From December 2002 "Byronica"

OUR FRIENDS, THE CHECHENS

Stella L. Jatras

     Finally some in the media are coming to the conclusion that Chechen "rebels" are not very nice people. Unfortunately, others - such as The Independent [London] of 25 October 2002, ("Russia pays price for its lie about winning the war") continue to paint Russia's war against the Chechens as a conflict which "equals anything seen in the Balkans for savagery," without mentioning the savagery perpetrated by Chechen "rebels."

     On 24 October, 50 Chechen gunmen stormed the Moscow theater, a Soviet-era House of Culture holding over 700 terrified hostages, among them three Americans. After the hostages were taken, no food was provided. To back up their demands that Russian troops leave Chechnya within seven days, the Chechen terrorists threatened to start shooting their captives until their demands were met. By the end of seven days, their threat was to blow up the theater with the remaining hostages. The attackers' leader, a nephew of the late Chechen warlord Arbi Barayev, said he and his Mujahideen gunmen and 20 Chechen women were suicide attackers who had come to Moscow, not to survive, but to die. The warlord stressed that nobody would get out of there alive and they and the hostages would die if any attempt was made to storm the building.

     Sadly, of the more than 700 hostages some 118 died, all but two from the effects of a fast-acting opiate used by Russian forces that was designed to knock out the Chechen terrorists before they could react to the assault. Unfortunately, many died as a result of their weakened condition from having been deprived of food and medical care during the three-day hostage crisis. All 50 Chechen terrorists were killed, including the chief hostage-taker Movsar Barayev.

     Russia is being criticized by many in the media for using such harsh tactics. One example of harsh criticisms come from The Independent [London] of 27 October 2002, in an article titled Massacre in Moscow, which headlined: "First they released the gas, then they targeted the women." These were the Chechen women terrorists whose husbands had died fighting and who had wrapped themselves with the explosives. Women or no, they had to be the first taken out before they could detonate their deadly cargo.

     At the conclusion of the operation, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "We couldn't save them all. Please forgive us." Were the critics of the Russian Moscow rescue mission as critical of President Clinton when nearly 80 men women and children met a fiery death at WACO in 1993?

     Those who criticize the Moscow rescue mission seem to have forgotten what occurred at the Branch Davidian compound at WACO, Texas, beginning on 28 February 1993 and ending on 19 April. Based on unfounded charges of child abuse and using questionable charges of firearm violations, the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) assaulted the compound, clearly motivated by the need to justify their existence before the next fiscal budget. The result after 51 days of the siege, 74 inhabitants were burned to death, including 22 children.

     David Koresh and his followers were members of what to many was an odd religious sect. However, they didn't deserve to die in a fiery holocaust at the hands of their own government. Not only did we use tanks against civilians at the Branch Davidian compound, we used massive amounts of CS gas. It was forbidden to be used by our troops in the Gulf War but was sanctioned by the Clinton administration to be used against American women and children. Furthermore, to unnerve those remaining in the compound, harsh measures were taken. For twenty four hours a day, loud playing of Tibetan chants, Christmas music and cries of rabbits being slaughtered was piped into the compound in order to make sleep impossible for those within.

     The difference between Moscow and WACO is that President Putin had a deadline and had to act quickly. President Clinton, on the other hand, did not. Had Moscow not acted when they did, all of the hostages would have died at the hands of the Chechen terrorists who threatened to blow up the entire building at the end of their seven day deadline. The Russians knew that time was of the essence in their decision, unlike WACO, where agents could have waited until Hell froze over. Their excuse at the time for the final assault was that the FBI and BATF agents were tired from the long shifts during the standoff. In a final display of arrogance, BATF agents hoisted their flag above the ashes of the compound to signify victory.

     For those who criticize the Russian rescue mission, it should be noted that more people were saved than died unlike WACO where none survived. The question, therefore, should be asked, "What would we have done under the same circumstances?" I hope we never have to find out.

     Some commentators understand the problem. "On Chechnya, U.S. is dumb and dumber," Jewish World Review columnist Don Feder wrote on January 4, 2000:

     The poor Chechens only want to be free - free to pursue their national pastime of kidnapping for ransom, run terrorist training camps, blow up Moscow apartment buildings and spread Islamic revolution to neighboring states.

     "In Chechnya, Russia is Fighting for Us, Too" Paul M. Weyrich and William S. Lind write that after decades of confrontation with the Soviet Union, Americans are accustomed to seeing Russia as an enemy: "When the Russian Army is fighting someone, we tend to identify with Russia's enemy. But in the case of Russia's war against Islamic terrorism in Chechnya, this would be a mistake. In fact, the Russia army in Chechnya is fighting for oppression of Islam." (Weyrich and Lind are associated with the Free Congress Foundation.)

     With Russia facing the same Osama bin Laden terrorists in Chechnya that we Americans face today, a more sensible perspective towards Russia should have prevailed. Chechens have been involved in blowing up Russian buildings in Moscow just as Islamic terrorists blew up the World Trade Center, not to mention its continued terrorizing of the American people. President Bush has declared to do "whatever it takes" to wipe out Islamic terrorists, even at the cost of innocent lives. Do not the Russians have that same right to defend themselves against these same Islamic terrorists who have been trained in Afghanistan?

