Getting Ugly in Russia

[DanaC]

It may make you look like a lunatic fringe and it is arguably wrong, though right and wrong seem to take something of a backseat whenever wars become entrenched but it has already had an effect. The spotlight is again on Putin and the Chechens. This is the issue which is most dangerous to Putin ( at the moment) The families of soldiers who have been conscripted to deal with the Chechens have already begun to voice their dismay at both the conditions their sons and daughters serve under and against the futility of the fight they are sent to. Every time a Chechen terrorist dies for their cause with a bombbelt around their waste and a prayer on their lips it hits the headlines, it increases the sense of fear and uncertainty and the people look to their strong man Putin to resolve the problem of Chechnya. So far his attempts have not been successful, but the expertly stagemanaged fearsome response which sends their young ones to die fighting people they dont really care about in a land they dont feel attached to anymore quietens the grumbling.

When the Black Widows staged a siege in the theatre Putin's response was to order a rescue mission which led to half the hostages dying, not at the hands of the Widows but at the hands of the rescuers. This is expected. A strongman is respected in Russia a negotiator much less so. What has made this siege interesting ( just to be entirely callous and look at the strategic situation rather than with the emotional response to an emotionally charged issue) is that Putin has been forced not to follow the Strongman response formula. His nation has all it's eyes turned to the school and the safety of those children is paramount. Unlike most sieges the hostage takers have resfused medical aid and food supplies. This is contrary to the usual pattern in which the hostage takers demand supplies and the negotiators make comparitive demands for a goodwill gesture, such as freeing the injured or the women or children. Right from the start this puts them on a much stronger footing than many hostage takers in other sieges.

Instead they have retained all the cards and have given up 32 ( I think) of their hostages, mainly the youngest children without attempting to secure supplies or anything else of that nature. They have demonstrated their power over the hostages by freely choosing to let some of them go. This lends frightening credibility to the idea that they would ( as they have stated) kill 50 children for any one of their people who are killed ( for instance by sniper) and that any attempt to storm the building ( the usual Russian response to hostage situations, which is effective but does lead to many hostages dying in the process) would result in them detonating the explosives which they wear thereby killing everyone in the school.

The truth is we dont know if they really would go through with that threat, they may even be bluffing. Either way Putin cannot risk engaging in tactics which could lead to the wholesale slaughter of a school of children, therefore he is trapped into alllowing some kind of negotiation with the terrorists and as such the terrorists have already made progress ( in their goals) This time, Putin cannot play the strongman without being seen to place children at risk, that in itself reduces him slightly in the national consciousness.

On a more general level the increase in terrorist attacks on the Russian people is making people nervous. They are likely (given the growing mutterings) to come to the conclusion that Chechnya is not worth the price the Cechens are charging.

Therefore in the longrun such activity whilst marking them to the world as lacking credibility may indeed be the thing which frees them from the yolk.

[jaguar]

bluesdaves, thankyou for displaying some truly awe inspiring ignorance about post-soviet eastern European geopolitics or for that matter, any kind of independence movement anywhere, the roots of pretty much any terrorist movement in history or hell - pretty much all history now I think of it. Your combined lack of understanding of chechen history, Russia's reasoning behind the ongoing conflict, the role of strategic resources and the history and structure of the chechen rebel movement is sadly not unique in it's awesome lack of understanding.

The most interesting thing though is the demonstration about the role of media illusions, nervous, often drunk russian conscripts can waste kids and noone will ever hear about it but as soon as the chechen rebels take the flight to Moscow they've 'lost the moral battle'? Who the fuck are you kidding, there is no moral battle, there never was, you think morals worried the russians? Welcome to the majority of today's battlegrounds, dirty, unfair, horrible, inhuman and entirely free of media spotlight except when something 'newsworthy' like this happens. Keep in mind too that the FSB (KGB with a new nametag) was behind many if not all the apartment bombings attributed to the chechen rebels.

The only people left in that god forsaken hellhole now are rebels and people that couldn't leave - the sick, the elderly, who have been subject to general brutalisation by an army consisting mostly of nervous 17y.o conscripts, drunk and unpaid and hardass specops that would be more at home in the SS.

[xoxoxoBruce]

THE most disturbing image I’ve ever seen on the internet was a Russian soldier on the ground with a boot on the side of his head. A knife pushed slowly through the side of his neck all the way through to the ground. Then in a sawing motion cut out through the front of his throat. For some reason this was more disturbing than the beheadings in Iraq.

The truth is we dont know if they really would go through with that threat, they may even be bluffing. Either way Putin cannot risk engaging in tactics which could lead to the wholesale slaughter of a school of children, therefore he is trapped into alllowing some kind of negotiation with the terrorists and as such the terrorists have already made progress ( in their goals) This time, Putin cannot play the strongman without being seen to place children at risk, that in itself reduces him slightly in the national consciousness.

Or he can blow up the school and blame it on the hostage takers.
BTW, don't forget the two planes these scumbags blew out of the sky, this week.

[DanaC]

"The only hope that Chechnya has, is to back off, and basically concede defeat, as painful as that will be for them. They have to accept that they belong to Russia, and forget about their independence. I know that Dana and Jag will say that I would feel very differently if I had been subjected to the same treatment as the Chechens, but they have to draw a line, and say "no more, we give up". The alternative is more of what they have been receiving, and eventually leading to Bruce's solution. They have to realise that they cannot win - ever - and that their only hope is surrender. Otherwise, they have no future."

Someone raised earlier the idea that if governments give in to Terrorist pressure then the terrorists have their methodology proven effective and this leads to other people who consider their cause serious enough taking up terrorism as a proven effective method.....By the same token, if people who are oppresed or occupied simply accept defeat without resistance then violent occupation is proven effective and countries which have a vested interest in maintaining their control over another people are more likely to ignore the cries and pleas of those they oppress. After all they know that if they can only hold on to that land and it's people long enough, no matter howmuch they brutalise them the world will not support their calls for independance or freedom and eventually the disputed territory is theirs. This just encourages the most agressive and violent occupations to continue. After all, why give in to the demands of the oppressed when time will give them both the oppressor both victory and worldwide acceptance for their actions.

I find it interesting that the world community is prepared to take action against a weak oppressor nation but not against a strong oppressor nation. What has been happening in Chechnya for the past few years is not wholly dissimilar to the goings on in and around Kosovo a few years ago. Serbia was not the great bear though. Therefore Serbia faced international condemnation and action. When the great Bear roars and mauls the Chechens the world is less willing to act or even condemn too vocally. Right now there is talk of sending in troops or imposing sanctions against the Sudanese government over it's complicity/inaction against the janjaweed militia in the Darfur region. This is well and good and about time, but nobody seeks to impose sanctions against Russia for it's crimes against the Chechen people. If Russia was a small, third rate state the international community might have been more vocal in it's condemnation of her acts. Instead we save our ager and vitriol for states who are weak enough for us to dominate and allow horrors to be committed unchecked by the strong.

And now here we all sit in condemnation of the Chechen rebels and their actions whilst no sympathy can be found for their suffering. Suffering which the world has been deaf to for as long as they have been tormented.

The world didnt listen when they screamed so now they will make sure the world listens whilst they shout.

Unless the world community starts taking this on board then the war on terror will remain as unwinnable as a war against mist

[lookout123]

Originally Posted by DanaC

And now here we all sit in condemnation of the Chechen rebels and their actions whilst no sympathy can be found for their suffering. Suffering which the world has been deaf to for as long as they have been tormented.

no you have missed the point. i do sympathize with the suffering of these people. i don't really follow that conflict so i don't know all the details, but if your description of the conflict is accurate i do sympathize with them. any concern at all is reserved for the ones who choose NOT to strap bombs to themselves and target civilians. these individuals are filth.

To be in a position to espouse an opinion about this which has any worth whatsoever, one needs far more information that almost anyone has,

nope, rebels have taken kids hostage. i know enough to condemn these individuals to death. i don't care what their political motivation is - their actions have made their ideals irrelavent.

The thing is, most of you are approaching this with a fair degree of if not extreme moral absolutism, sadly, the real world exists in shades of grey, not black and white. There is no space for moral absolutism in the modern world and certainly not in dirty little wars in the ex-buffer states of the Soviet Union.

there is black and white in the world Jaguar. specifically targeting innocent women and children is wrong. end of story. no matter how sympathetic to a cause you may be you have to admit that.

Many people have said that nothing excuses the targetting of innocent children. I would counter that nothing excuses the strong violently imposing their will upon the weak.

say explosive and gun carrying rebels vs school children?

It may have been possible to resolve this siege with minimal loss of life had they stuck to the rather novel tactic of negotiation.

it is unreasonable and unwise to negotiate with people who think these tactics are acceptable. if you cave to their demands you better be prepared to go to the next school because it will happen again.

The Chechens are an indigenous population of sunni moslems who have been fighting for their independance for upwards of three hundred years. They have made many attempts to free themselves from Russia both in it's Empire days and it's communist days.

if they are trying to secede from a russia then i can see why the russian troops are there. we had something called the civil war here. quebec tries and fails every few years (without gunfire) and i believe the UK has had some experience with folks that just don't want to be a part of the family anymore. nations don't typically find it in their best interests to let parts of the country , or their holdings break away.

[jaguar]

To be in a position to espouse an opinion about this which has any worth whatsoever, one needs far more information that almost anyone has, there are complex geopolitical games in action here, Russian politics, chechen rebel politics, islamic radicals are tied up and there is careful strategy in play by both sides. There are plenty of interesting personalities involved as well. The targeting of a school isn't accidental. First thing is you can't blow experimental Russian nerve agents over a bunch of kids and expect even the majority to survive, that rules out the way they ended the theatre siege. A direct assault would be very high risk and almost certainly end in the deaths of a number of hostages - kids, very effective media tool. Now they've released a bunch of them, awww, how nice.

The thing is, most of you are approaching this with a fair degree of if not extreme moral absolutism, sadly, the real world exists in shades of grey, not black and white. There is no space for moral absolutism in the modern world and certainly not in dirty little wars in the ex-buffer states of the Soviet Union. I challenge anyone (sadly impossible to prove) who can't see this being done to take a long hard look at themselves and try to say that whatever happened to them, their families, their friends and their communities they couldn't imagine themselves doing this. Lets face it, we all live (as far as I'm aware) in relative wealth )by utilising the poverty of the 3rd world), safe, comfortable, without the fear of a stray mortar going though the roof tonight or watching our wives and daughters raped by gangs of drunk conscripts, what kind of position is that to moralise to people from?

Both sides are dirty as hell here, most of you have at best displayed a very faint understanding of the history of this conflict and the groups involved. I mean the group who did this probably did to the great annoyance of the majority of rebels and when it comes to the islamic angle things get really messy.

It certainly explains why the US elected a president who espouses a similar position to mask a government full of people that make chechen rebels look like peaceful protesters in their extreme ideology. The trick worked the first time, we'll see if after watching the result of such ideologies in action it works a second time.

[DanaC]

Well said Jaguar.

I dont know nearly enough about the complexities of the Russia-Chechnya conflict and I have followed it for some years. It is almost impossible to actually get a clear accounting of what has been going on as we are to a large extent reliant upon the agendas of major media corporations for our information.

What I find saddening is that we are all much moved at the heartrending scene of a little russian girl being half dragged half run to safety from that school yet the equally heartrending picture of a little chechen girl half running half stumbling to get out of her house as the Russians begin to demolish it around her gets no attention.

What the children in that school and their parents are suffering is appalling. It does us credit as humans that we are moved by this. But countless Chechen children have died in fear or shivered through a night of terror. Countless Chechen mothers have had seen their little ones die and countless Chechen babies have lost their families to a russian advance. That we as a community remain unmoved by their plight does us no credit whatsoever.

It strikes me as interesting that many of the people who display the least understanding of the Chechen point of view are American. Perhaps America is simply too strong for it's people to be able to truly understand what it might be to be weak.

Many people have said that nothing excuses the targetting of innocent children. I would counter that nothing excuses the strong violently imposing their will upon the weak.

[Undertoad]

Being killed is kind of absolute.

By the same token, if people who are oppresed or occupied simply accept defeat without resistance then violent occupation is proven effective and countries which have a vested interest in maintaining their control over another people are more likely to ignore the cries and pleas of those they oppress.

Fine, now, why doesn't this happen in Yorkshire?

You didn't really answer my question, what would make you pull the trigger on a five-year-old? Because

I would counter that nothing excuses the strong violently imposing their will upon the weak.

There is no better example of this than pulling the trigger on a five-year-old.

[DanaC]

"Fine, now, why doesn't this happen in Yorkshire?"

This did happen in Yorkshire. It happened over a thousand years ago. The crimes commited against it's people were manifold and the region saw itself as culturally seperate from Wessex right the way through to the 10th century. They were eventually forced to accept their domination by the southern kings and time did the rest, now we do not think of Yorkshire as anything but an integral part of the kingdom of England. The second a nation/people accept their defeat and allow occupation unnopposed they lose their seperate identity.

