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2010-03-30 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

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Posted by Fred 2010-03-30 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11135 views ] Top
File under: Chechen Republic of Ichkeria

#1 something tells me that there won't be a lot of agonizing over reading of rights or worrying about waterboarding or whatever is done to find out what is is really going on and to root out Mr. Big.

Obumble might want to take notes. or something.

Posted by USN, Ret. 2010-03-30 00:38|| 2010-03-30 00:38|| Front Page Top

#2 There faces were intact, yet one carried an est. 4 kilos and the other an est. 2 kilos of TNT and detinated it in an enclosed rail car. They were identified as "north caucasian" before any official investigation/autopsy was undertaken. Something seems too easy here. Is it possible for your face to remain intact after detinating 2+ kilos of TNT under your chin(on a vest presumably)?

Posted by jefe101 2010-03-30 02:01|| 2010-03-30 02:01|| Front Page Top

#3 Obumble might want to take notes.

Offer those captured a choice:

A definite 100 waterboarding sessions at the hands of the CIA, or 1 session at the tender mercies of whatever spetznaz happens to come their or their families' way.

Posted by gorb 2010-03-30 02:06|| 2010-03-30 02:06|| Front Page Top

#4 Check yourself before you wish for the Russians to go Roman. Best to not stick our big toe in a conflict that is 200 years old. Did anyone cry when the chechen nation was relocated to the Stan's during WWII? Did anyone cry when Grozny was obliterated? Well as I recall the Western world didn't have much to say. The Chechen's apparently don't bow down as easily as say the Iroquois, Sioux or the Apache. So what I am wondering is is this a civil war waged by a people with apparent little chance of victory (like the Vietnamese) against a mighty enemy, or are these just random nutjobs holed up in hideouts killing Russians for Allah. It seems to me they have a reason to be pissed. It would be a mistake to blur the WOT and just include "the bad guy of the week", we would then lose focus.

Posted by jefe101 2010-03-30 02:53|| 2010-03-30 02:53|| Front Page Top

#5 If these douchebags believe in Allah, and all the stuff that goes with it, then they are the bad guys, end of story.

Posted by Dave UK 2010-03-30 04:35|| 2010-03-30 04:35|| Front Page Top

#6 Whether or not they believe in Allah, which they do, you need to check yo history my friend. If your people had been in a constant state of conflict, that is your great great grandfather, your great grandfather, your grandfather, your father, you (you died in the 90's), your son and your grandson (that only covers 6 generations, so add 4 more "greats" if you want). If your grandmother told you stories of the deportation, half a million people, your entire nation. yadda yadda yadda. It does not take a genious to see why Chechens, and N. Caucasian peoples, are totally pissed at the Russians. It is more about nationality and statehood than Allah. Chechens are not Arabs! But the are fighers, so at times they will sell their services to the highest bidder. So this may not be about religion for Chechens, there are some Arabs in their ranks which they tollerate because they need money to fund their activity. But it would be a mistake to draw a parallel between Taliban in Afghanistan and Chechen in Russia.

Posted by jefe101 2010-03-30 05:01|| 2010-03-30 05:01|| Front Page Top

#7 Not to be a bore, but if the population of your country, your people, was est. 1.1 million today. During the Second Chechen War you lost est. 25k to 200,k Chechen dead. You might be a little pissed. Why such a wide gap in the est. dead, you can thank the Russians for that. Black Widows or White Stockings, Russians love (and fear) a lethal woman. One thing I know, Russians love to blame the boogeyman (Chechens) for anything bad.

Posted by jefe101 2010-03-30 05:31|| 2010-03-30 05:31|| Front Page Top

#8 Is it possible for your face to remain intact after detinating 2+ kilos of TNT under your chin(on a vest presumably)? Posted by jefe101

Yes in fact it is. The head oftentimes pops off like a cork in a champaign bottle, landing a few meters away.

Posted by Besoeker 2010-03-30 06:18|| 2010-03-30 06:18|| Front Page Top

#9 What jefe trying to say Dave is that you over simplify. Why can't you understand that there are many different kind of Muslims---each with it's own reasons for killing infidels!!!

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2010-03-30 06:33|| 2010-03-30 06:33|| Front Page Top

#10 I have seen a couple of gruesome photos which speak to the effect Besoeker describes... The head and feet were intact. Everything else, get a sponge.

