from the New York Times:
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. Any word on what kind of gas they used?
It’s speculated to be some psychedelic compound, LSD-like.
–Chechnya, and the rest of the North Caucasus, have been tromped over by various empires for many centuries. The Russians annexed what is now Chechnya in bits between 1800-1864. If you’re interested in a super-detailed military history of the period, check out some of the books I list in the previous thread I linked to, above. I’m also a big fan of the Penguin Historical Atlas of Russia. They were also independent of Russia for a couple of years immediately after the 1917 Revolution, before the Communists got firm control of everything the Russian Empire had counted within its holdings. It also took the Reds a while to get a good grip on the Russian Far East and Central Asia.
–I’ve never seen a reliably conducted poll of Chechen public opinion, and doubt that such a thing exists (at least a recent one), but I think it’s safe to say that the majority of Chechens just want to be left the hell alone to live their lives. The differences of opinion would probably come about in terms of how far some of them are willing to go to have the Russians leave them alone, and the degree to which they want to be left alone.
I think that’s always been the case, to varying extents over time.
–And as to your last question, there’s the rub. Neither side has shown itself to be terribly willing to compromise, in large measure IMHO because neither side trusts the other in the slightest. The Russians also don’t have a great track record on delivering their promises, so I can’t say that I blame the Chechens.
If you want a slice of life of the current conflict, I highly recommend Anne Nivat’s Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Reporter Behhind the Lines in Chechnya. See my linked thread for more details.
And if you really want to be bored to tears by reading about how the Russians haven’t kept their promises to the North Caucasians (legislative and otherwise), I might be convinced to e-mail my thesis. And if you want a general overview of recent Russian political issues (one that won’t put you to sleep), highly recommend David Remick’s Lenin’s Tomb.
More opinions dished out on request.
Just checked regions.ru again; a bunch more stories, including the usual political bickering about whether the Spetsnaz should have done anything differently, but one item of note: some speculation that the gas used was a new generation of paralytic nerve gas, with a possible 30% lethality rate, that some visiting FBI guys passed along to their Russian colleagues. Can’t comment on the possible veracity of it, but the prospect that we would hand over something like that to the Russians is intriguing, to say the least. I hope it’s wrong.
US origin–HOOEY!
Russia had the largest active chem weapons program in the world before the fall of the USSR. So, far more likely it was “home-grown”.
Well, we may see soon enough; the U.S. Embassy has requested that the Russians tell them exactly what was used, so that they can help find proper treatment for two U.S. nationals who are in the hospital, suffering from the effects of the gas, which is apparently pretty nasty stuff. Regions.ru says the death toll is up to 112 hostages, but that the Russian government won’t even confirm how many deaths took place due to the armed violence inside the theater vs. how many are due to gas poisoning.
One article also mentioned that a Dutch and a Kazakh national are among the dead, but didn’t mention their names. If anyone sees their names, please post them! My roommate when I first studied in Russia was a Kazakh, who last I heard was married to a Dutch guy; it’s pretty unlikely that they were there, since last I heard they were living in Almaty, but one never knows. If she is dead, it will be a Kazakh national tragedy, as she is the granddaughter of Kazakhstan’s most famous modern writer. (Plus, last I heard, she was running the Soros Fund office in Almaty.)
Wow. I spent the weekend in a news hole–Blacksburg, VA without a computer–and got my information from this morning’s Roanoke Times, which is sort of like reading www.fark.com (you will notice that their pseudo-website is sort of set up like the Washington Post, but with the absence of a “world” section).
The interesting thing was that the article I read said that the 80-at-that-point deaths were attributed to “lack of medical treatment” and I kid you not, “hunger.” The Jimi Hendrix COD sounds far more likely than that.
That’s the horrible thing about modern terrorism. When someone pulls some bullshit this big, the modern world almost always has to come in from an angle that the bad guys didn’t consider. People will die from the gas, and the Russians will be blamed. But the next time this happens, the assholes will have gas masks and whatever else the good guys have to use to kill them will be criticized instead.
