STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND TERROR IN THE NORTHERN CAUCASUS IN THE 1990S-2000S
Keywords:
the Northern Caucasus, Chechnia, structural violence, terror and political violence, the Caucasus EmirateAbstract
The author relies on the structural violence concept to analyze political violence and terror in the Northern Caucasus throughout the 1990s-2000s, which brought him to the conclusion that direct armed violence, or even terror, are less dangerous than structural violence. The dynamics of their manifestations, however, is interconnected. Applied to the armed conflict in the Northern Caucasus, his tridimensional model reveals the inner logic of the conflict’s development and its cyclical nature. Indeed, outbursts of clandestine activities and terror alternate with relative lulls, while the conflict’s intensity gradually subsides. Each stage corresponds to an institutional structure of violence, which outcrops in the form of armed confrontation (either a classical frontal war or network terror) and its ideological frills (ranging from secular nationalism to radical international Islamism).
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References
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Here and elsewhere the figures of the potential life expectancy in Russia have been borrowed from the site of the Rus-sian Committee for Statistics (see: [http://www.gks.ru]), 21 January, 2014.
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