IF THE twin air crashes in Russia on Tuesday night are found to be the work of Chechen rebels, as many Russians suspect, they would be the latest blows in almost 300 years of bloodshed.
Chechnya’s relations with Russia have been violent since the Tsars first tried to exert their influence over the mountain tribes of the Caucasus in the 18th century.
The Chechen Sheikh Mansur first declared holy war on the advancing Russians, uniting clans and mobilising resistance until his capture in 1791. But the most famous Chechen rebel was the mullah and warrior Imam Shamil, who pioneered guerrilla tactics in the Caucasian War of 1817-64.
Shamil Basayev, the present rebel leader, claims to be descended from one of his lieutenants. Many Russians consider him the prime suspect for the crashes, even though the FSB, the KGB’s successor, says that there is no evidence of terrorism.
While Moscow regards Mr Basayev and his followers as terrorists with links to al-Qaeda, the rebels see themselves as the successors of Imam Shamil, continuing a struggle for independence from Chechnya’s imperial rulers. In July, Mr Basayev made a rare television statement, broadcast by al-Jazeera, in which he insisted that his battle was solely against Moscow.
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“Our Chechen people will continue their struggle inside Russia and we are not planning any attacks outside Russia, even though we have the capabilities to do so,” he said.
Security experts say that Mr Basayev, who is Russia’s most-wanted man, has pioneered the use of terrorist tactics in the Chechen conflict since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1991, his gunmen hijacked a flight from the southern city of Mineralnye Vodi and flew it to Turkey, threatening to blow it up to publicise the Chechen cause. That stand-off was resolved peacefully.
In June 1995, he seized 1,500 people in Budennovsk in southern Russia. After the deaths of 166 of them, the Chechens and Russians agreed a ceasefire, which lasted until December 1995.
His most audacious operation was the Dubrovka theatre siege in Moscow in 2002, in which Chechens took 800 people captive; 129 hostages and all 41 captors died when Russian forces stormed the building.
Mr Basayev has claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings around Russia in the past year, including one on the Moscow Metro in February that killed at least 40 people. He has also said that he was behind the assassination of Akhmad Kadyrov, the Chechen President, in May, and attacks on the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia in June, in which 90 people died.
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Russian authorities have refused to negotiate with the rebels and the escalating violence has made a mockery of a peace plan launched by the Kremlin last year, which featured a referendum on Chechnya’s status, a limited amnesty for rebels and an election to choose a Chechen president. Yet it does not seem to have dented the popularity of President Putin, who as Prime Minister sent troops back to Chechnya in 1999. T he air crashes are unlikely to affect Sunday’s election, which the Kremlin’s candidate, Alu Alkhanov, is expected to win.
Many regional experts say that the root cause of Chechen terrorism is widespread anger at human rights abuses by Russian troops and pro-Moscow Chechen forces against civilians. The picture they paint is chillingly similar to that described by Leo Tolstoy in Hadji Murat, his novella about the Chechen conflict, in 1904.
He wrote: “The feeling experienced by all the Chechens from the youngest to the oldest was stronger than hate. It was not hatred, for they did not regard those Russian dogs as human beings, but it was such repulsion, disgust and perplexity at the senseless cruelty of these creatures, that the desire to exterminate them — like the desire to exterminate rats, poisonous spiders or wolves — was as natural an instinct as that of self-preservation.”