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The Chechen Struggle: Independence Won and Lost
Told from the perspective of its former Foreign minister, this is a uniquely candid account of Chechnya's struggle for independence and its two wars against Russia which will revise our understanding of the conflict and explain how it continues. Features new insights, intimate portraits of key personalities and a foreword by Zbigniew Brzezinski.
- GenresHistoryRussiaNonfiction
286 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 20, 2011
This book is extraordinary. It's a page turner, but we all know the sad ending, and it's all true. We in the West saved Kosovo, the world helped East Timor to independence, but we all failed Chechnya miserably.
Written by the former foreign minister of the democratically elected government of Chechnya. This is no dry geo-political analysis. It's the real thing, told by someone who lived it. Read this book. Seriously. Let's make it sell and piss of Putin.
Written by the former foreign minister of the democratically elected government of Chechnya. This is no dry geo-political analysis. It's the real thing, told by someone who lived it. Read this book. Seriously. Let's make it sell and piss of Putin.
September 19, 2026
Ilyas Akhmadov is a former Chechen politician and militant who served as the Foreign Minister of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from 1999 to 2005 under President Aslan Maskhadov. At the behest of 1st Chechen War, he joined up with Shamil Basayev and formed a friendship. He was the party head of Shamil's political party Marşanan Toba. He also served in General Staff under Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen Army Chief of Staff. Being close to both of them, allowed Ilyas Akhmadov to give a much more nuanced portrayal of these seminal personalities, avoiding the conspiratorial rhetoric that surrounds them. He abstained from sweepingly blaming any of the side for all the calamities that befell the Chechen resistance.
This book sheds light on the relationship and tension between Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev, who in abstraction could be seen respectively as representatives of the reconciliatory nationalist wing of the resistance who were optimistic about reaching a peace deal and the more hawkish radical wing who considered negotiations as futile and in later phase transformed into a trans-national jihadist movement.
Although often overshadowed by the highly charismatic personality of Dzhokhar Dudayev, Maskhadov was the strategic mastermind behind both the defense of Grozny during New Year Assault and also the successful assault on Grozny, codenamed "Operation Jihad" (6-10 Aug 1996) that put an end to the 1st Chechen war. If Maskhadov was the "brain of resistance" devising strategies and plans, it was Shamil Basayev who was the "arm" implementing those plans in the field. It was these exceptional operational and tactical capabilities that made Shamil a force to reckon with. Shamil had an iconoclastic personality from the onset, he didn't hesitated to cross the limits where others might falter a bit. It was this daring nature of his that made him so lethal yet it came with its own cons.
While Dudayev with his charismatic personality ruled in a seemingly authoritarian manner and didn't allowed dissent, Maskhadov had to thread an entirely different part; balancing different sides in order to keep the resistance unified in a volatile post-war era. Although this compromising attitude of Maskhadov is often deemed as his weakness, it is important to understand the drastic changes that had occurred in pre and post-war Chechnya.
The post-war Chechnya was a chaotic place with hordes of armed men roaming around, taking the law in their own hand at their expense. Maskhadov had to deal with this state of lawlessness and although he tried to bring an end to these armed formations, it was difficult for him to implement it without provoking the field commanders under whose charge were those armed men. This unruly state gave rise to "hostage crisis" which was brought about by the Russian unwillingness to accept their soldiers in Chechen captivity as "POWs", because that would have given a tacit recognition to the Chechen resistance which they were branding as "terrorist illegal armed formations". So the Russians kept calling their soldiers as "hostages" and this precluded any possibility of official POWs exchange. Where there is no official apparatus, informal underground methods take its place. This gave birth to a whole new "hostage trade" in which Arbi Barayev, Akhmadov brothers and Sulim Yamadayev were foremost.
In the 1997 Chechen election, Maskhadov won with 62% of votes followed by Basayev (25%) and Yandarbiyev (11%). Ilyas Akhmadov mentioned a post-election event where Basayev went with his men to Maskhadov's place, raised Koran and said:
Maskhadov responded with his own oath and this reconciliatory gesture disregarded the crazy ideas that were swirling around Shamil's base that we should takeover using brute force.
