An ethnography of counterinsurgency: kadyrovtsy and Russia's policy of Chechenization

Abstract

Exploring the case study of the Moscow-led counterinsurgency in Chechnya, this article shows the crucial importance of cultural knowledge understood in an ethnographic sense in terms of patterns of social organization, persisting value systems, and other related phenomena – in the relative success of the eradication of the Chechnya-based insurgency. Using a range of first-hand sources – including interviews by leading Russian and Chechen experts and investigative journalists, and the testimonies of eyewitnesses and key actors from within local and Russian politics – the article explains the actual mechanisms of Moscow's policy of Chechenization that have sought to break the backbone of the local resistance using local human resources. To this end, the study focuses on the crucial period of 2000–2004, when Moscow's key proxy in Chechnya, the kadyrovtsy paramilitaries, were established and became operational under the leadership of Akhmad Kadyrov, which helped create a sharp division within Chechen society, reducing the level of populace-based support for the insurgents, thereby increasing support for the pro-Moscow forces.

Keywords::

• Chechnya
• Caucasus
• Russia
• counterinsurgency
• ethnography
• paramilitary

Notes

^1. Collaboration of social anthropologists and ethnographers with the military is not novel; since their very beginnings, anthropology and ethnography, largely Euro-centric academic disciplines, were often accused of being both a tool and legitimizer of Western colonialism. The need to utilize cultural aspects in a counterinsurgency was acknowledged already by Lawrence in his “Twenty Seven Articles” (1917).

^2. US Army General David Petraeus, a successful military commander in Iraq with a PhD in international relations from Princeton University, is considered one of those warrior-intellectuals, as he, among other things, gathered a group of social scientists to assist him in turning the tide in the Iraq counterinsurgency.

^3. For an overview, see Kelly et al. (2010).

^4. As a matter of the fact, cultural information confined to anecdotal evidence has resurfaced in some papers (e.g., soldiers should never show Iraqis the soles of their feet, refrain from making the OK sign, never reject offers of hospitality, and avoid contact with females), the banality of which has made them irrelevant for the scholarly investigation of how ethnographic knowledge shapes mechanisms of counterinsurgency.

^5. Usually, the relevance of larger subdivisions such as teyps and gars still hold in the isolated rural areas of mountainous Chechnya, which are on average more traditionalist.

^6. For an in-depth analysis of the social relevance of contemporary Chechen teyps and clans, see Sokirianskaya (2005).

^7. A specific exception justifying forgiveness may occur in cases in which death is caused by accident, but for cases of violent assault or death (i.e., murder and particularly rape) forgiveness is extremely rare.

^8. Importantly, if circumstances require, blood may be taken years after the original offense occurred.

^9. For a more detailed analysis of these and related phenomena, see Souleimanov (2007, 17–41).

^10. Insurgents tended to operate in their native areas, which meant they would operate with the members of the same family or clan.

^11. Interestingly, according to a journalistic investigation carried out by the influential Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta in 2001, out of 800 criminal cases pursued against Russian army personnel in Chechnya, only five had been taken as far as the courtroom (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, May 4, 2001).

^12. It is important to note that Memorial, due to harsh restrictions imposed on its work in Chechnya, only had the opportunity to monitor less than one-third of the republic's territory, primarily the areas in its northern and central parts. Additionally, many Chechens whose relatives were abducted, raped, tortured, or killed by federal troops chose to not approach Memorial.

^13. Information provided by the Germany-based Gesellschaft fuer bedrohte Voelker (2005).

^14. For more detail, see Human Rights Watch (2004).

