This war has a strong smell of oil, but it would be extremely naive to state that this is merely a fight for oil-rich terrain.
I think its important to make the point that, if this war was about oil, Russia would never have abandoned Kazakhstan, which is half Russian, and sits on the largest pool of oil outside the Persian Gulf. Maybe larger. They would never have turned loose of Azerbaijan, another huge oil producer.
Why would they turn loose of an oil-rich country the size of Europe, while fighting to hang on to a tiny region with... an oil refinery?
The answer is that it is not about oil. Its not even about preventing Chechen independence, since Yeltsin effectively granted that in the mid-nineties. It is a war against crime gangs and muslim terrorists, very simply.
Yes, but this makes the Left's allies, Islam, look bad.