MOSCOW, Aug 29 (AFP) - A vote to elect a new leader of Chechnya took place Sunday against the backdrop of a continuing guerrilla war in the separatist, Muslim Russian republic.
Chechnya enjoyed de facto independence following the first war there in the post-Soviet era from 1994 to 1996 between rebels and Russian federal forces. That changed when Russian troops marched back in on October 1, 1999.
Many data on Chechnya are estimates, as independent organizations have few reliable and current statistics.
GEOGRAPHY - 19,300 square kilometers (7,350 square miles). Chechnya is a landlocked territory, and is almost entirely enclosed by other Russian regions. It has an 81-kilometer (50-mile) mountainous border with the former Soviet republic of Georgia to the south.
CAPITAL - Grozny. The city had a population of 400,000 before the first war, and 185,000 in 1996. After shelling it for months, Russian troops retook the Chechen capital, by then largely in ruins, in February 2000. Non-government organizations put the current population between 70,000 et 190,000. Pro-Russian Chechen authorities say population is in excess of 300,000.
POPULATION - Around one million, according to the first census carried out in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in October 2002. NGO's estimate the population at 679,000.
RELIGION - The Chechens are Sunni Muslims. Since the 1994-1996 war, the radical Wahhabite brand of Islam, which originated in Saudi Arabia, has been making headway, but its followers remain in a tiny minority.
HISTORY - For over 200 years, the main feature of Chechen history has been the fight against Russia.
Chechnya's national hero is Imam Shamil, who led a "holy war" against the Russian conquest from 1834 to 1859.
Following the Russian revolution in 1917, Chechens fought both the Red Bolsheviks and White Russians before succumbing to Soviet rule. In 1936, Chechnya and neighboring Ingushetia were united in a single Soviet autonomous republic.
In 1944, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin accused the Chechens of collaborating with the Nazis during World War II and deported the whole Chechen people to Central Asia and Siberia. Hundreds of thousands are estimated to have died. Survivors were not allowed to return until 1957.
In November 1991, less than two months before the end of the Soviet Union, Chechnya unilaterally declared independence. In 1992, it separated from Ingushetia.
In December 1994, then president Boris Yeltsin sent Russian troops to Chechnya to fight the republic's separatist insurgency. After 21 months of fighting, Chechen rebels retook Grozny from the Russians, who withdrew their troops.
The Khasavyurt peace agreement of August 1996 brought the war to a close, but failed to settle the issue of Chechnya's status.
In the summer of 1999, armed groups coming from Chechnya invaded neighboring Dagestan, in an attempt to establish an Islamic state in this Russian republic. They were repelled by Russian forces, who bombed their bases in Chechnya, which they invaded on October 1, 1999.
Russia sent in approximately 80,000 troops to Chechnya and military officials say some 40,000 remain in the republic. The troops face daily harassment from separatists and civilians, soliders and rebels die on nearly daily basis.
According to official statistics, nearly 5,000 Russian troops have been killed in the second Chechen war. Rights groups say that up to 12,000 Russian soldiers have died.
POLITICS - Chechen separatist president Aslan Maskhadov was elected in 1997, but exerted only partial control over the republic even before the Russian intervention, as he faced powerful warlords controling their own armed groups.
In June 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed as head of Chechnya's pro-Russian administration Akhmad Kadyrov, a former mufti of the republic who fought against the Russians in the first war.
ECONOMY - Chechnya's economy was almost totally destroyed during the second war. Before the second war, the little that was left was mostly based on extracting local oil and illegally diverting more oil from the Russian pipeline running through Chechnya.