This is difficult to believe considering that the referendum, in which the Chechens voted for being part and parcel of the Russian Federation, and renounced separatism, was preceded by a decade filled with two fierce military campaigns, rampant crime, merciless ethnic purges, slave trade, and horrible acts of terror, many of which, such as the hostage crises in a Moscow theater and Beslan, have become known all over the world, and are still unprecedented in cruelty, audacity, and recklessness.
Strictly speaking, none of the sides has achieved its initial goals. The separatists, who seemed to have received "independent Ichkeria" as a result of the Khasavyurt peace agreement in 1996, suffered a complete fiasco in trying to build their own state. Ichkerian President Aslan Maskhadov, who enjoyed authority as a military leader, lost all his influence in a situation of relative peace and became a puppet in the hands of cutthroats and terrorists like Shamil Basayev, the man behind the Beslan attack. Maskhadov's semi-guerrilla army quickly disintegrated into numerous armed gangs, engaged in violence, slave trade, drug trafficking and abduction. It is often believed that this aggression was aimed primarily against Russia, but in reality its main target was Chechen society. On the one hand, the civilian population was a victim of very tough federal action (it is enough to mention the bombing of Grozny, which still lies in ruins). On the other, the criminal dictate on behalf of former separatists, who very quickly turned into terrorists and Wahhabi religious extremists, was even worse. The federal troops would come and go, but the home bandits were always there. Indicatively, out of thousands of people abducted by Chechen criminals in the last ten years, 90% were Chechens. They captured wealthy Chechens even in Moscow, and took them to Chechnya, demanding millions of dollars for their lives.
It is no surprise, that 96% (!) of the participants in the constitutional referendum in Chechnya in 2003 voted for Chechnya being an inalienable part of Russia. For them this meant an end to the war and criminal violence, and a return to relative stability. Incidentally, during the presidential elections in Russia in 2004, 93% of Chechen voters supported Vladimir Putin, who represented the federal side in the conflict.
However, the collapse of the separatist project of "independent Ichkeria", which for Chechens turned into the war of everyone against everyone and made the republic a bridgehead of Islamic terror, did not mean an unconditional victory of the federal center. In December 1994, the Russian troops were introduced into Chechnya to enforce "constitutional order". Moscow politicians believed (or at least declared publicly) that it was possible to appease Chechnya very quickly and with few casualties. But in reality, the Chechen problem could not be resolved by force alone.
Recently President Putin signed a decree, which provides for the withdrawal of troops stationed in the republic on a temporary basis, over the next two years. Their functions (including struggle against terrorism) will be transferred to the Chechen military and the militia. The most surprising fact is that the former militants who had been amnestied and released on the security of the local authorities form the backbone of this new support of the federal government in Chechnya. Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, who is tipped for the President, fought against Russia in the first Chechen campaign; several active participants in the second Chechen campaign are now members of the local parliament.
Even after the war had ended, and the constitutional status of Chechnya had been firmly established, the republic did not become a regular constituent member of the Russian Federation. During the war, Islam heavily affected Chechnya; blood feuds became standard practice; the social sphere is still in a deplorable state, and new jobs are being created only in administrative and security structures. Because of the bloody ethnic purges of the 1990s, Russian businessmen are wary of dealing with Chechens, and the republic is permanently short of qualified personnel. Obviously, Chechnya has to come a very long way to be fully integrated with the rest of Russia, like Tatarstan and Bashkiria the Volga region, or even North Ossetia in the North Caucasus.
From the very start one more side was tacitly involved in the Chechen conflict. Viewing Chechnya as a potentially independent state, the leading Western countries repeatedly offered their mediation to Moscow, and urged it to hold talks with separatists and terrorists. Even the September 11 terrorist attack did not prompt the West to give up completely its pressure on Russia. Only recently, when the West, and particularly, the United States encountered tremendous and totally unpredictable military and political problems in Iraq, they admitted indirectly that their version of a political settlement in Chechnya had been the most utopian of all, and at any rate, much less effective than what Russia had managed to achieve.
The first Chechen war started in the epoch of enormous illusions, when the West-supported separatists were raising the banner of "independent Ichkeria", and the federal authorities in Moscow were trying to enforce constitutional order. These global illusions were linked with the undivided faith in the virtues of globalization, universality of liberal recipes, and total ethnic sovereignty as the bright future of all mankind. To some extent, they had a real foundation. The Soviet Union had fallen apart relatively recently; the former Soviet republics proclaimed independence, and announced a course towards the free market and democracy. Czechoslovakia's disintegration was absolutely peaceful and civilized, and even the wars in former Yugoslavia seemed to be local conflicts, which the world community could easily settle.
Nevertheless, such a political scenario proved to be absolutely unacceptable for Russia and Chechnya. It took ten years of war, rampant terrorism, and its tough suppression to understand the need to search for other ways of coexistence and mutual progress. In essence, this understanding forms the foundation of today's political settlement in Chechnya. Since it is there, we can say that political settlement in Chechnya has become reality.
