Tell about Chechnya ?

It was estimated that up to 100,000 people in Chechnya died and more than 400,000 were forced to flee their homes during the 1990s.

the 2010 Moscow subway bombing was only three years ago. Neither the regional governments nor Moscow appear to be trying to solve the underlying issues so much as tamp down the extremism and violence

the Russian regions of Chechnya and Dagestan, early reporting suggests that Boston marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev may be of Chechen origin and may have grown up partially in neighboring Dagestan, The Washington Post reports. The regions are sometimes described as part of the "Caucasus region," so named for the Caucasus mountains.

In the center of Grozny, Chechnya's capital city, the Soviets erected a statue with the inscription, "There is no people under the sun more vile and deceitful than this one."

After 1956, during Khrushchev's "de-Stalinization period" Chechens were allowed to return to their country.

Russian troops, which had withdrawn from Chechnya after the agreements of the mid-1990s, returned in late 1999 after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin blamed Chechen secessionists for bombings that killed scores of civilians in Russia.

about Chechnya and Dagestan, which will no doubt be referenced frequently in coverage of the Tsarnaev brothers. This post is a simple, entry-level explainer on these Russian regions and their years of conflict and trauma, written to give anyone who's interested a basic understanding.

(Evidence never proved Chechen involvement in the bombings.) Heavy fighting resumed. As Russian forces gained control of the republic, Chechen fighters, forced into the mountains and hills, continued to employ guerrilla tactics.

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Chechnya pushed for recognition as a separate nation but was opposed by Boris Yeltsin's Russian Federation on the basis that, unlike the Baltic and some other Caucasian States, Chechnya had not been an independent entity within the Soviet Union. Since then the territory has been in almost constant struggle for independence.

In October 2002 a group of Chechen militants seized a Moscow theatre and took nearly 700 spectators and performers hostage. In the ensuing rescue operation, some 130 hostages died—mostly as the result of inhaling a narcotic gas released by security forces that was meant to incapacitate the Chechens.

The most basic answer is that they're two federal subdivisions of Russia, both in the country's far southwest. They're small, mountainous, predominantly Muslim and have been marked by years of conflict and independence movements.

Chechnya, and to a lesser extent Dagestan, have periodically rebelled against Moscow in a sometimes-violent effort to secure independence. Some of this violence has been led by separatists and some by "jihadists" who profess an extreme version of Islam.

Since 9/11, Checnya's secession attempts have been framed against the backdrop of the international war on terror.

The history of Chechnya may refer to the history of the Chechens, of their land Chechnya, or of the land of Ichkeria.

Some of it has been directed at local, pro-Moscow governments, some of it at people in Moscow itself and, during some of the worst years after the fall of the Soviet Union, against Russian troops sent to the region to put down the uprisings.

Chechen terrorists have been responsible for horrendous acts including the Beslan school hostage crisis of 2004 which left 380 dead including 186 children, and hundreds more injured; apartment bombings across Russia; and a bombing at Moscow's airport in 2011.

The First Chechen War began in 1994. A few years earlier, when the Soviet Union dissolved and its various regions either seceded or negotiated their place in the new Russian Federation, Moscow's talks with Chechen representatives fell apart.

Chechen society has traditionally been organized around many autonomous local clans, called taips. The traditional Chechen saying goes that the members of Chechen society, like its taips, are (ideally) "free and equal like wolves

More than 90% of the population are Sunni Muslim and, according to a source close to the situation, there is a very virulent Wahabi strain to their faith, as well as a mountain tribal revenge obligation.

The First Chechen War, which lasted almost two years, was brutal: Fighting claimed thousands of lives, including many civilians.

Add to this a long history of banditry (including wife kidnapping and professional killing) and you have an explosive mix in which journalists and human rights workers are regularly killed, threatened, or disappear without trace.

according to one Human Rights Watch report, leading a "massacre" in the town of Samashki that the United Nations says ended in more than 100 civilian deaths. Eventually, Russia retook Chechnya.

in 1999, a Chechnya-based group invaded the neighboring Russian region of Dagestan. They seized several villages, declared war against Moscow and said Dagestan was now an independent Islamic state. Once again, Russian troops moved in.

These days, a shaky ceasefire brokered between Russia and Chechnya keeps the tentative peace. Ramzan Kadyrov, son of assassinated President Akhmad Kadyrov and a dominant figure in Chechen politics, was nominated for the Chechen presidency by Russian President Vladimir Putin in spring 2007

Second Chechen War, like the first, took thousands of lives, including many civilians, leveled wide swathes of the country and was marked by allegations of horrific human rights abuses on both sides.