Editing Second Chechen War (section)

===Instability in Chechnya===
[[File:Cadets of the Ichkeria Chechen national guard 1999.jpg|thumb|Cadets of the Ichkeria Chechen National Guard, 1999]]

[[File:Interwar Crisis in Chechnya 1997-1999.png|thumb|Situation in Chechnya in the period between the end of the First Chechen War and the beginning of the Second Chechen War: In red the territory under the control of the [[Russian Federation]], in green the territory under the control of the [[Chechen Republic of Ichkeria]] and in grey the areas under the control of the [[Islamists]]{{citation needed|date=August 2024}}.]]

The authority of the government in Grozny was opposed by extremist warlords like [[Arbi Barayev]], who according to some sources was in cooperation with the [[Federal Security Service|FSB]].<ref name="Littell">[http://www.psan.org/document551.html The Security Organs of the Russian Federation. A Brief History 1991–2004] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080807054247/http://www.psan.org/document551.html |date=7 August 2008 }} by [[Jonathan Littell]], Psan Publishing House 2006.</ref> Kidnapping in Chechnya reached large proportions, and the total turnover reached tens of millions of dollars.<ref>Tishkov, Valery. ''Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Page 114.</ref> In 1998, [[1998 abduction of foreign engineers in Chechnya|a group of four Western hostages was murdered]]. [[FSB (Russia)|Russian special services]] were accused of being involved in kidnappings.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Litvinenko |first=Alexander |title=Blowing up Russia |pages=208}}</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=November 2023}} In 1998, a [[state of emergency]] was declared by the authorities in Grozny. In July 1998 a confrontation occurred in [[Gudermes]] between Chechen National Guard troops and a fundamentalist faction leading to many casualties.<ref>{{Cite web |date=24 July 1998 |title=Internal clashes in Chechnya |url=https://reliefweb.int/report/russian-federation/internal-clashes-chechnya |website=Reliefweb |access-date=4 August 2023 |archive-date=12 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240312113226/https://reliefweb.int/report/russian-federation/internal-clashes-chechnya |url-status=live }}</ref>

Some scholars linked Chechen resistance to Russia to the [[Al-Qaeda]] global jihad movement. According to Gordon Hahn, the connections between the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and Al-Qaeda "were common knowledge by the late 1990s among U.S. government officials, intelligence analysts, and terrorism experts" and there were about five hundred foreign jihad fighters in Chechnya at the start of the second war.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hahn |first1=Gordon M. |title=Getting the Caucasus Emirate Right |date=2011 |publisher=Center for Strategic and International Studies |isbn=9780892066650 |pages=2–3}}</ref><ref>{{Google books |id=yGOpAgAAQBAJ |page=239 |title=Routledge Handbook of Russian Politics & Society }} Graeme Gill, Professor Department of Government Graeme Gill, James Young. 2013. {{ISBN|978-1-136-64102-2}}, page 239</ref> Most Western observers prior to 11 September regarded the alleged al-Qaida links claimed by Russian government with skepticism. The Clinton and Bush administrations, as well as other NATO governments, uniformly dismissed Moscow's rhetoric concerning the existence of Chechens in Afghanistan and Afghans in Chechnya as Soviet-style "[[agitprop]]" (agitation-propaganda) until 11 September occurred.<ref>{{cite web| publisher=Jamestown Foundation| title=Shattering the al-Qaeda-Chechen Myth| date=23 April 2013| url=http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=40771#.VpjSncuFOM8| author=Brian Glyn Williams| access-date=15 January 2016| archive-date=4 March 2016| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304042158/http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=40771#.VpjSncuFOM8| url-status=live}}</ref>