Getting Ugly in Russia
 

first 2 planes go down. then a suicide bomber takes out some people. now they have gone into a school, and taken as many as 400 hostages. 7 people are already dead. i honestly haven't been following the situation too closely, do any of you well informed cellar dwellars know what has been going on over there to cause this sudden spike in activity?

School under siege.

good God. They are saying they are prepared to kill fifty children for each one of their members killed. No wonder I am a nervous wreck. This is insane.

the 'election' in chechnya seems to be the trigger to remind the ruskies to go fuck themselves. Also appears to be a more covert faction than the more traditional rebel movement, lots of women suggests it might include the wives of guys killed/tortured/abducted during the occupation.

still sus about the planes though, I wouldn't rule out FSB involvement in that.

I read, on Salon I think, that they have ID'ed two women as Chechen, one on each of the blown planes. Theres speculation they are black widow terrorists, but not sure yet.

giving them names only lends them credibility. i prefer to call them what they are: worthless piles of human filth.

I don’t know if it gives them credibility, but it quickly identifies them as one of “those” wackos as opposed to some other wackos. It’s shorthand that’s so valued in the electronic information age. Makes for better sound bites. ;)

"giving them names only lends them credibility. i prefer to call them what they are: worthless piles of human filth."

If they had just risen from their beds one morning and decided on a whim to slaughter people wholesale I might, just might agree with that sentiment but they did not. I dont agree with the way they are waging their war but I can see how they have arrived at their decision. These are women whose menfolk have been killed by the power which dominates them. They are under occupation and their land has been devastated by Russia. Grozny has been levelled. Literally. Whne the Russians had finished their destructive rampage you could stand on one side of the city and more or less look to the other side unobstructed by buildings. The women who are known as the black Widows have sufffered loss on a huge scale. Many of them have lost multiple members of their families.

Does that make it right that they engage in terrorist attacks on civilians? That's a question to be argued. But to merely dismiss them as worthless filth is to deny the pain they have suffered at the hands of Russia. What is happening in Russia now is what happens to a country who imposes it's will violently upon people who consider themselves to be seperate and independant. Putin and his government are responsible for the chaos which has been unleashed upon the Russian people as much as they are responsible for the chaos they unleashed upon the Chechens

Anyone who wishes to know why these people are engaging in such a terrible and violent struggle might find this website interesting

A photo Essay from Chechnia Following the Progress of the Russian front

The Chechnya Page

it does not matter what happened previously. it doesn't matter if they lived the life of Riley or were shat upon daily. if your decision is to strap explosives to yourself and enter an area crowded with civilians... women and children and detonate your explosives killing these innocents - you are filth to be cast off or destroyed. to justify their actions in any way is foolishness.

if they were going after political figures or military troops i might, just might change my view slightly.

previous pain and suffering is irrelevant to the decision to blow up innocent men, women, and children. to say their pain in someway justifies their actions is just ridiculous. that is like the pedophile saying he did it because he was an abused child. you are responsible for your actions and decisions - no one else. acts of terrorism unleashed upon the civilian population are not acceptable ways of voicing your displeasure at a government.

Bullshit, there is absolutely no justification for this kind of senseless carnage. None! :mad:

Okay, these are obviously desperate people but this isn't the way to effect change, gain sympathy or even get any message across. Does this tactic ever work?

Any time concessions are made to terrorists, it works.

Well.....Those tactics can have an effect. For instance, the people of Russia may after several of these appalling attacks put pressure on their government to pull the troops out of Chechnya. I would imagine that whilst many Russians will take a "hold firm and dont give in to terrorists stance" many others will just want the terrorism to end and as such may pressurise their government to effect the changes which will lead to an end of the violence.

As to whether or not it is ever justified to kill women and children well I really dont see a staggering amount of space between their acts and the bombing of hiroshima. The only difference is that the bombs were dropped by a state and these people are acting on their own. The whole point of this is that it is a target which a) is manageable with minimal military equipment ( which of course the chechens have) and requires no standing army or fully functioning state machinery ( which they do not have) and B) given that attempts to negotiate their independance have been met with overwhelming force and macho posturing by the russian state, an attack against it's military would be dangerously ineffective. Instead they have chosen to attack the people themselves. Specifically in this case they are attacking the children. They obviously see this as the only way they can get to the Russian people and therefore the only way they can effect any kind of change.

