Word: chechen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Andrew Meier: The Turkish authorities are saying the hijackers announced themselves as Chechens before taking over the cockpit and causing the plane to take a 1,000-foot drop. But we have to treat that information with caution, particularly in light of the experience of January 1996 in which a group of "Chechen" hijackers took over a ferryboat from Turkey. Once they surrendered, it turned out most weren't Chechen, but that six of the nine were actually Turks. They were sentenced to eight years, but all later escaped. There were reports at the time that they might have been...
...Still, it's probably safe to say the hijackers are Chechen sympathizers, as the ferryboat hijackers were in 1996. There is a strong and passionate Chechen diaspora community in Turkey, which has often caused problems for the Turks before. It's not exactly a mutual admiration society, even though Istanbul is probably one of the largest centers of the Chechen diaspora, the other major one being Jordan...
...probably an indicator of how Chechens and their supporters are feeling right now at a time when, as in 1996, the Russians may be deluding themselves but feel they have the upper hand in Grozny, the Chechen capital. You could draw the parallel that at the time of both hijackings, there was not a lot of good news for Chechens coming out of Chechnya...
...Even if they have their own difficulties with Washington, of course, China and India may also have many reasons to keep Russia at arm's length. And dabbling in Iran and Iraq also has the potential to blow up in the face of a Russian leader whose Chechen enemies have a far greater emotional claim on the good offices of Islamic countries. Still, Moscow has unleashed a flurry of moves on the geopolitical chessboard. And whoever ends up calling the shots in the White House will have his work cut out for him. Washington's geopolitical free ride...
This approach has usually worked. Putin has also quite often denied knowledge of an embarrassing event or subtly hinted that it was the responsibility of subordinates. He did this in February, when Radio Liberty journalist Andrei Babitsky was handed over by security services to spurious Chechen guerrillas. In June, when Gusinsky was arrested, Putin told a press conference in Germany that he had been unable to find out why Gusinsky was in prison: he had not been able to phone the prosecutor general. Today Chechnya, once Putin's abiding policy passion, is rarely mentioned now that the military effort there...