Attackers seize Russian school II(continued)

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Kropotkin
Dr S.: Oh, no we where all dancing in the streets over this!

As a matter of fact, as I have my gf over in the US, there's a possibility for me to make some comparisons, and it seems like all this has gotten more coverage and reactions (and no pro-reactons obviously) in Swedish media than in the US.

That wasn't meant to be a Euro-bashing troll. I'm truly interested in what Europeans think of this attack, what it means to them and what they think should be done about it.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
as usual, very few here can understand complex issues and parallels as demonstrated with what the fabulous emperor is saying.

and dont say targeting civilians is different -remember when the bombs exploded on the spanish buses and everyone jumped on the ETA and called them 'just like al qaeda.' the eta doesnt target random civilians. im not saying what they are doing is right, im just saying there is a difference between what they do and what al qaeda does. its a question of degrees.

Now wait a minute, I am contesting his point that these are people that are just resisting Russian oppression.

[Kidlicious]

The RNC is over, but now the hurricane is the biggest story even though the death toll has risen. Not that the RNC should have been a bigger story. Just a bunch talk after all. BS at that mostly.

[DanS]

I'm surprised that Bush hasn't made a statement, especially when you consider that it would be an excellent time to plug the war on terror.

He's made multiple statements about it, but hasn't used it as a campaign prop.

[Dr Strangelove]

Yuh, they had their chance, and proved that they were unable to live in peace with their neighbors.

(Replying to Whoha's post)

[Kropotkin]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
That wasn't meant to be a Euro-bashing troll. I'm truly interested in what Europeans think of this attack, what it means to them and what they think should be done about it.

I didn't think it was either, I just don't feel like a need a reason to be sarcastic.

Well, I'm gonna go and look around in our pravda and other papers to see what they say about it and come back to you.

[muxec]

If Chechnian so-called "rebels" are freedom fighter... Than Ku-Klux-Klan only resisted the black opression.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by muxec
If Chechnian so-called "rebels" are freedom fighter... Than Ku-Klux-Klan only resisted the black opression.

Yeah, well I'm from Lynchburg and I know some special knots that just might come in handy with these folks.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

I guess I gotta admit I didn't know much about the Chechen resistence. While I still support such resistence, these people do seem like ****heads. I still can't imagine that all, or even most, of the people who want to be a seperate nation from Russia are fanatics.

Its still no excuse for the human rights abuses made by Russia, nor the supposed genocide called for by muxec. Exterminating an entire race of people just because you feel threatened by a few is just wrong.

[Kropotkin]

Dr. Strangelove, I've read a few editorials and tried to summarize them below. it seems like they, from left to right, are keeping the same line as most europeans seems to do against terrorism in Israel or against the US; The hardline often leads to even more terrorism in the long run, and a change of direction is needed. Or from an american point of view; they are all a bunch of pinko treehuggers. I must however add that they all show no form of understanding whatsoever for the terrorists.

Dagens Nyheter:
(biggest morning paper, center-right)
Says that there's actually some truth to Putin's claim that this is part of international terrorism, but that it's more complex than that as there doesn't seem to be any coherent structure amoungst chechnian guerilla-groups. While they see a new generation of leaders inspired by Wahhabism they also point to the bloody history of chechnia. The author of their analysis does not in any way defend the acts of the terrorists but also points out that as the atrocities against civilian chechnians has became worse over time, so has also the acts of the terrorists. or, to put in other words; it seems like this journalist argues that violence breeds more violence. The papers editorial goes on in the same fashion.

Aftonbladet:
(biggest tabloid paper, however swedish tabloids are unique as they have 'serious' editorials and culture papers. Social democratic)
The editorial today thinks that the horrific act might give more support for Putins hard line against chechnial seperatists, but also thinks that it'll lower the general support for him. It doesn't seem like Putin can guarantee the safety of the russian people. The paper thinks that even if Putin would have liked to talk to someone on the other side, there doesn't seem to be anyone to talk to. The paper is concerned that this will make the US even more quiet about the tragic situation inside chechnia, but also argues that this might be an opening for international involvement in Chechnia.

Svenska Dagbladet:
(the second morning paper. Right wing)
Yesterdays editorial argues that it has been the hardline politics of Putin that have closed out moderate forces from an open debate and lead the conflict into the hands of terrorists. The author believes that it's up to Putin to make something that can win the hearts and minds of the chechnian population, and in this way stop an end to the breeding ground for terrorism and radicalism. However, he's sceptical that Putin would be the man to do this. The only possibilty is international pressure that would make Russia deal with the chechnian question and break the deadlock where war has become the normal situation in the caucasus.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

With the outbreak of the Second Russo-Chechen War in 1999, however, the differences between the secularized Chechen highlanders and the fundamentalist Pashtun-Taliban were overlooked (or deliberately blurred) by Russian leadership. Paranoid Russian officials saw the August-September 1999 invasions of the Russian province of Dagestan by Shamil Basaev, Emir Khattab, and Dagestani Wahhabis as a "Caucasian front" of a much-hyped trans-Eurasian united jihad that was said to be directed from the pariah Taliban state. In particular, Kremlin officials claimed that the 1999 "Chechen" invasion of Dagestan (which was actually condemned by Chechen President Maskhadov) represented the western pincer of an extremist front that stretched across Eurasia, from the Caucasus to Uzbekistan

