Today the issue becomes complicated. Chechnya or Chechen Republic, has recalled the most important
geopolitical problem for the Soviet Union first and then for the Russian Federation.
We find ourselves here, in a territory located on the northern flank of the Great Caucasus,
mostly flat and not very rich in natural resources,
bordering Georgia to the south and three other autonomous republics of the Russian Federation:
to the west with Ingushetia and North Ossetia, to the east with Dagestan and to the northwest with
the Russian kraj of Stavropol. It's not easy to establish the productive potential of Chechnya,
which has been almost wiped out by the destruction of war as far as industrial plants are concerned
and seriously weakened in the agricultural sector as well. The main resource is the transit of
the oil pipeline linking the Dagestan city of Machackala and the city of Baku in Azerbaijan,
on the western shore of the Caspian Sea with Novorossijsk on the Black Sea. Today's video
is not intended to be a detailed reconstruction of the contrasts, I would say almost secular,
between this rebellious republic and Moscow, because my friend Simone has already talked
enough about it. My intent is rather to talk about the rise of its current leader Ramzan Kadyrov,
because even if officially Chechnya today presents a facade of peace and reconstruction,
after the two conflicts that have opposed it to the suffocating grip of neighboring Russia, the
tyranny of its ruler, established with the silent blessing of the Kremlin, continues to eradicate
even the mildest forms of dissent. Through the law enforcement and security agencies under
his control, Ramzan has used brutal methods of repression (kidnappings, enforced disappearances,
torture, extrajudicial executions, and collective punishment practices) not only against suspected
armed insurgents and their suspected collaborators but also against other action groups deemed
inconvenient, such as independent journalists, Salafist Muslims, drug users, and those caught
drunk driving. Let's take a few steps back. At the dawn of the third millennium, after large-scale
Russian military operations had brought Chechnya back under federal rule, the Kremlin gradually
began to hand over responsibility for governing the republic and conducting counterinsurgency
operations to pro-Russian Chechen leaders. In his 2000 speech to the Federal Assembly, Putin
portrayed Chechnya as the supreme obstacle to be overcome to hold the country together, saying:
"Russia has received a fundamental challenge to its sovereignty and territorial integrity. It has
come face to face with a force striving to redraw the geopolitical map of the world." The domination
of Chechnya would have been the cornerstone of Putin's project of building a strong state,
because it was the emblem of the Kremlin's control over its subordinates. Putin's administration,
through collaboration with the Kadyrov family, set up the so-called policy of Chechenization, that is
changing the nature of the conflict from "Russians against Chechens" to "good Chechens against rebel
Chechens". And it's likely that the Russian president, in order to reinforce his statist
vision and end the ongoing conflict, needed to find a local lord with whom the local population
could identify and who knew the intricate traditions of the country. It was necessary
to appoint as president someone who had a past in the ranks of the insurrectionists and therefore
enjoyed a good popular support. Akhmad Kadyrov's past seemed a guarantee in every aspect. He was
a Sufi Muslim who didn't identify himself with the Salafists (the radicals) but who ironically,
after becoming Grand Mufti in 1995, that is the highest religious authority in Chechnya,
accepted to bless the jihad against the Russian state, siding with the separatist wing, led by
the then president Dzokhar Dudaev. Later, the Salafists criticized him for being too lenient,
which was unacceptable in their "project of real and pure Islam." As a result, a conflict developed
between Sufi and Salafist Muslims, and eventually Akhmad chose to align himself with the Russian
leadership and strengthen Sufi rule in Chechnya. Unfortunately for the Kremlin, Akhmad was not an
efficient puppet: he was despised as a corrupt and cold-hearted politician who argued with the
political partners and civil administrators that Moscow entrusted to him. He preferred to rely on
his relatives and his own security force, known as the SB (slushva besopasnosti ) or kadyrovtsky,
led by his son Ramzan. In the meantime, the second Chechen war raged and the Chechenization policy
didn't seem to bear fruit, as rebel cells sprouted up all over the country, flooding the media
with news of instability related to the small Caucasian region. The climax came in October 2002
when a commando of rebels in the service of the insurrectionist leader Shamil Basayev, besieged
the Dubrovka theater in Moscow and held more than 800 people hostage, demanding the withdrawal of
Russian forces from Chechnya and the end of the conflict. The subsequent raid by Russian
special forces led to the death of about 130 hostages, almost all of them suffocated by gas.
