Oct 19 (Reuters) - Here are some facts about Russia's mostly Muslim Chechnya republic on the country's restive southern fringe, where violence has escalated over recent months, leading the Kremlin to name the North Caucasus its biggest domestic political problem.
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* A mountainous region in the Caucasus range, Chechnya is inhabited by a mainly Muslim people with a fearsome reputation dating from the late 18th century when warlord Sheikh Mansour led a jihad (holy war) against Russian rule. It has been a thorn on Russia's southern fringe ever since.
* Under Soviet rule, Chechnya was lumped with ethnically close Ingushetia, with Grozny the combined region's capital. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ingushetia chose to become a republic within Russia while Chechnya declared independence.
* Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, fearing Chechens would be disloyal, deported the entire nation in 1944 to Central Asia, where many died. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev let them return in 1957.
* After former Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev declared independence at the end of Soviet rule, Russian President Boris Yeltsin sent in troops in December 1994 and Russia became mired in a bloody separatist war.
Mass rebel hostage-takings led to a truce being signed and Moscow withdrew its forces in 1996.
* During three years of de facto independence, the region was gripped by murders and kidnapping.
* In 1999, after Chechen hardliners invaded the adjacent region of Dagestan and Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, blamed rebels for bombings in Russian cities, including Moscow, Russian troops were sent back to Chechnya and separatist leaders fled.
Officially called a counter-terrorist operation, a second war began in Chechnya. Russia kept security restrictions and troops until April 2009.
* Chechen rebels seized a theatre in Moscow in 2002, holding 850 people hostage and demanding an end to the war. Around 120 hostages died. In September 2004, gunmen demanding Chechen independence seized a school in the town of Beslan in North Ossetia, near Chechnya, resulting in the death of 330 people, more than half of them children.
* Putin, as president, started installing local proxies to run an administration loyal to Moscow. His first local Chechen boss, Akhmat Kadyrov, was assassinated in a bomb blast in May 2004. His son, Ramzan, is currently the president.
Rights groups accuse Kadyrov, an ex-rebel turned Kremlin loyalist, of abductions and torture in present-day Chechnya, which he dismisses as attempts to discredit him.
* Chechen rebel Doku Umarov is Russia's most wanted guerrilla leader. His group claimed responsibility for an Aug. 17 dam disaster in Siberia that killed 75 and for bombing a Russian express train between Moscow and St Petersburg in November that killed 26 people.
* Two female suicide bombers killed 39 at two crowded Moscow metro stations in March earlier this year. Chechen rebel leader Umarov claimed responsibility for the attacks, which were the worst the capital had seen in six years.
* Increasing violence in the region and fears that militants will take their insurgency to Russia's economic heartland from the mountains of the northern Caucasus have drawn promises from the Kremlin to crush the militants.
* Kadyrov has amassed a large personal militia, which number in the thousands and are called "Kadyrovtsy". Rights groups and locals say they use heavy-handedness to carry out Kadyrov's personal decrees and permeate the society with fear.
* Russian officials say the Chechen insurgency has links with global Jihadist organisations, such as al Qaeda, though analysts dispute the links. (Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Jon Boyle)
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