Russian conspiracy theorists found sufficient grounds for suspecting the Taliban-sponsored Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) raiders, who in 1999 were creating chaos in Central Asia, and the radical "Chechen" invaders of Dagestan. In Uzbekistan at this time Islamic militants belonging to Juma Namangani's IMU had begun a series of invasions designed to undermine the regime of President Islam Karimov. [3] The Russian government felt that the IMU's raids resembled the incursions from Chechnya into Dagestan. Most alarmingly for the Kremlin, the 1999 IMU forays into Uzbekistan and the Batken region of Kyrgyzstan were launched from Taliban territory in the Mazar-i Sharif area of northern Afghanistan, where Juma Namangani's militant Islamists had found sanctuary.

It should be clearly stated that there is no evidence linking the August-September 1999 "Chechen" invasion of Dagestan to Namangani's 1999 IMU razzias into Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. While there is abundant evidence that in 1999 the IMU merged with al Qaeda's Afghan-based 055 International Brigade (the 3,000 man Arab, Uzbek, and Pakistani-dominated fighting wing of al Qaeda that was increasingly used by the Taliban in its spring offensives against the Northern Alliance), there is no evidence that Chechens served in this fanatical jihadi shock brigade.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Additionally, the regrouping Chechen defenders had no reason to abandon the defense of their homes and families to fight for the Taliban. Similarly, by the time of the Second Russo-Chechen War, the Chechen fighters--who had successfully stormed such Russian-occupied urban areas as Grozny and Gudermes in the First Russo-Chechen War--would have had little to learn militarily from the unskilled Afghan-Talibs (the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen failed to take Jalalabad in their only effort to storm an urban area and the Taliban resorted to bribery to achieve most of their victories).

As events demonstrate, the increasingly isolated Taliban regime could offer the encircled and diplomatically isolated Chechen Republic of Ichkeria token assistance. Notably, in January of 2000 a radical Islamist opponent of Maskhadov, named Zelimkhan Yanderbiev (interim Chechen President in 1996 who had severed all ties with Maskhadov), and five aides made an unofficial visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan seeking support for the increasingly desperate Chechen secessionist cause. In Pakistan, Yanderbiev collected US$200,000 from the radical Jamaat Islami and Jamaat Ulema e Islam organizations, which were also known to have funded Harkat ul Mujahideen military activities in Kashmir. Most fortuitously for the Kremlin spin-masters, on January 16, 2000, the rogue emissary Yanderbiev also visited Mullah Omar in Afghanistan. There, Yanderbiev, who was not operating in any official capacity as a Chechen representative, went though the almost comical process of receiving official "recognition" of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from the equally isolated Taliban regime. [4]

The Kremlin perceived this symbolic gesture as "proof" of links between its Chechen opponents and the pariah Taliban regime. One account maintains that Russian President Vladimir Putin "began to see Chechens everywhere" at this stage. By the summer of 2000 the Kremlin was even threatening to bomb the Taliban regime with TU-22M Backfire Bombers and SCUD missiles in retaliation for its supposed support for the Chechen resistance. [5] Kremlin spokespersons also spoke of a counterintuitive "exchange program" that saw "hundreds" of Afghans make their way to Chechnya to assist the Chechen rebels while "hundreds" of ex-Soviet Chechens traveled in the other direction, to Afghanistan, to hatch plans with Mullah Omar's Pashtun-speaking tribal fanatics.

In response to the increasingly shrill rhetoric about Chechens in Afghanistan coming from the Kremlin, Taliban spokesmen adamantly refuted the claims that there were any Chechens in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. A top ranking Taliban official declared: "There are no training camps for Chechens or any one else. We challenge them to identify even one." [6] If this statement were not emphatic enough, the Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, declared that there were not only no Chechen "bases" in Afghanistan, but no Chechens whatsoever, not even diplomats, in his country. [7]

When informed of Yanderbiev's provocative unofficial visit, an equally disgusted Chechen President Maskhadov declared from his hideout in the mountains of southern Chechnya: "We didn't ask for any military help from anyone, including Afghanistan, because there isn't such a necessity. We have enough forces and means to sustain a full partisan war with the Russian army. There are no Chechen bases in Afghanistan, nor in Yemen. We don't need any bases, because during the previous war Russian generals taught our people how to fight." [8]

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Prior to 9-11 the Clinton and Bush administrations, as well as other NATO governments, dismissed the Kremlin's rhetoric concerning the existence of Chechens in Afghanistan and Afghans in Chechnya as so much Soviet-style "agitprop" (agitation-propaganda, the specialty of Putin's former employers, the KGB).

And thus things may well have remained but for the fact that the al Qaeda parasite "organization" launched a stunning suicide attack on the United States of America from the Taliban host state on September 11, 2001. As a reeling Bush administration focused the full might of Centcom on the task of destroying the Taliban regime, Russia's permission was required for basing rights in the "Blizhnee Zarubezhe" of Central Asia (the so-called "Near Abroad," i.e., the former Soviet republics of Central Asia that are considered to be well within Moscow's sphere of military/political influence).

