Three big mistakes here.
1. Nobody is "minimizing" the damage caused by the Russian state. A hell of a lot of people died during the first Chechen War. However, it was not 100,000, a suspiciously large, round number that was plucked from a jihadi website (I know because MP has cited the figure before -- plucked from a jihadi website). Nabi Abdullaev, who is a Dagestani expert on the subject, says 30,000. I believe him. Moreover, this is not an independence war based on an attempt to right historuc wrongs against the Chechen people. This war is because of an aggressive attempt on the part of Islamist militants based in Chechnya and funded from abroad to forcibly conquer the North Caucasus. This has been stated by the Islamists themselves in many different venues and in many different times and places. That people don't know this simply shows how little effort they have taken to find out the easily verifiable facts on the matter. I have posted material on this by Anatole Lieven, Robert Bruce Ware and others many, many, many times. It appears nobody has ever bothered to read it, perhaps because it runs counter to the way in which they want to perceive the world..
2. THE PEOPLE OF THE CAUCASUS DO NOT LIKE ISLAMISTS. THIS IS NOT SAUDI ARABIA. This is not Malasia. This is not Pakistan. This is not Afghanistan. This is the Caucasus. It is a different place, a different culture, a different history, a different people. These are SOVIETS. And get it through your head -- when Islamist militants attacked Dagestan to convert it to fundamentalist Islam, guess what, the Islamists were beaten back by ordinary Dagestanis. The invasion occured after Chechen gangs had been kidnapping Dagestanis, holding them in cellars, and dismembering them in front of video cameras so they could extort money from their impoverished families for years. Guess what? Islamism has a very bad name in the Caucasus. ISLAMISTS, GO HOME!!!! is the general attitude.
3. For the love of god people shouldn't start talking about a subject they don't know about and reduce it to facile ideological categories. It is an excuse for not thinking, it is deeply irresponsible and it has profoundly negative consequences. Chechnya is a very complicated subject and reducing it to an "independence movement" is inane at best and positively harmful at worst, though that doesn't stop Western journalists.
--- kjkhoo at softhome.net wrote:
> At 8:34 am -0700 7/9/04, Chris Doss wrote:
> > >
> >> 100,000 Chechens were killed in the 1st war,
> >
> >30,000 is the figure I have.
>
>
> And this is what I don't understand -- the need to
> minimise the
> trauma visited by the Russian state, or whatever
> passes for it.
>
> As for secular Muslims, etc. -- well, we are just
> now witnessing how
> another once secular Muslim society is turning,
> aren't we?
>
> kj khoo
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail