West is silent as Russia hits Chechens

RUSSIA has launched a series of powerful offensives in Chechnya after rebel forces ignored a deadline to lay down their arms.

Supported by artillery and helicopter gunships, special forces units struck 15 locations across the province, with Moscow claiming 27 rebel dead as fighting continues to rage.

The battles came minutes after a 72-hour-deadline to surrender set by the president, Vladimir Putin, expired on Thursday night.

The hardest fighting was around the entrance to the strategically important Vedeno gorge, the main rebel supply line south to bases in neighbouring Georgia. Russian helicopter gunships rocketed positions there while special forces battled for control of hilltops. The helicopters, one of the most feared weapons in Moscow’s armoury, were also in action further north in Chechnya.

Commando raids hit rebel units around the key cities of Gudermes and the capital Grozny, which is still infested with guerrillas despite being captured by Russia more than a year ago. Attacks also struck at several southern villages, which are now ringed by troops.

The defence ministry said that 69 suspects have been arrested by regular army and police units during the operation. Rebel troops quickly struck back, killing a district governor, Salman Abuev, and a deputy district governor, Sheikh Dubayev.

"We are determined to fight terrorism," said the defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, underlining Russia’s hard line. "We are fighting terrorists, we are not fighting Islam."

The past two months have seen a series of bloody rebel strikes against Moscow, in which scores of Russian troops have been blown up.

Russia has been at pains to stress the links between the Chechen rebels and the terror suspect Osama bin Laden. His affiliated organisations have long been blamed for pumping funding and men into the province.

Fighting alongside the rebels in this war are squads of so-called Wahabists, volunteers from the Middle East, and their senior officers have prominent positions in the Chechen command structure.

A few weeks ago, Moscow’s offensive would have risked triggering a round of criticism from Western capitals. Russia is already under pressure from the Council of Europe, which earlier this year came close to recommending its membership be suspended.

This time, the silence is deafening. With the United States and Russia now locked in what both see as a common fight to root out terrorism, it is difficult for Washington to contemplate bombing Afghanistan while criticising Russian action in Chechnya.

Mr Putin made his ultimatum earlier this week, at the same time as he promised support for the US plans to strike at bin Laden in Afghanistan.

But while Moscow has now deployed the "stick" with devastating effect, it has not given up on the "carrot" in trying to persuade the rebels to disarm.

Russian planes have dropped 100,000 leaflets across the province promising amnesty, a message reinforced by a television appeal yesterday by a district governor, Ahmed Zargaev.

"We will make all the conditions for the Chechen fighters so they can come back to their homes," said Mr Zargaev.

The signs are that the rebels plan to ignore them. While the suffering of the Chechen people has been great, the rebel army is undefeated.

Earlier this year, Moscow transferred command of the war from the army and passed to the FSB, the renamed KGB.

But the security service has proved no better at subduing the rebels than the army. Plans to pull out three-quarters of the 80,000-strong army in the province have been quietly shelved, as have plans to re-open the government in the ruined capital, Grozny.

Meanwhile, there are growing fears that the war may spread to Georgia, where the Chechens operate safe bases in the north of the country. Georgian forces and aid workers have reportedly pulled out of the region, home to base camps and supply dumps for the Chechens.

Georgia yesterday said it was handing over 30 captured Chechen fighters but Russia is likely to ask for more, following reports that a senior Chechen commander, Ruslan Gerlief, has now moved his headquarters to Georgian territory. Russia earlier this year said it might consider striking at targets across the border unless these bases were closed.

Pay attention, the author still tries to pain Russians as bad guys who just want to be cruel to the population and present the extremists as noble freedom fighters.

Maybe he is not able to withdrew from previous Russia bashing so quickly or is afraid that the public can start to see the methods of manipulation if shift is too quick or his bosses want to keep the option open for future promotion of terrorism when it is expedient.

It is so hard keep the truth under cover, promoting lies is so tedious and humilating that I feel sorry for the guy. And he has to see the very people he needs to slander, eye to eye, when he is working in Moscow. Ouch.

1 posted on 09/30/2001 11:20:11 AM PDT by A. Pole

Are the "rebels" Muslim?

2 posted on 09/30/2001 11:36:48 AM PDT by Tripleplay

I'm not silent. I hope the Russians crush these Muslim fanantics once and for all.

4 posted on 09/30/2001 11:43:58 AM PDT by Inyokern

A terrorist is anyone who doesn't want to be assimilated without their consent into someone's empire or some New World Order.

Imagine that you are a Chechen who does not care about preventing his daughters from getting education and does not want to enclosure his wife, does not want live according the Sharia law in the most crazy interpretation by Saudi Wahabites, who does not want to reconquer Russia (to bring it to the time of Mongol yoke) who does not want to revive the great traditions of mountain banditry, etc ...

If you open your mouth you will be slaughered like a pig (literaly) by those noble "freedom" fighters. So if you are really smart you will leave. That is exactly what majority of Chechens already did. They live all around Russia and do not want to go back at least before the crazy foreign missioneries are forced to leave. And many those who remain if they do not get carried away by collective passions stay very quiet.

I know, it is nice to dream about all those picturesque noble warriors so similar to Apaches from Hollywood movies. It might be even profitable if through their suffering the new way for cheap gasoline for your SUV will be opened. You will have moral satisfaction, gas while their land will get ruined.

If Chechens were able to prevent the extremist from joining the Big Game by blowing up the apartment buildings, hospitals and invasions, Russians would not give a hoot how they rule themselves.

5 posted on 09/30/2001 12:05:53 PM PDT by A. Pole

. . . it is difficult for Washington to contemplate bombing Afghanistan while criticising Russian action in Chechnya . . .

It's pathetic it took the WTC for America to get on the right side in this Great War Against Islam. Anyone with a brain has been able to see for many years who our real enemy is. The anti-Serbian campaign by Clinton and his legions of PC whores was an incredibly stupid blunder, as the Serbs are our natural allies against Mohammedism.

6 posted on 09/30/2001 12:27:59 PM PDT by LibWhacker

I've always been on Russia's side in this. I never saw these people as "freedom fighters" and I couldn't understand why nobody else saw it.

I have to admit, I did kind of cringe at the brutality, but now that I know what they've been up against, I understand it. If the Russians were as outraged by their bombings as we are with 9-11 I don't think any kind of brutality against these terrorists is enough.

Apparently, the innocent civilians are all living as refugees in Russia.

7 posted on 09/30/2001 12:28:39 PM PDT by McGavin999

I never saw these people as "freedom fighters" and I couldn't understand why nobody else saw it.

Because they 1. were hoping that those "freedom" fighters will fill the tanks of their SUVs, 2. wanted to feel moral and righteous in supporting the noble cause, 3. they were feeding their collective imperial pride and ego by beating down some Russkies to compensate their own personal shortcomings. I do not know, do you have better explanation?

8 posted on 09/30/2001 12:51:06 PM PDT by A. Pole

Maybe because some of the biggest supporters on Capitol Hill of the "freedom frighter" intended to benefit financially, either directly or indirectly, from investments in the Caspian Bay area. They saw it in their interest to mitigate Russia's influence and to encourage the growth of an autonomous region in Central Asia. The "freedom fighters" were the means to this end.

9 posted on 09/30/2001 12:58:14 PM PDT by independentmind

This is part of the price the Muslim world will pay for the terrorist attacks on the U.S. Another is the fear Arabic foreign students felt that caused them to leave classes in the U.S. Another is the scrutiny these people now get whenever they board an airplane. There must be more to come. Redical regimes in this part of the world have to fall.

Only then will the average or moderate Muslim see that tweaking the tiger's tail is not all fun and games. Only then will they rid themselves of this terrorist cancer within their own culture.

10 posted on 09/30/2001 1:03:14 PM PDT by BigBobber

I agree. If Russia and India want to maim, murder, and kill these extremists, who are we to tell them no. The Chechen's blew up 300 people in Russia...and we tell them to hold back...like we did the Isreali's?? I bet we'd look REAL silly to ourselves if we did that now that 7,000 Americans are dead in ONE day. Go Russia!! I hope we are giving them satalitte info

11 posted on 09/30/2001 1:36:59 PM PDT by madison46

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794