I’ve argued for a long time that the best way to approach terrorism is to simply take the terrorists’ demands off the neogtiation table after the act. I’m willing to bet that, partially as a result of this ambitious exhibition, a permanent Russian military presence in Chechnya is the price of peace, if there is one. The rest of you hostage-taking wannabes better take note.
So **Sofa King, ** then it’s OK for the Russian military essentially to engage in genocide, and there is no way to convince them otherwise?
Oh, hell no, Eva Luna! I’m not defending the Russian actions in Chechnya at all. What little I know about it does the Russians no credit.
What I do deplore is the use of this sort of terrorism to fight back. Hostage-taking is a terrible thing to do, and I don’t think many rational people condone it.
If the Chechens want to take the fight to the Russians, they have plenty of more civil ways to do it. The Chechen gangs which purportedly control much of the black market trade in Moscow could start arranging shortages. Guerrillas could be attacking Russian military targets inside Russia. There are dozens of other things which would get the message across without crossing the line into reprehensible behavior.
And as I said, when they do cross that line, the terrorists’ demands should be taken right the hell off the table until they can come back and negotiate in good faith, without the dirty pool. It’s not a particularly nice thing to do, but it’s a pretty obvious way to discourage terrorism rather than encourage it.
I’m not the only one who sees it this way:
It’s not an either/or situation. The Russians can be doing terrible things as well, and still not be expected to put up with bullshit like they’ve just dealt with. The point is that terrorism is simply unacceptable, intolerable, and eminently punishable, no matter how desperate the situation.
OK, so then what should the majority of the Chechen populace, the civilians who have no particular urge to engage in covert military operations, do to exercise their right to live in peace, not to mention achieve all the RF’s broken Constitutional and legal promises even in some small measure?
Depending on how involved this gets, I may start a new thread, but let’s see.
That’s a great question which I don’t think I can reasonably answer, Eva. The only thing I think I can say is that there is an entire gamut of options–none of them very effective on their own but perhaps more effective when used in combination–from civil disobedience to human rights appeals to legal action to guerrilla warfare. But the line has to be drawn somewhere and right now “terrorism,” whatever that really means, is where the line is right now.
One can assume that those who don’t want to fight also don’t want to take hostages, either. What they must do is police themselves well enough to discourage acts of terrorism performed in their name, or at least make it abundantly clear that the terrorists do not represent them. It’s not an easy thing to do, as we can see in Sri Lanka, the southern Philippines, Palestine and elsewhere. But it has worked before. Terrorist groups are marginalized throughout most of South America, for example, and the terrorist organizations there don’t appear to represent the population at large.
It’s a crummy situation, but if you let the radicals speak for you, you also have a share in their fate. So somehow, the Chechens have to make it clear that they aren’t represented by those who would resort to terrorism, and don’t condone their actions.
How? I don’t know, but I wish I did.
Sofa, just a thought regarding the stated policy of the Russian government.
To wit: the citizens of Chechnya clearly need a resolution to the independence issue - possibly a plebiscite that will be honoured by the separatists and the Russians. This is a far-off goal, but one that should surely be worked towards.
Now because a bunch of murderous bozos attack and take hostage hundreds of Muscovites, for Putin to withdraw any participation in negotiations, the innocent civilians of Chechnya will (speculatively) be forced to endure the satus quo for longer than they might have.
While the proposed policy may prove theoretical discouragement to terrorists, most acts of political terrorism happen when extremists of a given group feel that their voice/demands are not being heard. A policy of total refusal to discuss the issue is a reactive policy, it also means that a single person could entirely derail negotiations at any time they see fit: in other words, negotiating parties are then controlled by terrorists.
Just because a goal is sought by terrorists shouldn’t remove that goal from the peaceful majority. Isn’t refusing to negotiate the issues at the heart of the terrorists’ demands simply another way of punishing innocent civilians?