de Waal, Most Chechens speak Russian much better than they do Chechen
September 7, 2007 7:41 am ChechnyaThe north Caucasus: politics or war? | openDemocracy, September 7, 2007
It cannot be stated often enough that the Chechens are not Afghans. They are a small mountain people with a history of resistance to the Russian state, but also one of pragmatic accommodation with it. Most of them speak Russian much better than they do Chechen and almost all have relatives working in the rest of Russia. While they are Muslim, they are Sufis practicing a form of local Islam that is all but incomprehensible to Arab incomers. For years Chechens have dismissed these foreign interlopers with curses when they were told to stop visiting their local shrines or to start veiling their women.
Over the last decade the Russian state has given these ordinary Chechens nothing but contempt and violence, yet they remain the key to restoring some kind of stability to the north Caucasus. The trouble is that the Kremlin will have to make two difficult changes if it wants even to begin to enlist their support.