For decades Chechnya has seen war, devastation, terrorism and ping pong government control. More recently Chechnya has been known for its terrorist attacks by separatists against civilians with the School bombing being the most infamous of the attacks. After the second war, Russia disabled the Chechen forces to the point where large scale fighting is no longer a large issue and the chechen rebels have gone to a guerrilla form of warfare targeting Russian forces where they could.

The 2 Chechen wars and intermittent fighting after have claimed the lives of many chechen civilians and brought some attention to human rights violations in that region by both sides. Even though huge amounts of people have been killed in the wars and other fighting, only a few incidents really received international media coverage.

The First Chechen War also known as the War in Chechnya was fought between Russia and Chechnya from 1994 to 1996 . The war established the Chechens independence from Russia and created the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

The first Chechen war was 1994–1995.  Russian forces attempted to control the mountainous area of Chechnya but were set back by Chechen guerrilla warfare and raids on the flatlands in spite of Russia’s overwhelming manpower, weaponry, and air support.  Boris Yeltsin declared a ceasefire in 1996 and later signed a peace treaty.

sick images of the devastation in Chachnya due to decades of war and fighting.

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The Second Chechen War, or War in the North Caucasus, was launched by the Russian Federation in August 26, 1999, in which Russian federal forces largely re-took control of the separatist region of Chechnya.

The Second Chechen War was started in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the IIPB, and the Russian apartment bombings which Russia blamed on Chechen separatists, although no evidence linking Chechens with the bombings has been released to the public. The campaign largely reversed the outcome of the First Chechen War, in which the region gained de facto independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Although it is regarded by many as an internal conflict within the Russian Federation, the war attracted a large number of Jihadist foreign fighters.

photo gallery of fighting in Chechnya as well as the more recent school bombing that made international headlines for the terrorist attack against school children.

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