Essentially, since the chechnens are not militarily capable of taking on the Russian army headon, there is nothing for the Russian state or it's people to gain from simpy pulling out their troops and leaving the chechens to get on with it. By making life intolerably violent and dangerous for the Russian people they change that completely. With people afraid their loved ones will become victims or that they themselves are personally at risk there is suddenly a hell of a lot to be gained by persuading the govermnent to pull out the troops. Why would they be willing to sacrifice many in order to keep hold of a devastated province ?

It isnt pretty, but it is the way wars were fought for most of the world's history. All that calmly marching up to each other and then swinging axes only held for the warriors. Warfare has always been brutal and the struggles between peoples have historically hurt civilians most. Standard practice in ancient and medieaval warfare was to devastate the surrounding area and starve it's people and maybe also take a bunch of them as slaves along with the rest of the plunder.

War as an honourable and governable action is the luxury of nationstates with armies and strong infrastructures. It is a luxury which Russia has chosen to put aside in it's treatment of the chechens because they do not see Chechnya as a nationstate. The Chechens do not have that luxury to put aside, they have been denied their statehood and their infrastructure has been devastated. Therefore the Chechens have to wage an altogether different kind of war. To make their lands carry such a heavy price that the Russian people become unwilling to continue paying it.

As far as I know none here have seen their homelands devastated and their loved ones slaughtered or tortured or simply "disappeared" Humans are humans and when pushed to the very limits of their despair and brutalised to such a degree then they begin to see the people who did that to them as somehow less worthy of their respect. They become the foreigner and the brutaliser. The human desire for vengeance is strong. It can drive people to wish to visit upon their enemy the torment and pain which was visited upon them. Hence I have some sympathy for the Black Widows. Not, I hasten to add that I see the hostage situation at the school as at all acceptable. But I believe it is possible to deplore someone's actions without ceasing to sympathise with their own distress.

As to the comparison with childmolestors. I dont think that holds. When the chechens attack civilians, they attack the heart of their enemy. The parents of those children are the people whose persuasion needs to be brought to bear on Putin's government. When a paedophile attacks a child and uses as his excuse that he was abused as a child then he is simply repeating blindly a pattern of abuse. What the chechen terrorists are doing is not blind. It is a conscious and thought out plan of attack at the nation which has caused it such turmoil and grief. A paedophile abuses a child to satisfy his urges and the identity of the child is usually irrelevant. The children in that school arenot just random children chosen to satisfy the selfish desires of individual people, they are Russian children, whose parents are seen as at least partly culpable for the situation in Chechnya.

After 9/11 the world went in to a state of shock. None of us could quite believe I think what had occurred. America in pain hit out in a strike that led it to Afghanistan and Iraq. Many people had vengeance on their lips and bombs were rained down upon Iraqi heads. Think of how much that atrocity affected America. Now imagine that the people who had done that were much much more powerful than America( almost impossible to imagine really ) Imagine that there 20 world trade centres, imagine New York flattened to rubble, it's people homeless refugees. Imagine an army tank on your street corner with your enemy seated in it pointing a gun at you. Imagine your children have missed the last 2 years of school. Your brother perhaps has disappeared along with one of your cousins. Your partner of however many years died in your arms. You have lost hope and the world does nothing to ease your pain. There is no coalition of the willing to stand at your side and facse the dangers with you, nor is their an international outpouring of grief for the lost.

