--- John Bizwas <bizwas at lycos.com> wrote:
> I just changed time zones by 14 hours, so I'm
> applying for a different day's allotment. This will
> be my only post in the next 24 hours, promise.
> Fugazy
This puts me one ovet too -- sorry, but this is an imprtant topic so I'm going to sneak one over.
>
> I'm not going to quibble extensively over death
> figures either, but your writing is not clear here.
> Who says a population of 850,000 - 1 million can't
> sustain a loss of 100,000. By what evidence does
> Nabi Abdullaev make his claim of 30,000?
Abdullaev is a Dagestani journalist -- presumably he is using the figures drawn up by the Dagestanis. (I have further comments below.)
There's an online discussion with him here: Chechnya: Ten Years of Despair With Nabi Abdullaev Moderator: Nicole Rosenleaf Ritter Friday, August 18, 2000; 04:00 pm CET
Oxford, Britain: Traditional Islam in Chechnya is supposedly very different from the hard-line Islam of the Wahhabites and of the Chechens who imposed sharia law after the first Chechen war. At the time, hard-line Islam had been present in Chechnya only for a few years. Why do you think sharia law was accepted back in 1996 and 1997 with such relative ease? Why didn’t traditional Chechen Islam and society prove able to withstand this new phenomenon? Or do you think people overrate the power of Sufi-like Islam or securalisation in pre-war Chechnya? If Chechens were incapable eight years ago of stopping hard-liners, what chance would they have now? Nabi Abdullaev: My wife was a citizen of Grozny. In October 1991, she recalls, her family was awakened one night by a loudspeaker put on a lorry that was cruising street. "Dudayev is the Chechens' elected president," the loud speaker blared. This is how they learned about Dudayev's becoming head of the state. Similar has happened to introduction of Sharia law. It was announced by Chechen presidents and what option was for those who would not accept it? Step out against the ideology uniting the most zealous and well-trained fighters led by Islamist warlords? We may speak about acceptance or not acceptance of something if we have an organized polity. Chechnya was a political mess, its people were not making choices like the one about sharia. I think actually that few cared, given that proper and universal implementation of the sharia law was viewed as impossible. The Chechens were among the last ethnic groups to adopt Islam in the Northern Caucasus and the religious thought was not well developed there. In fact, traditionally the spiritual leadership in the anti-Russian resistance in the Northern Caucasus has belonged to Dagestani religious leaders. In the Soviet Union, the spiritual administrative bodies were not independent from the state. There was no time for them to assert themselves as an authoritative entities in the independent Chechnya. Kadyrov, in his being mufti, was not regarded as a serious religious authority: his influenced had manpower and gunpower nature. As for the Chechen society, it had never been formed as political entity (in fact, this relates to many other societies in the Northern Caucasus) with its own agenda, its mission was mainly to minimize the immediate destruction to be caused by outsiders. At that moment, radical Islam was not seen as an imminent and short-term threat by most Chechens. Now, Chechens themselves would not be able to stop hardliners. Disorganized, they cannot take on the Wahhabis, the most organized and determined violent group in Chechnya. State should protect them, I believe. there is just nothing else.
http://www.tol.cz/q-a/QAlist.php?&IdD=18
There is an article by Abdullaev here, writing in the Chechen Times: http://www.chechentimes.org/en/press/?id=20653
>
> Of course, complicating body counts is the huge
> numbers of refugees in the region, including large
> numbers of ethnically and linguistically related
> Ingush 'cleansed' from N. Ossetia.
Also inclusing the large numbers of non-Chechens who were ethnically cleansed or fled from Chechnya from 1996-1999. Citizenship in Free Ichkeria was based on nationality -- only Chechens or Ingush could be citizens. Grozny used to be about half non-Chechen. The Nautsky district was about 70% non-Chechen. Not anymore.
This could be a
> good lead in understanding some of what happened at
> the Beslan school. So much for the 'rootless Islamic
> terrorism virus going around theory'. More likely
> it's good old fashioned Caucasian 'the blood of your
> children too' revenge on Russified Ossetians, who
> themselves know a thing or two about using the
> Russian center to stand on the Ingush and Chechens.