In the 11th century when England was invaded and occupied by the Normans there was resistance this resistance was met with extreme force and actions which in todays society would be descried as war crimes. It worked. The resistance was crushed and England lost it's independance and pride and became a French territory. Now a thousand years later we are what we are and that is no great sadness to me. But for the Anglo Saxon culture which ended on the battlefields of Hastings this was a grave conclusion. The decimation of Saxon resistance and the punitive destruction meted out to all and sundry silenced the anglo saxon tongue and relegated it to the history books once and for all.

If the Chechens simply accept defeat then maybe in a thousand years it wont matter to the people they have become. But right now the idea of simply losing one's identity cannot be acceptable to them. It would not be acceptable to me and it would not be acceptable to you.

What would make me pull the trigger on a child? I would like to say nothing owuld mak e me do that. I cannot say that with absolute certainty because i do not have any experience of being brutalised to the point of desperation and hate. As far as I am aware neither do you. I do think that most people if faced with a simple choice of pull the trigger on a foreign unknown child or pull the trigger on their own daughter wold likely choose the former as the lesser of two evils. It's a wholly unlikely scenario that someone would be faced with that choice but hypothetically speaking that is one circumstance which would lead me to kill a 5 year old. If it was a simple choice of someone else's five year old or my five year old the animal in me would seek to protect my own.

By the same token, what would make you hold a chechen child at gun point and rape her in front of her brother?

[Undertoad]

Well turned D. Much respect.

In order for me to hold a chechen child at gun point and rape her in front of her brother, I would have to be extremely mentally ill. It would require a pretty serious delusion probably combined with some sort of paranoia.

I can't imagine that it's the policy of the Russian government. But if it is, then this kind of resistance may be warranted. Still, if I were resisting I would target agents of the state, not random people. The agents of the state are the ones responsible and I think they would take the situation more seriously if they were personally targetted.

As far as personality goes I take my cues from the culture and not the state. In this case does the state want to institute a new culture, like enforced language changes and such?

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

The agents of the state are the ones responsible and I think they would take the situation more seriously if they were personally targetted.

This would be a better tactic. It's not like the Russian government is terribly reflective of the people of Russia. Focus your hate and resources at the source of the oppression.

[jaguar]

Well they have been wacking russia stooge presidents for a fairly long time and I'm sure plenty of people have seen those delightful videos of decapitation of russian soldiers, it didn't seem to really get anywhere did it.

At any rate it seems the seige has been ended by a rather botched sounding rescue attempt though most of the hostage takers are now on the run and a fair few kids are dead.

[DanaC]

*shakes head* The Russian authorities seem incapable of resisting their tendency to use strongman tactics in any given situation no matter how dangerous that might be to those involved. It was obvious to everyone that if they went in guns blazing children would die. Foolishness in the extreme.
It may have been possible to resolve this siege with minimal loss of life had they stuck to the rather novel tactic of negotiation. Unfortunately the emphasis seems to have shifted last night from protecting the safety of the children at all costs to preventing the escape of the terrorists at all costs.

[DanaC]

"As far as personality goes I take my cues from the culture and not the state. In this case does the state want to institute a new culture, like enforced language changes and such?"

Thats a good question Bruce and I dont really know the answer. I know that there have been extremely oppressive measures taken against the civilian populace of Chechna and that brutality seems to be a mainstay of the army's approach there ( as Jaguar pointed out many of these soldiers are really conscripted teens who have no wish to be there and have grown to despise detest and fear the people they are dealing with, much as some of the younger and less well trained members of the coalition forces have found themseves hating Iraqi civilians and brutalised those in their custody)

Whether or not there are language and cultural oppressions I am unsure. Certainly the Russian culture is not sympathetic to the Chechen culture. The Chechens are an indigenous population of sunni moslems who have been fighting for their independance for upwards of three hundred years. They have made many attempts to free themselves from Russia both in it's Empire days and it's communist days. ( forgive my rather thin knowledge of the culture and history :P)

I found a really interesting site by the Human Rights Watch. It has many articles about the situation and the history of the conflict, check it out if you have time ( and inclination *smiles* ) But whilst you are reading bear in mind that not all chechen terrorists target children, in reality the school siege is notable for it's unusual nature. Nor indeed do all Russian soldiers engage in abuse.
This conflict is much wider than one set of extremists and a school of frightened children.

]Human Rights Watch on Chechnya

[DanaC]

Britain's insistence on retaining it's rights of governance over northern ireland led to much unhappiness on both sides of the water. Had the IRA stuck to entirely peaceful protest the Good Friday agreement would never have been brokered in the first place and the virtual apartheid under which the descendants of the indigenous Irish lived would have continued unchecked.