Suicide bombings in Moscow Video

It appears that two female suicide bombers from the Wahhabist Chechen rebel movement have blown up a lot of people traveling to work on the subway in Moscow. I know from talking to people in the U.S. that most people don’t have a clue what the rebels are fighting for or what is the root of this conflict. In a nutshell, the Chechen rebels want to establish an Islamist Caliphate under sharia law in Chechnya and in all the neighboring lands (including Russia).

Chechnya gained independence from Russia but then lost it again, as a result of the Islamist movement in Chechnya, supported by Islamist fighters from the Middle East, invading the neighbouring country of Dagestan and thus sparking the Second Chechnya war, in which Russia returned to Chechnya in aid of Dagestan. A fuller, though still brief, history of the conflict is summarized below.
During the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chechnya declared independence. In 1992, Chechen and Ingush leaders signed an agreement splitting the joint Chechen-Ingush republic in two, with Ingushetia joining the Russian Federation and Chechnya remaining independent. The debate over independence ultimately led to a small-scale civil war since 1992. The First Chechen War began in 1994, when Russian forces entered Chechnya to “restore constitutional order”. Following nearly two years of brutal fighting, in which an estimated more than 100,000 people died, and the 1996 Khasavyurt ceasefire agreement, the Russian troops were withdrawn from the republic. But it wasn’t over.
Following the first war, the separatist government’s grip on the chaotic republic was weak, especially outside the ruined capital Grozny. The areas controlled by rebel groups grew larger and the country became increasingly lawless, with more than 1300 abductions-executions, including a group of Western hostages –engineers who had arrived to help rebuild infrastructure. Political violence and religious extremism, in the form of islamist Wahhabism, was rife.
The Invasion of Dagestan was the trigger for the Second Chechen War. In August and September 1999, Shamil Basayev (in association with the Saudi born Ibn al-Khattab, Commander of the Mujahedeen) led two armies of up to 2,000 Chechen, Dagestani, Arab and international mujahideen and Wahhabist militants from Chechnya into the neighboring Republic of Dagestan. This war saw the first use of aerial-delivered fuel air explosives (FAE) in populated areas, notably in the village of Tando. By mid-September 1999, the militants were routed from the villages and pushed back into Chechnya.
On October 21, 1999, a Russian short-range ballistic missile strike on the central Grozny killed more than 140 people, including many women and children, and left hundreds more wounded. A Russian spokesman said the busy market place was targeted because it was used by rebels as an arms bazaar. Eight days later Russian aircraft carried out a rocket attack on a large convoy of refugees heading into Ingushetia, killing at least 25 civilians including Red Cross workers and journalists. Fighting intensified throughout 1999. And in 1999-2000 Russia began the seige on the city of Grozny which had become a stronghold for the Islamist rebels. The siege and fighting left the capital devastated like no other European city since World War II; in 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on Earth.
Russian President Vladimir Putin established direct rule of Chechnya in May 2000. On March 23, 2003, a new Chechen constitution was passed in a referendum. The 2003 Constitution granted the Chechen Republic a significant degree of autonomy, but still tied it firmly to Russia and Moscow’s rule, and went into force on April 2, 2003.
In June 2000, the North Caucasian Chechen separatist-led Islamic insurgents added suicide bombing to their tactics in their struggle against Russia. Since then there have been dozens of suicide attacks in and outside the republic of Chechnya, resulting in thousands of casualties. Two large-scale hostage takings, the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis (850 hostages) and the 2004 Beslan school siege (about 1,200), resulted in the deaths of more than 463 civilians.
In October 2007 the leader of the Islamist rebels issued the Declaration of Caucasus Emirate for the entire region –stating it was “his duty as a Muslim to establish an Islamic state as required by Sharia” and where he also urged for a global Jihad, and the political schism between the moderates, and the radical Islamists fighting in Chechnya and the neighbouring regions with ties in the Middle East.