Who Is Ramzan Kadyrov?

When I first learned of the assassination of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, my immediate thought that Vladimir Putin had uttered something akin to what Henry II said about Thomas Becket – “who will rid me of this troublesome priest?”  I figured Putin wasn’t dumb enough to explicitly order a hit on Nemtsov, especially one carried out by the FSB.  Soon enough, Russian police arrested Chechen servicemen close to the government of Ramzan Kadyrov who were implicated in the killing.  Kadyrov’s name kept coming up in article after article.  What is it with this guy that makes him a topic of much conversation?  I started to peel back the onion layers, I found this about Kadyrov – in late December last year he told a meeting of 20,000 Chechen “volunteers” that he and they are ready to perform tasks “which can be solved only by volunteers” and not by “the regular army, air force, navy or nuclear forces.”  He also declared “We will gladly fulfill any order, in any spot of the world where our president tells us to go.”  Is Boris Nemtsov’s murder one such task?  What about providing “volunteers” to fight on Russia’s behalf in Ukraine?  So who is Ramzan Kadyrov?  To answer the question, one must go back to the Chechen Wars. 

In September 1991, an organization called the All-National Congress of the Chechen People [NCChP] (led by a former Soviet Air Force general named Dzokhar Dudayev) invaded a session of the local Supreme Soviet.  The Communist leader of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR died in the attack, and the local government of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was effectively dissolved.  A referendum in October 1991 confirmed Dudayev as the new president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.  Russia didn’t recognize Chechen independence, and Boris Yeltsin sent Ministry of Interior troops to Grozny to reassert Russian control.  However, troops loyal to Dudayev kept the Russian troops bottled up at the airport.  Russia hesitated to use further force against the breakaway republic.  In June 1992, the Chechen-Ingush Republic split in two.  One part [Ingushetia] opted to return to Russia as the Republic of Ingushetia.  The remaining part of the Chechen-Ingush Republic [Chechnya] declared full independence in 1993.  In December 1994, the Russians attacked Chechnya.  The Russians thought it would be a quick war – it was not.  Estimates vary, but the Russians killed between 50,000-100,000 Chechen civilians and 17,000-18,000 Chechen militants/military.  Grozny was reduced to rubble.  Russia lost between 5,000-6,000 military during the 20-month war.  On paper, Russia won the war, but wars aren’t fought on paper.  The Russians didn’t have the stomach for large casualties.  The military proved to lack capability and its readiness for such a mission to suppress separatism, so the Chechen Republic gained de facto independence.

During the First Chechen War, Dudayev had made Akhmad Kadyrov the supreme mufti of Chechnya.  He also led a division of guerrillas in the war.  After the First Chechen War, Chechnya was teeming with jihadis, many of whom were from other countries.  The foreign fighters were there mainly because Kadyrov declared jihad against Russia.  After the war, the foreign fighters stayed in Chechnya.  Dudayev was assassinated in April 1996.  His successor, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, himself was assassinated nine months later in February 1997.  Yandarbiyev’s successor, Aslan Maskhadov, was unable to control the various warlords, including Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab.  They led the fundamentalist group Islamic International Brigade [IIB].  In August 1999, the IIB invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan to support separatist rebels.  Their aim was to free their Muslim brothers from the “infidel” [Russian] occupiers.  The IIB inflicted casualties on Russian Ministry of Defense troops.  The Dagestan locals saw the IIB as religious fanatics [they were Wahhabis] and organized themselves as resistance against the IIB.  Yeltsin’s successor Vladimir Putin used this attack [and other cross-border attacks and assorted apartment bombings carried out between 1996-99] as a pretext for invading Chechnya, and so began the Second Chechen War.

The First Chechen War was about Chechen nationalism.  The second war was about Islamism dominated by external forces.  These fundamentalists [as outlined above] were motivated by the goal to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Caucasus.  Basayev and al-Khattab sought to incite a wider war against the Russians.  Vladimir Putin needed a loyal Chechen to do his bidding and undercut Maskhadov's status.  Putin found such a Chechen in Akhmad Kadyrov.  Early in the Second Chechen War, Kadyrov switched sides and threw his support [and that of his clan] to the Russians.  So here there was a conflict between the nationalists of Aslan Maskhadov vs. the Islamists of Basayev and al-Khattab, Basayev and al-Khattab vs. the Russians, and Kadyrov against Basayev, al-Khattab, and Maskhadov. 

After the elder Kadyrov switched sides, there was a one-sided air war that featured a massive Russian air campaign, two months after which began the ground campaign that included a three-month siege of Grozny.  When the Russians were through, Grozny’s landscape resembled that of the Moon.  While Putin appointed Akhmad Kadyrov President of Chechnya in June 2000, the Second Chechen War entered its guerrilla phase.  Once in the guerrilla phase, leaders began to die:

• -          Ibn al-Khattab – assassinated in 2002 by a double agent with a letter laced with a nerve agent;
• -          Akhmad Kadyrov – assassinated 2004 – blown up during Soviet Victory Day celebration [Basayev claimed credit];
• -          Aslan Maskhadov – KIA in 2005;
• -          Shamil Basayev – assassinated in 2006 – blown up by the FSB.

