MOSCOW, December 11 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - As Chechens marked Saturday, December 11, the 10th anniversary of the Russian invasion of their homeland, former Soviet leader Mikhkail Gorbachev regretted the invasion as a “great and tragic mistake.”

Gorbachev stressed that the invasion not only failed to solve any problems in the republic but also stoked war, terror and cost countless thousands of lives, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Certainly, what was going on in Chechnya at that time was alarming,” the ex-Soviet leader, who now heads the Green Cross International, an environmental group dedicated to preserving fresh water and eliminating weapons of mass destruction, told Russia's Interfax news agency.

“But those problems were not unsolvable and the sending of troops into that republic was an absolutely inadequate measure. That was a great and tragic mistake which led to the military campaign and later to a terrorist war.”

Gorbachev, who served as president of the then Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991, said “thousands of people were killed, Chechnya has suffered catastrophic devastation, but the situation there still remains unsettled.”

The small mountainous Caucasus republic has been ravaged by conflict since 1994, with just three years of relative peace after the first Russian invasion of the region ended in August 1996 and the second began in October 1999.

At least 100,000 Chechen civilians and 10,000 Russian troops are estimated to have been killed in both invasions, but human rights groups have said the real numbers could be much higher.

A picture shows Leila (back) standing near a shell that hit her house in Grozny during the war (AFP).

Leila Malueva's mother is a bit hesitant about giving birth to another daughter -- it seems that every time she has a little girl, war engulfs her native Chechnya.

“I've got strict orders from my family,” the 35-year-old elementary school teacher says, smiling.

“I need to have a son for this nightmare to stop.”

Her first daughter and oldest child Leila is 10 now, with auburn hair, big brown eyes and a shy streak.

She can tell you all about war.

It's when houses crumble and people die and adults pack their kids and clothes into cars and drive to strange new places. It has a burning smell and the rat-tat-tat sound of helicopters in the sky.

Leila knows how to act in war and readily shares her wisdom.

“As soon as there are booms, you run to a corner of the room and crouch there -- to avoid being hit if the roof collapses.”

In fact she knows how to behave in war so well that it comes naturally, without thought -- if she hears helicopter blades on the Caspian coast in summer, she dashes toward her mother and they cower as other beachgoers wonder why.

Leila is a small person who has led quite a life. Her lively eyes have seen much in their first two years -- when war first swept Chechnya -- even though she does not remember any of it.

It was on December 11, 1994 that former Russian president Boris Yeltsin ordered Russian troops into Chechnya to subdue an increasingly powerful movement there to separate the Caucasus republic from the Russian Federation and establish an independent country.

After two years of horrific fighting, Russian troops pulled out in 1996.

In 1999, then-prime minister Vladimir Putin pushed some 80,000 Russian troops into the Caucasus republic in what Moscow called a lightning-strike “anti-terror operation” but which has since degenerated into a grinding war with Chechen fighters.

The current conflict has driven tens of thousands of Chechens into exile within Russia and abroad.

Thousands of refugees from war-torn Chechnya live in battered tent camps  in neighboring Ingushetia and refuse to return home because of continuing insecurity.

Moscow has been considering itself the master of the Caucasus ever since its troops first came to claim the lands in the early 1800s and Chechnya has always chafed at Russian rule.