I hardly see how Chechens have a beef with the Ossetians. Ingush yes, but not because they were being "stood on." It is because of a property dispute. Anyway Chechens and Ingush have been russified at least as much as Ossetians. But yes some of it is probably tied into Caucasian traditions of blood feud -- which we are going to see more of after the 40-day Orthodox period of mourning ends and the Ossetians seek compensation in the form of Ingush and Chechen blood, as happened between the Avars and the Chechens after the 1999 invasion of Dagestan by militants based in Chechnya. Anti-Chechen pogroms carried out by the Avars were barely averted. The Russian Army is already strengthening the Chechen border in order to prevent reprisal attacks.
> Also, you say 'length of war' which is misleading,
> since there have been at least two periods of
> sustained combat, one under Yeltsin, and one under
> Putin, and an occupation lasting much longer than
> the 'short' war you seem to be alluding to.
>
I meant the First Chechen War. That was the high-casualty war. At present, casualties in Chechnya (all participants) are (reportedly) a few dozen a month.
>
> Well, there is nihilism of the mouth and nihilism in
> action. This particular ideologue would appear to be
> more anti-modern, anti-industrial and anti-urban
> than particularly Wahhabist or even traditional
> Sunna-Hanafi turned militant-radical.
In fact Nukhaev is anti-Wahhabi. He has a strange fusion of radical Islam, Luddism, and gangsta mythology (he is a former Mafia guy who has been in an out of prison since at least the early 1980s). He represents more the Maskhadov than the Basayev wing.
The two cities
> of Chechnya were started as Russian military
> outposts founded during the Russian conquest of the
> Caucasus, so perhaps his Khmer Rouge-like nostalgia
> for the lost communal, village society might be
> empathized with, if we try.
If we try REAL hard.
>
> Still, isn't it a bit out there to assert that
> Khozh-Adhmed Nukhaev speaks for all Chechens or even
> all Chechen 'radicals' or any of the dead, however
> you want to count them (who might choose life in a
> rather crappy post-Soviet Grozny over death and a
> graveyard in smoking pit?).
I do not believe there is a single group of Chechen "radicals." There are the Nukhayev-type people around Maskhadov; there are the Wahabbis around Basayev; there are criminal gangs making money off the war; and there are the foreign mercenaries and mujaheedin. All thes groups interpenetrate to some extent. I am not an expert on this region, but I know people who are, and they say that they believe that the Maskhadov wing has almost no pull at present -- supposedly, his men have either been radicalized and gone over to the Wahabbis, or joined the pro-Moscow Chechen government (half the Chechen police are former rebels).
In any case, all the information I possess indicates that ANY of the above groups have broad support in Chechnya. Basayev attacked Dagestan in 1999, which brought the current war. The "moderate" Maskhadov presided over a kidnap industry, slave trade, introduced a largely secular populace to Shariah Law, and had a "country" that was divided into fields of regional influence between feuling warlords that extended as far as an AK-47 can shoot. Most Chechens want an end to violence, which can only come about through the seccession of radical activity; it cannot be brought about simply by Russian withdrawal, as the events of 1999 make clear.
And I'm not at all sure
> yet how I should interpret the events of this
> conflict let alone how you should interpret how I
> interpret them. I'm trying to understand what
> happened in Beslan because I wonder why, if it
> should be so outrageous and beyond reason, why it
> all seemed so 'predictable' as I watched it
> transpire on CNN-I?
Because you were watching it on CNN-I and not on Rossiya? :) Seriously, I don't see why you are asserting that it was "beyond reason" -- I think it probably had a definite reason: to trigger ethnic war in the Caucasus.
>
> Also, what was interesting to me, based on the video
> that made it into the western media, the terrorists
> seemed to have a military demeanour and body
> language. Moreover, although they brutally murdered
> these children and non-combatants, it was also
> reported that they killed over 10 Russian special
> force troops and some of them escaped. This means
> that the group had a very good plan and knew Russian
> military and police operations very well.
This is the first time I have heard that any escaped -- some tried to escape. One was apprehended and is in custody, and one was torn apart by outraged Ossetians. In any case, as you say, these were pros. They were either very experienced fighters, mercenaries, or a combination of the two. The reason 19 special forces guys were killed was because they needed to storm the building without making preparations (that is, people had started shooting at hostages). They did not have time to even put on their bullet-proof vests.
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