But soon afterwards, President Maskhadov found himself in a quandary. With almost no foreign assistance for rebuilding the devastated Chechen infrastructure and economy, Maskhadov found himself in a tight place; to reconstruct Chechnya meant establishing better relationships with Moscow, but it turned out that this could not be achieved without compromising our independence. Disagreements over governmental appointments started to brew between Shamil and Maskhadov. Maskhadov had appointed a few qualified individuals that had influence in Moscow and could have got the job done but all of them had switched to the Russian side during the 1st Chechen war, to this Shamil objected. After a mass protest, Maskhadov made a second government this time including Shamil and Gelayev. Shamil was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in April 1997 and remained in this position for four months before resigning after disagreement arose on the appointment of Viskhan Shakhabov.
By the end of 1998, the scuffle had grown into a political struggle between the two ideologically distinct camps. Shamil will move further away from Maskhadov and eventually joins the Congress of Nations of Dagestan and Ichkeria (which to my understanding was the brainchild of Movladi Udugov, who was a rival of Shamil and launched disparaging propaganda campaign against him during the 1997 election. But in the late 1998, they both grew close to each for unknown reasons). The group that staged the August 1999 incursions into Dagestan had already lost Chechnya's internal power struggle, and sought to recoup their political fortunes by inciting a wider rebellion in the North Caucasus. This proved disastrous and provided Russia a pretext to launch their preconceived invasion.
Another important aspect of this book was the portrayal of Khattab by Ilyas Akhmadov. It is typical among the Russians, western analysts and Chechen diaspora to blame it all on Khattab and foreign Arab Wahhabis for all the misfortunes and terrorism because it aligns perfectly with the "war on terror" narrative. It is convenient for some Chechens living in west to scapegoat Khattab and absolve the native resistance. But Ilyas has a more balanced and truthful depiction to offer.
Khattab never took a stand on issues of internal Chechen politics and he never proselytized publicly. He stayed out of all these intra-Chechen feuds and this is consistent with his advice to foreign mujahideen that he gave in his memoirs [refer to Memories of Amir Khattab - The experience of the Arab Ansar in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Tajikistan] to stay out of the internal struggles. I think he learned the drawbacks of this from his experiences in Afghanistan where a lot of Arab mujahideen got themselves embroiled up in intra-Afghan feuds which proved to be disastrous [refer to Abdullah Anas's To the Mountains: My Life in Jihad, from Algeria to Afghanistan for a more detailed narrative]. Significantly, Khattab and his fighters made no visible move to help the Wahhabis in Gudermes during July 1998 conflict. Khattab never commented on internal Chechen power struggles: his line was that all of us are Muslims and should be united.
Khattab wasn't a terrorist either. Although Basayev had orchestrated Budyonnovsk and Beslan, Khattab never acted against the civilian population and his actions were directed against military targets. He was an exceptionally accomplished guerrilla war fighter and religious emissary. He was very smart and the best description of him was Sergei Kovalev's phrase, "a Muslim Che Guevara."
Another controversial personality is that of Movladi Udugov. From what I have read so far on Chechnya, I am still unable to solve the conundrum of this guy. Although Ilyas had not labelled him as a spy and considered Udugov's goals as ideological; he was instilling certain ideas and he sought political goals. Udugov's personality remains suspicious. He was probably the instigator of the fateful Dagestan incursions through relentless media campaigns through his KavkazCenter media site, yet he left Chechnya at the start of 2nd Chechen war. Boris Berezovsky funded both his and Akhmed Zakayev's campaign during the 1997 elections. It is understood that Dokku Umarov took the inspiration from Udugov when he abolished ChRI and declared Caucasian Emirate.
I have not included a lot of important stuff in my review but this is left for the readers to read. It is an enagaging read that got me completely hooked and I finished it in three days.
