Russian Counterinsurgency Doctrine During The Second Chechen War 1999-2009
Georgetown University March 6 2020
https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2020/03/06/russian-counterinsurgency-doctrine-during-the-second-chechen-war-1999-2009/
The Bear subjugating the Wolves
Before the Russian people became a nation, Russia was an empire. This has severe implications for the Kremlin’s counterinsurgency doctrine, as Russia can best be described as a state-nation rather than a nation-state. Given Russia’s unique identity, the very legitimacy of the Kremlin’s actions can be put into question, fueling Russian insecurity, which in turn caters to an inherently offensive mindset. This tendency for aggressive action quite clearly emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union, as the fear of disintegration became a reality. This offensive mindset had perverse effects, however, as Russia progressively destroying the Republic of Ichkeria as “an autonomous political community,”[i] feeding corruption and criminality rather than extinguishing it, and catering to economic uncertainty and insecurity. The result was the growth of increasingly potent anti-Russian sentiments. This left Chechens with nothing, leading many to support the oppositional identity provided by the insurgents in Ichkeria. Russia’s short-sighted historic approach means that the Chechen insurgency is never fully extinguished in the region. Conflict recurs because of the repressive and coercive measures outweighing any real move toward winning the “hearts and minds” of the locals. Because the use of repression is so entrenched, it is unlikely that Russia will ever be able to fully vanquish insurgent elements in the North Caucasus.
Unlike the typical Western approach, Moscow focused on the “hearts and minds” of the Russian people rather than the Chechen population and took a hard-core, enemy-centric approach to eliminating the perceived threat emanating from outside its borders, emphasizing the foreign elements instigating the insurgency. In May 2008, for example, Vladimir Putin declared that the Chechen insurgency had never been an attempt to achieve independence in the mid-1990s, stating that the conflict was instead instigated by foreigners designed to “loosen Russia’s place in the world stage.”[ii] Moscow sought complete control over information flows, targeting and manipulating the Russian population and the international community more broadly by highlighting the infiltration of foreign terrorists infiltration into Russian territory.
Déjà vu
The volatile neighborhood’s insurgency against Russian imperialism plays out like a broken record. Even the guerrillas, usually adept at avoiding past mistakes, mirror their ancestors’ failures, always underestimating Russia’s willpower to suppress independent sentiment expressed by the North Caucasus people. Simultaneously, Russia’s historic experience with the Chechens taught them that any weakness espoused would directly result in an uprising, which meant that the Bear had to always appear stronger and unequivocally ready to savagely quell the pack of wolves.
Russia’s counterproductive ‘divide and rule’ policies meant that Chechnya viewed Russian imperialist aggression in the context of a 300 year-old genocide, making any “hearts and minds” approach impossible to conceptualize within a limited time-frame. The Russians historically view any Chechen leadership unappointed by Russian headquarters as illegitimate, but Chechnya too saw the Russian government as illegitimate given that it has proved itself to be untrustworthy time and time again. During the early days of the Soviet Union, for example, the most influential Sheik was invited to visit Lenin in Moscow. But instead of enjoying a grand reception, he was strangled to death at Rostov-on-Don, his final stop.[iii] The Soviets then promised to grant Chechnya autonomy, but in 1922 Moscow again reneged on its word by severing Chechnya from the rest of the mountain republics. This shattered trust, which contributed to the violence of the Second Chechen War.
(article continued in link)