Shamil, named after the famous warrior Imam Shamil who led the resistance of the mountain tribes
against the tsarist armies in the 19th century, claimed responsibility for numerous attacks:
after an incursion into neighboring Dagestan in 1999, he repeatedly threatened to attack
Russian cities, even boasting that he had an army of "black widows," Chechen female kamikaze;
his organization planted a bomb in the Moscow subway on the morning of 02/06/2004, killing
41 people. Finally, Akhmad, judged a traitor, also fell victim to Basayev's murderous rampage,
when on 05/09/2004, two days after receiving his second term as president, a bomb exploded at the
stadium in Grozny, where the Chechen leader and a number of senior Chechen and Russian
officials were attending the World War II victory day celebration. Blind to the growing threat, the
Kremlin continued with its Chechnya policy. While waiting for Ramzan, still too young, to reach the
minimum age of 30 years to govern, it designated Alu Alkhanov as Akhmad's successor. However,
he had no popular base, lacking the charisma and influence that had distinguished his predecessor,
surrounded by many questions about his real ability to manage a region devastated by war
and to convince the Chechen rebels to lay down their arms. His election took place the weekend
before the event that triggered the decisive change in Putin's approach to the Chechen issue,
namely the hostage crisis at the Beslan school in North Ossetia on 09/01/2004 On that day more
than 330 people lost their lives, many of them children, and Putin had to open his eyes to the
obvious failure of his policy. 4 years later, in a speech Putin stated that he had underestimated the
complexity and the danger of the processes taking place in Chechnya, failing to react adequately and
showing weakness. It was necessary, therefore, to create a new system of forces and means
to exercise control over the situation in the North Caucasus. Concepts fully embodied by the
protagonist of our video, Ramzan Kadyrov. He is the master of Chechnya, a man who, contrary
to expectations, has managed to monopolize power over the Chechen security forces in the territory.
Still, it was hard to expect this from a man who appeared in audiences before Putin dressed in a
training suit and who, given his poor education, made every public speech a shameful disaster. In
spite of this, Kadyrov knew how to operate within the network of the numerous Chechen teips (the
clans) and balance power among them perfectly, which explains much of his strategic success and
popularity in the eyes of his fellow citizens. The Chechens are in fact a complex society,
based on extended families, the "teip" in fact, and tradition dictates that the omnipotence of
a single teip is unthinkable, because power must be distributed equally among the various clans,
according to a horizontal structure of government. This is precisely the reason that led to the fall
of President Akhmad, who probably knew his time was running out when he affirmed the supremacy
of his clan without consolidating it, having to look more to his old comrades in arms than to
the neighboring Russian giant. But Kadyrov junior didn't repeat his father's mistakes and, enjoying
the support of the Kremlin, he was able to spend his resources to concentrate on internal affairs,
taking all the risks involved and eliminating potential rivals. The centralization of power
required first and foremost to get rid of anyone who dared to challenge his military authority,
especially influential warlords such as members of the Yamadayev family, Said-Magomed Kakiev
and Movladi Baisarov. The Yamadayev brothers and Kakiev commanded the Vostok and Zapad battalions,
respectively, each about 900 men strong and the only ethnic Chechens in the Russian Defense
Ministry structure that weren't under Chechen government control. Zapad, formed in 2003, was
pro-Russian and, at the time of the first Chechen war in 1994 -1996, opposed separatist leader
Dudaev. On the contrary, the Vostok was formed by former rebels who passed to the Russian side
during the second military campaign and thanks to their loyalty and efficiency on the field, for the
first time in the modern history of Russia, three brothers of the same family (the Yamadaevs) were
decorated with medals for bravery, thus enjoying not only the admiration of Moscow for the courage
shown in battle but also the control of the commercial center of Gudermes, a city that lies on
the railway junction between Rostov on Don, Baku, Astrakhan and Mozdok. There has never been good
blood between the Yamadaev family and the Kadyrov family, and animosity exploded in April 2008
when fighters of the Vostok battalion engaged in a shootout with members of Ramzan's personal guard,
resulting in several deaths. In retaliation, the Yamadaevs' older brother Ruslan, a former Duma
deputy, was killed in Moscow five months later. Sulim, commander of the battalion and military
pride of the family, managed to escape from Russia and settled in Dubai but in March 2009
Adam Delimkhanov, Ramzan's right hand man, had him assassinated. Kakiev instead, head of the Zapad
