--- Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
>
> URL:
>
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/09/opinion/edlieven.php
>
> THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 2006
> International Herald Tribune
>
> Europe's role: Help Israel abandon its failed
> strategy
> Anatol Lieven
> >
> It is instructive in this regard to compare what
> is happening in
> Lebanon to Russia's victory over the militants
> in Chechnya.
> To achieve this took the Russians seven years,
> thousands of Russian
> dead, tens of thousands of Chechen dead, and
> several well-publicized
> atrocities that have severely tarnished Russia's
> image in the eyes of
> the world.
>
> Moreover, since Chechnya is legally part of
> Russia, it was possible
> for them to reintegrate Chechnya as a republic
> of the Russian
> Federation, giving local power to one Chechen
> faction and handsomely
> rewarding its leaders.
>
Yep. The Chechenization policy has been very effective.* Practically the entire Chechen security service is composed of amnestied former "freedom fighters" who went over to the Kadyrov clan. That's 7,000 people.
It's funny in a tragic way. Today, Chechnya's government is composed entirely of ethnic Chechens and is virtually separate from the larger Russian government. The economy is controlled entirely by the Grozny government. They don't pay taxes. In other words... they're practically an independent state, except that the Kremlin subsidizes them, pays for reconstruction and pensions and state salaries, and they can vote for the president.
* Back when the press was full of "Russia is caught in a battle in Chechnya that will never end" articles that sound kind of silly now, the primary argument that Chechenization wouldn't work was that it didn't work in Vietnam. The level of analysis was THAT BAD.
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