Why Do Chechen Women Turn Into Suicide Bombers? (Respekt)

Why Do Chechen Women Turn Into Suicide Bombers?[1]

Emil Souleimanov

Without any doubt the terrorist acts carried out recently in Moscow by
Vaynakh women suicide bombers cannot be interpreted in any other way than
as an expression of extreme despair and hopelessness.

The hostage-taking at the Dubrovka theatre in Moscow in October 2002
carried out by the de facto suicidal Chechen group led by Movsar Barayev,
as well as the ever more frequent terrorist and sabotage operations against
various representatives or entire agencies of the Moscow-backed government
in Grozny – all these give evidence of the same underlying issue: having
lost hope in the possibility of defeating the occupying Russian army, or
more precisely, of inflicting sufficient losses on the army to force it to
leave Chechnya, some of the field commanders have resorted to means and
methods directly contradicting the high moral standards of their own
people. It can be expected that the attempts – that is, sabotage and
terrorist activities – of Chechen separatists to transfer the war to the
territory of Russia are bound to continue.

There can be no justification for terrorism in the sense of organized
violence against the civilian population, no matter how "right" or "just"
the objectives are. Nor in what name the organizers and perpetrators of
terrorist acts kill and maim innocent people. Nevertheless, extensive
experience worldwide demonstrates that an efficient fight against terrorism
inevitably requires not just a "cosmetic" destruction of the instruments of
terror but a systematic search for, and if possible, elimination of the
reasons that compel young and healthy people to sacrifice their lives with
a smile on their face in the fight for an idea. It is very regretful that
nothing similar can be found in the Russian policy towards Chechnya and
Chechens.

Under no circumstances can the Chechen resistance be generally branded as
terror. While various isolated cases of terror from the side of Chechen
separatists have occurred since 1995, the guerilla activities of the
Chechens who took up arms to fight for liberating their country from the
brutal military occupation cannot be put on a par with "typical" terrorism.
They share nothing with the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. in
September 2001 – despite all the efforts of Moscow to compare them.

On the other hand, what is the appropriate word to use for describing the
systematic terrorizing of the Chechen population by robberies, endless
abuses and humiliation, bloody "mop-up" operations, and heavy artillery
shelling and aircraft bombing of towns and villages that have been going on
ever since the end of 1994, with the exception of the brief peace in 1996 –
1999? And what response would one expect from the representatives of a
nation, 15 percent of which (120,000 – 130,000 people) has been
exterminated as a result of the genocidal policy? A policy by which tens of
thousands of people have been disabled and one half of the population have
lost their homes? The majority of Chechens literally struggle to survive
from day to day.

Roots of the present conflict

The roots of the Russian – Chechen conflict go back to the 17th century. In
that period, faced with Russia's strategic and political expansion in the
southwestern direction, the freedom-loving mountain people of the Caucasus
united. The Chechens, who knew no state boundaries and had never had a king
or aristocracy, had no particular interest in becoming a part of Russia
with its serfdom and tyrannical order. The onset of the armed resistance
against the Russian invasion coincided with the definitive Islamization of
the Chechens, a process that began in the 16th century. According to the
majority of experts on the history of the Caucasus, it was precisely the
Russian – Chechen wars that served as a kind of stimulus and a boost for
the Islamization of the Vaynakhs and a number of Adyg tribes of the
northwestern Caucasus. The shaping of the peculiar "Caucasian Islam" of the
Chechens was greatly influenced by pre-Islamic Vaynakh customs and beliefs.
Since those times it has become an organic part of the Vaynakh life
experience, a distinctive Chechen nationalism, and up to the present day it
still has not shed the romantically mystic aura of the Nakshbandiya
followers from the period of the great Caucasian war of 1817 – 1864.

According to research carried out by Soviet-era scientists, the result of
the intensification of the genocidal policy, especially in the period from
1830 to 1859, was that "roughly one million Chechens were killed in clashes
with the tsar's armies, died from starvation or epidemics, or were
deported..."

Nevertheless, the fierce resistance of the exhausted Chechens continued
even after the fall of the Dagestani settlement of Gunib in 1859 and the
capture of imam Shamil. Local or nationwide uprisings broke out repeatedly
in Chechnya in 1865, 1877–1878, 1905, 1919–1920, 1921, 1928, 1930–1936, and
1940–1944, demonstrating that in spite of the occupation of Chechen
territory and the systematic terror aimed at the local population the
Russian powers have not managed to break its will for freedom.

