Posted on 12/04/2010 7:24:00 PM PST by Nachum
As more neo-Soviet horrors are revealed to the public, it's time to call U.S. policy towards Russia its proper name: appeasement.
The Russian tinderbox known as Chechnya is smoldering once again, indicating a complete policy breakdown on the part of the Kremlin that has wide and deep repercussions for the outside world — including a greatly increased risk of terrorism at the 2014 Olympic Games. If the Obama administration does not act soon, it may have blood on its hands.
Current events coming out of the region look like a public relations nightmare for the Kremlin. First came the renewed insurrection: on October 19, 2010, Chechen rebels launched a bold direct assault on the Chechen parliament building in the capital city of Grozny, choosing the exact moment when a high-ranking Russian cabinet official was visiting. A few months earlier, the rebels had been even more provocative, attempting to assassinate the Kremlin’s puppet ruler Ramzan Kadyrov while he was watching a theater program. The myth that Kadyrov had decisively cowed the rebels has been, no pun intended, exploded. In fact the rebel groups are operating far and wide with impunity. There was a recent attack on a power station in Kabardino-Balkaria and a devastating explosion at an outdoor market in Vladikavkaz, emphasizing that insurrectionist activity is not limited to Chechnya proper but is spreading throughout the region.
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
Sorry Russia may have a lot of faults but their riding roughshod over Chechnya is not one of them. The Muslim terrorists that have been warring with Russia for close to 20 years and spread their brand of terrorism throughout Russia and the globe do not have my sympathy.
Dittos.
“Sorry Russia may have a lot of faults but”
Yeah, I concur. I have little sympathy for muslims or their causes....mostly, of which including destroying everything not muslim.
The USA can do nothing about Chechnya - there are no good options. Yes, the Russians may be brutal, but Chechnya and its indiginous Muslim Jihadists seem to be another Taliban in the making. I would simply butt-out, and let Russia do what it needs.
When it comes to dealing with the Taliban, we can take a page from the Russians’ playbook. The Pashtuns in Afghanistan never liked us, so we would be better off on focusing our alliance with other tribes in the country, IMHO.
9. (C) Chechnya was a major entrepot for laundering oil for this arbitrage. It appears to have been used both by the military (including Grachev) and the Khasbulatov-Rutskoy axis in the Duma. Dudayev had declared independence, but remained part of the Russian elite. Chechnya's independence, oilfields, refineries and pipelines made Chechnya perfect for laundering oil. Planes, trains, buses and roads and pipelines to Chechnya were functioning, allowing anyone and anything to transit -- except auditors. In the early 1990's millions of tons of "Russian" oil entered Chechnya and were magically transformed into "Chechen" oil to be sold on the world market at world prices. Some of the proceeds went to buy the Chechens weaponry, most of it from the Russian military, and another lucrative trade developed. Dudayev took much of his cut of the proceeds in weapons. The Groznyy Bazaar was notorious in the early 1990s for the quantity and variety of arms for sale, including heavy weaponry.
10. (C) Chechnya was the home of Ruslan Khasbulatov and served various purposes for his faction of the Russian elite. He took advantage of the army's independence from Yeltsin's control. An informed source believes that it was Khasbulatov, not the "official" Russian government, who facilitated the transfer of Shamil Basayev and his heavily-armed fighters from Chechnya into Abkhazia in 1992, and who ordered the Russian air force to bomb Sukhumi when Shevardnadze went there to take personal command of the Georgians' last stand in July 1993. The Yeltsin government always denied that it bombed Sukhumi, despite Western eyewitness accounts confirming the bombing and the insignia on the planes. Given the confusion of those years, it could well be that the order originated in the Duma, not the Kremlin.
Sorry, can’t blame the Russian bear for this. After that terrible massacre as Beslan, every muslim pig in Chechnya should have been lined up against a wall and shot. They wouldn’t have any more of those kinds of problems.
They were only nominally Muslim when Russia started the war. They all started out as godless communists.
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