Posted by Free Radical 2010-03-30 06:36|| 2010-03-30 06:36|| Front Page Top

#11 The Russians have an incredible knack for getting into fights with people even more detestable than themselves, thus drawing otherwise undeserved sympathy from the civilized world.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2010-03-30 07:06|| 2010-03-30 07:06|| Front Page Top

#12 Special teaching point: Cycle of ethnic hate fully explained in cmnts #4 and #6. This material is testable.

Posted by Besoeker 2010-03-30 07:11|| 2010-03-30 07:11|| Front Page Top

#13 During the Second Chechen War you lost est. 25k to 200,k Chechen dead. You might be a little pissed.

Good one.

"He wasn't northern Caucasian...

"Okay, he was but he has every right to commit and act of terrorism."

Helluva spread in the war dead statistics, too.

You'd think you'd might find 250k graves, mass or otherwise.

Chechen war dead has been inflated for a long, long time. Seems the Chechen cause is inflated in self importance as well.

Seems all it takes is several undefended citizens to make a cause just.

I wonder what Colonel Budinov would say about all this?

Posted by badanov 2010-03-30 07:42|| http://www.freefirezone.org 2010-03-30 07:42|| Front Page Top

#14 The Russians think that the Chechens are evil bastards.

The Chechens think that the Russians are evil bastards.

I must say I can't find fault with either position.

Posted by Steve White 2010-03-30 07:54|| 2010-03-30 07:54|| Front Page Top

#15 The Chechens lost every scrap of sympathy I had for them after Beslan - and I did have some; NPR was always banging on and on about them, the poor, pitiful ethnics being picked on (snf!) by the central government.
Now when it comes to Russians and Chechens, I'm wondering if there is a way they both can lose...

Posted by Sgt. Mom 2010-03-30 08:53|| http://www.celiahayes.com 2010-03-30 08:53|| Front Page Top

#16 After reading what Jefe101 said, I would agree that local/ancestral issues very much domninate the russian/chechen conflict. Islam comes into play because it does not have the "forgive your enemy/pray for your enemies" option that Christianity promotes. Martin Luther King mostly succeeded because he explicitly BANKED on that option within the largely Christian white American majority. The current black leadership denies it exists because they need the conflict to create the need for their positions.

Communism doesn't have that option either, and would leverage any such option as weakness, just as Islam does, so "fight it out" both sides must....

Posted by Ptah 2010-03-30 08:56|| http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org 2010-03-30 08:56|| Front Page Top

#17 I've been following this bunch on and off since Djokar Dudaev. They lost me when Shamil hit the maternity hospital. Nord-Ost was disgusting. And there's a special place in hell for the people who devastated Beslan.

What used to be the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Region is now Chechnya and Ingushetia because one of the two groups is genetically nutz. That fact that they're in alliance with al-Qaeda doesn't change anything but the odor.

Will the Russers flatten Grozny again? I don't particularly care if they do. I don't like the Russians generically but they're best friends compared to what I feel for the Chechens.

I occasionally dwell on the symbolism of the fact that "grozny" is Russian for "terrible."

Posted by Fred 2010-03-30 11:33|| 2010-03-30 11:33|| Front Page Top

#18 Jefe's narrative has a few gaps. First, the West, especially European human rights activists including prominent French politicians, throughout the pre-Putin era castigated Russia's unbelievably brutal handling of the Chechen rebellion. When Putin began assassinating journalists who'd reported on Chechnya, and after Putin attained a degree of quiet in the region, the western protestors called it quits.

Second, the nationalist Chechen rebellion became islamicized in the last decade with the arrival of arab islamist fighters, many of them funded by the same Saudis who financed Al Qaeda. It's no longer about nationality or territory. It is now part of the same struggle that animates the Taliban and AQ.

The Russians have made many errors, and their methods shouldn't be our methods. But we should be on their side in this one.

Posted by lex 2010-03-30 11:34|| 2010-03-30 11:34|| Front Page Top

#19 Russia has always been a split personality. Part Asian, part European. Lately, if memory serves, there has been a push towards the Asian side to differentiate themselves after the Cold War and all that. i wonder if that will change towards Europe if the Caucasus continue to broil.

Personally I think if Russia used diplomacy instead of thuggish tactics they could become the big-brother, defacto leader of the Europeans.

Posted by rjschwarz 2010-03-30 12:32|| 2010-03-30 12:32|| Front Page Top

#20 That would be possible if the pro-western, well-educated, relatively honest and transparent Russian liberals like Nemtsov and Kasparov were ever to attain power. But Russian liberals are weak, small in number, hopelessly fragmented and quarreling. Putin crushes them with ease.