Kadyrov’s son Ramzan now came into the picture as he was made Deputy Prime Minister.  The younger Kadyrov ascended to power quickly.  He became acting Prime Minister after the incumbent barely survived an automobile accident in November 2005.  Kadyrov became Prime Minister after the incumbent resigned in March 2006.  When he reached presidential minimum age of 30 in February 2007, Vladimir Putin removed Alkhanov and installed Kadyrov as president.  He’s been ruling Chechnya ever since. 

Ramzan Kadyrov runs Chechnya like his own private fiefdom.  Human rights organizations and independent journalists have documented patterns of abduction, detention, disappearances, and the systematic use of torture by Kadyrov and his regime.   Among the alleged abuses:

-          Stripped and beat Muslim women accused of adultery with metal rods and hoses;

-          Killed insurgents, beheaded the corpses and displayed the heads in public;

-          Abduct and torture rebel supporters during police and military sweeps;

-          Illegal detention, rape, robbery and kidnapping;

-          Arson against families of insurgents;

-          Assassination of opponents

§  Ruslan B. Yamadayev – brother of Sulim Yamadayev [former militia leader, rival of Kadyrov], assassinated September 2008 in Moscow;

§  Sulim Yamadayev – former commander of Special Battalion Vostok, assassinated March 2009 in Dubai – accused by Kadyrov of complicity in assassination of the elder Kadyrov;

§  Natalya Estemirova – prominent human rights activist who documented kidnappings and killings in Chechnya, kidnapped in Grozny and murdered in Ingushetia in July 2009;

§  Anna Politkovskaya – investigative reporter for Novaya Gazeta, murdered October 2006 after documenting allegations of torture by security forces loyal to Kadyrov in Chechnya;

§  Umar Isralov – former Kadyrov bodyguard, murdered in Austria after filing allegations of torture to Russian prosecutors and the European Court of Human Rights in 2006 and 2007.

For now, Ramzan Kadyrov rules Chechnya with an iron fist.  But, there is an enmity between Kadyrov and the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB].  Shortly after he became Chechnya’s leader, the local FSB refused to allow a group of his armed men into their headquarters. Kadyrov responded by having all the building's entrances and exits welded shut. The standoff was only resolved when Nikolai Patrushev, then the FSB director, intervened personally.   After Boris Nemtsov’s assassination in February 2015, Russian police arrested five Chechen suspects, while another reportedly killed himself with a hand grenade at the time of his arrest in Chechnya.  All these men have ties to Kadyrov, and attempts to question other Chechens who may be involved have been blocked by Kadyrov.  In a separate incident in April 2015, Russian police from Stavropol entered Chechnya to arrest a Chechen wanted on a federal charge.  Kadyrov was so upset that he issued a “shoot to kill” order against any federal police who conduct operations in Chechnya without having first cleared it with Kadyrov.  Kadyrov has since backed off that stance, but there is no love lost between Kadyrov and the FSB.

Why does Russia tolerate Ramzan Kadyrov?  Right now, Kadyrov is useful, and Vladimir Putin has a Muslim problem, one that lies in the Caucasus.   Since 2009, part Kadyrov has kept Chechnya under control for the most.   The Caucasus Emirate is a decentralized organization [like al-Qaeda] with fighters in Dagestan, North Ossetia, Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria.  These Salafi jihadis want the Caucasus region to be governed by the “truest form” of Islam.  They respect Islam’s sacred texts in their most literal form.  Russia doesn’t really have a strategy to deal with the likes of the Caucasus Emirate, or ISIS [with whom the Caucasus Emirate competes for followers].  The Russians launch specific operations against specific militants, but their policy is more reactive than proactive.   ISIS has threatened to “liberate” Chechnya and the Caucasus [where support for ISIS is growing] from Russia.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has suggested that the Islamic State is Russia’s main enemy.  Who better to do Putin’s dirty work against these foes than Ramzan Kadyrov?  Kadyrov is trying to make himself as indispensable to Vladimir Putin as he can.  In December 2014, Kadyrov stated that he was prepared to go immediately to eastern Ukraine to fight against Ukrainian forces.  Then there is this quote from a YouTube video from last January that is quite chilling:

“If there are such indications [of terrorism and extremism] in Moscow or other regions of the country, we will be at the forefront to fight them because we have the experience… In all these years we have garnered so much experience and can fight so well that we will be in the first ranks for such a role. If Chechen terrorists can be eliminated or imprisoned, so can be a Russian or Tatar terrorist; there is no other way. We have the same attitude toward all citizens of Russia. If there are extremist indications, we will take steps, we will ask the leadership of the country to make use of Chechen law enforcement forces just as forces from other regions of Russia were used on the territory of Chechnya in the past.”

As long as Ramzan Kadyrov is useful, he will be protected by Vladimir Putin.  But Kadyrov is like Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief.  While Stalin was alive, Beria could act with impunity.  But once Stalin was dead and Beria wanted supreme power for himself, the rest of the Soviet collective leadership wasted little time in dispatching Beria.  Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.  And so it is with Ramzan Kadyrov.