Examine the main causes and consequences of the wars in Chechnya (and Essay

Examine the main causes and consequences of the wars in Chechnya (and now the wider North Caucasus) in the period 1994 to the pr - Essay Example Precisely, while it seems logical to claim that national liberation fuelled by fundamentalist beliefs on Islam could be the main reason for the movements of Chechnya (which I shall explain in greater detail in the succeeding parts of this paper), I wish to underscore that the economic and socio-political motives of the Russian government must also be taken into consideration. Perhaps, the terrorist attacks of the rebel groups could be a result and not mainly the cause of war, as Cornell (2003) posited. Aside from this, attention must also be placed on the theories ofpolitical economy that flourished in the neighboring regions of Chechnya in the North Caucasus. For evidences that I shall explore later on, it must be pointed out that the situation in Chechnya quite interestingly provided commercial benefits to Ingushetia and Dagestan. In the end, I wish to argue that the two Chechnya wars must not be simplistically viewed as a result of the ideological viewpoints of the Chechnya people , but rather a result of much complex string of socio-political and commercial perspectives. In order to maintain succinctness and focus in my discussion, I like to divide my paper into three parts. The first part will provide a brief overview of the happenings in the two Chechnya wars in order to highlight the key factors that have led to their occurrence—from the perspectives of the rebellious group and of the Russian government. The second part will synthesize the data gleaned by infusing socio-political, economic, and commercial perspectives into the discussion. The last part will provide a conclusion and shall re-emphasize the thesis presented above. The Two Chechnya Wars: A Brief Overview Located in the Southwestern corner of Russia, Chechnya is primarily considered a Muslim region (Zalman, n.d.). Geographically, it is bordered by Dagestan, to the north, Ingushetia, to the west, and Georgia to the south. Its capital is Grozny. The first Chechnya War, as further noted by Zalman (n.d.), was instigated by the region’s declaration of independence after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Deemed as a huge impediment in redeeming Russia’s economic and socio-political power, President Yeltsin ordered immediate military enforcement in the region (Hughes, 2001). As Vendina et. al. (2007) narrated â€Å"Boris Yel’tsin, then-president of the RSFSR, declared a state of emergency in Chechnya in November 1991, dispatching troops to Grozny one month after the region had declared its independence; these were repulsed and the chaos surrounding the Soviet Union’s demise allowed Chechnya to be left to its own devices† (p. 180). As factional fighting against the army of Air Force general Dzhokhar Dudayev increased in 1994 (which was also the time when Russia had already gained its strength as a state), Yeltsin ordered a full assault on the region (Cornell, 2003). In this regard, as Cornell (2003) described the subsequent happening s, â€Å"it took two months of massive air and artillery bombing for the federal army to capture Grozny—at the cost of thousands of own casualties, over 20,000 civilian lives, a total destruction of the city, and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people† (p. 170). Indeed, it was crude counterinsurgency tactic as marked by the massive use of firepower that defined the fighting strategy of Dudayev’