Posted on 06/02/2006 2:22:00 PM PDT by lizol
Land Grab // Russia rejects Georgia's and Moldova's territorial integrity
The Russian Foreign Minister yesterday for the first time openly declared that the unrecognized republics in the former Soviet Union have a right to self-determination. That is Moscow's response to Western demands that Russia adhere to the 1999 Istanbul Commitments and remove its forces from the territories of Georgia and Moldova. It represents a radical shift in Russian policy and is a means of maintaining influence over pro-Western former Soviet states. Its timing in relation to the G8 summit in St. Petersburg indicates that Russia wants to send a message to the West about its exclusive rights in the former Soviet Union and the lengths it will go to to restore its superpower status.
Belgian Foreign Ministry Karel de Gucht, the current chairman of the OSCE, stated that that organization would pay €10 million in expenses for Russia to withdraw its troops after a visit to Chisinau and Tiraspol. He also stated the need for Russian peacekeepers in Transdniestria to be replaced by international forces. At the same time, Georgian authorities protested the “illegal increase in the number of Russian soldiers in South Ossetia,” claiming that extra forces were added in the last rotation of troops there. Chairman of the Georgian Parliament Committee on Defense and Security Givi Targamadze stated that Russia has placed 1000 troops there, instead of 500. “There was no rotation,” Targamadze said.
Russia and the unrecognized republics responded almost simultaneously. Transdniestrian leader Igor Smirnov announced a referendum on Transdniestria's independence from Moldova in the autumn. The Russian Foreign Ministry approved that move. “The expression of the will of the people is the highest instance for the determination of the fate of those who live in a specific territory,” Russian special ambassador Valery Nesterushkin said. Another Foreign Ministry official, Mikhail Kamynin, said of South Ossetia that “We respect the principle of territorial integrity, but that integrity as applied to Georgia is more a possible condition than a political and legal reality. The South Ossetian position is based on a principle no less acknowledged by the international community – that of self-determination.”
Moscow's support of the unrecognized republics has always been strong. As Georgia and Moldova have declared their intentions of integrating with Europe, Russia has imposed trade embargoes on them and declared gas wars. Then it began to conclude bilateral agreements on financial aid and economic cooperation on a government level with the unrecognized states and their presidents visited Moscow. Now its support for the breakaway republics in those countries is being openly stated. To defend its position in relation to Georgia, the Kremlin can threaten to break a number of agreements and impose further economic sanctions, as well as take advantage of its membership in the UN Security Council, which issues an annual statement on Abkhazia. It has also been issuing residents of Transdniestria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia Russian passports for several years. In the event of an armed conflict in any of those areas, Russia can send in forces and claim that it is protecting its citizens.
Turkish Ambassador to Georgia visits Abkhazia - June 5, 2006 - "I think it is important to undertake some concrete steps. We are ready to discuss the issue of opening a direct marine link between Turkey and Abkhazia and not only a passenger one," Tezgor said. The ambassador also mentioned that Turkey has good relationships with Russia in the economic sphere saying "Turkey and Russia are interested in stability in the Caucasus. More than seven million Caucasians reside in Turkey. Knowing about the Abkhazian demography we would like to facilitate the improvement of the situation. We want to strengthen our contacts with you and your brothers in Turkey. We hope that the Abkhaz diaspora in Turkey will soon be able to invest more freely in Abkhazia."
The state that doesn't capture hospitals in neighboring territories, does not make raids for jasyr ([yassir] capturing slaves] does not have slave trade, does not bring the most crazed Wahabis from Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the state that does not stage outside invasions, the state that does not kidnaps visitors to for ransom or slave labor, the state that does not shelter organized crime which operates abroad. The state in which clans do not wage constant vendetta one against another, the state which does not promote Sharia law, the state that does not propagate idea of Caliphate and "liberation" of all Russia from infidel (Christian) rule. The state in which other ethnic/religious groups can feel secure.
Chechnya had its Wahabi independence for several years. It ended with the invasion of Dagestan and 9/11 style attacks in Moscow. No state worth its salt could tolerate this.
It would if Chechnya were across the sea. But Chechnya is in the middle of Russian territory.
