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Undoubtedly, terrorism is a plague of the 21^st century. In the beginning of a new millennium a wave of horrifying and devastating acts of terror spread across the whole globe affecting New York, Bali, London, Moscow, Madrid not to mention atrocities in Iraq, Israel, Palestine, North Caucasus and Afghanistan.

In order to protect the state and its citizens from terrorism some governments undertook radical counter-terrorist measures, which often lacked rationality as well as, in certain cases, legitimacy. By addressing the fates of victims of a counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya, this article argues that radical counter-terrorism in states with a hybrid model of democracy contains a similar if not a bigger threat to national security than terrorism itself.

From 1998 until 2009 Russian federal forces officially led a counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya. Due to widespread military campaigns and casualties among civilians, the general public tended to call this operation 'a war'. During this period, the civil population of the republic was stuck between terrorism and counter-terrorism, both of which violated their rights and liberties, including the most basic right to life. Chechens were subjected to arbitrary detentions exercised by state forces, which in a significant number of cases led to ill-treatment, disappearances or even murder. According to Human Rights Watch, the recorded number of disappeared people in Chechnya from 1999 until 2005 varied between 3,000 and 5,000. Obviously, the policy of enforced disappearances was exercised beyond the scope of any domestic or international legal framework. The official aim of counter-terrorist operations was to detain and arrest suspected terrorists. However, the crucial point is that detained suspects, no matter rebel fighters or ordinary civilians, were deprived of their right to due process, which is an essential element of a democratic state. The situation in Chechnya was described by some scholars and politicians as "a legal black hole." The same metaphor in the same counter-terrorist context was used with regard to Guantanamo prisoners.

Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights served an instance of last resort for victims and their relatives who lost any hope to enforce justice in the Russian legal system. Numerous claims brought by Chechens before Strasbourg cast light upon inadequate prolongations, bureaucracy and the state's failure to open an effective investigation on the cases of disappeared or ill-treated individuals. Up until now, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in more than 150 cases against Russia on tortures, enforced disappearances, extra-judicial executions and indiscriminate bombings. Nevertheless, one should bear in mind that Strasbourg cannot provide a full scope of justice as it is not entitled to conduct criminal investigations in Russia and open cases against individual lawbreakers. The Court rather restores victims' faith in the rule of law and in the possibility to obtain justice. According to the official discourse of the Russian government, since the end of a decade-long counter-terrorist operation, the situation in Chechnya has been normalizing. Nevertheless, it is extremely disturbing that a lot of Chechens still cannot seek effective investigations at home and have to appeal to Strasbourg in order get at least some remedy and comfort.

The policy of terror and injustice exercised in Chechnya brought about not only a dilution of democracy and liberal values but also triggered off a new round of rage and anger, which resulted in notoriously frequent acts of terror on Russian soil and new numerous victims among the civil population. Furthermore, the tendency to equate people of Chechen origin with terrorists and 'bandits,' which was frequently exercised on an official level in a counter-terrorist context, contributed to the growing anti-Chechen and generally anti-North Caucasian sentiments in a multinational Russian society. This trend could not help but affect, for instance, the conception of mass nationalist riots which took place in the Russian capital last December.

History shows that national security cannot be upheld by infringing the rights of any minority group, and terrorism cannot be overturned through its own means. By violating the rights of civilians, the state undermines people's trust in its authority and the rule of law. The Good Friday Agreement in the UK is an excellent example of how a half-a-century long problem of terrorism was overcome through negotiations and political compromise. A long-lasting stance of Moscow was to prohibit any negotiations with terrorists. However, the usage of terrorism as a broad umbrella term for separatism distorted the real state of things in Chechnya and hindered the possibility to avoid numerous casualties by using diplomacy instead of weapons.

Victoria Naselskaya completed her master’s thesis on comparative counter-terrorism in Russia and the UK at the Centre for British Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

This article was submitted for the atlantic-community.org's competition: "Empowering Women in International Relations." It coincides with the 10th Anniversary of UN resolution 1325 calling for an increased influence of women in all aspects of peace and security. The contest is sponsored by the U.S. Mission to NATO and the NATO Public Diplomacy Division.

You can read more submissions from the competition here.