Posted on 09/04/2004 1:32:36 PM PDT by Destro
September 2, 2004: When Chechnya first declared independence from Russia in 1993, the Russians promptly invaded. The Russians quickly tired of getting a lot of their troops killed for what appeared to be little gain. In the wake of their 1994 withdrawal from Chechnya, Russia simultaneously declared Chechnya still a part of Russia (and paid pensions and government salaries there) and left the Chechens to their own devices. But the Chechens could not govern themselves. It was as simple as that. The central government in the province controlled little beyond the capital Grozny. At least six major warlords held sway, and then quite loosely, over the rest of the province. Criminal activity rapidly increased. Between 1997 and 2000, some 1300 Russian civilians from southern Russia were kidnapped for ransom. When the money did not appear to be forthcoming, the victims were murdered. Hundreds of these captives were rescued as Russian troops again advanced into Chechnya in late 1999. But kidnapping wasn't the only racket. There was also auto theft, rustling, drug running and diverting oil from pipelines running through the province. This last scam was abetted by gangsters taking over local oil refineries and going into the fuel business. Add to this the usual gambling, extortion and prostitution rackets and you have a pretty grim place. For while a lot of the victims were fellow Chechens (who didn't belong to a particular gangs clan), most were in neighboring areas.
But what really mobilized public support for another invasion of Chechnya was one gang that specialized in religious fanaticism (in addition to some more secular crimes, everyone found kidnapping and smuggling too lucrative to give up for religious reasons.) Not content with just turning Chechnya into crime central, the Besayev gang decided to turn all the southern Caucasus into an Islamic republic. Most Chechens practiced the more laid back Sufi form of Islam, but Besayev and his followers managed to convert a few thousand Chechens to the more hard nosed Wahhabi form of Islam. It aid in this, non-Chechen fundamentalists came in to join the jihad. A few hundred converts were made in neighboring Dagestan. In the Summer of 1999, Besayev and company decided it was time to stop preaching and start fighting. Several thousand holy warriors invaded Dagestan. The Chechen criminals were bad enough, but this was too much for the Dagestanis, and they fought back.
Some 32,000 Dagestani civilians who fled the invasion, and the 1,500 locals were killed in the fighting, sometimes massacred by the holy warriors for resisting. Twice the Russian police and troops drove Besayev's warriors back into Chechnya. But after the third invasion, the new prime minister of Russia decided to reestablish control of Chechenya.
In February 2000, the senior Islamic cleric of Chechnya, Mufti Akhmed Khadzhi Kadyrov, proclaimed that the Russian occupation of Chechnya was the only way the people were ever going to be free from all the criminal activity. During the late 1990s, the Russian government had basically ignored the pleas of Chechnya's neighbors for relief from the increasing criminal activity. Reassuring press releases and more border guards were all that was sent to paper over the situation. But the local resentments built up, not just in the Caucasus, but throughout Russia. What was going in Chechnya was symbolic of the lesser degree of lawlessness throughout the country. Russians were waiting for someone to do something. But no one wanted a lot of Russian troops to get killed in the process. The 1993 battles in Chechnya had been humiliating for the Russian military, and people as a whole. In 1999, the Russians were more careful, numerous and decisive. This time the Chechens were also divided. The Russians soon occupied the entire country and began negotiating with many of the clan based groups for some kind of deal. The Russians wanted to get a majority of Chechens to agree to keep the crime rate, especially against people outside of Chechnya, down.
Chechen independence was not a major issue, Chechen's disruptive effect on the entire region was. This was nothing new. The Chechen's had, for centuries, been one of the more powerful ethnic groups (out of over fifty) in the Caucasus. The Chechens were used to doing as they wanted, and were tough enough, and ruthless enough, to get away with it. Two centuries ago, this unruly attitude brought the Chechens into violent contact with the expanding Russian empire. The Russians kept killing Chechens until the survivors agreed to behave. But such bloodletting is never forgotten in places like the Caucasus. The Chechens hate the Russians and want to be free to do whatever they want. And that's what the war in Chechnya is all about.
It's time to form a worldwide coalition against these Islamofascists. Initial targets are obvious - their heretofore "off limits" sanctuaries - all the Mosques around the world. Time to start knocking them off one at a time.
mo-slimes do what mo-slimes do.
Moral: eliminate the Chechens.
Bump for later read.
I think you can go back further to find the roots of the conflict over Chechnya:
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/History%20of%20Chechnya
The Russian strategy used in the past two Chechen wars- and the genral trend of world events- seems to have contributed to its conversion to (or usurpation by) radical islamization.
<< There is no excuse whatsoever for killing .... a school full of children.
If I were Russia, I'd break out the ruthless squad and cleanse some nests of sympthazers of this activity. >>
Time to go medieval on they arse!
"their heretofore "off limits" sanctuaries - all the Mosques around the world."
All wars with Muslims are open to radical islamization. The Soviets deported the Chechens because of fear they supported the Nazis? Well, Americans deported the Japanese.....
Bump!
Deported? To which country?
Me, too. Unfortunately, when you're doing that, no one admits they sympathize--the bad guys try to blend in with the population. The Russians will thus have to completely clean house, taking out everyone, including the not-so-bad, to be sure. There will be repercussions, and it will go on. I'd still clean house, though if I were Putin, and say it was too bad about the collateral damage.
The US was just as bad as Stalin? We deported the Japanese after the attack on Pearl Harbor? You mean like- Roosevelt sent the entire Japanese-American population to Kazakhstan, let 25% of them die, and Eisenhower didn't let the survivors come back until 1957?
Is that why the Japanese-Americans have joined with islamo terorists to attack America? /sarcasm
My son is serving with the US Army in the boondocks of Afghanistan. He told me that they can buy DVDs of new movies within two weeks of the initial movie release in the theaters. They can buy them at the local market.
. . . like killing kids, murdering infidels, beheading a christian who refuses to submit (Islam means submit in Arabic, not peace), or make women wear burqas, beat women, take 5 wives, rape male children of christians, invade the Muslim Holy City of Moscow . . . etc, etc, etc . . .
Yes Brian, it certaiinly appears that it is.
The other day I advocated that when terrorists can be identified after an event, corpse identification etcetera, that the authorities might consider going after every immediate living family member.
These terrorists might not value their own lives, but the wife, children, parents, brothers, sisters might mean something to them. Announce that those memebers would forfeit their lives, and all property owned by them would be destroyed. Houses would be leveled. All other personal property destroyed or returned to the financial institution that held the paper on them, vehicles or other.
If this is where legitimate governments need to head, then those governments should announce this new policy far and wide. Any terrorist that carried out an attack would be damning their family to extermination. The governments wouldn't.
Just pointing out that while the Soviet example was brutal it was not unprecedented - and can not stand as an excuse for their actions. By the way - how many American Indians died upon removal to reservations? "Trail of Tears", anyone?
Historically, this has been the only effective way to handle muslims.
By definition, deportation is the banishment of a person from one country to another country. Do you maintain that Arizona and California are not in the same country?
If you know the answer to that question, then why would you seemingly not know that the Japanese-Americans during WWII were interned (confined), not deported?
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