Why were they wearing masks ?
THE SAVAGE WAR IN CHECHNYA
Last week, the brutal war in Chechnya reached a new nadir of barbarity
when
Chechen fighters seized 700 hostages in a Moscow theater. Bungled efforts
by Russian security forces to gas the attackers caused the deaths of 118
hostages.
Fifty unconscious Chechens were summarily executed.
Russia has come under heavy international criticism for using a modified
anesthetic,
Fentanyl, against the assailants. Yet Russian security forces were right
to use an opiate gas
in a hostage-taking where the attackers were ready to detonate powerful
explosives and
kill all 700 captives. Tragically, the operation was badly executed.
Worse, security forces
refused to tell hospitals what gas they had used.
One fascinating reason for trying to keep the gas secret: In 1988, a C-130
carrying
President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan was sabotaged by a still mysterious gas.
The aircraft went out of control and crashed, killing Zia - who was
primarily responsible
for defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Soviet KGB, which often
employed
chemical weapons, remains the prime suspect in the assassination. The same
potent
Fentanyl derivative may have been used to quickly render the aircrew and
passengers
unconscious.
There is no excuse for taking civilians hostage. The Moscow outrage was an
act of terrorism, as Russia insists. But it was a smaller act of terror
within a
greater one: Moscow's ongoing war to crush the Chechen independence
movement, an inconvenient cause ignored by the outside world.
The hostage-taking in Moscow was a desperate act by desperate people
without voice or hope.
Chechen, a Muslim people of the Caucasus Mountains, have fiercely battled
Russian occupation for 300 years. In hidden genocide during the 1940s,
Stalin had thousands of Chechen shot and 500,000 (half the population)
sent in cattle cars to frigid Central Asian concentration camps, where 25%
died.
Survivors of Stalin's gulag filtered back to Chechnya in the 1960s. When
the
Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Chechen, led by Gen. Jhokar Dudayev,
declared independence. While Moscow allowed other republics independence,
Chechen were denied freedom because of im****tant oil pipelines that ran
through their territory and Kremlin fears other Muslim peoples of the
Caucasus
would seek independence.
In 1994, Boris Yeltsin ordered an invasion of breakaway Chechnya. Much of
the cost of the war was financed by the United States, which sought to
sup****t Yeltsin against his domestic political enemies. President Bill
Clinton
even called Yeltsin Russia's Abraham Lincoln. In a near military miracle,
lightly-armed Chechen fighters defeated and drove out the Russian army,
but at appalling cost. Russia razed the Chechen capital, Grozny, and
killed an
estimated 100,000 civilians. President Dudayev was assassinated by the
Russians,
thanks to secret electronic equipment supplied KGB by the US.
In 1996, Russia granted Chechnya de facto recognition and promised a
referendum within five years to decide its future. Chechnya seemed free.
But in 1999, in an eerie harbinger of the 9/11 attacks on the US, a series
of mysterious explosions destroyed apartment buildings in Russia, killing
300 people.
Then prime minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, blamed Islamic
terrorists
Chechen linked to bin Laden. Russia was swept by nationalist fury and
anti-Chechen hatred.
When a FSB (formerly KGB) team was caught planting bombs in another
building,
and a KGB officer blamed the bombings on the war party in Moscow,
the news was hushed up. Putin became president, almost by acclaim,
and promptly ordered another invasion of Chechnya.
In the Second Chechen War, 60,000 civilians have so far died in Russian
shelling and bombing, according to Chechen sources; 170,000-are refugees.
The
tiny nation has been shattered, covered with mines, and turned into a
nightmare free-fire zone for 80,000 ill-disciplined, often drunken Russian
soldiers and
Interior Ministry troops, who are paid special monthly bonuses to fight in
Chechnya.
In spite of massive firepower, including devastating fuel air explosives
and
carpet bombing, Russian forces have failed to crush small bands of fierce
Chechen mujihadin. In mass roundups called zachistki, Russians seize all
male Chechen over 16, routinely torture and, often, execute them.
International
rights groups accuse Moscow of widescale murder, torture, rape, and
looting.
War in Chechnya has degenerated into a savage battle of attrition, with
atrocities
and banditry committed by both sides. Moscow conducts its brutal
operations under
a blanket of secrecy. Foreign and Russian journalists who try to re****t
the ugly truth
about this conflict are killed or silenced. Russia has lost an estimated
10,000 soldiers
killed, 66% of total losses in Afghanistan.
The Bush Administration has shamefully adopted Moscow's propaganda line by
branding the Chechen independence fighters Islamic terrorists, the price
of Kremlin sup****t for its anti-Islamic campaign. The Kremlin now claims
the
hostage-taking was Russia's 9/11.
Not so. Terrorism is the only weapon the weak have against the mighty.
Russia could end terrorism by finally giving Chechen the independence they
have long sought and richly deserve - and be well rid of this pointless
bloodbath.
If America truly cared about human rights, it would be encouraging Moscow
to
set the Chechen free instead of turning a blind eye to what the rights
group,
the International Helsinki Federation, calls a second attempted genocide
against
this tortured, forgotten people.
THE SAVAGE WAR IN CHECHNYA
October 31, 2002
http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2002/10/index.php
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