> Yes, the jihadists in Chechnya had added tremendously to the devastation
>of Chechnya.
The jihadists are the _reason_ for the devastation of Chechnya. If they had not attacked Dagestan in 1999 (twice), and if Maskhadov had given the Russians Basayev and Khattab, as he was asked, there would never have been a Second Chechen War. Most Russians consider Chechnya to be a wretched little shithole and wish it would disappear.
But, you really don't want to defend the
>Russian regime in their tactics in the 1st and 2nd Chechen Wars do you?
>Reducing Grozny to rubble, filtration camps, and all the rest?
I am not a military stragegist, and neither are you or anybody else on this list to my knowledge. But the shelling of Grozny was standard military strategy used the world over in taking defended cities. There are no filtration "camps"; there are filtration centers. Such centers exist in every counterinsurgency operation. They are not peculiar to Chechnya. And, no, I do not deny that a great deal of abuse takes place in them.
>How is what they are doing to the Chechens different from what Israel
>is/has done to Palestinians? What we did to Vietnamese, Salvadoreans,
>Guatemalans, Chileans, Indonesians and on and on...?
The Palestinians did not invade Israel. The Vietnamese, Salvadoreans, Guatemalans, Chileans, Indonesians and on and on did not invade the United States.
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