It is easy for us to condemn. We in the west are primarily safe. The chances of being involved in a terrorist attack are so minimal as to make them almost not worth calculating. The hard thing to do is to get a grip on the human psychology which leads people in extremis to do appalling things in order to achieve their aims, or simply to assuage their grief filled need for vengeance. To dismiss the people who do this as inhuman is to deny the human condition, to deny the way we as humans are when we've been stripped back to our barest.

and if the russians fold due to these attacks they will once and for all prove themselves to be a feeble state unable to stand firm in the face of terrorist actions.

by your logic, let's imagine that the wives of the russians killed in this conflict started strapping bombs to themselves and going into chechen markets and schools. would you then argue that it is a logical and justified action? or would you condemn them as butchers?

striking out at civilian centers with terrorist method is the work of human filth. they deserve to be wiped from the earth. soldiers fighting other soldiers is unfortunate, but fair - the strongest win. (and that doesn't necessarily mean the side with the most bombs or people) sometimes civilians will be killed in these battles that is also unfortunate, but not the intentional goal of the action. strapping a bomb on a person and putting that person in the middle of a civilian center is bullshit. you can justify it with your love for the "cult of the victim" but it is still bullshit. we live in a "civilized" world (it is hard to say that with a straight face) that has decided there are rules of warfare. if one side of a war or conflict discards the rules what is to stop the other?

say putin sees enough russian civilians killed and gets big balls about it. what is to stop him from discarding the accepted rules of war, like his opponents did, and commence firebombing the city centers of chechnya one at a time. i mean, hell, why waste anymore good russian soldiers on the conflict. just wipe chechens right off the face of the earth until their leadeship decides they've had enough and surrenders. would that be ok with you? if putin sees that as the only viable option to ending the conflict, that would be ok wouldn't it?

dana i appreciate your compassion for those you see as downtrodden but you are obsessed with victimization. you justify anything they do with the same logic; "look what they have had to endure." bad shit happens. each individual is responsible for their actions. having some corpses in your family cannot justify the intentional targeting of civilians. those who strap bombs to themselves and target women and children are filth, worthy of a painful death.

Dana, this is the simplest redaction of the difference between taking hostages and bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When you take hostages, or engage in acts of terror, you are attempting to use the moral decency of your opponent as a weapon to hinder his actions. You are counting on an inequity of moral hindrance to make your actions effective.

“I am willing to kill children. You are not willing to let children die. Therefore, I have created a position of strength by exploiting your moral hinderance.”

If there is no moral hindrance on the part of your opponent, then they will not care that you kill their women and children; they will use their overpowering military might to crush you regardless of the costs. Any action which creates exploits a position of strength through the exploitation of the moral rectitude, compassion, charity, or love of your opponent cannot hold the moral high ground.

This is true in Chechnya. This is true in Gaza. This is true in Iraq. This is true in business, in law, in communities, and in families.

Bombing major cities in a time of war is a different act altogether. The essential task is not to use the compassion of your enemy against him, it is to remove his ability to wage war. When you level two of his major centers of economic strength, including shipping yards, armament factories, military bases, and yes, civilian populations that are working to support a war of aggression, your primary goal is to remove his ability to wage war.

There are many, many valid arguments to be made against our actions in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they are not equivalent acts with a terrorist group seizing hostages.

-sm

We went through another approach to this question a few years back.

Dana, what indignity would you suffer before you decided your best bet was to abduct a 5-year-old girl, aim a high-powered rifle at her head, and blow it completely off? What thought would make you pull that trigger?

It makes sense to me that Dana would support such terrorist actions. After all, she supports them on the part of the Palestinian people against the Jews, so why not on the part of the Chechans against the Russians?

"Giving in" to terrorists tells other filth that "Hey, it worked for them, it will work for us."

I've thought about what would happen if the US for example just laid waste to entire cities (like Najaf) in order to send the message of not to fuck with us, but then I realize that actions like that make us just as bad as the shitpiles we're fighting.

I think sm is completely right with his view on moral hindrance.

It all depends on whether you're willing to see the enemy as human. All too often, a war goes on long enough that one or both sides lose that perspective. Nothing dehumanizes one's enemies more than a thirst for vengeance.

This isn't a justification of the behavior of the people who commit atrocities, but it is a predictable outcome. Whoever creates the situation is culpable in addition to - not instead of - the perpetrator.

