BBC Analysis: Putin's permanent problem

[HuckleB]

Analysis: Putin's permanent problem

For more than four years now the word President Vladimir Putin has used about the situation in Chechnya is "normalisation".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3617782.stm

"He has reassured the Russian public that the conflict is virtually over, that his uncompromising tactic of no negotiations with pro-independence Chechen leaders has worked and that he needs no international presence in the troubled republic.

Although the Russian president maintains that this is an international problem - that Chechnya has become a front in the worldwide "war on terror" - he constantly rejects calls for a greater role for the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe there.

That claim was badly damaged by the seizure of the theatre by Chechen gunmen in Moscow in October 2002, when more than 129 theatregoers who had come to watch the Nord-Ost musical died. It was further hurt by the assassination earlier this year of pro-Moscow Chechen leader Akhmad Kadyrov.

Now "normalisation" lies in pieces as Mr Putin is facing the worst week of terrorism in his entire presidency. It looks increasingly likely that the destruction of two passenger planes over southern Russia last week was the work of Chechen suicide bombers.

..."

[el_gato]

1. Classic David and Goliath situation

Russian troops have been murdering Chechens for quite a while now.
If the claims about the passenger planes are true then it is a case
what goes around comes around.

[russian33]

2. That's a bit harsh, don't you think?

I wouldn't want someone to say that in regards to 9/11

[el_gato]

4. No it is not harsh at all

Terror begets terror and nobody is an exception to that rule.

[HuckleB]

3. "Putin points finger in wrong direction" -- another dirty war wounds many

Putin points the finger in the wrong direction

Despite President Vladimir Putin's assertions to the contrary, Russia's latest wave of terror attacks has little, if anything, to do with al-Qaeda. But it has everything to do with Mr Putin's disastrous policy in the north Caucasus
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3150096

"...

Though the identities of the bombers suggest the recent attacks have much to do with Russia’s policy in Chechnya and little to do with global terrorism, the leaders of France and Germany had nevertheless been warmly supportive of Mr Putin when they joined him for a press conference on Tuesday, hours before the metro bombing. “In Chechnya, a political solution is essential,” said President Jacques Chirac. “That is what Russia is striving for. It is completely open to any discussions about a political solution.”

Yet whether or not any al-Qaeda connection exists, the overriding cause of the latest attacks is that Russia has failed to find, and indeed has avoided looking for, a political solution. Unable, like his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, to quash the separatist conflict in Chechnya by military force, Mr Putin had tried to isolate it by appointing as regional president a local strongman, Akhmad Kadyrov, who tried to impose control with his own home-grown militia. That policy foundered when Mr Kadyrov was assassinated in May (possibly by the rebels, possibly not), while the conflict has splintered into a many-sided power struggle between the Kadyrov militia, rebel groups and federal forces, and factions within these. Mr Putin’s meeting with the French and German leaders came two days after an election for a new Chechen president, which, as expected, was won by Mr Putin’s candidate, Alu Alkhanov. Equally predictably, the election was denounced by local journalists and human-rights watchers, who documented widespread ballot-stuffing and fraud.

The carte blanche given to Russian security forces to abduct, torture and kill young Chechen men suspected of rebel ties spawned the “black widow” phenomenon; and it is no longer confined to Chechnya. Ingushetia, which used to be fairly free of the arbitrary kidnappings that are common in Chechnya, has suffered at least 50 of them since the start of 2003, according to Memorial, a human-rights group. One Ingush local official, Galina Gubina, after surviving a car-bomb attack in May, said there had been 25 kidnappings in the previous three months.

Incompetence and corruption have rendered the security forces incapable of tackling the rebels. In June, an all-night raid by Chechen rebels in Ingushetia claimed dozens of lives. The terrorists apparently bribed their way through a series of checkpoints, and according to a foreign aid-agency official in Nazran, federal troops based nearby mysteriously failed to come to the aid of besieged local Ingush forces until about ten hours after the attackers had melted away. A raid in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, a week before the presidential election, had similarly devastating results. Indeed, most of the victims of the 2002 theatre siege and the 1995 hospital siege died as a result of the security forces’ botched attempts to rescue them.


..."


I can't help but compare what Russia has done to many in Chechnya as similar to what occurred in Argentina in the late '70s, though as a percentage of the population and in terms of brutality, Russia has gone far beyond the ugliness performed by the Argentinian dictatorship.

And yet the world remains silent.

[bemildred]

5. Completely unnecessary too, this business was all settled

in the 90s and then they had to try to subjugate the Chechens
again. And a very clumsy and bloody job they have made of it too.
Payback is a bitch. I like Pooty-Poot in a lot of ways, but
he's been a real bonehead about Chechnya.