This book sheds light on the relationship and tension between Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev, who in abstraction could be seen respectively as representatives of the reconciliatory nationalist wing of the resistance who were optimistic about reaching a peace deal and the more hawkish radical wing who considered negotiations as futile and in later phase transformed into a trans-national jihadist movement.
Although often overshadowed by the highly charismatic personality of Dzhokhar Dudayev, Maskhadov was the strategic mastermind behind both the defense of Grozny during New Year Assault and also the successful assault on Grozny, codenamed "Operation Jihad" (6-10 Aug 1996) that put an end to the 1st Chechen war. If Maskhadov was the "brain of resistance" devising strategies and plans, it was Shamil Basayev who was the "arm" implementing those plans in the field. It was these exceptional operational and tactical capabilities that made Shamil a force to reckon with. Shamil had an iconoclastic personality from the onset, he didn't hesitated to cross the limits where others might falter a bit. It was this daring nature of his that made him so lethal yet it came with its own cons.
While Dudayev with his charismatic personality ruled in a seemingly authoritarian manner and didn't allowed dissent, Maskhadov had to thread an entirely different part; balancing different sides in order to keep the resistance unified in a volatile post-war era. Although this compromising attitude of Maskhadov is often deemed as his weakness, it is important to understand the drastic changes that had occurred in pre and post-war Chechnya.
The post-war Chechnya was a chaotic place with hordes of armed men roaming around, taking the law in their own hand at their expense. Maskhadov had to deal with this state of lawlessness and although he tried to bring an end to these armed formations, it was difficult for him to implement it without provoking the field commanders under whose charge were those armed men. This unruly state gave rise to "hostage crisis" which was brought about by the Russian unwillingness to accept their soldiers in Chechen captivity as "POWs", because that would have given a tacit recognition to the Chechen resistance which they were branding as "terrorist illegal armed formations". So the Russians kept calling their soldiers as "hostages" and this precluded any possibility of official POWs exchange. Where there is no official apparatus, informal underground methods take its place. This gave birth to a whole new "hostage trade" in which Arbi Barayev, Akhmadov brothers and Sulim Yamadayev were foremost.
In the 1997 Chechen election, Maskhadov won with 62% of votes followed by Basayev (25%) and Yandarbiyev (11%). Ilyas Akhmadov mentioned a post-election event where Basayev went with his men to Maskhadov's place, raised Koran and said:
"We came to swear to you and for you to swear to us that we will travel together on one path. While we all have one goal—our independence; while you permit no one to deceive you; so we honor the dead and we swear our allegiance to you."
Maskhadov responded with his own oath and this reconciliatory gesture disregarded the crazy ideas that were swirling around Shamil's base that we should takeover using brute force.
But soon afterwards, President Maskhadov found himself in a quandary. With almost no foreign assistance for rebuilding the devastated Chechen infrastructure and economy, Maskhadov found himself in a tight place; to reconstruct Chechnya meant establishing better relationships with Moscow, but it turned out that this could not be achieved without compromising our independence. Disagreements over governmental appointments started to brew between Shamil and Maskhadov. Maskhadov had appointed a few qualified individuals that had influence in Moscow and could have got the job done but all of them had switched to the Russian side during the 1st Chechen war, to this Shamil objected. After a mass protest, Maskhadov made a second government this time including Shamil and Gelayev. Shamil was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in April 1997 and remained in this position for four months before resigning after disagreement arose on the appointment of Viskhan Shakhabov.
By the end of 1998, the scuffle had grown into a political struggle between the two ideologically distinct camps. Shamil will move further away from Maskhadov and eventually joins the Congress of Nations of Dagestan and Ichkeria (which to my understanding was the brainchild of Movladi Udugov, who was a rival of Shamil and launched disparaging propaganda campaign against him during the 1997 election. But in the late 1998, they both grew close to each for unknown reasons). The group that staged the August 1999 incursions into Dagestan had already lost Chechnya's internal power struggle, and sought to recoup their political fortunes by inciting a wider rebellion in the North Caucasus. This proved disastrous and provided Russia a pretext to launch their preconceived invasion.