battalion then abolished in 2008, was the only one to survive, because he never questioned Ramzan's
power. Finally, Movladi Baisarov had been the head of Akhmad's personal security service and,
after his death in 2004, he set up the Gorets security unit on his own, directly reporting
to the FSB (the Federal Security Service). But Baisarov was one of those who liked to
play with fire, since he openly criticized Ramzan several times, until he released in October 2006
an interview to Moscow News in which he defined him as a "medieval tyrant". The reaction of the
Chechen leader was not long in coming and in fact the following November, Baisarov was killed in
Moscow by a team of Chechen policemen, the Gorets unit disbanded and its fighters reintegrated in
various units of the Chechen Ministry of Interior. Once the main rival forces were defeated,
the way was clear for Kadyrov. He was able to monopolize the sphere of administration in the
small republic, and Moscow is not only uninvolved in Chechen internal affairs but receives no
information about the real state of affairs. One could almost say that "what happens in Chechnya,
stays in Chechnya" and the fact that the circumstances of Natalia Estemirova's murder
in 2009 are still unknown is a concrete proof of that. Estemirova, a Russian activist who worked
with investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaia and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov,
both of whom murdered in 2006 and 2009 respectively, documented hundreds of cases of
abuses in Chechnya by government security forces. She carried out her research for the human rights
organization "Memorial" and was therefore branded as an undesired person in the eyes of Ramzan,
who repeatedly stressed his willingness to silence her forever. So that morning of 07/15/2009, when,
according to the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, Estemirova was kidnapped near her home in
Grozny and then found dead in a wooded area near the village of Gazy-Yurt in Ingushetia, there was
little doubt as to who was behind the kidnapping. The problem is that there has never been a tough
stance against Ramzan from the Kremlin. In fact, even though Vice-President Dmitry Medvedev
"expressed indignation at the murder and ordered to take all necessary measures to carry out the
investigation" he always rejected all hypotheses about Kadyrov's involvement in the crime.
After all, there is a dark power pact between the federal government and the small republic
that mustn t be revealed to the outside world: Ramzan was charged with creating the illusion
of a peaceful and flourishing Chechnya by any means necessary, which explains his use
of violence outside Moscow's control. In the 2016 elections, Ramzan confirmed his role as
the undisputed leader with almost 98% (97.94%) of votes in favor and from that moment until
the present day he has continued his war against political opponents and insurgents. But why was
such a high degree of consensus reached? Simple, because in the months leading up to the vote,
the authorities undertook a fierce crackdown on anyone who thought total loyalty to Kadyrov
was questionable. Among them were ordinary people expressing dissent through social media; Russian
journalists like Boris Nemtsov, a critic of the Chechen leadership who was assassinated in Moscow
on February 27, 2015; and the very few human rights defenders who dared to challenge abuses
of power by Chechen law enforcement and security agencies. A recent report describes contemporary
Chechnya as a "totalitarian state within a state," characterized by Kadyrov's interference in nearly
every aspect of social life, including politics, religion, academic discourse, and family matters.
Many experts describe his orders as being, in practice, the only law in the republic,
thanks to the cult that has been created around his figure. The main driving force behind this
cult is Grozny TV and state radio, whose news and current affairs programs often depict Kadyrov
while also blaming local high officials for their mistakes. It s well known his intensive use of
social media to set his public agenda, demand obedience, identify and smear enemies. think
that his instagram account, which he launched in February 2013, before being banned by Zuckerberg's
company, had about 1 million followers in 2015. In more recent times, despite Ramzan professing
his loyalty to Vladimir Putin himself, his insistence on having a free hand in Chechnya has
apparently begun to test the Kremlin's patience. Moscow has condemned, albeit in mild terms,
some of his more outrageous actions, such as his public efforts to destroy the homes
of alleged rebels and the numerous fires that followed, saying that no one, including Kadyrov,
has the right to impose extrajudicial punishment. But these are just words and it is difficult to
believe that in the near future the situation will change, also because Moscow needs someone like
Kadyrov to keep at bay a territory where tensions are dormant, ready to explode again. Well, we are
done. I hope I have kept your attention up to the end and I'll see you in the next video. Ciao!