Chechnya: Problem region for Putin
(CNN) -- Chechen never has been an easy territory for Russia -- or for its current President, Vladimir Putin.
Chechens were active opponents of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus during the period 1818-1917.
During World War II, Chechen units collaborated with the invading German Nazis. As a result, in 1944 Stalin deported many residents to Central Asia and Siberia.
With the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, 14 regions became independent states. Chechnya did not.
Since 1994 the Chechen conflict has cost more than 150,000 lives in the disputed region that has only 1.3 million inhabitants.
Chechens, like the neighboring Ingush from Ingushetia, are not Russian Orthodox Christians but Sunni Muslim, and do not speak Russian but a Caucasian language.
Chris Bird, author of the book: "To Catch a Tartar: notes from the Caucasus" told CNN's Paula Hancocks that the need for Russian territorial integrity is a key to understanding the need for President Putin to cling on to the disputed territory.
However Bird noted that there is another, economic issue that makes Chechnya, and the Caucasus region important for Russia: Oil.
In late December 1994, within days of the first Russian attacks, Western experts pointed to the strategic importance of the Caspian pipeline route running through Grozny. Russia's attempt to retake control of Chechnya by force came less than three months after the first Caspian offshore oil deal was signed.
A shaky peace deal resulted in the wartime rebel leader, Aslan Maskhadov being elected president in 1997. A formal peace treaty signed between Maskhadov and Boris Yeltsin did not deal with the issue of independence.
Negotiations over pipeline reconstruction, transit fees and security remained an important issue.
Fighting flared up again in August 1999 after Chechen incursions into Dagestan and a series of apartment bombings in Moscow. But it also followed months of tension over the pipeline, which was shut down for most of the year due to illegal tapping on the route.
For 2004, Grozny Oil and Gas, a Rosneft subsidiary, predicted an output of 2 million tonnes of oil and more than 510 million cubic meters of gas -- no comparison to the situation before the 1994-1996 war when Grozny's network of refineries made it the second biggest oil city in the region after Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
In March 2003 Chechens voted in a referendum that approved a new regional constitution making Chechnya a separatist republic within Russia. Agreeing to the constitution meant abandoning claims for complete independence.
In September elections, Akhmad Kadyrov, the de facto Chechen president installed three years earlier by Russia, officially became president. He was however killed in a bomb blast in May 2004 and fighting and violent crime continued.
A week ago In August 2004 another Kremlin favorite Alu Alkhanov -- the former interior minister of the war-torn Russian republic -- was elected to the post after receiving nearly 74 percent of the vote. (Full story)
CNN's Paula Hancocks contributed to this report.
