How and why did #Chechnya separatists begin to self-identify as Islamists ?
“The conflict in the 1990s was grounded in and defined by secular political demands: demands on the part of the Chechens to exercise independence, and demands on the part of the Russian Federation that Chechnya remain a part of that Federation. Russian atrocities perpetrated on the Chechen people during the First Chechen War brought about an economic and social crisis which created an environment conducive to radical Islam in a culture predominantly opposed to both radicalism and politicized religion.
The Chechen resistance movement adopted fundamentalist Islamic tactics and accepted support from Islamic organizations largely because the money was there for the taking. The Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban all contributed money to Chechen separatist groups. Additionally, Al Haramain, Khayatul-Iga-Sa and Islamic Congress, the Kuwaiti Society for Social Reform, the Yemeni International Islamic Organization, plus Islamic charities in Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Central Asia, the US and Europe all donated money. Funding from these charities during the second war ranged in the millions. A wide estimate of $10 to $200 million a year came from foreign Islamic groups, while the US Department of State claims that radical Muslim individuals have contributed close to $100 million since 1997. Fighters came to join the holy war from Algeria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Sudan, Australia, Bosnia and the United States. Up to 300 Afghan-Arabs fought in Ibn Al Khattab’s Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade, himself an Islamic warlord originally from Saudi Arabia who was known to have close ties with Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan’s Taliban was the only state to recognize Chechen independence in the early 1990s.
Rather than a motivating factor in their decisions to adopt terrorist methods, the adoption of radical Islam by many of the rebels was a way of creating solidarity between Chechen separatists and the Islamic world that simply did not exist between them and the West. By pledging allegiance to Islam, the Chechen fighters were able to garner money, manpower, crucial resources and moral support from foreign jihadis to strengthen their own nationalist positions. Many new religious recruits were not even ideologically strict and had little knowledge of the religious values for which they claimed to fight. They were simply fighting in the name of whatever power would allow them to continue the fight”
Source: ▻http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dxxob/wednesday_ama_chechnya/c9ux204