Chechen Clans and Other Kin Groups in Times of War and Peace: Definitions, Types, Saliencies and Need for Further Research

Arguably, most traditional societies conform to a predominant religion, state, emperor, nation, ethnicity, or to a predominant collection of tribes and clans; multi-clan or other mixed groups with residential unity and self-identification in hamlets, villages, towns or other localities; and finally to extended families and nuclear families. In this research note I discuss some (preliminary) observations of mine, and those of Dettmering, Sokirianskaia and some other scholars, observers and others on the identified, claimed or actual (sub-)clans and other kinship or localised ethnic (sub-)groups however defined among the Chechens in distant and more recent history. Further research is required to determine with more confidence what roles any such surviving kinship and ethnic (sub-)groups may have played during particularly the First Russo-Chechen War (1994–1996) and the first high-intensity phase of the Second Russo-Chechen War (1999–2005), which since then has morphed into a collection of small-scale insurgencies across the North Caucasus.