Well since we're all feeling uppity about 'human filth' and the like, maybe take a gander at what has been going on in Chechnya for getting on to a decade, the murders, torture, brutal pack rapes, the actions of the Russian army make Abu Ghraib look like a funpark, when you brutalize a people like that you shouldn't be too shocked when it comes back to bite you in the arse, hard.

If you're wondering why those pictures don't make the media, the last reporter I know of who tried got shot in the face by russian soldiers for his trouble, all his equipment strangely went missing too.

Media control is a funny thing and the illusions you can spin are powerful, in this, mighty Russia somehow, despite the facts of the matter is the 'victim'. Same applies with Israel.

I didn't say Russia was some innocent victim. I said that individuals who think walking into areas crowded with civilians with designs on blowing them up are filth. it doesn't matter if they are russian, chechen, or australian they would still be filth in my eyes.

The trouble is that I'm sitting here at my computer, several timezones away from all of this. I'm sure Russians are capable of atrocities and the Chechnyan's certainly deserve justice. But I don't know the full story from either side. What I do know is that holding children hostage is wrong.
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2004/WORLD/eu...ry.girl.ap.jpg
This little girl had nothing to do with what is happening in Chechnya. It is never ok to involve her in events like this. Her parents probably didn't have anything to do with it either. Thanks to the terrorists, I am on the side of the Russians. That is the thing I don't get. If you kill innocents like that it makes me want to stop you at all costs, not sympathise with you.

You know what else? I didn't bomb Hiroshima. As far as I know nobody that made that decision is in power in the United States today. Maybe we could stop having that flung in our faces sometime soon? That'd be swell.

"what is to stop him from discarding the accepted rules of war, like his opponents did, and commence firebombing the city centers of chechnya one at a time. "

Too late they already did something very similar.

Radar I do not support the actions of palestinian suicide bombers. I am a pacifist I believe in non violent approach wherever possible. I also however am able to seperate my abhorrence for the actions and take a look at both sides. Since so much of the media portrays these issues with scant regard for one side and airbrushing the other that leads me all to oftenhaving to put ( *smiles* having, of course merely referring to my own self imposed compulsion :P) the point of view of the unreported side in a conflict. The side whose suffering didnt make the world blink let alone act. When their suffering is so categorically ignored and their towns unfamiliar to us until they produce a suicide bomber, I feel in some ways there has been a crime of complicity perpetrated by the world community; a crime which has helped to create the envrionment these atrocities occur in. If I heard nothing in the media about the suffering of the Israeli bomb victims, if most of what I saw was arab propoganda which ignored the very real fears of the Israeli man on the street, glossing over every suicide bomb and reporting in detail every last assassinated Hamas leader's death;if i then came onto the cellar and found that many people seemed unwilling to accept a parity of culpability between the two sides, worse they were insisting on reducing the Israelis to less than human because of their methods, then I would likely find myself arguing their fears.

I do think there is a danger when we refuse to understand people. I dont condone what is happening in Russia, but we have to see this event in the context of a tapestry of other events. To do otherwise is to reduce our understanding of the gestalt and that can only lead to a society less capable of responding in the most effective way possible.

As to the school siege....This is clearly a step too far. It's many steps too far. Some things are of course morally repugnant to most civilised people and naturally I have a very low opinion of the people who are holding childer hostage. That however doesnt prevent me from trying to seek an understanding of what they are trying to achieve and why they have chosen such methodology. It's lazy to just dismiss them as lunatics or psycopaths or simply evil. It's laziness which leads ( imo) to a complacency of thought which is a weakening of actual defenses in society in favour of percieved defences.

It occurs to me I may not have made myself entirely clear in my first post. When I was talking about the Black Widows and disagreeing with Lookout, I was not referring to the school siege. We dont kow who is responsible for that. My own feeling is that it is not the Black Widow. It seems unlikely that women who have lost sons and husbands would focus their attention on babes in arms and mothers like themselves. It would be a real move away from their usual modus operandi. Might be them, but I doubt it. I have a real sympathy for these women. I have sympathy and empathy for what they have suffered. I am inclined to think this siege is being perpetrated by a much more extreme group within the Chechen fight back.

