Chechen men were driven into drugs and crime--profit was made out of hostage taking and kidnapping. The social fabric of the Chechen people had been shattered and poisoned by the war and this bred a new desperate group of brigands who became influenced by a fundamentalist Muslim sect, the Wahhabis, originally from Saudi Arabia. This sect financed gun-running and influenced the Chechens to adopt the Muslim Shariah law that had not previously been practiced in Chechnya.

During 1995, British Quakers were involved in the March for Peace from Moscow to the Chechen capital Grozny that was organized by the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers. They worked with a moderate Chechen, Alaudin Chilayev, who had endeavoured to persuade the Chechen President Dudayev to moderate his full independence stance, knowing that Russia did not want to disintegrate. Russian regions having other dominant ethnic groups like Tatarstan and Kamchatka had obtained degrees of autonomy more than that demanded by Chechens. Chilayev wrote that Quakers were making a very significant contribution to the welfare of the Chechen peoples.

In the first half of 1999, the kidnapping of foreigners diminished, but by then very few international NGOs could take the risk of working in or near Chechnya. Chechen raiders led by Shamir Basayev and the Saudi Arab Khattab attacked neighbouring territory in Dagestan in an endeavour to create a Muslim state there. In Moscow several bomb explosions in large blocks of flats killed about 300 people and these were attributed to Chechens although no definite proof has yet been established. Khattab said in a recent interview that his aim is to help free his fellow Muslims from Russian rule; his hatred of Russians arises from his experiences of fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

Throughout these hostilities, ever since the Russian assassination of the Chechen President Dudayev in 1995, his successor Aslan Maskhadov has remained a moderate and principled leader with whom General Alexander Lebed on behalf of the Russian government readily arranged a cease-fire in 1996. The current acting Russian president, Vladimir Putin, previously head of the Soviet KGB in East Germany, continues to ask Maskhadov to hand over Shamir Basayev and other Chechen brigands. This he cannot do as he does not control them, and because no Chechen can betray his own people.

According to the Ingush Ministry for Emergencies, as of November 1999, there are about 200,000 newly internally displaced persons, IDP's, in Ingushetia, 70% are children and the rest are nearly all elderly, for the Russians who control border posts have not allowed Chechen men of military age to leave Chechnya. 10% to 20% of these IDP's are living in near zero temperatures in tents or in the open air. In addition, there are another 40,000 IDP's already in tiny Ingushetia whose normal population is 300,000. Other Chechens have fled to neighbouring parts of Russia, but tens of thousands are trapped in encampments inside Chechnya.

Since 1995, a Quaker-established NGO, the Centre for Peacemaking and Community Development (CPCD), registered in Britain and in Chechnya, under the direction of a young Yorkshire Quaker, Chris Hunter, has developed a network of local workers. They are engaged in assisting children traumatized by the first war, developing indigenous food supplies, creating Email networks of communication, and helping to create a civil society throughout the North Caucasus. Chris Hunter has just appealed for $225,000 of relief aid to feed and support 2000 IDP families in Ingushetia and Chechnya. Norwegian Church Aid has already contributed $150,000 and Chris and his indigenous workers have distributed clothes, tents, and food to IDP's and to some Chechens nearby in Chechnya itself.

Also, since 1995 another British Quaker, Roswitha Jarman, has been travelling regularly to Chechnya and neighbouring territories at the instigation of a Dutch charity, Chechen Relief, as a counselling psychologist to help Chechen doctors, teachers, and social workers attend to traumatised children, youth, and women from the first war. She expects to be with them in Ingushetia in January.

Now that a second war is raging, with Russian forces relentlessly shelling and bombing citizens in the vain hope of rooting out terrorists, Chris Hunter and Roswitha Jarman have appealed to the world community to recognise the suffering of the Chechen and Ingush people and to provide relief.