Lessons Learned From Russia’s Battles With Ethnic Militants Chechnya To The Moscow Theater Incident

13 Pages 3176 Words

“Accusations of ‘mass treason’ for collaboration with Nazi forces were based on dubious evidence.”3

Forty years later, the Soviet war in Afghanistan again tested the mettle of Islamic militants. The April 1978 coup by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan overthrew popular president Mohammed Dauod, setting in motion a series of events which led to the Soviet invasion in December of 1979. This, in turn, provoked a civil and then a religious war. The declaration of a religious war on the “godless Russians,” caused a huge influx of fanatical Muslims into the battle area. Calling themselves the Mujahideen, their style of brutal guerrilla warfare forced the Soviets to withdraw in disgrace in 1988 and 89. The Afghan war was the genesis not only for the Mujahideen, but later the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Muslim veterans of the Afghan war went on to become leaders, instructors and fighters in Islamic expansionist causes around the world.

When the Soviet empire finally died in 1989 the communist idea of a “family of peoples” died along with it. The Soviets employed secular humanism and atheism in the hope of precluding ethnic and religious conflict. The forced closure of churches, synagogues and mosques and the suppression of religious practice drove religion deep underground. But instead of eliminating Islam, it only further strengthened the faith of its followers.

In the early 1980s, Soviet intelligence gathering agencies in Afghanistan took notice of the growth of a militant movement calling itself the Mujahideen. Responding to crimes of violence against the Soviet puppet government, a combination of Soviet ministries launched a military campaign to root out Mujahideen fighters.

Decades later, as Russia’s iron grip on its people began to weaken; Muslims from around the empire began moving back to their ancestral homes. Once they had coagulated enough to sense their numbers, calls for independence, reveng...