In the aftermath of 9-11, Putin wholeheartedly sided with the U.S.-led Coalition and the Russian military gave its permission for the basing of U.S. forces on its doorstep (most notably in Karimov's Uzbekistan, which was used as a springboard for inserting U.S. special forces and airborne troops into northern Afghanistan). It was at this time that the White House began referring to the Chechens as "al Qaeda terrorists" and declared the anti-Karimov IMU (which had no record of anti-Americanism) a "Foreign Terrorist Organization." Stunned Chechens (and IMU extremist fighters from Uzbekistan, who were soon to find themselves in the U.S. cross-hairs in northern Afghanistan) assumed that a quid pro quo had been granted to the Kremlin (and to Uzbek President Karimov) by the Bush administration, which had once looked on their separatist cause with sympathy (see part one of this series).

In response to this green light from the Bush administration for stepped up attacks on "Islamic extremists" in Chechnya, Russian Federation troops accelerated their zachistki ("cleansing" round-up operations) in "terrorist" villages throughout Chechnya. In other words, in the immediate months after 9-11 the Chechen resistance found itself pressed as never before due to the fact that the West had given the Kremlin carte blanche to ratchet up its ongoing war against Chechen separatism under the guise of playing its role in the war against global al Qaeda terrorism.

At this time of elevated Russian offensives in Chechnya that Western media (which had previously depicted the Chechens as victims of Russian war crimes) began accusing the Chechens of being in league with the Taliban. In a short time the Western media surpassed the Kremlin in its casual linkage of the Chechen highlanders to the doomed Taliban regime. It soon became an article of faith even among the U.S. military in Afghanistan that (along with the Uzbeks of the IMU, Pakistanis, and Arabs) the Chechens were a vital component of al Qaeda's tough 055 Brigade. The U.S. military began uncritically to produce reports such as the one below:

They have been the stuff of nightmares for Russian troops and now U.S. forces face the prospect of trying to combat Chechen fighters in Afghanistan who have thrown their lot in with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. "There are a hell of a lot of them and they sure know how to fight," one senior American officer said after the conclusion of the recent offensive Operation Anaconda against diehard fighters in eastern Paktia province. The man who led the offensive said that a large proportion of the fighters who chose to fight to the death were non-Afghans.

But Chechen separatists, who have been involved in a fierce war for independence from Russia for the past twenty-nine months, appear to make up the largest contingent of al Qaeda's foreign legion...Following the downfall of his Taliban protectors in Afghanistan, there has been speculation that Osama may now try to seek refuge in Chechnya. "We know the history of the Chechens. They are good fighters and they are very brutal," Hagenbeck said. The general said he has heard of reports out of the Pentagon that a unit of 100-150 Chechens had moved into southern Afghanistan. [9]

Chechens were accused of leading the Taliban's defense of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan (sixty Chechens were said to have thrown themselves into the Amu Darya River when this city fell to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance) and "hundreds" of Chechen "die-hard Taliban fanatics" were said to be fighting in scores of battlefronts throughout Afghanistan. This author has carefully collated these unsubstantiated reports of Chechens fighting on behalf of the Taliban regime against American forces and has come to a stunning numeric conclusion. If the Western media sources, which specifically speak of "dozens," "hundreds," and "thousands" of Chechens fighting against Coalition forces in Tora Bora, Shah-i Kot, Kunduz, Mazar-i Sharif, and even Kandahar, Afghanistan, are to be believed, then there were considerably more Chechens protecting the Pashtun-Taliban thugocracy in distant Afghanistan than defending their own villages, homes, and people in Chechnya.

Despite a veritable barrage of such accounts, a barrage that continues to this day, not one Chechen has been apprehended by U.S. and Coalition forces in Afghanistan or Pakistan. In my August 2003 discussions with General Dostum, the Northern Alliance general responsible for the destruction of the 055 al Qaeda Brigade in Mazar-i Sharif and Kunduz, he admitted that his anti-Taliban forces had not uncovered a single Chechen among the foreign fighters subsequently shipped to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following the November 2001 defeat of the Taliban (although his forces discovered one American, Johnny Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban").

[lightblue]

Originally posted by Ned

Some also appear to be al Qaida of Arab descent.

I counted them amongst Jihadis. I doubt the secular nationalists want anything to do with these people, who would probably be doing this regardless of what Moscow has done in the past.

[Dr Strangelove]

Who cares whether any of them moved to Afghanistan or not? In the late 1990s the Chechen state was ruled by a Taliban like regime. Even if you question how much support they gave to the proxy fighters who invaded Dagestan, you can't ignore their internal human rights violations, like as I mentioned, executing gays. They also removed the civil rights of women and non-Muslims. In fact with regards to their internal policies they marched lock-step with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The systematic human rights abuses of the Chechen state were recorded in their law books and are a matter of public record. The former Chechen regime had no more legitimacy than the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan.