The North Caucasus: Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia
Back in 1998 - 1999 I was the manager of a Marine Corps project supporting the Corps' Urban Warrior program - our goal was to gain the perspective of those who had planned and conducted an urban insurgency against a modern conventional force. Ms. Marie Bennigsen Broxup conducted interviews of 20 Chechen commanders and staff officers in Chechnya. We also conducted an 8-hour seminar with another commander who was visiting the U.S. in 1999.
Three articles / papers were produced based on the interviews:
View From the Wolves' Den - The Chechens and Urban Operations by Dave Dilegge
David Slays Goliath: A Chechen Perspective on the War in Chechnya (1994 - 1996) by LtCol Tim Jackson, USMC
General-Major Tourpal-Ali Kaimov - On Urban Warfare in Chechnya by Dave Dilegge
That said, I was looking through my old files and ran across the original raw / unedited interviews and thought they might be of some interest and maybe useful. Here is the first, will post the others soonest...
Interview: Aslan Maskhadov - Wikipedia: Leader of the separatist movement in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya. He was credited by many with the Chechen victory in the First Chechen War, which allowed for the de facto establishment of an independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Maskhadov became President of the nation in January of 1997 with heavy backup from Moscow. Following the start of the Second Chechen War, he returned to leading the guerrilla movement against the Russian army. He was reported killed in a village in southern Chechnya in March 2005.
The Caucasus region conflicts (merged thread)
Recommendations: Second Chechen War (esp. post-2005)
I'm currently writing a paper for my Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics class on Chechnya and the confluence of political/military circumstances that led to the fragile peace we are seeing today. A few years ago, analysts and experts almost universally predicted continued violence and instability in the region; today flights to Grozny have resumed and Ramzan Kadyrov is talking about building a tourism industry. My paper will examine why.
I've got a preliminary outline and a working thesis but am having trouble finding material on developments in the last few years. Even the more recently published books are of very limited utility (unless I missed a big one or my school library doesn't have it). Got some stuff from CSIS, the Carnegie Moscow Center, and a few others but I'm hoping the folks here might be able to offer advice and direction. The Chechnya section of this site's research page offers excellent background but doesn't seem to have anything recent enough to help with the meat of my paper.
Thanks in advance for any help I get!
Vilyat? Vilayet? In Dagestan ?
I generally like Jamestown stuff but this struck me as really weird.
Isn't a "Vilyat" a corruption of an Ottoman Turk administrative division? When did the Ottomans rule Daghestan ? Golden Horde, sure. Persians, definitely. Why would Wahabbist neo-salafi loons use antique Turkish terminology when a good Wahabbist would see Ottoman sanjaks as corrupt former oppressors of "true Islam" ?
Maybe I have missed something somewhere ?