Insurgency Success Factors and Rebel Legitimacy
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
The protracted conflict in Chechnya is commonly framed as the unfortunate rise of
extremism in a peripheral, uncontrollable region of Russia¹. The conflict remains a complex,
deeply engrained phenomenon that in recent years has produced thousands of casualties, and
created a sense of lawlessness in the Russian oblast². Although Chechens have rebelled for
decades against tsarist, Soviet, and Russian power, repeat rebellions have ultimately failed to
secure positive outcomes for Chechen independence³. Possibly the most successful rebellion,
was the one led by Dudayev in the 1990's, which resulted in Chechen separatist de facto control
of the territory. The success of this rebellion, however, was short lived, ending after less than two
decades at the hands of a crushing counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign launched by the newly
established Russian state. While Russian anti-rebellion methods have produced positive results
by war terms, rebellion remains, and Russia has, ultimately, still failed to secure its own
legitimacy in Chechnya.
This paper seeks to examine the effects of legitimacy on rebel success, to better understand
legitimacy's role and weight in influencing rebellion. If rebellion can be understood as "a fight
for control of political space" against a legitimate power, then the rebellion in Chechnya can be
understood as the Chechen separatists' attempts to assume control of official political space in
Chechnya, that was previously occupied by the Soviet Union. Rebel legitimacy requires
recognition by states, civilians, and institutions that the rebel group is the more appropriate actor
for receiving political support, engaging in political negotiations, and controlling political
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