Except that the reporter in that article doesn’t call them terrorists - he quotes Putin as doing so.
Ummmmm…you’re really using Chinese news sources as an example of free unbiased reporting?
Interesting comment heard today on BBC World Service. It was from a Muslim journalist (runs a TV station or something - diDn’t pick up the name or the details).
“Not all Muslims are terrorists. But all terrorists today are Muslims.”
It’s hyperbole - in the interview he specifically mentioned Ireland and Spain - but it’s refreshing that some Muslims are willing to stand up as critical rationalists.
Innocent religion is now a message of hate
How can a thing or set of ideas be “innocent”?
I don’t know, but on the other hand there isn’t much about this conflict that would surprise me anymore. Politics may make strange bedfellows, but armed resistance makes even stranger ones.
On a related subject, you’re in France, right? What kind of journalistic reputation does the paper Libération have? Did you read any of Anne Nivat’s coverage of Chechnya? What kind of an impact did it have in France? I heard her speak in Chicago a couple of years ago, and she made quite an impression.
(Anyone who wants to understand the human impact of the Chechen conflict should take a look at her book, Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Reporter Behind the Lines in Chechnya. It was originally published in French, but is now available in English.)
Does this translate as “War Bitch”? Just checking.
Thanks very much for the link, Rune.
Actually, some interesting thoughts on the subject of outside Islamc radical influence in Chechnya, and on North Caucasian politics in general:
“It’s Time to Worry About the North Caucasus”
"North Ossetia has now been shaken to the core. It was partly chosen as a target by the terrorists because of its traditional loyalty to Moscow. The anger we have seen among the Ossetian public is putting that loyalty under strain…
Most worrying is the threat posed to Ossetian-Ingush relations. The two neighbors have had a long-simmering conflict since the Ingush returned from Stalinist deportation in the 1950s and tried to reclaim the small territory, the Prigorodny region, that had formerly belonged to them and been transferred to North Ossetia. In 1992 the two sides fought a small but nasty war that resulted in 600 deaths. Since then Ingush have been slowly returning to the Prigorodny region and the two sides have begun living side by side again. Now, following Ingush involvement in a siege where Ossetian children died, there is the frightening prospect of retaliation by the Ossetians…
Finally, Chechnya. It should be obvious to all but the most blinkered now that the Kremlin’s dogged policy of “normalization,” with the Kadyrov family as its venal agents, has failed…It cannot be stated often enough that the Chechens are not Afghans. They are a small mountain people with a history of resistance to the Russian state, but also one of pragmatic accommodation with it. Most of them speak Russian much better than they do Chechen and almost all have relatives working in the rest of Russia. While they are Muslim, they are Sufis practicing a form of local Islam that is all but incomprehensible to Arab incomers. For years Chechens have sent these foreign interlopers with curses when they were told to stop visiting their local shrines or to start veiling their women.
Over the last 10 years the Russian state has given these ordinary Chechens nothing but contempt and violence, yet they remain the key to restoring some kind of stability to the North Caucasus. The trouble is that the Kremlin will have to make some difficult changes if it wants even to begin to enlist their support…
Beslan suggests that the radicals in Chechnya have fully eclipsed the moderates amongst the rebels and that Chechen nationalism is almost dead as a political force… Recent events show that Moscow badly needs men like Ruslan Aushev, while the North Caucasus badly needs some consensus politics and some unrigged elections. Both parties would benefit enormously from a political conversation in which ordinary North Caucasians are consulted and the men in Moscow listen to some uncomfortable truths."
Has the thought crossed anyone else’s mind here that perhaps if Moscow kept its own promises in re: Chechnya, Russia might not be having these problems?
There were roughly 1 million people in Chechnya at the time of the last Soviet census in 1989. There are roughly half that number now, largely as a result of Russian military policy and the vast upheaval it has caused.
How is this not ethnic cleansing? Does it really surprise anyone that a certain percentage of the poppulation has decided to fight back?
According to this Norwegian website, there were 1,270,429 people in Chechnya in 1989. Have you got a source for the current figure you mention?
Fight back? We’re still addressing the attack on a school full of kids, right? The French Resistance ‘fought back’. The Polish Home Army ‘fought back’. To try to explain away 300+ dead kids and teachers as ‘fighting back’ is pretty low, even by the low standard I hold apologists to.
And by the standard of the Russian treatment of Chechnyan’s Brutus? The whole damn mess is low, the fighting and the fighting back.
