Russian mistakes or Western Chechnia

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Dec 9, 2006 at 19:19

Dear Concerned European , you wrote :

"Chechnia is a special case. The situation perhaps had not exacerbated so much there, if Russians hadn't handled the Chechen issue so clumsily in the beginning."

You mean if Yelzin had not supported Dudayev at the beginning to get rid with his help of the Supreme Soviet of the Ingush-Chechen Republic in September 1991 and if he had not allowed the arms of the North Caucasus Military District (one of the most important military arsenals in the former Soviet Union due to its strategic location near the frontier with Turkey) to be robbed by the Chechen bandits headed by general Dudayev ; and if at the very outset of the Chechen affair some ways and means had been contrived to stop the influx of Saudi money , mercenaries and Wahhabi preachers ... ? But all of it it did happen and thus the hydra of Chechen Moslem terror was set at large and grew exponentially . The Russians saw the dire consequences of the mistakes Yeltzin had made but the price they had to pay then for Yeltzin's perverse and erratic policy was very high. Mineralnye Vody (1994) , Budyonovsk(1995), Kizlyar (1996) ought to be remebered as places of some of the most appalling acts of Moslem Chechen thugs.

And yet with time something could be achieved and the worst mistakes could be corrected. In 1996 the Russians targeted Dudayev with a missile. In 2004 another Chechen "frighdom-fighter" was targeted. Yandarbyev , the former 'president ' and spiritual leader of Chechen terrorists who had fled to Qatar after the Russians had regained control in the region , was blown up in his own car on leaving Friday mosque service ...

Well, will the West ever learn anything from Russian mistakes ? Or will it prefer to rear its own Western Chechnia following Yeltzin's example which will explode in a generation or two - be it in France or Britain or wherever - as it happened in the Caucasus ?

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