What a bunch of bullshit. It's revenge, pure and simple. "The human condition" is waxing poetic and serves no purpose, except at proper tea parties that have no connection to the real world. The obvious solution is to exterminate them, and end their silly games. Don't think for a moment the Russians can't do that. History has proven they are both capable and willing to exterminate millions, if they only perceive them to be a problem. :dead:

And that's the attitude (that of the Russians) which breeds this sort of thing.

"The obvious solution is to exterminate them, and end their silly games. Don't think for a moment the Russians can't do that. History has proven they are both capable and willing to exterminate millions, if they only perceive them to be a problem"

I think that pretty much says it all. Why strive for understanding which could lead to resolution when you can just exterminate the enemy ? An interesting moral highground

Moral high grounds get you killed. You can have the moral high ground, I'll take the AK74 and put flowers on your grave. Do you think you can tell these suicide bombers "There, there Dear, I feel your pain."? Be my guest and you will be feeling their pain. :p

No Bruce they arent looking for palliatives and they arent seeking words of comfort. What they want is a simple and achievable thing. They want their statehood, they want their population not to be terrorised year after year. If all we see is the terrorist and his bombbelts then we are not looking at the picture as a whole. We have to see what the struggle is and whether, at it's core it is a reasonable demand ( the unreasonable tactics employed in achieving that notwithstanding)

The Chechens have made reasonable demands of Russia and Russia has responded unreasonably. In response to this the Chechens again made reasonable demands. Russia again responded unreasonably. Now a small number of Chechen rebels have begun to act unreasonably.

Obviously if I was in any way involved with that situation, if I was for instance a Russian mother whose child was facing a second night of the siege I very much doubt I would be able to see the Chechen's point of view. Here many miles away i have the luxury of being able to take an objective look at the situation.

Interestingly, whilst there hasnt been a massive outcry ( that I know of) from the Russian people over their government's treatment of the Chechens, the Chechens themselves are staging protests to object to their rebels' treatment of Russian children.

i don't belong here in this thread because I am first and foremost a whimp who wants the approval of ALL the Cellar Dwellars--so, it is with great trepidation that I say this:

I have no idea what is going on in Chechenya (if I even spelled it right)--BUT! I know that it is wrong to threaten children. It is wrong to strike non-military targets. It wins you no sympathy for your cause; indeed, makes you look insane in the eyes of the world. It makes you look like a lunatic fringe. Nobody can relate to that.

The "Black Widows" (see Lookout, names eliminate a lot of descriptions) are seeking revenge, to kill civilians, kill women and children. They are no better than rabid animals and should be exterminated.
As for letting the rest of the Chechens break away, I think the Russians have made their position quite clear. And if Arizona tried it, they would get the same from Washington. :eyebrow:

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.

let me be perfectly clear dana. i mean absolutely crystal clear.

i don't give 2 fucks about what type of suffering a person who chooses to murder innocent women and children has endured in their lives. it is a decision to destroy the innocent. pure and simple. couching it in terms of they are trying "to achieve a goal" is morally repugnant.

and i haven't followed it too closely so feel free to give me an objective answer to this - aren't the russians fighting to keep a portion of their country from seceding?

A portion of what used to be the Soviet Republic but which considers itself seperate and was seperate before it was incorporated into Russia.

Dont get me wrong Lookout. On a personal level I abhor what is being done ( by both sides) however there is also a political analasys to be had as well as a moral one.

There is little doubt of Russia's guilt in their past treatment of Chechnya, but now the Chechens are losing the moral battle. As Lookout has said, you can never justify terrorism against civilian targets, no matter what has preceded it.

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.

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.

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. 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. :mad:

"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

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.

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.

Being killed is kind of absolute.

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

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

"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?

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?

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.

*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.

"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

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.

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.


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.

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.

say explosive and gun carrying rebels vs school children?


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.

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.

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.

Thankyou for illustrating, perfectly, my point. Both in moral absolutism and situational ignorance for that matter.

Are things really that straightforward for you? When do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? When total war is waged on you at what point are you obliged or forced to wage total war in return?