Since when do you care about what is "better for Russia"? You has proven yourself hostile to Russia, so I guess that your "good" advice is insincere. You wish Russians to make a monumental and foolish error.
Putin's goal of restoring the USSR is unchanged (whatever the final product may be called). His hopes are founded on oil and gas sales to Europe, which will fund everything, as well as accomplish Russian domination over Europe, something WWII and the Cold War failed to do. Wherever the pipelines run will be under Russian control.
"I truly believe, that it would be much better for Russia to get rid of Chechnya - like it was for France with Algeria. "
After France got out of Algeria, many Algerians with their families who worked with French colonial authorities, moved into France to flee the reprisals from the new government.
While French authorities at a time had the best intention to save their Muslim allies from the murder, this mass movement of Muslim Algerians into France was the beginning of Islamization of France.
Now Muslims constitute about 10% of French population and growing without assimilation. We see the results in Paris riots last year , numerous attacks on Jews, Muslim rules takeover of many public schools in France, etc. Overall, French and Spanish withdrawal from Africa opened the way to mass uncontrolled third world migration into Europe from there.
Algeria itself nearly become an official Wahhabi Islamic state in Democratic 1992 elections had these elections not been cancelled by the military and the ensuing civil war did not claim lives of about 100,000 people. Even with presumably secular regime in Algeria, it's one of the sources of the manpower for the world Jihad. Algerian Islamic movement victory over French authorities was an inspiration for Jihadists everywhere, like Arafat, who used Algerian instructors to train his thugs in Intifada against Israel.
With Chechnya, with all the terrible brutalities committed by Russian authorities there, leaving Chechnya means it will become a springboard for future Jihad spreading across Russia's North Caucasus and beyond as it already happened in 1999 when Basayev and Khattab raided Dagestan to support their fellow Wahhabi Islamists there. Basayev, by the way, was at a time a Chechen official in Maskadov separatist government, although they clashed with each other. Overall, simply leaving Islamic world alone is not an option because Islamic world simply cannot be at peace until the entire world is under Islamic rule.
"Why do the Turks support Akhazian separatism? Why it's because they hope for a "right of return" for the descendants of muslims which fled Abkhazia in the late 1800's. It's the same reason the Chechen terrorists supported the Abkhazians against Georgia, including even the baby-killer of Beslan, Basayev himself. Russia stands with the muslim Turks against Christian Georgia in Abkhazia"
Very good analysis ! Putin is clearly driven by pathological desire to punish Georgia for its pro-American policies, and he apparently does not realize that destabilization and disintegration of Russia's Christian neighbor in Caucasus can pave the way for Islamist expansion there which will further threaten Russian territorial integrity in North Caucasus and elsewhere.
Let's also have Prussia to declare its independence.
Just build a wall around Chechecnya, just like Israel is doing with the West Bank, and let it be independent and isolated. That should do the job.
Quick comment.......wouldn't it be a hoot, for lack of a better word if my country's support of Kosovo's independence and the emplacement of Albanian war criminals as political leaders, was to set a precedence for the total break up of the former Soviet states......This strategy goes back to 1948 by the way. Macedonia is next by 2010, I would wager.....
Interesting thought, ???
It is impossible. Too hard and too expensive to build such wall in steep mountains and it would have to build all around. Russia has no resources or troops for watching such wall. Politically Russia would be mauled.
Most of Chechens live all over Russia anyway. The only solution is to help them to advance, prosper and to integrate in Russian society - as many of them do.
Interestingly it was a Chechen Khasbullatov who led Russian Parliament in its resistance against fire-sale piratization of national economy and assets. This ended in 1993 brutal massacre of Parliament demanded by the Western "democrats" and free marketeers.
After breaking this resistance the way for looting opened and people like Khorodkovsky grabbed national assets at the price of mass impoverishment and premature deaths of millions. (This was the initial impetus for the Chechen insurgency, Arab Wahabis infiltrated Chechnya later).
People who moan the "horrible" suffering of a crook who is to serve a few years in prison for his thievery or pour crocodile tears about imaginary massacre on Tienanmen Square are the same once who cheered killing of hundreds of Russian parliamentarians and their defenders.
