>>>"Leo Tolstoy wrote about the Chechnian problems in the 1800's"
In a like manner, Winston Churchill wrote about the Sudan. Here's the first paragraph:
Link for some of the greatest writing around, you can download this free book by Winston Churchill, The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan.
"The north-eastern quarter of the continent of Africa is drained and watered by the Nile. Among and about the headstreams and tributaries of this mighty river lie the wide and fertile provinces of the Egyptian Soudan. Situated in the very centre of the land, these remote regions are on every side divided from the seas by five hundred miles of mountain, swamp, or desert. The great river is their only
means of growth, their only channel of progress. It is by the Nile alone that their commerce can reach the outer markets, or European civilisation can penetrate the inner darkness. The Soudan is joined to Egypt by the Nile, as a diver is connected with the surface by his air-pipe. Without it there is only suffocation. Aut Nilus, aut nihil!"
As Churchill described back in this 1902 book, the muslim north was enslaving those in the south. Today, it's the same 'ole same-oh.
The book can be downloaded free from Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4943
It is our own hubris which makes us think we will be able to change this dynamic.