Another important aspect of this book was the portrayal of Khattab by Ilyas Akhmadov. It is typical among the Russians, western analysts and Chechen diaspora to blame it all on Khattab and foreign Arab Wahhabis for all the misfortunes and terrorism because it aligns perfectly with the "war on terror" narrative. It is convenient for some Chechens living in west to scapegoat Khattab and absolve the native resistance. But Ilyas has a more balanced and truthful depiction to offer.
Khattab never took a stand on issues of internal Chechen politics and he never proselytized publicly. He stayed out of all these intra-Chechen feuds and this is consistent with his advice to foreign mujahideen that he gave in his memoirs [refer to Memories of Amir Khattab - The experience of the Arab Ansar in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Tajikistan] to stay out of the internal struggles. I think he learned the drawbacks of this from his experiences in Afghanistan where a lot of Arab mujahideen got themselves embroiled up in intra-Afghan feuds which proved to be disastrous [refer to Abdullah Anas's To the Mountains: My Life in Jihad, from Algeria to Afghanistan for a more detailed narrative]. Significantly, Khattab and his fighters made no visible move to help the Wahhabis in Gudermes during July 1998 conflict. Khattab never commented on internal Chechen power struggles: his line was that all of us are Muslims and should be united.
Khattab wasn't a terrorist either. Although Basayev had orchestrated Budyonnovsk and Beslan, Khattab never acted against the civilian population and his actions were directed against military targets. He was an exceptionally accomplished guerrilla war fighter and religious emissary. He was very smart and the best description of him was Sergei Kovalev's phrase, "a Muslim Che Guevara."
Another controversial personality is that of Movladi Udugov. From what I have read so far on Chechnya, I am still unable to solve the conundrum of this guy. Although Ilyas had not labelled him as a spy and considered Udugov's goals as ideological; he was instilling certain ideas and he sought political goals. Udugov's personality remains suspicious. He was probably the instigator of the fateful Dagestan incursions through relentless media campaigns through his KavkazCenter media site, yet he left Chechnya at the start of 2nd Chechen war. Boris Berezovsky funded both his and Akhmed Zakayev's campaign during the 1997 elections. It is understood that Dokku Umarov took the inspiration from Udugov when he abolished ChRI and declared Caucasian Emirate.
I have not included a lot of important stuff in my review but this is left for the readers to read. It is an enagaging read that got me completely hooked and I finished it in three days.
March 4, 2011
Not the best writing technique, but one of the very few books on Chechen struggle written by an insider to the situation.
October 5, 2024
In 1944, Stalin deported almost the whole Chechen nation, more than 500,000 persons, to Central Asia, while falsely accusing it of collaboration with the invading Nazis. This depor-tation, recognized by the European parliament as genocide, resulted in the deaths of a third of the Chechen population during their transportation and the first year of their resettlement.
---
Putin declared that the Chechens were “international terrorists” backed by outside inter-ests. Moscow would go all out to crush them. His famous words were, “We will pursue the terrorists everywhere. In the air-port . . . in the airport . . . it means, and you will excuse me, if we catch them in the toilet, we will drown them in the shithouse!
That’s it! The matter is closed.” Putin’s admirers cheered.
---------
The tragedy of Chechnya stands as a failure of the U.S. policy of indifference and neglect. Throughout this conflict, under suc-cessive Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States essentially stood aside, asserting that the Chechen problem was a Russian internal matter. At one point the Clinton White House even compared the conflict to the U.S. civil war and President Lincoln’s determination to preserve the Union. U.S.
*******
And, let us hope, it will inspire a future generation of Chechens and of Russians to fashion an alternative and a better tomorrow. Zbigniew
------------
On our side there were only 1,000 to 1,500 experienced fighters;
the rest were inexperienced, poorly armed, poorly equipped, and totally uncoordinated. Yet we held up the advance for a week, and held on to parts of Grozny for seven weeks.
