Kulisy rosyjskiej polityki wobec Republiki Czeczenii i jej konsekwencje

The Backstage of the Russian Policy towards the Chechen Republic and its Consequences The Russians lost the First Chechen War. Russia’s federal security service (FSB) organised kidnappings of western citizens to change the real image of the Chechen people in Russia and the West. The FSB agent Adam Deniyev founded the first Wahhabi organisation in Chechnya. Shamil Basayev, who collaborated with Russia’s military intelligence Service (GRU), carried out a series of terrorist attacks in Russia. Gradually, the Chechen national liberation movement was transformed into a jihadist movement. The FSB carried out the infamous bomb attacks in Russia, which, together with Basayev’s land offensive in Dagestan, became the reason for starting the Second Chechen War, won by the Russians. After the attack on the president of Chechnya Akhmad Kadyrov, power was taken over by his son, the dictator Ramzan Kadyrov, who is still ruling today, and is Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man in the North Caucasus.

How does war become a legitimate undertaking? Re-engaging the post-structuralist foundation of securitization theory

How does war become a legitimate undertaking? This article challenges the interpretation of securitization as a narrow, linear and intentional event by re-engaging the post-structuralist roots of Copenhagen School securitization theory. To uncover the social process that makes war acceptable, the framework presented in this article is informed by securitization theory but foregrounds the web of meaning and representation between a myriad of actors in society to unearth the contents – and changes – in how war is articulated and carried out with public consent. This matters not only for the question of how war becomes a legitimate undertaking, but also for the very practices through which the war is fought: the emergency measures that are enabled in a discourse of existential threat. The article re-visits the Second Chechen War to illustrate how war is made logical and legitimate to leaders and their publics.

Russia’s role in the official peace process in South Ossetia

The aim of this article is to analyse the role of Russia in the transformation of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict and analyse this important period in the history of the Caucasus, where Georgia and its secessionist region of South Ossetia have been trying to find a peaceful solution to their post-war situation. Major milestones of the official peace process are set in the context of Russian-Georgian relations. We then proceed to the analysis of the internal changes within the Russian Federation at the turn of the millennium and try to find a connection between this internal transformation of Russia and the transformation of the conflict in South Ossetia. The most important factors behind the more assertive approach by the Russian Federation towards Georgia in the last decade are considered: internal centralisation of power and economic growth of the Russian Federation, the reinforcement of the importance of the South Caucasus as part of the geopolitical discourse within the Russian Federation, the deterioration in Russian-Georgian relations, and the suppression of the fear of the spill-over effect since the end of Second Chechen War.

Are Coethnics More Effective Counterinsurgents? Evidence from the Second Chechen War

Does ethnicity matter for explaining violence during civil wars? I exploit variation in the identity of soldiers who conducted so-called “sweep” operations (zachistki) in Chechnya (2000–5) as an empirical strategy for testing the link between ethnicity and violence. Evidence suggests that the intensity and timing of insurgent attacks are conditional on who “swept” a particular village. For example, attacks decreased by about 40% after pro-Russian Chechen sweeps relative to similar Russian-only operations. These changes are difficult to reconcile with notions of Chechen solidarity or different tactical choices. Instead, evidence, albeit tentative, points toward the existence of a wartime “coethnicity advantage.” Chechen soldiers, enmeshed in dense intraethnic networks, are better positioned to identify insurgents within the population and to issue credible threats against civilians for noncooperation. A second mechanism—prior experience as an insurgent—may also be at work. These findings suggest new avenues of research investigating the conditional effects of violence in civil wars.