For more than 150 years, the Northern Caucasus region of Russia has seen a restive population chafing under Russian – and, later, Soviet – rule. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, the separatist forces in Chechnya tried to negotiate independence from the Russian Federation, but failed. The separatists launched a campaign against the Russian rule in Chechnya, and in response, the Russian military invaded the territory, brutally suppressing the rebellion. Following their defeat in the 1994-95 war, the originally secular separatist movement turned toward Islamic radicalism: the seizure of power in Afghanistan by the Taliban, the creation of al Qaeda, and the support Islamic movements – and governments — offered fellow co-religionists in Bosnia-Herzegovina and, later, in Kosovo, persuaded Chechen separatist leaders that aligning their movement with the broader Islamic cause was the best path to secure support from the Muslim world in the form of money and fighters. This affiliation with the global Jihadi movement became even stronger after the second round of Russian military intervention in Chechnya, in 1999-2000. More than 200,000 have so far been killed in Chechnya, nearly all of them Chechen civilians killed by the Russian army, and hundreds of thousands more have been turned into refugees. Russia has been roundly criticized for its military tactics in the two rounds of war, tactics which included carpet-bombing of cities — including the flattening of the capital city of Grozny — and indiscriminate artillery shelling and missile attacks on civilian neighborhoods.