Here’s a WIkipedia article, listing the population of Chechnya as approx. 700,000 in 1997, before the latest round of military actions:
From 2001, stating population levels were expected to reach 600,000 once again that year:
http://www.great-britain.mid.ru/GreatBritain/pr_rel/pres34.htm
Here’s one from Jan. 2003, along with explanation of the issues involved in current Chechen census-taking:
http://www.db.idpproject.org/Sites/idpSurvey.nsf/wViewCountries/B719ECAEC8399E38C1256CD1002F2449
The most current information I can find, from U.N. operations in Russia:
I can’t remeber where I saw the 500,000 figure; it was in something I read in the past couple of days, but I’ve read a lot of stuff in the past couple of days. Byt as you can see, estimates vary widely, but most ones from reliable sources state that somewhere in the neighborhood of half of Chechnya has been either killed or become a refugee (either within Chechnya, or elsewhere in the North Caucasus or the RF at large) since the 1989 census. No matter whose estimate you accept, it’s nothing to sneeze at.
You know what, Brutus? If I had the stomach for it right now, you’d be my first-ever Pitting of another Doper. If you’re going to worry your pretty little head about apologists, I suggest you start with those who excuse Russian military actions in Chechnya as the “stabilization” of a “lawless society.” More bang for the buck, you know.
I don’t think so. Does it really not disgust everybody the method they have chose to do so?
You seem to place all blame squarely on the shoulders of the Russians. Though as has already been mentioned, the Chechens had their chance of de-facto independence which they elected to squander in an orgy of violence and crime and finally military invasion of a neighboring country. Such a situation was clearly unacceptable to the Russians. Had the Chechens instead shown a minimal ability or wish to create a peaceful nation there would have been no way the Russians could have intervened. What in the current situation makes you think the Chechens would fare better were they given another shot? Also you describe them as pragmatic. Clearly the terrorists were not pragmatic, since a background of such despicable violence they just perpetrated is pretty much the worst environment to start diplomatic talks in or any compromises – even had Putin wished so. Nobody can be seen to give in to terror. Rather I suspect Putin will now be forced to react with force. Also the Chechens have been granted fairly extensive home-rule if not outright independence. It seems to me the pragmatic choice here for the Chechens would be to take what they have instead of pursuing what they won’t get – especially since it evidently will result in their own destruction.
I remember hearing number that up to 40% of the population of Chechnya immediately following the collapse of Soviet were ethnic Russians. As well as seeing images of hasty erected refugee barracks in other places of Russia when they were forced to leave. Any truth to any of those two?
Crap – just lost a long response. An attempt to reconstruct it:
Of course taking children hostage and killing them is morally reprehensible. Has anyone stated otherwise? However, it currently appears that 30-some people participated directly in the attack, which is not exactly a significant proportion of the population of Chechnya.
No, I haven’t. But I do have a rather longer time window of examination than the past 10 years, and if you look back, yes, the Russians did start this mess when they conquered the North Caucasus.
Is “de facto indpendence”what you call it when a place is leveled practically back to the Stone Age, large chunks of its population are killed or displaced, and is expected to start over again from scratch with no resources or help from anyone? And when its leaders are essentially appointed in some of the most ridiculous elections seen in that neck of the woods since Stalinist times?
BTW, if you’re talking about the Chechen incursion into Dagestan, once again that was perpetrated by a small number of people. And Dagestan isn’t an independent country, or even a region with seccessionist leanings – yet.
And had the Russians never attacked Chechnya, or even provided some minimal level of political and human rights to the Chechens, as promised both in the RF Constitution and under international law, none of this mess would have happened.
It’s difficult to envision things turning out worse than they have.
No, I don’t; the writer of the article I cited does. Although I tend to think that dialogue, even with one’s oponnents, is generally the more pragmatic response than bombing the crap out of them.
Terrorists != Chechen political figures overall, and certainly != the Chechen people as a whole.
So because a few dozen people did something horrendous, the remaining several hundred thousand should suffer ethnic cleansing and the nearly complete obliteration of their homeland and way of life?
So they should forego their desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or even the basic political and human rights guaranteed to them under the RF Constitution and international law?
The 1989 census showed more like 20% ethnic Russians in Chechnya (maybe you are thinking of 40% non-Chechens, but that would include other Caucasian ethnic groups as well). Yes, large numbers of Russians fled many non-Slavic areas after the breakup, and the housing situation being what it is in Russia, they probably ended up in less than optimal accommodations (we didn’t see much footage here, but then Russia gets ignored a lot in the U.S. media). But many of those Slavs were relatively recent migrants to those areas, and there were no wide-scale orchestrated campaigns of murder, rape, and ethnic cleansing of Slavs in non-Slavic areas. You’re talking apples and oranges.
