OPINION Robert Bruce Ware is an assistant professor of philosophical studies at Southern Illinois... Last month advancing Russian soldiers liberated one of my Dagestani friends from a cellar in Chechnya where he had been held by Chechen kidnappers. His captors were demanding an exorbitant ransom from his frightened and deeply impoverished family. Every day my friend thanks Allah for his release. Many other Dagestanis have not been so fortunate. Conventional wisdom holds that the war in Chechnya is based on the tradition of Russian imperialism and the temptations of Kremlin politics. It is a vengeful war against past humiliations, and a racist war against ''dark-skinned'' Muslims. The war is primarily about none of this. The war is primarily about my friend and the rest of the Dagestani people. Most Dagestanis are dark-skinned Muslims. Most don't like the Yeltsin regime, and they have never had any sympathy for the Russian military. Until now. Their sympathies used to be with the Chechens. Dagestanis are the closest people in the world to Chechens, geographically, historically and ethnically. In the first Chechen war from 1994 to 1996, Dagestanis sympathized with Chechnya. Hundreds of thousands of Chechen refugees were sheltered in Dagestan, most of them in Dagestani homes. Dagestanis know more about Chechens than anyone in the world. And they hate them. Deeply and bitterly. Now Dagestan has refused to accept Chechens. Dagestanis bring hot food and warm clothes to the Russian soldiers who have flooded their republic. And they go with the Russian soldiers to fight against Chechnya. What has caused this change? It started in January 1996 when a group of Chechen raiders took 350 hostages in a Dagestani hospital. But Dagestanis have been even more discouraged by the consequences of Chechen lawlessness since Moscow negotiated peace with Chechnya in August 1996. Hundreds of men, women and children have been kidnapped in Dagestan, and sold two or three times before ending up in Chechen cellars. Though the initial kidnappers are Dagestanis as well as Chechens, the victims usually are sold to Chechens, and the industry could not endure without its Chechen base. Once in Chechnya, Dagestanis are tortured, dismembered and sometimes murdered on videotapes that are used for extorting exorbitant ransoms from deeply impoverished families. Dagestanis are not their only victims. Four British people were beheaded in Chechnya a year ago. About the same time, Chechen kidnappers videotaped themselves sawing the index finger off an American missionary. The regional head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who had been trying to help the Chechens, was held under brutal conditions until a French organization paid $5 million for his release at Christmas 1998. Six Red Cross workers were murdered in their beds in Grozny in 1996. The list is literally endless because Chechens commonly stage one kidnapping to retaliate for another. Dagestanis don't hate Chechens because of Russian imperialism, or Kremlin politics, or because of racism or religious intolerance. Dagestanis are simply tired of being kidnapped, tortured and murdered. They do not distinguish between good and bad Chechens, in part, because the hundreds of kidnap victims who have returned to Dagestan tell them that most Chechens are complicit in crime. If Dagestanis needed any further reason to hate Chechens, then Chechen militants supplied it during 45 days from Aug. 2 to Sept. 15, when they twice invaded Dagestan. They murdered Dagestani men before their wives and children. They destroyed homes and villages, and displaced 32,000 Dagestani refugees. There were no Russian troops killing Chechens in Chechnya until after there were Chechens in Dagestan killing Dagestanis--twice. Russia has a right and a responsibility to protect its citizens. I, for one, wish that it had started protecting Dagestanis long ago. There truly are vicious anti-Caucasian prejudices in Russia, but Russia is fighting neither a racist nor an anti-Islamic war in Chechnya, as the Dagestani case illustrates. Russia is fighting to protect its citizens from aggression and lawlessness. A Russian defeat, or even a stalemate, would mean business as usual along the Chechen border, buying, selling and torturing Dagestanis. The Russian military is fighting a brutal of war of excess.The military is bombing and shelling Chechens indiscriminately from great distances because it probably is incapable of winning in close quarters. The results are horrific. The alternative is a criminal state, running drugs and guns and harboring international terrorists. The alternative is the torture of Dagestanis. There is no one who can negotiate authoritatively for Chechnya. Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov presided over years of lawlessness and has been linked to kidnapping. If the Chechen people are serious about negotiations then why don't they release the hundreds of civilian hostages they are currently holding? If the U.S. is serious about human rights, then why don't we demand that they do so? Most Dagestanis believe the U.S. is behind Chechen aggression. While this is false, it is certainly true that the West's lopsided approach to a complex situation has damaged its relations with Russia and its stature in Dagestan.
Once we had a chance for friendship and constructive engagement with Russia.
Russians turned to us for guidance. Now President Yeltsin sits in China and points nuclear weapons at us. We sink again into Cold War rhetoric and tit-for-tat espionage arrests. The world is a darker place.