On February 23, 1944 and over the following days, owing to accusations of
collaboration with the Germans, a mass deportation of Chechens to Central
Asia was carried out by special order of Stalin. According to some
estimates about 50–60 percent of the total Chechen population died during
the deportation and over the 13 years of their life in exile in Kazakhstan,
due to the brutal repression as well as starvation, cold weather, and
disease. During the period from the permitted return of Chechens to their
homeland in 1957 till they actually achieved independence in
August/September 1991, a discriminatory policy towards Chechens was in
place. Chechens were denied access to higher education; substantial
limitations were imposed on the usage of the Chechen language; and even the
least significant positions in the republic were filled by representatives
of other, non-Vaynakh nationalities, by the direct order of Moscow. All
attempts by Vaynakh intellectuals to develop their language and culture and
to preserve their national identity met with accusations of nationalism
from the all-powerful KGB and were curbed in every possible way.

During the Brezhnev-era period of stagnation a number of pseudo-scientific
works and textbooks on the history of Chechnya were produced, according to
which Chechnya's unification with Russia was "voluntary" and historically
"correct." The cynicism of the essentially colonialist policy of Moscow
towards Checheno-Ingushetia reached its low point when a memorial to
general Yermolov was erected in the center of Grozny. General Yermolov was
the ideologist and perpetrator of the genocide of Chechens and other
nationalities of the northern Caucasus in the first half of the 19th
century. February 23, a tragic day in the mind of all Chechens, was
celebrated pompously in the Soviet Union as the Day of the Soviet Army (the
anniversary of stopping the German offensive at St. Petersburg by the new
Red Army in 1918). Ever since the mid-1990s the date has also been
celebrated in the Russian Federation as the Day of the Defenders of the
Fatherland.

For an observer unfamiliar with the Caucasian situation a single look at
the map of Chechnya, which occupies an area similar to that of Wales in the
United Kingdom, may lead to astonishment: how can the million-strong nation
of Chechens expect to succeed militarily in a war with forces that are so
vastly superior? However, the Chechen society found itself in the grip of
the proverbial "irrational" mentality of the mountain people of the
Caucasus, of historical memory filled with the heavy burden of three
hundred years of wars, mass extermination, and abuse. Ignorance of these
facts together with a tragic coincidence of a number of circumstances in
the post-Soviet era finally led to the military invasion by Russia. This
left the Chechens with no other choice than to take up arms to defend their
honor and their hard-won independence.

The vicious circle of violence

Today you would not find a single person in the republic who has not lost
family members or close friends as a result of the operations of the
federal troops. Moreover, in Chechnya up to now a failure to abide by the
tradition of blood feud brings about great disgrace for a person and his
descendents. Therefore it is naive to expect that the armed resistance will
come to a spontaneous end. Centers of resistance against the occupying
power will continue to exist, from time to time taking up forms that are
most effective in different situations: from attempts to take over towns
and villages in Chechnya to the intensification of sabotage and terrorist
activities on the territory of Russia.

This in turn will lead to repeated waves of repressions on the part of the
occupying power, and the vicious circle of violence and revenge will be
intensified ever further. In such a situation achieving an ultimate
subjugation of Chechnya and an end to the military conflict would then
necessarily require either total exhaustion of the nation's psychological
and material resources (which as a matter of fact already happened several
times in the past), or a mass-scale physical elimination of its male
population. Unfortunately, it has to be said that even after a potential
end of the immediate Russian–Chechen conflict Chechen society will be
affected for many years to come by its irreconcilable division into two
antagonized camps.

The ever more frequent attacks by Chechen saboteurs or terrorists in
Russian towns will first of all hurt the Chechens themselves, because they
provide an excellent pretext for Russian generals to continue waging their
war against the "bandits" until the victorious end. In the current context
of growing anti-Caucasian sentiments in Russian society one might expect
another wave of pogroms and an increased discrimination of not only
Chechens but also other Caucasus natives throughout Russia.

Any realistic attempt to settle the conflict in a peaceful way will
undoubtedly have to be based on the soonest possible withdrawal of the
occupying armies beyond the boundaries of Chechnya. As the current
experience demonstrates, the guerilla war against the federal troops
deployed on the Chechen territory, who are responsible for daily robberies,
violence and abuse targeting the peaceful population, has not been
suspended for a single day. It can be claimed with certainty that it will
be possible to start talking about a true end of the Russian – Chechen war
only on the day when the Russian troops will leave the country.

One thing remains certain – memory cannot be destroyed; a genetically based
thirst for freedom cannot be uprooted. The history of Chechnya bears
witness that sooner or later the recuperated Chechen nation will rise again
to fight for independence, and the more mercilessly they will be barred
from reaching it, the fiercer the fight will be.

Emil Souleimanov
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[1] The article was published in Prague Watchdog (August 3, 2003) and in
Czech in Lidové Noviny (October 31, 2002).