No large illegal armed groups under single command have been left in Chechnya, Colonel General Valery Baranov, Commander of the Joint Army Group in the Northern Caucasus, has said in an interview with the Voenno-Promyshlenny Kurier (Military-Industrial Courier) weekly. According to Baranov, âthe militants changed their tactics radically.â
| "I mean, like, they got out of Dodge!" |
âThey are operating in small groups, which tend to be dispersed, and are avoiding open armed clashes,â he said.
| Here's the dichotomy: a well-trained military force of, say, 100 men with beat the living crap out of a random group of tough guys approximately 100.00 percent of the time. This is why soldier armies always defeat warrior armies. In a one-on-one, however, the tough guys will beat the snot out of individual soldiers approximately 50 percent of the time, or even 60-40 if the tough guys are from a warrior culture. The same applies to small groups â under ten, or maybe up to a dozen. The only way warrior cultures (like the Chechens or Islamists in general) stand a chance of beating disciplined, professionally led armies is through breaking into small groups and going for attrition. The assumption there is that the warrior culture is capable of sustaining equal losses with the more civilized culture during the course of hostilities. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't... |
Baranov set forth his understanding of the recent incident, when a gang of Chechen gunmen penetrated to Dagestan and was destroyed there. âIt was Ruslan Gelayevâs illegal armed unit, made up of 37 men. It was going from the Shatoi district of Chechnya to Georgia,â Baranov continued. In his opinion, âthe gang planned to go to Georgia for the purpose of creating special conditions on its territory during the elections. In other words, they planned to destabilise the situation there.â General Baranov pointed to the fact that the gang under the command of Ruslan Gelayev, who is now in Georgia, included foreign mercenaries. This is confirmed by the evidence given by the captured gunmen. âA gang was destroyed recently near the village of Serzhen-Yurt, which included mercenaries even from Western Europe. A ramified network of recruiters is functioning in the world. They recruit only real professionals, as a rule, former servicemen,â Baranov said.
| I'm not sure that's a true statement. A lot of the cannon fodder we've seen recruited have been more in the street tough category... |
Commenting on the prospects of capturing Maskhadov and Basayev, Baranov said it was just a matter of time. âI hope soon they will be captured. Now Chechnya is no place for Basayev and Maskhadov. This is why either they surrender voluntarily, or they will be destroyed,â he said.
| I think I'd go for "destroyed," myself... |
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