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Caucasus
Krazed killers ice 3 coppers a week
2004-01-09
Chechnya’s Interior Ministry says rebel fighters killed 159 pro-Moscow police in 2003 - roughly three per week.
... or one every other day.
Another 300 officers were wounded in ambushes and clashes said ministry spokesman Ruslan Atsayev, quoted by the Itar-Tass agency. He added that the death toll was one-third lower than in 2002, and that people were keen to work as policemen. Another official said some 20 attacks within the last 24 hours killed five Russian soldiers and a police officers. The official told the AP agency that the attacks included direct stikes on Russian positions as well as ambushes on military and police convoys. Mr Atsayev was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying that payments to dead policemen’s families totalled more than one million roubles per month in the first 11 months of 2003. Russian forces have been assaulted on an almost daily basis since they re-entered Chechnya in 1999, three years after rebels drove them out. The official figure for the number of Russian soldiers who died in Chechnya between 1999 and mid-2003 is 4,705 - though the Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia organisation put the figure at 11,000.
It's a meat grinder. I attribute the high casualty rates to either crummy intel or to poor integration of intel resources, likely the former. If I was Putin — which I'm not; he's shorter than I am, for one thing — I'd be asking my good friend G.W. for a bit of assistance in that area.
Posted by:Dan Darling

#5  It's a quagmire! Big media don't compare Iraq to Chechnya for the same reason they don't compare the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to our invasion. They don't like to showcase US strength. They prefer reliving the Vietnam experience, when the US tucked it's tail and ran.
Posted by: B   2004-1-9 6:06:53 PM  

#4  John - Iraq would become like Chechnya if we handed it over to the Russians to run. As there is no likelyhood of this, Iraq will not become Chechnya. Compare the Russian and US experience in Afghanistan. Somewhat different don't you think.

Otherwise you are on the money in your comment about 'big media'
Posted by: phil_b   2004-1-9 4:16:20 PM  

#3  Point taken.

I still think Chechnya is a vision of what Iraq could potentially become, even as the continuing failure of the Russians to eradicate terrorists in Chechnya demonstrates islamist success by default. In jihad, struggle is more important than accomplishment. The ultimate victory in jihad is failure: defacto martyrdom. The more successful we are in Iraq, the more glorious the failure.

Big media compare Iraq to what they think they remember about Vietnam because they know even less about Chechnya.
Posted by: john   2004-1-9 1:35:28 PM  

#2  In Chechnya they're not rounding up the head cheeses. Maskhadov, Basayev, Gelayev and Abu Walid should all be dead or in custody by now, as should the members of the Shura Council. Instead, they screw around chasing cannon fodder. In Iraq, we're chasing after the leadership of an entire army - not a very good army, it's true, but still an army - and a political leadership that was deeply tied to terrorism, both organizationally and philosophically. We've been at it for eight months now. I'd say we're doing pretty well, and the reason we're doing so is our intelligence collection and dissemination.
Posted by: Fred   2004-1-9 10:39:38 AM  

#1  GW has his own problems, wherein Iraq looks more like Chechnya and less like Vietnam every day.
Posted by: john   2004-1-9 10:29:42 AM  

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