It's interesting, in the same breath, you seem to suggest that actions such as

are just routine efforts to keep the provinces under control and justifiable.

Maybe if
had happened to your sister, then your mother, you might start feeling differently about the wall of indifference eminating from moscow and the innocence of those who did nothing to stop or supported these actions in their name.

I'm not trying to justify this, I'm simply trying to give you a modicum of understanding of what is going on beyond simplistic moralisms for middle class americans.

It is interesting to me that the same people who denounce violent attacks on the innocent by non state sponsored group are the same people who will uphold the rights of the state to act to whatever degree of brutality is deemed necessary for the achievement of it's goals.

You seem to expect little or no restraint on the part of a state which imposes it's will on another state or which denies the cessation of a portion of what it considers to be it's own. Yet you expect a greater level of restraint on the part of a brutalised people in their attempts to rid themselves of an oppressor.

please point out to me in my words where i said that was justifiable.

do you operate soley as an intellectual to the point that you don't see that no matter what the situation is, targeting children is wrong - no matter who is doing it. you seem to be missing the fact that i am not condoning russia's behavior. i didn't say Russians are allowed to do XYZ but Chechens are not. i said anyone who targets innocent (not carrying weapons) civilians is filth. it doesn't matter their ideology.

yes i would feel more strongly about the situation but the entire world wouldn't devolve into shades of gray. there are some things that are just wrong no matter the context. targeting innocent women and children because you can't seem to defeat the military is wrong. end of story. it is the action of a bully no matter whether they are russian or chechen.

this is not about "simplistic moralisms". this is about one of the few absolutes that exist in our world. specific targeting of women and children to make a political point is wrong. you can talk about history, shades of gray, and moralism all you want - some things are just wrong.

wouldn't the needs of the many be for innocent people to quit blowing up while shopping? how many people benefit from that?

and from my limited understanding of the situation i don't think the russians were bored one day and invaded for the hell of it. didn't they send troops because of an attempt to secede from their nation?

Ignoring for a moment the techniques being used, do they have a right to independence from Russia?

The American revolution was all about gaining independence from England. Did we have a right to our independence, or were we wrong then? The Confederacy tried to gain its independence from the USA. They failed, but did they have a right to be free?

No, that's the point. You don't have a damn clue. It's complex, very and there is both the confusing and complicated movements since the collapse of the USSR and a long and interesting history before that as well.

While I can and do totally logic-only situational analysis this is more a case of putting yourself in the shoes of a mad as hell chechen mother or daughter that's seen everyone around her murdered brutally, hell hath no fury and all that. I'm not a fan of moral relativism and I don't want to let this get near metaethics but I don't feel you can simplify a situation this messy down to something so simple. You end up invading countries based on what your advisors feed you if you think like that. As far as I'm concerned moral absolutes are as much a red herring as the sacred nature of human life. Even if something is black in the middle it'll probably be grey around the edges.

Maybe they wouldn't be blown up while shopping if other people weren't being blown up while shopping as well. Bringing the flight to the enemy isn't exactly a new tactic.

This is biased and fairly poor but the best canned history I can find without listing an ISBN.
A little taste

That's going on my list of all time favourite quotes

Does anyone remember how India resisted occupation?

The first palestinian intafada used similar tactics, there are groups that protest nonviolently against the barrier daily, often met by violent force by the IDF. Don't see that on FOX do you?

so you're saying it doesn't work?

"Does anyone remember how India resisted occupation?"

India resisted or complied with occupation in various ways at various times. Ghandi and his followers were one strand of that, a non violent strand. The Chechens have non violent strands to their resistance also.

Depends on the circumstances. One could say 'not in this day and age', but then you'd be overlooking the Rose Revolution in Georgia but it's rare that it works and requires certain conditions which don't seem to be that common. Certainly doesn't work in the middle of a conflict that is already well established.

The very fact we all know so little about a conflict which has been raging for the best part of a decade shows how much interest the world has in hearing the Chechens. Why would peaceful resistance on their part make us more inclined to help them?