RUSSIAN OCCUPATION IN CHECHNYA

Russian Occupation in Chechnya

Russian Occupation in Chechnya

Introduction

Chechens are an ethnic minority living primarily in Russia's North Caucasus region. For the past two hundred years, they have generally been governed by Moscow, though they have had varying degrees of de facto autonomy. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Chechen separatists launched a coordinated campaign for independence, which resulted in two devastating wars and an ongoing insurgency in Russia's republic of Chechnya. Militants in and around Chechnya continue to agitate for independence, though the death of separatist leader Shamil Basayev in July 2006 weakened the separatist movement. However, violence in the North Caucasus has escalated since 2008, and Moscow experienced its most serious attack in six years with the bombing of a metro station in March 2010.

Research Rationale

Chechnya is a region in southern Russia that, like many other regions in Russia, is home to a non-Caucasian ethnic group. As in many other ethnic struggles, the Chechens want freedom from Russia. The main reason the Russian government is reluctant to give up the land in Chechnya is because of a very valuable natural resource that is located in the region. That resource is oil, which is rapidly becoming one of the world's most valuable substances, due to the fear that the world could run out of it in the near future.

There are numerous pipelines that run through Chechnya and if the Chechens were granted autonomy Russia fears that it would lose the control over those pipelines. In fact Chechens have already started refining the oil and selling it on the street.

Russia occupied Chechnya under the guise of fighting terrorism and human rights violations. The war is even losing the support of native Russians, who are beginning to notice the various cruel tactics performed by the Russian military.

"?The ?great gamesters'---their faces anonymous and their greed unexposed by the media they own---proceed to play their obsessive profit board game for the international monopoly of black gold, undeterred by the human blood cost of their contemptible and destructive goals." That was a quote of "The heart of the matter: Oil and Chechnya" by Luciana Bohne.

In this study she exposes the Russian government for being heartless and uncaring toward their own people as they pursue their own goals.

In Crying Wolf: The Return of War to Chechnya author Venora Bennett states that one of the terrorist attacks that was used, as a justification for the occupation of Chechnya, may not have even been carried out by Chechens. While we do not know if it was carried out by Chechens or not, what we do know is that the Russian government didn't care if they were or not because they did not take the time to check the facts of their intelligence.

Who are the Chechens?

The Chechens are a largely Muslim ethnic group that has lived for centuries in the mountainous North Caucasus region. For the past two hundred years, Chechens have resisted Russian ...