[lbo-talk] Chechnya coverage -- compare and contrast

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 23 13:33:01 PST 2005


No secret who I agree with here.

Surrealpolitik How a Chechen terror suspect wound up living on taxpayers' dollars near the National Zoo

By Matthew Brzezinski Sunday, March 20, 2005; Page W12

The apartment felt like a safe house. The curtains were drawn. Someone else's family portraits hung on the walls, and a stranger's books lined the shelves. Other than a small framed photograph of the sons he had not seen in nearly three years, Ilyas Akhmadov hadn't bothered to unpack in the two weeks that he'd been there. His meager belongings stood near the door, ready for a hasty exit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38200-2005Mar15.html

A Reply to Matthew Brzezinski on the topic of Illyas Akhmadov By Robert Bruce Ware Published on March 21, 2005

Every few months the Ministry of Propaganda at the Washington Post whips itself into a frothing diatribe so egregious as to require a careful response in order to restore the vestiges of a balanced view.

The latest instance, from an author named, of all things, Brzezinski, draws ad nauseum upon all of the usual Washington Russaphobes, and almost nothing else, in order to whitewash Illyas Akhmadov, the self-styled Chechen Republic of Ichkeria’s self-styled “foreign minister”. (“Surrealpolitik: How a Chechen terror suspect wound up living on taxpayers' dollars near the National Zoo” by Matthew Brzezinski, Washington Post 20 March 2005, Johnson’s Russia List #9096). On the basis of distortions, such as those rehearsed in this article, Akhmadov was granted political asylum in the United States last summer, at just about the same time that those he claims to be representing were claiming responsibility for terrorist atrocities in Ingushetia. Yet important questions about Akhmadov’s connection to these and other terrorist acts have never been adequately addressed. I will outline those questions below, and I will publicly ask those questions of Illyas Akhmadov, Matthew Brzezinski, his uncle Zbignew Brzezinski, Glen Howard, Fred Starr, and all of the others cited in Brzezinski’s article. Then, by way of illustration, I will briefly address a couple misrepresentations more or less randomly selected from Brzezinski’s article.

On August 2 and September 5, 1999, the Russian Republic of Dagestan was invaded by about 2,000 terrorists from al-Qaeda-connected bases in Chechnya. Dozens of innocent Dagestani men, women, and children were murdered. According to figures furnished by the UNHCR, 32,000 people were driven from their homes. The invasions were potentially genocidal in that they exposed to direct attack the entire ethnic territories, and all villages, inhabited by some of Dagestan’s smaller ethno-linguistic groups, such as the Andis. During these months Illyas Akhmadov was serving as Chechnya’s foreign minister. He did not resign from that position. I have been able to find no evidence that Akhmadov issued any public statement repudiating the invasions of Dagestan during the six weeks that they were in progress. During interviews with Dagestanis since that time, I have been able to find no one in Dagestan who is aware of any public statement issued either by Illyas Akhmadov or Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov repudiating the invasions while they were in progress, let alone offering to assist the people of Dagestan in resisting them.

http://www.untimely-thoughts.com/index.html?cat=3&type=3&art=1515

Nu, zayats, pogodi!

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