>Abdullaev is a Dagestani journalist -- presumably he
>is using the figures drawn up by the Dagestanis. (I
>have further comments below.)
Even with this and the comments below, I'm not sure why this is a credible figure. Relative to so many other sources, it seems a bit low. In any case, we are still talking about a lot of people dead, two military campaigns against Chechens alone amidst all the other turmoil in the region, and quite lengthy occupations/deployments.
>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.
You make it sound like something a few dozen people could sort out at the court house. We are talking about a Russian military deployment in N. Ossetia that displaced tens of thousands of Ingush, who are an ethnic identity very close to the Chechens--a grouping the Russians themselves make from the Russian center.
>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 was why I was pointing this out counter to the article that we had been referred to in the post that kicked off the thread (the spikedonline article by O'Neill). This event is made understandable by the disputes going on in N. Ossetia from 1992 and still further back to the 1940s. If N. Ossetians are asking 'Why us', they need only think back to 1992. I was speculating that the people who massacred the students and parents in Beslan might well be , in part, Ingush. They also look to be, in part, the sort of people the Russians hire to stand on people elsewhere in the region.
>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.
Let's be realistic here. One reason why body counts differ so much is just the agendas of the people controlling information. But it's also a matter of a distinction between direct deaths (shot by soldiers, died in an aerial bombardment) and indirect deaths (froze to death after the power plant went down, got sick from cholera after fleeing from home and drinking filthy water, etc.).
>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.
Yes, isn't it nice how I intuited that. The reason I brought up Wahhabism is it's the catch(all) world for people like O'Neill. Apparently it's this meme virus that takes over whole populations and turns them into terroristic, suicidal zombies who quote bin Laden (please read with irony).
>I do not believe there is a single group of Chechen
>"radicals."
Nor do I. What I was asserting was that events like Beslan or the train bombings in Spain still can be interpreted in relation to the very sort of things that O'Neill is denying. Moroccans getting revenge on the Spanish, even if they haven't been directly hurt by the Spanish. In this case, it could well be payback for 1992, among other things.
>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.
Body armor in outfitted soldiers is usually worn all the time in a combat or siege area. Perhaps the key criminals in the siege knew how to anticipate special force tactics because they have such training themselves? The guy I saw on the video sure seemed like it.
Finally, it's interesting that those who can't motivate much empathy or sympathy for Chechens or Ingush tend to dismiss them as criminals, gangsters, emotional or religiously controlled primitives from a lawless territory, etc. Has anyone noticed that gangsterism is really a formative phase of capitalism? I think the Russian Federation has a new golden age soon upon it!
Fugazy
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