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Why has Putin offered such steadfast support to Assad? On the surface, Moscow seems to profit from exporting arms to Syria, and it depends on the regime’s good will to maintain Russian access to a naval facility at the Mediterranean port of Tartus. But these are marginal and symbolic interests. Putin is really motivated to support the Assad regime by his fear of state collapse -- a fear he confronted most directly during the secession of Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Chechnya, which he brutally suppressed in a bloody civil war and counterinsurgency operation fought between 1999 and 2009. (In Russia, the republics are semi-autonomous federal units comprising the historic territories of the country’s non-ethnic Russian groups.) In a series of interviews he gave in 2000 for an authorized biography, Putin declared that “the essence of the ... situation in the North Caucasus and in Chechnya ... is the continuation of the collapse of the USSR.... If we did not quickly do something to stop it, Russia as a state in its current form would cease to exist.... I was convinced that if we did not immediately stop the extremists [in Chechnya], then in no time at all we would be facing a second Yugoslavia across the entire territory of the Russian Federation -- the Yugoslavization of Russia.” And we know how Putin feels about the demise of the Soviet Union; in 2005 he called it “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [twentieth] century,” a comment that was meant to bemoan the collapse of the Soviet state rather than the demise of communism.

For Putin, Syria is all too reminiscent of Chechnya. Both conflicts pitted the state against disparate and leaderless opposition forces, which over time came to include extremist Sunni Islamist groups. In Putin’s view -- one that he stresses repeatedly in meetings with his U.S. and European counterparts -- Syria is the latest battleground in a global, multi-decade struggle between secular states and Sunni Islamism, which first began in Afghanistan with the Taliban, then moved to Chechnya, and has torn a number of Arab countries apart. Ever since he took office (first as prime minister in 1999 and then as president in 2000) and was confronted by the Chechen war, Putin has expressed his fear of Sunni Islamist extremism and of the risks that “jihadist” groups pose to Russia, with its large, indigenous, Sunni Muslim population, concentrated in the North Caucasus, the Volga region, and in major cities such as Moscow. A desire to contain extremism is a major reason why Putin offered help to the United States in battling the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11. It is also why Russia maintains close relations with Shia Iran, which acts as a counterweight to Sunni powers.

In the case of Chechnya, Putin made it clear that retaking the republic from its “extremist opposition forces” was worth every sacrifice. In a speech in September 1999, he promised to pursue Chechen rebels and terrorists even into “the outhouse.” He did just that, and some opposition leaders were killed by missile attacks at their most vulnerable moments. The Chechen capital city of Grozny was reduced to rubble. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed, along with jihadist fighters who came into Chechnya with the encouragement of extremist groups from the Arab world, including from Syria. Moscow and other Russian cities endured devastating terrorist attacks. Putin’s treatment of Chechnya became a cautionary tale of what would happen to rebels and terrorists -- and indeed to entire groups of people -- if they threatened the Russian state. They would either be eliminated or brought to their knees -- exactly the fate Putin wishes for today’s Syrian rebels.

After two decades of secessionist strife, Putin has contained Chechnya’s uprising. Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel who switched his allegiance to Moscow, now leads the republic. Putin granted Kadyrov and his supporters amnesty and gave them a mandate to go after other militants and political opponents. Kadyrov has rebuilt Grozny (with ample funds from Moscow) and created his own version of an Islamist and Chechen republic that is condemned by human rights organizations for its brutal suppression of dissent.

1 posted on 03/26/2013 5:47:51 PM PDT by cunning_fish
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To: cunning_fish
Your Russia/Eastern European stuff is excellent.

I have a more simple take.

Putin wants to build a Russian Empire, and bemoans setbacks to that goal..

The Muslim Brotherhood and the majority radical Muslims want to build an Islamic Empire (World Caliphate).

Obama and the DemoRats want America to descend into a third world serf populated socialist dictatorship paying international taxes to the rest of the world.

I like Putin's idea best.

2 posted on 03/26/2013 6:22:59 PM PDT by Navy Patriot (Join the Democrats, it's not Fascism when WE do it, and the Constitution and law mean what WE say.)
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To: cunning_fish

Warm Water Port!


4 posted on 03/26/2013 6:50:12 PM PDT by G Larry (Which of Obama's policies do you think I'd support if he were white?)
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To: cunning_fish
brutal suppression

... the only language that Islamists understand.

5 posted on 03/26/2013 7:07:50 PM PDT by Praxeologue
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To: cunning_fish
The difficult part that most Americans would probably have in believing this narrative, would be the part where Iran is supposed to represent a lesser threat to America then say Al Qeada.

Other then that, in the last paragraph, it almost reads as if Putin made Kadyrov and his men. In the mafiya sense of the term.

7 posted on 03/26/2013 8:27:13 PM PDT by justa-hairyape
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