States Nations Geopolitics

State Terrorism in Chechnya

f the many ethnic and subnational movements that surfaced with glasnost and the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union, the Chechen independence movement has been the most bloody. In Chechnya, a region of the northern Caucasus mountain range (Figure 9.D), clans, not territory, is the traditional form of political organization. Ever since imperial Russia began expanding into the region in the late 1700s, the Sunni Muslim Chechens put up strong resistance, periodically waging holy wars against Christian Russia. When the Russian revolution occurred in 1917, they did not view the Bolsheviks as an improvement, not least because the newly created Soviet Union formally adopted scientific atheism as its

0

Fewer than 1 rnllllon

Figure 9.D The Northern Caucasus This reference map shows the principal features, political boundaries, and major cities of the northern Caucasus.

The most feared form of terrorism in the twenty-first century is bioterrorism. Bioterrorism is the deliberate use of microorganisms or toxins from living organisms to induce death or disease. Biological and chemical agents that could be used for bioterrorist purposes range from anthrax to West Nile virus. In 2002, the president of the United States signed into law the Bioterrorism Act, intended to protect the nation's food and drug supply from bioterrorist threats. Since 9/11, research about and public and commercial responses to possible bioterrorist threats have grown significantly. Legislation, such as the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, is the driving force behind this new growth industry. The emergence and persistence of a wide range of extremist religious groups in the United States and throughout the world represents a potentially far more violent

state religion. Following a brief, failed attempt by the peoples of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasus (including the c o ~ ~ n t r i eofs Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) to resist Soviet domination, the Soviets decided to divide and conquer by creating adniinistrative regions that encompassed a mixture of clans and ethnic groups. The anti-Soviet Chechens were put in the same region as the Ingush peoples to the south. The Chechens remained defiant but paid a terrible price for doing so. In the late 1930s tens of thousands were liquidated by Stalin's purges aimed at suspected anti-Soviet elements. In 1944, after invading German forces were forced to retreat from the North Caucasus, Stalin accused the Chechens of having collaborated with the Nazis and ordered the entire Chechen population-then numbering about 700,000-exiled to Kazakhstan and Siberia. Brutal treatment during this mass deportation led to the deaths of more than 200,000 Chechens. In 1957 Nikita Kruschev embarked on a program of de-Stalinization that included the rehabilitation of Chechens. But when the Chechens returned, they found newcomers had taken over many of their homes and possessions. Over the next 30 years many of these newcomers withdrew, while the Chechen population consolidated and grew to almost 1 million. When Mikhail Gorbachev initiated his policy of glasnost in 1985, Chechens finally saw a chance for self-determination, and with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989, they wasted no time unilaterally declaring their complete independence.

threat than terrorist groups of tlie early and niid-twentieth century. The rise in faith-based terrorism since tlie new millennium suggests that the potential for evcti greater acts of violence shoiild not be ignored. The United States responded to the terrorist attacks of September 11,2001 by declaring a global war against terrorism and identifying first Afghanistan and then Iraq, as the greatest threats to U.S. security. Although the evidence of involvenient in the 911 l attacks by Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein, was highly questionable, on March 19,2003 after aniassing over 200,000 U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf region, President George W. Bush ordered the bombing of the city of Bagdad, Iraq. The declaration of war and invasion occurred without the explicit authorization of tlie U.N. Security Council, and some legal authorities take tlie view that the action violated the U.N.