The Islamic State and Chechnya: Disturbing Similarities

... Still, even more disturbing is the evidence of how similar the current instability in Iraq and Syria is with the bloody conflict in Chechnya, which troubled Russia for almost two decades and resulted in a 60,000 death toll. First, both insurgency in Iraq and war in Chechnya originate from a similar political context. After the Soviet Union breakup, Moscow’s totalitarian control over the republics of Caucasus weakened, giving way to separatism, accompanied by ethnic and clannish rivalry. The defeat of federal ...