*****
He had come up to the sentry and asked him, “Young man, how many tanks did you blow up?” The sentry very proudly answered, “One tank.” Dudayev patted him gently on the cheek, “Oh you have barely fought at all!” You could see tears well up in the young man’s eyes, but Dudayev was already on to the next man, who happened to be Maskhadov’s adjutant.
----------
How are things?” he asked. “Good,” I responded. “No!” he corrected me, “Very good!” I understood I had to follow his example. “Very good!” I blurted. I remember Dudayev, who knew some Spanish, singing “Bessame Mucho” (“Kiss Me a Lot”) over the telephone to an American professor whom he occa-sionally consulted. When she voiced fears about explosions that could she heard in the background, he dismissed her concerns and started singing that Mexican love song. This was Dudayev’s style of interacting with people: to distract them from the grav-ity of a situation with any spontaneous, jovial gesture. He did not like it when people complained, and he always projected confidence.
--------
“Za bazar ya otvechayu,” was how Berezovsky responded.
The phrase is jargon for “I’m responsible for my words.”
---------------------
The options for the population are the emirate, which offers them nothing but war, and the Ichekerian national idea, which is now located in London. Everyone needs political space, you can’t have war for-ever and against all—even the emirate will find that it needs the political space; the men with weapons in hand also want to see a political success. The fighters want something more tangible than the feeling of Islamic solidarity, and they will need the experience of those who are in the West.
The dream of an independent Chechen state has merely been deferred.
------------
---
Putin declared that the Chechens were “international terrorists” backed by outside inter-ests. Moscow would go all out to crush them. His famous words were, “We will pursue the terrorists everywhere. In the air-port . . . in the airport . . . it means, and you will excuse me, if we catch them in the toilet, we will drown them in the shithouse!
That’s it! The matter is closed.” Putin’s admirers cheered.
---------
The tragedy of Chechnya stands as a failure of the U.S. policy of indifference and neglect. Throughout this conflict, under suc-cessive Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States essentially stood aside, asserting that the Chechen problem was a Russian internal matter. At one point the Clinton White House even compared the conflict to the U.S. civil war and President Lincoln’s determination to preserve the Union. U.S.
*******
And, let us hope, it will inspire a future generation of Chechens and of Russians to fashion an alternative and a better tomorrow. Zbigniew
------------
On our side there were only 1,000 to 1,500 experienced fighters;
the rest were inexperienced, poorly armed, poorly equipped, and totally uncoordinated. Yet we held up the advance for a week, and held on to parts of Grozny for seven weeks.
*****
He had come up to the sentry and asked him, “Young man, how many tanks did you blow up?” The sentry very proudly answered, “One tank.” Dudayev patted him gently on the cheek, “Oh you have barely fought at all!” You could see tears well up in the young man’s eyes, but Dudayev was already on to the next man, who happened to be Maskhadov’s adjutant.
----------
How are things?” he asked. “Good,” I responded. “No!” he corrected me, “Very good!” I understood I had to follow his example. “Very good!” I blurted. I remember Dudayev, who knew some Spanish, singing “Bessame Mucho” (“Kiss Me a Lot”) over the telephone to an American professor whom he occa-sionally consulted. When she voiced fears about explosions that could she heard in the background, he dismissed her concerns and started singing that Mexican love song. This was Dudayev’s style of interacting with people: to distract them from the grav-ity of a situation with any spontaneous, jovial gesture. He did not like it when people complained, and he always projected confidence.
--------
“Za bazar ya otvechayu,” was how Berezovsky responded.
The phrase is jargon for “I’m responsible for my words.”
---------------------
The options for the population are the emirate, which offers them nothing but war, and the Ichekerian national idea, which is now located in London. Everyone needs political space, you can’t have war for-ever and against all—even the emirate will find that it needs the political space; the men with weapons in hand also want to see a political success. The fighters want something more tangible than the feeling of Islamic solidarity, and they will need the experience of those who are in the West.
The dream of an independent Chechen state has merely been deferred.
------------
February 7, 2025
For me the best inside report about the Chechen wars. The author replies to many controversial events like of these years. Incredibly authentic and honest
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews