Thursday, October 31, 2002
On the questions about Chechen terror acts and Putin's choice
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The horrors of the Chechen terrorist act in Moscow and of the Russian response have left many of us shaken. What will be the impact on the world, and on us, Americans? Once more, we should look back in history for some form of an answer.
The Chechens, slightly more than one million in strength, have been the most warlike and independence-minded of the Muslim nations in old Russia. The Caucasus, wild country of the 10,000-foot high mountain ranges and taller peaks, bordered by Turkey and Iran on the south, Black Sea on the east and the landlocked Caspian Sea on the west, is the home ot the intermittently warring Muslim republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan and the hemmed-in Christian Armenia. Landlocked Chechenya, between Ingushetia on the east and Dagestan on the Black Sea in the west, is directly north of the republics.
The area was ruled by Armenia until in the 7th century, when it became Arab-dominated and converted to Islam. Seljuk Turks came in the 10th, Mongols and the Tartar Golden Horde in the 13th, Ottoman Empire in the 16th and the Persians in the 18th centuries, until the expansionist and Pan-Slavist Russians gradually conquered the area.
Russia itself threw off the rule of the Golden Horde after 1480, under Ivan the Great, and his grandson Ivan the Terrible (he killed his son and heir in a fit) started the expansion by annexation of Siberia in the west and the Muslim lands in the south. Russia fought the Turkish Ottoman Empire for territory in 12 wars between 1686 and 1878, most actively after defeating Napoleon's attack in 1812, until the Turks, with aid from Britain France and the Italians (Sardinia-Piedmont) beat them in the Crimean War, with a quarter of a million dead on each side, nostly from disease.
The Chechens were conquered in 1823, and revolted twice. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918, the Caucasus was alloved to unite in a Republic, which was dissolved in favor of individual Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) in 1920s. The Chechens and Ingushes were united in an Autonomous SSR within the Russian SSR, as were the 20 nationalities, speaking 80 languages and dialects, of the larger Dagestan ASSR (2M pop.) During WWII, Hitler succeeded in the Caucasus with the collaboration of certain disaffected Muslims. After the war Stalin repaid the Chechens by deporting all of them, in two weeks, to the deserts of northeast Kazakhstan (not a first; he had deported the Volga Germans to Siberia during the war), and a quarter of the deportees died. Under Khruschew, in 1957, they were allowed to return. Meanwhile, many Chechens, well known for their commercisal skills (the Russians also point out their great skills in Mafia-style crime) had drifted to Russia, Europe and the Americas.
After the collapse of the USSR in 1989-91, the Chechens declared independence.The Russians did not try to reconquer the province, an important oil route, until 1994. Chechenya's capital Grozny was largely destroyed, and there was immense brutality in fighting on both sides. In 1996 Russia withdrew, defeated. Chechenya's president, Aslan Mashkadov, tried to effect an armistice leading to peace, but his uncontrollable field commanders wanted to fight. One warlord, Arbi Barayev, turned to hostage taking, for ransom. He kidnapped several dozen people, Russians (Russia's MTV paid $2 million ransom for its reporters), tourists, journalists, wealthy Ingushettis and Chechens, beheading four British and New Zealand electronics engineers (allegedly their employers' $10M was topped by bin Laden's $20M Jihad money). Mashkadov's forces tried to capture him. He died in a battle, in June 2001.
How does bin Laden figure in? Well, his money fuels the Chechen commanders' actions and training. In 1999 1,200 Chechen warriors, from the notorious Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, an al-Qaeda hideout, entered neighboring Dagestan, to start a revolt. That province, with a divided legislature, to give all of its 14 ethnicities representation, did not fall for the Chechen-Arab attempt, and they withdrew. In September 1999 several apartment houses in Russia exploded, killing 300 people. President Putin blamed Chechen terrorists, and revived the army action against Grozny. There have been claims that Putin needed the outrages to consolidate his weak presidency and give Russians a rallying factor against an external enemy. Official US has not commented. The current war, once more, has been extremely brutal, with Russian renegade soldiers accused of kidnappings and extortion. Grozny has once more been destroyed, to the ground. Which brings us to this week of horror in Moscow, when some 50 Chechen terrorists, men and women armed with bombs, captured an entire Moscow theater audience of 700 as hostages, threatening wholesale killings and suicide by bombs, unless the Russian forces in Chechniya withdrew and stopped the war within a week. Some killings of hostages had taken place when the Russian security forces attacked and freed the hostages, after flooding the theater with an odorless gas, with disastrous results. They did succeed in stopping the detonation of 400 lbs of explosives. It is to be noted that the leader of the suicide squad was Movsan Barajev, nephew of Arbi Barajev.
The questions pile up. How did such a group of Muslims (the women were wearing black headdresses and clothes) slip into Moscow and pass through to the theater, in today's fearful atmosphere? Did they expect to escape, as Chechen terrorists did after a 1995 capture of 1000 hospital hostages in Budyonnovsk, near Stavropol, and a similar 1996 event near Kizlyar, in Dagestan? Will the reckless gas attack by the Russian security people cause more Muslim revolts in Russia and reactions elsewhere? Did Putin transgress against the Chemical Weapons Convention?
As for us in the US, will the next hostage-taking be here? I think not. Checheniya does not support terror. Terrorists are forewarned of negative reactions around the world, according to some concerns expressed by Palestinian (Arafat as well as Hamas) speakers. Our response to 9/11 brought down the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. A repeat terror act that could be laid to the door of bin Laden might cost them a lot more. Fear must not be our reaction, we too are forewarned and should be prepared.
I first heard Paul Wellstone interviewed on WNYC, in May 2001. His clear voice and honesty sent me to buy "The Conscience of a Liberal," his autobiography, and to review it. Although not a disciple, I felt that Wellstone might be the most ethically correct Presidential candidate for the US. His death is an immense loss.
The horrors of the Chechen terrorist act in Moscow and of the Russian response have left many of us shaken. What will be the impact on the world, and on us, Americans? Once more, we should look back in history for some form of an answer.
The Chechens, slightly more than one million in strength, have been the most warlike and independence-minded of the Muslim nations in old Russia. The Caucasus, wild country of the 10,000-foot high mountain ranges and taller peaks, bordered by Turkey and Iran on the south, Black Sea on the east and the landlocked Caspian Sea on the west, is the home ot the intermittently warring Muslim republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan and the hemmed-in Christian Armenia. Landlocked Chechenya, between Ingushetia on the east and Dagestan on the Black Sea in the west, is directly north of the republics.
The area was ruled by Armenia until in the 7th century, when it became Arab-dominated and converted to Islam. Seljuk Turks came in the 10th, Mongols and the Tartar Golden Horde in the 13th, Ottoman Empire in the 16th and the Persians in the 18th centuries, until the expansionist and Pan-Slavist Russians gradually conquered the area.
Russia itself threw off the rule of the Golden Horde after 1480, under Ivan the Great, and his grandson Ivan the Terrible (he killed his son and heir in a fit) started the expansion by annexation of Siberia in the west and the Muslim lands in the south. Russia fought the Turkish Ottoman Empire for territory in 12 wars between 1686 and 1878, most actively after defeating Napoleon's attack in 1812, until the Turks, with aid from Britain France and the Italians (Sardinia-Piedmont) beat them in the Crimean War, with a quarter of a million dead on each side, nostly from disease.
The Chechens were conquered in 1823, and revolted twice. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918, the Caucasus was alloved to unite in a Republic, which was dissolved in favor of individual Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) in 1920s. The Chechens and Ingushes were united in an Autonomous SSR within the Russian SSR, as were the 20 nationalities, speaking 80 languages and dialects, of the larger Dagestan ASSR (2M pop.) During WWII, Hitler succeeded in the Caucasus with the collaboration of certain disaffected Muslims. After the war Stalin repaid the Chechens by deporting all of them, in two weeks, to the deserts of northeast Kazakhstan (not a first; he had deported the Volga Germans to Siberia during the war), and a quarter of the deportees died. Under Khruschew, in 1957, they were allowed to return. Meanwhile, many Chechens, well known for their commercisal skills (the Russians also point out their great skills in Mafia-style crime) had drifted to Russia, Europe and the Americas.
After the collapse of the USSR in 1989-91, the Chechens declared independence.The Russians did not try to reconquer the province, an important oil route, until 1994. Chechenya's capital Grozny was largely destroyed, and there was immense brutality in fighting on both sides. In 1996 Russia withdrew, defeated. Chechenya's president, Aslan Mashkadov, tried to effect an armistice leading to peace, but his uncontrollable field commanders wanted to fight. One warlord, Arbi Barayev, turned to hostage taking, for ransom. He kidnapped several dozen people, Russians (Russia's MTV paid $2 million ransom for its reporters), tourists, journalists, wealthy Ingushettis and Chechens, beheading four British and New Zealand electronics engineers (allegedly their employers' $10M was topped by bin Laden's $20M Jihad money). Mashkadov's forces tried to capture him. He died in a battle, in June 2001.
How does bin Laden figure in? Well, his money fuels the Chechen commanders' actions and training. In 1999 1,200 Chechen warriors, from the notorious Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, an al-Qaeda hideout, entered neighboring Dagestan, to start a revolt. That province, with a divided legislature, to give all of its 14 ethnicities representation, did not fall for the Chechen-Arab attempt, and they withdrew. In September 1999 several apartment houses in Russia exploded, killing 300 people. President Putin blamed Chechen terrorists, and revived the army action against Grozny. There have been claims that Putin needed the outrages to consolidate his weak presidency and give Russians a rallying factor against an external enemy. Official US has not commented. The current war, once more, has been extremely brutal, with Russian renegade soldiers accused of kidnappings and extortion. Grozny has once more been destroyed, to the ground. Which brings us to this week of horror in Moscow, when some 50 Chechen terrorists, men and women armed with bombs, captured an entire Moscow theater audience of 700 as hostages, threatening wholesale killings and suicide by bombs, unless the Russian forces in Chechniya withdrew and stopped the war within a week. Some killings of hostages had taken place when the Russian security forces attacked and freed the hostages, after flooding the theater with an odorless gas, with disastrous results. They did succeed in stopping the detonation of 400 lbs of explosives. It is to be noted that the leader of the suicide squad was Movsan Barajev, nephew of Arbi Barajev.
The questions pile up. How did such a group of Muslims (the women were wearing black headdresses and clothes) slip into Moscow and pass through to the theater, in today's fearful atmosphere? Did they expect to escape, as Chechen terrorists did after a 1995 capture of 1000 hospital hostages in Budyonnovsk, near Stavropol, and a similar 1996 event near Kizlyar, in Dagestan? Will the reckless gas attack by the Russian security people cause more Muslim revolts in Russia and reactions elsewhere? Did Putin transgress against the Chemical Weapons Convention?
As for us in the US, will the next hostage-taking be here? I think not. Checheniya does not support terror. Terrorists are forewarned of negative reactions around the world, according to some concerns expressed by Palestinian (Arafat as well as Hamas) speakers. Our response to 9/11 brought down the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. A repeat terror act that could be laid to the door of bin Laden might cost them a lot more. Fear must not be our reaction, we too are forewarned and should be prepared.
I first heard Paul Wellstone interviewed on WNYC, in May 2001. His clear voice and honesty sent me to buy "The Conscience of a Liberal," his autobiography, and to review it. Although not a disciple, I felt that Wellstone might be the most ethically correct Presidential candidate for the US. His death is an immense loss.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 3:26 PM 
