Friday's bloody end to the hostage crisis at a school in the southern Russian town in Beslan came on the heels of a suicide bomb attack in central Moscow and the blowing up, in mid-air, of two Russian passenger planes. All these attacks have been linked to the ongoing rebellion in Chechnya. If anything, the string of terrorist attacks in Russia this past week have given the lie to President Putin's proclamation that the breakaway republic has been "pacified".

The taking of civilian hostages has been part and parcel of the Chechen rebels' combat strategy ever since the first Chechen War started in 1994. Both in 1995 and 1996, Chechen militants held hundreds of civilians hostage in high-profile actions in southern Russia. In return for the release of the hostages, then President Boris Yeltsin chose to grant free passage to the hostage-takers. His successor, Vladimir Putin, has opted for a different approach.

After rebel leader Shamil Basayev and his men invaded Dagestan in 1999, Vladimir Putin – an unknown quantity at the time – projected himself as a hardline leader, launching the second Chechen War in his capacity as prime minister. Less than six months later, President Yeltsin named him as his successor.

Ignoring reality

In his inaugural speech, President Putin vowed to quash the rebellion once and for all within half a year. When that didn't materialise, he ordered the FSB secret service (the successor agency to the Soviet KGB) to "normalise" the situation in Chechnya. Refugees were forced to return to the ruins of their towns and villages, where they had to survive without work, amid rampant crime, corruption and violence, left at the mercy of the Russian military on the one hand and armed Chechen gangs on the other.

The Kremlin then appointed local administrators in Chechnya, ignoring the total lack of security on the ground. As Russian television kept silent about the grim reality in the breakaway republic, only a few critical newspaper readers were aware of what was really happening.

New scapegoat

The September 11 attacks by al-Qaeda gave Vladimir Putin the opportunity to put the blame for the failed pacification of Chechnya at the feet of "global terrorism". The Kremlin was quick to show understanding for what Americans were going through. After all, Russia had experienced a similar tragedy in 1999 when a series of explosions destroyed a number of apartment blocks. Incidentally, it's never become entirely clear who was behind these attacks.

President Putin was partly right: as of 2001, an increasing number of reports have come in pointing to the growing presence of Wahhabite Islamic militants inside Chechnya. Human rights organisations reported the existence of training camps, where a new generation of Chechen warriors embraced a much more hardline form of Islam. They grew beards and favoured a ban of the use of alcohol as well as the introduction of the Islamic code of Sharia. This new crop – many of them relatives of murdered or missing Chechens, according to representatives of human rights groups - soon filled the ranks of the rebel forces fighting the Russian troops in Chechnya.

Martyrs and black widows

Shamil Basayev struck again in 2002, this time in Moscow, where his heavily armed men entered a theatre and held 800 people hostage. A novelty in this attack was the presence of female hostage takers known as "Black Widows", wives and sisters of killed Chechens. The three-day siege was ended by Russian security forces in a rescue operation that left 129 dead. Again, the Kremlin had refused to enter into serious negotiations.

Moscow put its own men in power not only in Chechnya, but also in neighbouring Ingushetia, where the widely popular President Ruslan Aushev was forced to make way for the pro-Kremlin Murat Zyazikov, an FSB major-general who was little known in the republic. Under the leadership of Mr Aushev, the man who secured the release of 26 women and children in the latest hostage crisis at a school in the town of Beslan, Ingushetia had managed to stay out of the Chechen conflict, despite the presence of tens of thousands of Chechen refugees inside its borders.

Only last June, armed Chechen and Ingush warriors, calling themselves the Islamic Brigade of Shaheeds (martyrs), crossed into Ingushetia. For an entire night, the 570-strong group, sent by former Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, took control of the capital Nazran, killing pro-Russian officials and seizing large quantities of weapons.

The recent string of attacks has shown that Chechen terrorism is more alive than ever before. And still, the Kremlin has no answer other than to point the accusing finger at the scourge of "global terrorism" - this is a dead-end road that can only lead to more violence.

(Source: rnw.nl)

It seems if Putin is going to continue this violence for violence attitude there will be no conclusion.

President Bush strikes me as this kind of person also. He seems very vindictive in speeches he gives in regaurds to this subject matter. That is not an endearing quality to have as a leader. It tends to cloud judgement.

what does it take for you people? All those children were massacred and you STILL think that by singing "Kumbaya" the terrorists will go away. They won't. They want us to die. Like the aliens in "Independence Day", they want us to die in the name of Islam.

For those of you who STILL don't realize this, there's no point in me talking to you.

That may or may not be the case (I think that such a judgment may apply to some individuals, but not to many others). But I think the point that most intelligent people are able to grasp is that by invading regions wholesale in an attempt to 'wipe out' terrorism, one only provides fuel for the (generic) terrorist's cause among the resident population. Believe it or not, most people on this planet are more interested in making ends meet than in risking themselves in all-out war.

The rhetoric you espouse in this thread (and in others) merely provides evidence that you are indeed a voltaile threat to people of the Islamic faith, one that may need to be fought against to negate. From what I gather of you DBear, you are what you despise. Do you see how inneffective and futile the 'kill them before they kill us' mentality is?

[ 09-05-2004, 03:51 AM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]