You're the expert (or rather, an expert), Chris, on this subject, so I won't disagree with the details.
But it should be pointed out that what is a "criminal gang" is to some extent in the eye of the beholder. Many governments (e.g., Mobutu's Zaire) have been in effect criminal gangs. In a situation where law and order have collapsed, as after the fall of the USSR, the difference between a gang and a government is even more subjective. The government is the one that won the civil war and monopolized force in the territory (establishing a Weber-style state). The gang is a group of armed troops that lost the war. Who is going to be the government isn't always clear ahead of time, though of course the winners write the (dominant) history after the fact.
If Basaev were to win (something I'm _not_ rooting for), then he would likely be labelled the Father of his Country. Remember that when when that traitor George Washington wrested control of the 13 colonies from their rightful owners, about 1/3 of the population became refugees, mostly to Canada. The so-called "patriots" also invaded Canada more than once. Further, they were motivated by the then-obscure ideology of the so-called Enlightenment, something that went totally against the time-tested belief in the divine right of kings.
Frankly, I want Basaev to lose, but I think that the point in the previous e-mail was not about the Russians' entering of Chechnya. It was about the Russians' bloody tactics when dealing with hostage crises, tactics that didn't seem to involve care for the fate of the hostages:
>Talking about the Beslan and Nord-Ost terrorist attacks, Basaev
pointed out that most of the hostages died because of gas (in Moscow)
and flame throwers and tanks (in Beslan) used by federal forces during
so-called "rescue operations" rather than because of actions by his
men.<
--
Jim Devine
"The Almighty Dollar..." -- Washington Irving.