Doug quotes:
>Although it is widely acknowledged that Chechen fighters are hardboiled,
>ruthless and heavily implicated in drug trafficking, kidnapping and
>torture,
>the Western perspective is that while Russia faces a ferocious internal
>rebellion, the West is confronted by a global jihad by Islamic
>fundamentalists.
>>
>However, the influence of Islamic fundamentalists on the impoverished
>plains
>and mountain redoubts of southern Russia is easy to exaggerate. Not many
>Chechens went to Afghanistan. Not many Islamic radicals joined the fight in
>Chechnya.
>
>A small number of Chechen factions occasionally spout Islamic rhetoric. A
>few
>may even dream of an Islamic state in the Caucasus. But most Muslim rebels
>there have little interest in an extreme interpretation of the religion of
>their forefathers. Nor do they bear a grudge against Western civilization.
>Their sole ambition is to expel the Russians from Chechnya.
Hmmm...
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4546.html Current History October 2000 Through a Distorted Lens: Chechnya and the Western Media By ANATOL LIEVEN ANATOL LIEVEN is a senior associate in the Russia and Eurasia Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He covered the 1994-1996 Chechen war as a correspondent for the London Times. His books include Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998).
The second Chechen war has not brought out the best in the Western media-with the usual exception of the brave and dedicated correspondents who have gone to report on it. All too much of the coverage and analysis has been relentlessly one-sided and relentlessly anti-Russian. Most of the media-and in particular, of course, television-were typically uninterested in the signs of growing crisis, and turned their attention to the region only when the Russians actually invaded. Equally typically, once the war had begun, the media lost themselves in the reporting of the unfolding events, rarely stepping back to analyze the background to the fighting.
As a result, the media missed the great majority of the attacks on and threats to Russia from Chechnya in the two years leading up to the war. Above all, the media overlooked the powerful forces in Chechnya and their international radical Muslim allies, who had publicly committed themselves to a jihad to drive Russia from the entire North Caucasus and establish an Islamic state-whether the peoples of the region wanted it or not.
..... Yet the bitterly anti-Western ideology of Khattab, Basayev, and their followers is not a matter of debate, and does not have to be sought out by intrepid journalists venturing to interview these men in the mountains of Chechnya. Their views can be found, on the Internet, in English, on the web site of the international mujahedeen in Afghanistan, at qoqaz.net. This is Basayev himself on the nature of the war (interviewed in early January 2000): "The crucifix is being raised anew and war is being declared against Islam and Muslims; this is proof that this war is like the Crusades, where all of Europe's intelligence capabilities are geared towards providing Russia with information and other support. . . . The Russians and their supporters in the West are fighting us collectively, as Allah has described them: 'And fight the unbelievers collectively as they fight you collectively.'"
CONFRONTING RADICAL ISLAM
The campaign of Khattab, Basayev, and their allies against Russia in 1998 and 1999 was carried out in the name of this radical Islamist ideology, as a reading of their propaganda makes clear. The culmination of this campaign was the invasion of Dagestan in August 1999, with the avowed intention of overthrowing the republic's government and creating a united Islamic republic of Chechnya and Dagestan. This was opposed by the great majority of Dagestanis and would indeed have been a nightmare for that republic. Too many supporters of the Chechens have tried to shrug off this invasion as a minor affair. It was not. Quite apart from the number of casualties that resulted from the invasion itself, Dagestan, with its 34 different nationalities, rival religious groups, and unstable government, is a fragile and delicately poised place. Chechen incursions have the potential to upset this balance and plunge Dagestan into a more impoverished and hopeless version of Lebanon during its ethnoreligious civil wars in the 1970s and 1980s. It cannot be stressed enough: even if you disapprove of the Russian invasion of 1999, in initially resisting Basayev and Khattab and their plans, Russia was, objectively speaking, serving the interests not just of the region but of the West as well.
The governing council of the new state that the rebels planned to establish-the Islamic Shura (council) of Dagestan-publicly declared (including once again on the Internet, on the Kavkaz-Tsentr web site, www.kavkaz.org) "the necessity of liberating the Islamic territory of Daghestan from age-old occupation by Russian rebels," of introducing shariah (Islamic law) across the republic, and of arresting the Dagestani president "as a traitor to the cause of Muslims." The shura declared Basayev amir (commander) of this jihad. Asked at the time why he had crossed the border, Basayev told Lidove Noviny that, "Many Dagestani political parties and movements are fighting for Dagestan's freedom nowadays. Some of them have asked me to take up the command of the Mujahidin United Armed Forces of Dagestan. This is no Chechen army. It is an international corps comprising Chechens, Dagestanis, and other nationals. . . . We shall always be pleased to fight the Russians and we shall help anyone, in any way, who seeks freedom."
It is clear why Russia could not have tolerated Chechnya being used indefinitely as a safe haven for such forces and as a potential base for further attacks on Russia. For how long would the United States tolerate such a situation in a neighboring state? It is also important to note that the fighting in Dagestan was on a serious scale: 270 Russian servicemen died there, considerably more than the United States lost in the Persian Gulf War (165). If the government of Chechnya had failed to deal with Basayev, Khattab, and their followers, then Russia-like any other state-would have been justified in taking forceful action of its own. This could have been accomplished by carrying out the plan drawn up by former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin to establish a Turkish- or Israeli-style "security zone" in Chechnya north of the Terek River. Given the pro-Russian traditions of the local population, and the open nature of the terrain, this could have been carried out with minimal bloodshed. By contrast, full-scale invasion should have been only the last resort. That the Kremlin did so without adequately exploring other options undoubtedly has a great deal to do both with Putin's electoral calculations and the desire of many Russian generals for revenge against the Chechens.
The decision to invade should therefore be condemned. Before taking this course, Moscow should have tried much harder to support Chechen President Maskhadov with arms and money to help him establish his authority in the republic and defeat Basayev, Khattab, and the other militants. Despite the disappointment of many ordinary Chechens with Maskhadov's "weakness," my interviews with Chechen refugees in December 1999 suggests that most Chechens still respected him in principle as the country's legally elected president; and in the end, any government in Chechnya-whether pro- or anti-Russian-will only be able to create stability if it enjoys a measure of legitimacy among a majority of the population. Yet a country suffering Chechnya's conditions would have posed a severe challenge to any neighboring organized state, and the great majority of such neighbors would have responded with force of arms, perhaps even sooner than Russia did. The United States has done so repeatedly in Central America, in response to much smaller threats and provocations than those stemming from Chechnya in 1999. ...
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