    AP reported on 11 December 2001 that two Spanish businessmen held hostage in Georgia for more than a year said they were treated like animals by their masked kidnappers, deprived of food and tied together by the neck:

     "Looking pale and thin a day after their release in a special police operation near the border with Chechnya, Antonio Tremino and Francisco Rodrigues said Sunday that they had been in constant fear of being killed. They treated us badly, inhumane, unbearable conditions. Even animals shouldn't be treated that way."

     Evidence of Chechen fanaticism was cited in an AP report dated 16 June 2000: "A Muslim cleric was gunned down in Chechnya on Friday, hours after urging peace. Two Chechen police officers working for Russian authorities were also found beheaded." The AP report goes on to say, "Amid widespread lawlessness in Chechnya, it is not unusual to see severed heads displayed to instill fear in opponents. The killing was more evidence of Chechen rebels' determination to punish Chechens they view as traitors."

     Further evidence of Chechen fanaticism is cited in a report by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough of The Washington Times on 28 Jan 2000 when they quoted a report that circulated in the Pentagon highlighting the savagery of the 1994-95 war in Chechnya, where "Russian prisoners were decapitated and at night their heads were placed on stakes beside roads leading into the city." A Virginia Christian radio program announced that "the leader of the Grozny Baptist Church in the Chechen capital is reported to have been beheaded and his severed head displayed at a local market." On other occasions, they were the heads of Russian priests. "Bodies of Russian 'Slaves' Found in Chechnya" was reported by the Associated Press on 19 July 1996: "Authorities found the bodies of 10 Russian prisoners of war today who military officials say were used as slave laborers, then tortured and executed by Chechen rebels." There we go again with that word, "rebel."

     In 1995 Chechens took more than 1,000 hostages at a Russian maternity hospital in Dagestan and killed more than 300 people. The media's bias was apparent when the Chechens were again referred to as "rebels."

     On 24 May 1999, Alla Geifman, then twelve years old, was kidnapped by Chechen terrorists on her way home from school. As the Russian newspaper Kontinent, USA reports:

     A man wearing a police uniform approached her at the front of her house, and persuaded her to get into a fake police car that had tinted windows. After three days had passed, her parents received a phone call. The kidnappers demanded five million dollars ransom for the girl… In order to put more pressure on Alla's parents, her Chechen abductors cut off her ring and little finger from her left hand. They recorded this horrific act and sent it to her parents.

     Alla Geifman's father, a businessman from the provincial city of Saratov, expressed shock and dismay that the United States would reject his family's visa application for travel to the United States to get medical advice about their daughter's mutilated left hand. While in the country, Alla had hoped to tell America of the brutal treatment she received from her tormenters.

     Just as America moved West, Russia moved East. It should be noted that Grozny was founded as a Christian fortress in 1818 by Russian General A.P. Yermokov. It later evolved into a town in 1870 and by 1897, became the center of Russia's oil industry. Russia's conquering of those regions was no different to America's own frontier experience, when the United States subdued and conquered the Apaches and the Navajos by establishing forts, which later became settlements, town and cities, thereby giving us names such as Fort Collins and Fort Worth. Grozny's population in 1950 was 240,000, chiefly Russians.

     Even with Muslim snipers in the streets of America; even with Muslim terrorists bombing in Bali; even with the KLA's Islamic terrorists; even with Chechen terrorist found in Afghanistan and Kosovo; and even in the aftermath of September 11th, fomented by Saudi radicalism and all the other Islamic terrorism throughout the world, there is a mentality among many in the media who somehow refuse to believe that jihad is the reason all these things are happening.

     The Washington Post, in its editorial titled, "Chechnya in Moscow,"of 25 October, displays all that remains wrong with the entrenched Russophobic Beltway mindset:

     Even if they prove to be real, the hostage-takers' supposed links to other fanatical groups - and the Russian media's insistence already that "this is our Sept. 11" - should not be allowed to obscure the differences between America's war on terrorism and Russia's war against Chechnya is different because - unlike America's war on terrorism - it has a clear political solution. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, could begin negotiating with Mr. Maskhadov tomorrow and could end the war just as easily, if he could muster the political willpower. Paradoxically, ending the war would also make the fight against al Qaeda's terrorist network in Chechnya far easier. In the end, it is the Russian government's invasion -- with its systematic bombardment of civilians, its human rights violations and its mass executions -- that has created anarchy in Chechnya, so conducive to al Qaeda and its ilk.

     What is it about us, as characterized by The Washington Post editorial, that we feel compelled to always chose the wrong side in a conflict as we did in Bosnia and Kosovo? Do we have a death wish? Just as the media depicted the Kosovo Liberation Army mafia as "freedom fighters" throughout the civil war in Yugoslavia, they also characterize the Chechens as "rebels," and "freedom fighters," instead of what they are: Terrorists. Will we never learn?

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