ABSTRACT
On 30 September 1999, the ground offensive into Chechnya started. There are many possible stories to tell and many alternative ways of presenting how the war was fought on the ground. There were many regular armed clashes and battles between Chechen and foreign fighters and Russian troops of varying stripes. There were ambushes at Russian garrisons and attacks with remotecontrolled bombing devices. There were also atrocities committed by the Chechen and foreign fighters against the Chechen civilian population and against Russian soldiers. These events and many others are not included in the account that follows. Not because they did not happen or were insignificant, but simply because my concern is with how the seemingly unacceptable warfare practices undertaken by Russian forces in Chechnya during the Second Chechen War were enabled by Russian representations of Chechnya and Chechens. The account will therefore focus on the practices undertaken over the course of several years as part of the effort to ‘cleanse’ the entire territory of Chechnya of ‘terrorists’ in the ‘zachistki’ (a slang word meaning ‘cleansing operations’) and the ensuing practices at ‘filtration points’ (fil’tratsionnyy punkt). The treatment of people in the zachistki and at ‘filtration points’ was characterized by massive and arbitrary violence. According to Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch, human rights violations were carried out by Russian troops on a much wider scale during the second campaign in Chechnya than the first.1 These were emergency measures that went far beyond both legal provisions in armed combat and what one would think was socially acceptable to the Russian public.2 And indeed, as we shall see below, reports of gross human rights violations in Chechnya in connection with these practices of war were proceeded by a rupture in the discourse which constructed Chechnya as an existential threat and Russia as the righteous defender – but only to a limited degree. Generally, these practices did not seem to be wholly unacceptable or illegitimate any longer. Again, the argument I will be advancing is that the system of zachistka and ‘filtration’ as well as the blunt violence used in connection with these practices now appeared both logical and legitimate because it matched identity constructions of Chechnya and Chechens found in the official securitizing narrative as well as in representations voiced by the political elite, the experts and the journalists.