^15. Akhmad Kadyrov was a graduate of Islamic theology in Soviet Uzbekistan and Jordan, who took active part in the re-Islamization of Chechnya at the beginning of the 1990s, advocating for the establishment of Sharia courts, among other things. During the First Russo-Chechen War, he fought in the ranks of the Chechen separatists, declaring jihad on Russia. In the interwar period, he was appointed the grand mufti of Chechnya, profiling himself as a tenacious opponent of Salafists and a defender of traditionalist (Sufi) Islam. After the invasion of Dagestan in August 1999 by the detachments of Chechen and Dagestani jihadists, he distanced himself from the Chechen leadership, handed over Chechnya's second largest city of Gudermes to the Russian Army without resistance, seeking a “peaceful solution” with Russia for the sake of “saving the Chechen people from annihilation,” which further antagonized the leaders of the Chechen resistance.

^16. On the use of indirect rule in the North Caucasus (via local proxies from the respective titular group), see Siroky, Dzutsev, and Hechter (2013).

^17. A few months before the outbreak of the Second Russo-Chechen War, in May 1999, the assassination of Akhmad Kadyrov resulted in the death of five of his bodyguards, among whom were his three nephews.

^18. Contrary to popular belief, the fact that Kadyrov belonged to Benoy, the largest Chechen teyp (with up to a 100,000 members), seems to have played no role in the Kremlin's considerations due to the vast number of teyp members and the relatively loose sense of solidarity among them. Instead, Kadyrov's clan is based around the nekye called Onzhbi, a subdivision of the Benoy teyp.

^19. Intriguingly, in the subsequent years and with the exception of Kakiyev, all of these pro-Moscow warlords were liquidated by Akhmad Kadyrov's son Ramzan.

^20. Russian journalist Ilya Maksakov, quoted in Kedrov and Shaburkin (2000).

^21. Kadyrov's side was taken by the former commander of the special force of the Chechen president Boris Aydamirov, the commander of the president's guard Shaa Turlayev, the head of the security council Artur Akhmadov, and other high-ranking Chechen insurgents.

^22. For instance, Magomad Khambiyev, the minister of defense in the separatist government, who was considered Aslan Maskhadov's right-hand man, turned into the target of a manhunt by Chechen paramilitary and federal forces. After efforts to capture Khambiyev failed, according to various estimates 40–200 relatives of the general were captured and threatened to be killed by the Chechen paramilitaries, which in the end forced Khambiyev to surrender in March 2004 after consultations with the clan's elders.

^23. Initially, Chechen paramilitary units were established within the framework of the Akhmad Kadyrov-led Presidential Security Service, lacking any formal legal status, with detachments of Chechen OMON and other armed units controlled by pro-Moscow Chechen warlords existing simultaneously. Since 2003, Chechen paramilitary units controlled by Kadyrov had seen gradual incorporation into a separate and formally legal institution, the Ministry of Interior of the Chechen Republic, with the Chechen OMON and other Chechen-manned units coming under the grip of Akhmad, and since 2004 his son Ramzan Kadyrov. By and large, it is fair to assert that the structural patterns of counterinsurgency operations in Chechnya have remained largely unchanged since 2000, even though the gradual monopolization of Chechnya's political and security spheres under the reign of Ramzan Kadyrov (and his close personal ties with Putin) coupled with the weakening of the local insurgency have enabled him and kadyrovtsy to operate in a more ruthless way irrespective of the federal authorities.

^24. Testimony of an anonymous member of the Chechen paramilitary, presented in Venyaminov (2004).

^25. Interview conducted by the author with the Jamestown Foundation's Mairbek Vatchagayev, 18 October 2013.

^26. Interview conducted by the author with a former member of Chechen paramilitaries, Paris, France, September 2011.

^27. Interviews conducted by the author with Chechen refugees in Oslo, Paris, and Vienna, 2007–2013.

^28. This information is based on the author's research.

^29. This was one of the factors that ultimately contributed to the significantly weakened Chechen insurgents' decision in 2007 to extend the geography of the insurgency across nearly all ethnic autonomies of the North Caucasus, establishing the so-called Caucasus Emirate, a virtual jihadist theocracy.

^30. Similarly, coercion in the form of torture and murders (or threat thereof) carried out against the relatives of some notorious separatist leaders forced some to capitulate, weakening the separatists' power base even further.