When I asked Russians about the conflict, most people reacted as if it was a nonissue, something not even worthy of debate or discussion. Asking people whether Western intervention would have met with success in resolving the conflict was met with the same dismissal and negativity. My Russian respondents always seemed to reply with a touch of fatalism and inevitability to the conflict — there’s always been war there, and there always will be war there. There isn’t a damn thing anyone — especially the West — can do about it.

One of the people I questioned went so far as to describe Chechen people as bandits by nature, implying that if the Russian army wasn’t occupying the region, the Chechens would be galloping out of the mountains, twirling scimitars in the air and pillaging Cossack villages. The story of Chechnya is a long and violent one that cannot fully be described in a few short paragraphs. It is one similar to that of Afghanistan: a remote, mountainous region populated by a hardy people who make their appearance on the world stage whenever an imperial presence attempts to assert control over the area.

The Russians most recently invaded Chechnya in 2000 to reestablish authority over the breakaway republic after failing four years prior. What followed in Chechnya was much like it had been before the invasion — political opportunism and nepotism along with massive corruption and economic instability. Repeated appeals to the West were ignored and the calamities in the North Caucasus were treated as an “internal Russian problem.”

This snubbing of honest appeals for protection and investment has had dire consequences. The ultimate realization is the fact that instability in the North Caucasus is anything but an internal Russian problem. Resistance to Russian rule that began largely as secular and Chechen-centric has changed into something far more fearsome. The lure of Islamic extremism always had been present in the Chechen resistance movement. Following the massive instability after the conclusion of the first war and the rise of Islamic extremism throughout the Middle East — especially after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the declaration of the “War on Terror” — the militants in Chechnya and the North Caucasus in general have taken on a fundamentalist, pan-Islamic character.

The most recent leader of the movement declared the creation of the Caucasus Emirate in 2007 which, in theory, comprises the entirety of the North Caucasus and has turned the entire region into a combat zone, riddled with bombings and attacks on a daily basis.

Thus, the ignorance of the West and the refusal to intervene in what clearly was a black-and-white affair has led to the creation of another training ground for its enemies. It has become an ignored, poverty stricken, rubble-strewn corner of the globe as well as a hotbed of Islamic extremism.

We have already borne witness to the dire consequences of such actions two other times in the past two decades: the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s and most recently the genocide in Sudan. Both episodes have led to increased alienation between the West and the rest of the world and a more dangerous globe in general. If the developed countries of Europe and the Americas are to save any face and attempt to secure a safe future for not just ourselves, but people of the world as a whole, a more interventionist and internationalist approach must be taken.

Matt Korovesis is a State News guest columnist. Reach him at koroves1@msu.edu.