Aggressors may impose on subjugated communities the obligation to refuse shelter to members of the resistance and to hand over everyone who has escaped the aggressor's power - rebels, runaway soldiers and bondsmen, prisoners. The obligation is formalized in a decree or a treaty and rests on collective liability: the whole settlement answers for harboring or for failure to inform - with fines, confiscations, devastation. In this way the aggressor destroys the very function of uncontrolled space - mountains, forests, free borderlands - as a refuge beyond its power: political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott showed that such zones of refuge (he explicitly names the Caucasus among them) are formed by people deliberately fleeing state exactions, and political theorist Neil Roberts described flight from bondage itself as a practice of freedom - the forced surrender of fugitives strikes precisely at it. With the hands of the subjugated themselves, the aggressor turns every settlement that has yielded into a barrier against those still resisting.
The "Conditions prescribed to submitting highlanders", issued by general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), on 15 June 1840, obliged the Chechen auls to refuse shelter to members of the resistance and to hand over people who had escaped the empire's power. Point 8 prescribed: "Not to give refuge in their auls to abreks, murids and unsubdued highlanders" (abrek - the imperial label for a highlander declared an outlaw; murids - the imam's disciples and warriors); point 11: "To hand over all Russian prisoners and runaways staying in the mountains" - by runaways the empire meant its own soldiers and serfs who had gone over to the highlanders[1]. Handovers went on even before the decree, under the pressure of the winter expeditions: the imperial historian Yurov recorded of the outcome of the December 1839 march of general Pullo, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line, through Lesser Chechnya (the lowland-piedmont western part of Chechnya): "97 abreks, 7 prisoners and two runaways were handed over", and of the January 1840 march along the Michik river - the auls "handed over 30 abreks"[2].
The empire demanded that Chechen communities hand over soldiers who had fled to them from the imperial army, and set salt as the price of that surrender. Minister of War Chernyshev, in an official service letter (otnoshenie) of 6 September 1842, conveyed to general Golovin, commander of the Separate Caucasus Corps (head of the imperial troops and administration in the Caucasus), the order of emperor Nicholas I: the local command was to ""demand the return of the servicemen who had hidden among the highlanders who had declared their submission to us"", and from the communities that had not submitted to obtain the surrender through need - ""to endeavour to induce the unsubmitted to hand over deserters in exchange for salt""[1]. The emperor expressly forbade ransoming the fugitives with money: the payment for the people handed over was access to the salt the empire kept under embargo.
After the shooting near Shali the empire demanded that the Chechen societies hand over the survivors. On 26 January 1864 Loris-Melikov, head of the Terek oblast, assembled the naibs and "honorable" residents in the Groznaya fortress: the historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova writes - he "announced to the assembled Chechens that they were obliged to hand over all the zikrists [followers of Sheikh Kunta-Haji]. A final deadline was set - 1 February, after which the head of the oblast threatened to commence military operations. He also forbade the performance of zikrist rites"[3]. The historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov quote the demand verbatim: "...to assist in restoring the order disrupted by the zikrists...", and record the ban on the "loud" zikr, compliance with which was to be watched over by the clergy and the village elders[4].
In February 1919 the Volunteer Army demanded, through the Mountain government, the handing over of all Red Army men sheltering in Chechnya: "About 700 people were indeed prepared for handover, but this action met the resolute resistance of the Goity Soviet and the open discontent of the people," write historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov (the Goity Soviet - the soviet of the village of Goity); General Shatilov reported: "...unrest is taking place among the Chechens, as part of them do not want the Bolsheviks handed over"[4]. The demand to hand over "all Red Army men, Bolsheviks and abreks" entered the April ultimatum as well[4].
On 8 September 1925 Soviet aviation dropped eight one-pud bombs - 16 kilograms each, like a round of a modern 120 mm mortar - on Nozhay-Yurt, to force the village to hand over Gibertiev, the former head of the district militia[5]. Urus-Martan was coerced in the same way: historian A. Yu. Lashkov writes that after artillery fire and bomb strikes "the leadership of Urus-Martan yielded and handed over the bandits on 9 September"[6]. Of the representatives of the local authorities the instruction on mass searches, issued for the operation by the staff of the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB), says: they are brought into the removal as those "obliged to point out the dwellings of persons subject to removal, as well as those persons (relatives and others) with whom the person subject to removal may be hiding"[7] - the community itself was made the executor of the removal. The price of this demand is named by historian E. F. Zhupikova: "By force of the highland custom of hospitality, the population of Chechnya, even if it was hostile to the leaders of the insurgents and the chiefs of the bandits, could not hand them over to the authorities. Breaking the custom would have disgraced the highlander for many generations and would have threatened his clan with blood vengeance from the man he had handed over"[8].