Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 14. April 2008 / Time Line April 14, 2008
Version 3.013. April 2008, 15. April 2008
04/14/2008
Russia Attempts to Draft Chechens into the Army
By Mairbek Vatchagaev, The Jamestown Foundation: North Caucasus Analysis. Volume 9
Twice each year, all Chechen mothers with sons aged 18 to 27 start worrying about their children’s future as news of the draft into the Russian army begins to circulate. Every spring and fall Chechnya's Military Commissar Sedim Tsunaev starts talking about the need for voluntary service in the Russian Army. However, the Chechen populace, which still faces war-like conditions, believes that their children are being recruited to face a certain death: almost all Russian regions today have army officers who have served in Chechnya, lost friends or were themselves wounded or broken by what they saw there during the last nine years. The army recruitment initiative dates back to 2002, when President Vladimir Putin decided that the war was over and Chechens therefore should be required to perform military service in the ranks of the same army that kept fighting in Chechnya. The government thought it could control the anti-Chechen sentiments fermenting within the army, but failed to realize that the young Chechen recruits drafted from the armed conflict zone in Chechnya would not behave like other conscripts. They made the Russians understand that in addition to combat operations, the war was also a battle of wills, which the conscripts fought by resisting everything required of them by the Russian army officers.
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