--- John Bizwas <bizwas at lycos.com> wrote:
> Consider the US still hasn't given one figure for
> the dead of 9-11.
> Despite your demographic discussion, I still find a
> total of 60-100 thousand quite credible, though as
> I've pointed out before, direct deaths and resultant
> deaths make accounts vary. Certainly my use of those
> figures is better than CNN-I's recent figure of a
> total of 800,000 dead.
WOW! That would be almost the entire population.
>
> The terms Chechen and Ingush aren't what they call
> themselves. But no, I wasn't saying Moscow defined
> them as a people or two related peoples with related
> languages (with quite a bit of mutual
> intelligibility). They also have native terms to
> refer to themselves as related but separate people.
> As for what Dudayev says, all the more reason to
> condemn Russia's expulsionist interventions in N.
> Ossetia.
You would prefer the Ossetians and Ingush had just killed each other with no referee? (How can you "intervene" in your own country anyway? Can the United States "intervene" in Utah?)
My point
> was that N. Ossetians and Ingush were in conflict.
> So much for the proclaimed innocence and neutrality
> of the Ossetians. This is in counterpoint to how
> recent events have been reported.
>
I really don't know how the events have been portrayed in the Western media. Certainly everybody in Russia knows the history, and that was reflected in the media coverage. I suspect omission in the Western media was probably due to ignorance of the history. How many Anglo-Americans had ever even heard of Ossetians before Beslan?
> What I'm saying is that Putin ought to take a good
> look at his own government's 'anti-terrorism' and
> 'counter-insurgency' efforts if he wants to calm
> down the Caucasus.
Well that's certainly true. I don't see why "counter-insurgency" is in quotes though.
In this case I think it quite
> possible that the attackers had indeed been trained
> and equipped, at least originally, by the Russians
> or their proxies.
Who are the "proxies"? Everyone in the North Caucasus is a Russian (rossiyanin, that is, citizen of the Russian Federation). This is like accusing the Americans of using New Yorker proxies in New England. Moreover, almost everyone in the North Caucasus supports Moscow. Moscow is their only source of protection from you-know-who and almost their only source of income. Dagestan gets 85% of its budget from Moscow. Ingushetia gets 80%.
And you can get equipped and trained quite effectively without Moscow doing it for you. The North Caucasus is swimming in weapons and there are plenty of people who would be willing to sponsor and finance such an operation. In any case Basayev took credit.
That was what they looked like to
> me watching the videos. Also, its a region of
> multiple cultural and linguistic identities, so I
> think that one reason why Beslan was such a success
> for the attackers was people, quite knowledgeable of
> the police and military there, passing as Ossetian
> in setting up the attack.
They wouldn't need to pass as Ossetian. North Ossetia is a multithnic republic. There are ethnic Russians, Ingush, Chechens, Ukrainians and everybody else living there.
_______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com