The the Ukrainian nationalist from the Western part do not stop their drive to suppress Russian character of the east, their Soviet created republic might be the prime candidate for the breakup.
Unfortunately there is a romantic/aristocratic concept of freedom which means weak royal/state power combined with the complete license for the upper leisure/quarrelsome class and destitute debased mass of toiling peons.
This idea of Golden Aristocratic Freedom was quite spread in XVII/XVIII century - it lead to the ruin of Poland and to the bad image projected on more practical "opressive" powers of Russia and Prussia.
Muslim raiders, trade-slavers and conquerors fit nicely into the ideal of aristocratic adventurer. So, yes there are quite a few of NON-Muslims who see emir Khattab inspired Chechnya as beacon of freedom.
'imaginary massacre on Tienanmen Square'
Interesting topic. Here is some more:
The prestigious Columbia Journalism Review published an article in 1998 in which Washington Post education reporter Jay Matthew’s admits his own inadvertent misinformation and says the press fails its duty to the Chinese people by hastily summarizing events of that morning. Yet some shrill propagandists persist in comparing accurate accounts of the June 4 fighting to neofascist denials of mass murder in World War II Germany.[1] (http://www.workers.org/ww/tienanmen.html)[2] (http://www.cjr.org/archives.asp?url=/98/5/tiananmen.asp)
According to conflicting accounts, during an urban warfare action designed to regain control of their capital city, Chinese government troops on June 4, 1989, reportedly killed some number between a few hundred and three-thousand of their fellow Chinese citizens, including workers, Bejing residents, dissident soldiers, site-seers and students (source: original interviews with eyewitnesses who were Bejing residents or who visited the capital as students at the time). Peoples Liberation Army soldiers also died, some beaten and burned by civilian combatants. The WWP interpretation of events echoes the Chinese government's claim that no one was killed in the square itself. By all historic accounts, organized non-violent protesters left the Square when soldiers arrived. To this day, ballistic pock-marks found along Chang'an Boulevard but absent in the Square attest to the veracity of the Chinese governments version of where shooting occured. w:Wikipedia has an article on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which notes that the Chinese government's claim "appears to be technically true, but misleading in that it does not account for the causalities in the approaches to the square. ... Estimates of the number of civilians killed range up to 2,600 (Chinese Red Cross). Injuries are generally held to have numbered from 7,000 to 10,000."
Note that while Wikipedians acknowledge the truth of WWP and the PRC's language, they make no similar allowance for debate about whether a "holocost" occured in mid-20th Century Germany. And note that Wikipedia does not claim the "civilians" who died along Chang'an Boulevard and elsewhere in Bejing were primarily "students."
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Excerpts:
From Columbia Journalism Review September/October 1998
The Myth of Tiananmen And the Price of a Passive Press
by Jay Mathews
Mathews is an education reporter for The Washington Post. He was the paper's first Beijing bureau chief and returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations. With his wife, Linda Mathews, he is the author of One Billion: A China Chronicle.
"The resilient tale of an early morning Tiananmen massacre stems from several false eyewitness accounts in the confused hours and days after the crackdown. Human rights experts George Black and Robin Munro, both outspoken critics of the Chinese government, trace many of the rumor's roots in their 1993 book, Black Hands of Beijing: Lives of Defiance in China's Democracy Movement. Probably the most widely disseminated account appeared first in the Hong Kong press: a Qinghua University student described machine guns mowing down students in front of the Monument to the People's Heroes in the middle of the square. The New York Times gave this version prominent display on June 12, just a week after the event, but no evidence was ever found to confirm the account or verify the existence of the alleged witness. Times reporter Nicholas Kristof challenged the report the next day, in an article that ran on the bottom of an inside page; the myth lived on. Student leader Wu'er Kaixi said he had seen 200 students cut down by gunfire, but it was later proven that he left the square several hours before the events he described allegedly occurred.
"Most of the hundreds of foreign journalists that night, including me, were in other parts of the city or were removed from the square so that they could not witness the final chapter of the student story. Those who tried to remain close filed dramatic accounts that, in some cases, buttressed the myth of a student massacre.