Oh come on, GorillaMan, Eva Luna et all
Independent websites? Just google for; Terrorists - Russian school. There are thousands of them. I merely picked a Chinese one to show the diversity in disgust around the world.
Don’t give me any more crap about Chechnya. Open another thread for those suckers.
But : No matter what excuses you think next of:
This was barbaric.
Mutilating babies, shooting 12 year old girls in the back 24 times is Barbaric
These people are scum. The lowest of the lowest. And indeed: Terrorists.
I agree. These 30 - 35 individuals (all now dead or captured) are, indeed, terrorist scum.
Now, are we going to see the same level of righteous indignation leveled against Putin when he sends in the Army to indiscriminately kill lots of Chechens who had no connection to this event?
Kindly enlighten me as to which of the information I have presented you believe to be crap. Contrary citations would be appreciated.
Nobody is disputing how disgusting it was to target a school. I’m not disputing that people around the world, including in China, find this hostage-taking reprehensible. I’m not even disputing that the 30-some people who did it are terrorists. All I’m disputing is that this means that the Chechen people as a whole are terrorists and/or deserve to be wiped off the face of the Earth.
So what’s the problem?
Some have stated it is a legitimate and logical consequence of the war in Chechnya. It is neither.
The Russians participating in crack-downs in Chechnya are not a significant proportion of Russians either. Actually if you insist on such a route nobody is a significant proportion of anything since we’re all simple individuals not representing anything but ourselves.
Even so, slaughtering small children on their first school day is not acceptable (we all agree), but the Russian will now be quite within their rights to go to great lengths to ensure such will not repeat. Terrible repercussions in Chechnya will be legitimate acts of self-defence.
You seem to have no problem blaming all Russians for something done by a small minority of soldiers and rulers, even something happening 150 years ago in a drastically different time under a dictatorship. Surely you must mean the Russian soldiers participating in the Caucasus campaigns started this? Even so I think one of the big difficulties in solving this and similar conflicts are the impossible long memories of everybody involved. Perhaps everything would be a whole deal easier to settle if everybody just thought back 10 years. You go back 150 years – we’re all bastards.
And when you talk of ethnic cleansing and carefully planned campaigns of murder and rape there’s really no leeway left for shifting or sharing blame since no one is ever responsible for such acts perpetrated on themselves.
Come on. You’re being needlessly inflammatory. De-facto independence is what I call when the legitimate and international recognized owner of an area though not having formally relinquished it’s right to are not trying to impose its will on an area.
Well how many does it take to reflect negatively back on the country/people? In any case it makes little difference how many participated in the incursion, it was the last in a long string of unacceptable behaviour, and showed quite clearly the Chechens were unable or unwilling to control their people. Assuming Chechnya was independent the Russians were quite within their rights to react with military might to prevent another incursion. Assuming Chechnya is, as it is, a part of Russia, the Russians had any right to maintain law and order in a part of their country.
Are you still talking 150 years ago? Whatever happened before does in no way excuse what happened at that school.
For the Chechens, perhaps. For the Russians I can imagine several worse scenarios.
Not what I said. I said it’s very hard for any country to start negotiations following terrorists attacks on this scale, since the population demand blood not talk and it’s always a bad idea to be seen to give in to terrorists. If the terrorists were pragmatic and wanted negotiations they’d have realized that.
aw. You really think their struggle so far has resulted in an increase of any of those, or are likely to do so? I said the pragmatic move would be to follow the choice that maximized their da-da-da-da. So far they’ve succeeded in creating a condition which has resulted in the near annihilation of their people. How’s that for a desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
What?! It’s no big problem because those were relatively recent migrants (a wide term when you operate with time-windows of hundred of years) But of course those people fled an established life in Chechnya to miserable refugee camps and uncertain futures because what? not threats of murder, rape, and ethnic cleansing of Slavs? But I’d like to see the evidence for “wide-scale orchestrated campaigns of murder, rape, and ethnic cleansing of” Chechens - premeditated and planned as you insinuate rather than being the inevitable, if sad consequences, of war. Until then we have apples, oranges and pears.
My problem is: This thread is being used for making excuses for child slaughterers.
And: As long as Putin doesn’t hide behind children, refrains from shooting children in the back, and maiming babies; No. You won’t get the same level of righteous indignation.
No excuses. These terrorists are scum