Putin is essentially a gangster-bandit. He doesn't give a damn about national greatness or any other national interest. It's about his loot, which numbers in the tens of billions.

Posted by lex 2010-03-30 13:32|| 2010-03-30 13:32|| Front Page Top

#21 Here's my understanding of some of this. Some years ago the Russians loaded a quarter of the Chechen men into trains one day and carted them off to Siberia like cattle. Many died along the way. If this is true, I can understand the animosity.

These days, there are many womenfolk around with no related men to vouch for their virginity, and are therefore "useless". They make great fodder for those looking for suicide bombers because they believe as a martyr they will head straight to heaven as the first wife of a 72-woman harem, a place otherwise unattainable.

I don't know why there are so many women around with no male relatives. Is it because of recent fighting?

Posted by gorb 2010-03-30 13:44|| 2010-03-30 13:44|| Front Page Top

#22 This goes way back before Stalin's time, to the 19c Romanov czars' time. The Russians have been fighting islamic warlords for centuries. Tolstoy's greatest short story/novella, "Hadji Murat", details one of the caucasian/chechen warlords' struggles against the Russians in the mid-19c.

Posted by lex 2010-03-30 14:28|| 2010-03-30 14:28|| Front Page Top

#23 The book on Chechnya I read said that Stalin transplanted nearly the entire population of Chechnya to Khazakstan (how is that even possible?) and that under Gorbichev or Yeltsin they were allowed to return.

Also a large number of veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan were Chechnyans. So they were exposed to Jihadist thought and trained in various military techniques. Then eventually when the independence movement started the Russians decided to send in Draftees against these Chechnyan vets. The victory that resulted created a lot of momentum amung Chechnyan nationalists.

Posted by rjschwarz 2010-03-30 16:02|| 2010-03-30 16:02|| Front Page Top

#24 Of course they also worked with Kim Jung Ill, but Team America put an end to that thankfully.

Posted by rjschwarz 2010-03-30 16:03|| 2010-03-30 16:03|| Front Page Top

#25 I've been following this bunch on and off since Djokar Dudaev. They lost me when Shamil hit the maternity hospital. Nord-Ost was disgusting. And there's a special place in hell for the people who devastated Beslan.

What used to be the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Region is now Chechnya and Ingushetia because one of the two groups is genetically nutz. That fact that they're in alliance with al-Qaeda doesn't change anything but the odor.

Will the Russers flatten Grozny again? I don't particularly care if they do. I don't like the Russians generically but they're best friends compared to what I feel for the Chechens.

I occasionally dwell on the symbolism of the fact that "grozny" is Russian for "terrible."

Now I remember why I read this site.

Posted by Shipman 2010-03-30 17:29|| 2010-03-30 17:29|| Front Page Top

#26 Anybody who fought the Nazis is good guy in my book. Anybody who fights Islam is good guy in my book.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2010-03-30 19:15|| 2010-03-30 19:15|| Front Page Top

#27 Y'all prompt me to ask, Did the Nazis have anything to do with the Muslims?

Or were they on the Nazi's "Kill'em all" list?

Posted by Redneck Jim 2010-03-30 21:52|| 2010-03-30 21:52|| Front Page Top

#28 Nazis supported the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Yassir Arafat's great uncle or somesuch) and some of the Pashas in Iraq.

Amin Al Husseini is founder and President of the World Islamic Congress, and he meet with Heinrich Himmler, and supported the SS.

Pictures here

Does that answer your question about where the Nazis stood on Islam - and what Islam got fromt he Nazis?

Posted by OldSpook 2010-03-30 22:25|| 2010-03-30 22:25|| Front Page Top

#29 RJ, Muslims were enthusiastic supporters of Nazism. Hitler formed some SS units exclusively from Bosnian muslims, they were among his most fanatical troops. Bonus trivia: the word Iran comes from the same root as Aryan, a literal translation of Iran is "land of the Aryans".

Posted by Scooter McGruder 2010-03-30 22:44|| 2010-03-30 22:44|| Front Page Top

#30 The Nazis also had a nicely murderous Muslim unit of Bosnians, if I recall correctly. You do want to google that, Redneck Jim, before you quote me.

Posted by trailing wife 2010-03-30 22:48|| 2010-03-30 22:48|| Front Page Top

#31 Scooter beat me to it, and is more right. Well done!

Posted by trailing wife 2010-03-30 23:55|| 2010-03-30 23:55|| Front Page Top

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