"For example, CBS correspondent Richard Roth's story of being arrested and removed from the scene refers to "powerful bursts of automatic weapons, raging gunfire for a minute and a half that lasts as long as a nightmare." Black and Munro quote a Chinese eyewitness who says the gunfire was from army commandos shooting out the student loudspeakers at the top of the monument. A BBC reporter watching from a high floor of the Beijing Hotel said he saw soldiers shooting at students at the monument in the center of the square. But as the many journalists who tried to watch the action from that relatively safe vantage point can attest, the middle of the square is not visible from the hotel.
"A common response to this corrective analysis is: So what? The Chinese army killed many innocent people that night. Who cares exactly where the atrocities took place? That is an understandable, and emotionally satisfying, reaction. Many of us feel bile rising in our throats at any attempt to justify what the Chinese leadership and a few army commanders did that night.
"But consider what is lost by not giving an accurate account of what happened, and what such sloppiness says to Chinese who are trying to improve their press organs by studying ours. The problem is not so much putting the murders in the wrong place, but suggesting that most of the victims were students. Black and Munro say "what took place was the slaughter not of students but of ordinary workers and residents — precisely the target that the Chinese government had intended." They argue that the government was out to suppress a rebellion of workers, who were much more numerous and had much more to be angry about than the students. This was the larger story that most of us overlooked or underplayed.
"It is hard to find a journalist who has not contributed to the misimpression. Rereading my own stories published after Tiananmen, I found several references to the "Tiananmen massacre." At the time, I considered this space-saving shorthand. I assumed the reader would know that I meant the massacre that occurred in Beijing after the Tiananmen demonstrations. But my fuzziness helped keep the falsehood alive. Given enough time, such rumors can grow even larger and more distorted. When a journalist as careful and well-informed as Tim Russert, NBC's Washington bureau chief, can fall prey to the most feverish versions of the fable, the sad consequences of reportorial laziness become clear. On May 31 on Meet the Press, Russert referred to "tens of thousands" of deaths in Tiananmen Square.
"The facts of Tiananmen have been known for a long time. When Clinton visited the square this June, both The Washington Post and The New York Times explained that no one died there during the 1989 crackdown. But these were short explanations at the end of long articles. I doubt that they did much to kill the myth.
"Not only has the error made the American press's frequent pleas for the truth about Tiananmen seem shallow, but it has allowed the bloody-minded regime responsible for the June 4 murders to divert attention from what happened. There was a massacre that morning. Journalists have to be precise about where it happened and who were its victims, or readers and viewers will never be able to understand what it meant.
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External links
Andy McInerney, "China's Tienanmen Square; History Clarifies What Happened in 1989 (http://www.workers.org/ww/tienanmen.html)," Worker's World, June 20, 1996.
Columbia Journalism Review: The Myth of Tiananmen And the Price of a Passive Press by Jay Mathews http://www.cjr.org/archives.asp?url=/98/5/tiananmen.asp
Alternative Insight:The Tiananman Square Confrontation http://www.alternativeinsight.com/Tiananmen.html
State Department document, June 3, 1989, describing violence by protesters against PLA troops: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/09-01.htm
State Department document, June 3, 1989, describing hostility by Bejing residents toware PLA troops, vehicles used to blockade troop movements: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/11-01.htm
State Department document June 4, 1989k, describing seven hour battle in which Bejing residents burned military vehicles and attacked national troops with rocks, bottles and firebombs. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/13-01.htm
State Department document June 4, 1989, detailing uncorroborated and later refuted accounts of deaths in Tiananman square http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/14-02.htm
State Department document June 4, 1989, detailing eyewitness account of Bejing residents beating soldier to death in Tiananman, burned goverment vehicles throughout city: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/15-08.htm
State Department documents June 6, 1989, discussing possible fighting between various PLA units:http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/19-01.htm, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/18-01.htm
State Department document June 22, 1989, contradicting reports of previous days and examining evidence that most, if not all, deaths occured outside the square. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/32-01.htm
good point......
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