Ali Askerov - Historical Dictionary of the Chechen Conflict (Historical Dictionaries of War, Revolution, and Civil Unrest)

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HISTORICAL DICTIONARIES OF WAR, REVOLUTION, AND CIVIL UNREST

Jon Woronoff, Series Editor

The United StatesMexican War , by Edward H. Moseley and Paul C. Clark Jr. 1997.

World War I , by Ian V. Hogg. 1998.

The United States Marine Corps , by Harry A. Gailey. 1998.

The Wars of the French Revolution , by Steven T. Ross. 1998.

The Spanish-American War , by Brad K. Berner. 1998.

The Persian Gulf War , by Clayton R. Newell. 1998.

The United States Air Force and Its Antecedents , by Michael Robert Terry. 1999.

World War II: The War Against Japan , by Anne Sharp Wells. 1999.

British and Irish Civil Wars , by Martyn Bennett. 2000.

The Cold War , by Joseph Smith and Simon Davis. 2000.

Ancient Greek Warfare , by Iain Spence. 2002.

The Crimean War , by Guy Arnold. 2002.

The United States Army: A Historical Dictionary , by Clayton R. Newell. 2002.

Ancient Egyptian Warfare , by Robert G. Morkot. 2003.

Arms Control and Disarmament , by Jeffrey A. Larsen and James M. Smith. 2005.

The Russo-Japanese War , by Rotem Kowner. 2005.

Afghan Wars, Revolutions, and Insurgencies, Second Edition , by Ludwig W. Adamec. 2005.

The War of 1812 , by Robert Malcomson. 2006.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict , by P. R. Kumaraswamy. 2006.

Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Warfare , by Benjamin C. Garrett and John Hart. 2007.

Civil Wars in Africa, Second Edition , by Guy Arnold. 2008.

The Northern Ireland Conflict , by Gordon Gillespie. 2008.

The Anglo-Boer War , by Fransjohan Pretorius. 2009.

The Zulu Wars , by John Laband. 2009.

Terrorism, Third Edition , by Sean K. Anderson with Stephen Sloan. 2009.

American Revolution, Second Edition , by Terry M. Mays. 2010.

Dirty Wars, Second Edition , by David Kohut and Olga Vilella. 2010.

Korean War, Second Edition , by Paul M. Edwards. 2010.

Holocaust, Second Edition , by Jack R. Fischel. 2010.

United States Navy, Second Edition , by James M. Morris and Patricia M. Kearns. 2011.

War in Vietnam , by Ronald B. Frankum Jr. 2011.

The Civil War, Second Edition , by Terry L. Jones. 2011.

Spanish Civil War, by Francisco J. Romero Salvad. 2013.

The Crusades, Second Edition , by Corliss K. Slack. 2013.

The Chinese Civil War, Second Edition , by Christopher R. Lew and Edwin Pak-wah Leung. 2013.

World War II: The War against Germany and Italy , by Anne Sharp Wells. 2014.

The French Revolution , Second Edition , by Paul R. Hanson. 2015.

Chechen Conflict , Ali Askerov. 2015.

Historical Dictionary of the Chechen Conflict

Ali Askerov

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB, United Kingdom

Copyright 2015 by Ali Askerov

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Askerov, Ali, 1970

Historical dictionary of the Chechen conflict / Ali Askerov.

pages cm. (Historical dictionaries of war, revolution, and civil unrest)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4422-4924-0 (cloth : alkaline paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-4925-7 (electronic) 1. Chechnia (Russia)HistoryCivil War, 1994 Dictionaries. I. Title.

DK511.C37A85 2015

947.086dc23

2015000755

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Editors Foreword

It would be nice if wars were so simple that one could sum them up by saying that one side fought the other one, or indeed, for those who are more closely concerned, that one side was the good guys and the other was the bad guys andpresumablythe good guys won. This simplistic schema does not apply to the Chechen conflict, or maybe to any conflict, and in this case the situation is not only nuanced but frequently quite confusing even to close observers. The Chechens are fighting the Russians, and this for three centuries now, with the Russians being at different times the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation. The Russians think they are right in putting down a small people in the Caucasus whom they beat such a long time ago, all the more so since there are other small peoples who might follow a bad example. The Chechens are fighting for their independence, one that was taken from them by force, and they intend to get it back by force if necessary. Fine, but then the Chechens are divided and have often been divided in the past, with some on the Russian side, so this is both a war of national independence and a civil war with a bit of Islamism mixed in. It is a challenge to determine who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, or even who is on which side when, let alone when this conflict will ever end.

While difficult to grasp in many ways, this conflict can be traced if not quite explained by focusing on specific events, including all-out battles and smaller skirmishes, abductions, assassinations, and other, specific persons on all of the various sides and sometimes on different ones at different times, places where major encounters took place or which are important for one reason or another, the role of women and what place is left for human rights, among many other things. These are all included in the core dictionary section. And that is easier to follow over time, a very long time, thanks to the extensive chronology. The introduction provides the best summing up. And further information can be sought through the bibliography. Readers of this Historical Dictionary of the Chechen Conflict will find multiple ways of approaching it and making some sense of it as it continues to unfold.

The rather messy and controversial nature of the Chechen conflict makes writing about it far more difficult than writing about neater conflicts that have already been determined one way or the other and lie somewhere in the past. Even writing a historical dictionary, which is an encyclopedia of sorts, and should stick to facts without judgments, is no easy matter. Still, this volume makes a particularly commendable effort to do so. That is thanks to an author who has gone to great pains to state facts as clearly as possible without taking sides. Ali Askerov, who was born and educated in Azerbaijan, initially worked as a journalist and then instructor of international relations at Qafqaz University in Baku, and has studied at George Mason University and taught at the Universities of Manitoba, Winnipeg, and Regina. Presently he is at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He received his PhD in 2011, with a thesis concerning analysis and transformation of the Chechen conflict, and has since written numerous articles and papers on related topics. He has also produced a book titled Chechens from Past to Future: Healing the Wounds . His specialization is most emphatically the Chechen conflict, and it would be very hard to find a better guide to this bloody and intractable conflict.