Search results
to secure the safe and sound release of our colleagues, often without making any material concessions. No overarching theory applies to every situation. For example, while publicly holding Russian and Dagestani deputies to account for the abduction of Swiss MSF head of mission Arjan Erkel in Dagestan in 2002 accelerated his release ( McLean, 2016 ), the Congolese militias who are likely holding the four MSF staff members abducted in the DRC on 11
Shamil Basaev invaded the republic of Dagestan, a Russian region bordering Chechnya. In addition to fighting the insurgents, the federal authorities’ decision to intervene militarily in Chechnya itself was influenced by the devastating bombing of random apartment buildings in Moscow, Volgodonsk, and Buinaksk in September 1999 in which around 300 citizens lost their lives. These attacks were blamed on Chechen extremists.1 Their emotional and physical impact, particularly in the heart of Moscow, made any attempt to ‘securitise’ the Chechen crisis unnecessary in their
, although it signalled briefly that it might ease the ban in light of Morsi's victory in Egypt's presidential election in 2012. Russia has continued to tackle a domestic and regional insurgency of jihadi fighters, some with a background in Saudi Arabia or a strong Wahhabi influence. Many have fought in Afghanistan and gone on to fight in the Tajikistan civil war, Bosnian War, First Chechen War, Dagestan War and Second Chechen War. These include individuals such as Ibn al-Khattab 38 and Shamil Basayev, who was said to be
, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and Dagestan and how the situations there relate to developments in Georgia. Its overarching research question is how we can understand the recurrent patterns of conflict between nations, subregions, and social groups in the more than twenty years which have passed since the breakup of the Soviet Union. While paying attention to the longer history of imperial and Soviet military activity in the region, including the forced resettlements of some ethnic groups, Guseynov makes the initial observation that the essentially conflictual nature of
an ailing Yeltsin four or five years earlier. An initial draft of a law on opposing extremism was submitted to parliament in June 1999 amidst increasing concern about the rise of skinhead attacks on ethnic minorities in Moscow. It was backed up by a Security Council declaration that the law was urgently needed. By the autumn of that year, however, far-right extremism had been joined on the agenda by Islamic extremism, in the wake of the incursion into Dagestan by Chechen rebels and the bombing of apartment buildings in Moscow and elsewhere (see Chapter 3). These