--- Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brian says that the Cuban government massacred
> homosexuals.
> You say Putin had apartment buildings blown up,
> killing hundreds.
I've linked to this article by Anatol Lieven (one of the few people writing on Chechnya in English who actually knows what the fuck he's talking about) maybe a billion times, but since no one seems to have bothered to read it, or indeed anything that doesn't confirm what the already "knew," I'm going to do it again:
>From April 1998 to their invasion of Dagestan in
August 1999, Chechen fighters killed or took prisoner
dozens of Russian police and troops in raids across
the Russian republic border. Terrorists also carried
out many bomb attacks in the region, including a
massive bombing in the North Ossetian city of
Vladikavkaz in March 1999 that killed 51 people, and a
bombing on a block housing Russian soldiers' families
in the Dagestani town of Buinaksk in September 1999
that killed 64 people. No one has ever claimed
responsibility for these bombings, but they appear to
fit into the general campaign by the forces of
Basayev, Khattab, and their allies, which included
carrying out bombings of Russian military and police
targets.
Only with the bombings in Moscow and elsewhere in September 1999 that killed more than 300 people did the growing crisis make headlines in the West. Western reporting of these bombings was invariably accompanied by statements that proof of Chechen or Islamist responsibility for the bombings had not been established (no one claimed responsibility). It was also argued that the behavior of the security forces had been highly suspicious; notably, that they moved quickly to bulldoze the buildings affected by the Moscow blasts, thereby also perhaps destroying evidence, and that they carried out an alleged "antiterrorism" operation in the town of Ryazan, which involved planting explosives in a building-something of which they had apparently not warned the local police. The blasts of course also seemed to be very convenient for Putin and his supporters. They created a great wave of public support for a new war in Chechnya and allowed Putin to present himself as a forceful and courageous leader in the run-up to the presidential elections of 2000.
This was all in itself correct; if not the Russian security forces, then it is certainly plausible that a tycoon supporter of Putin might have contracted such an operation. Yet, as far as the general Western discussion of the issue is concerned, the history of bombings in the North Caucasus was barely mentioned, nor was the character, antecedents, or links of Khattab and his men. Whatever the suspicions about pro-Putin forces, it should be obvious that the suggestion that a force largely composed of Arab Muslim extremists would have lacked the motive, the expertise, or the ruthlessness to carry out a terrorist bombing campaign against Russians is absolutely ridiculous.
(snip)
To suggest that Khattab and his men had no motive to carry out the Moscow bombings is similar to suggesting that Osama bin Laden had no motive to attack the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing hundreds of innocent Africans in the process. Bin Laden and Khattab share not only the same background but also exactly the same beliefs and attitudes. The tendency of too many Western commentators to believe automatically in Russian responsibility for the bombings is tragicomically reminiscent of the attitude of the old leftists for whom the anti-Israeli forces in the Middle East could do no wrong. Western Russophobes believe that Russia can do no right, and their views have colored Western media approaches.
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4546.html
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