Word: chechnya
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Once again the mountains of the Caucasus are the backdrop to scenes of violence, cruelty and suffering. The Russian government last week warned all civilians in Grozny, the capital of the breakaway republic of Chechnya, that they must leave the city in a days or be killed when the city is destroyed in an apocalyptic artillery barrage and bombing. This is a particularly cavalier escalation of a war which has already been very punishing for Chechen civilians...
...closer examination of the conflict quashes the popular predilection for bestowing states on oppressed minorities, yet it also casts doubt on the viability of continued rule. If nothing else the war in Chechnya is a lesson in the complexities and lack of real solutions to ethnic conflict, and a rebuke to the advocates of easy answers...
...using military might to mercilessly pound the Chechen countryside wherever rebels might be hiding; paving the way for Russian ground troops. Since rebels often hide in villages, civilians have suffered greatly as a result of Russia's new casualty minimizing strategy. As the Russian army moves deeper into Chechnya, it leaves a swath of devastated villages, home to maimed and wounded civilians who receive little assistance because Russia has not allowed international aid agencies to operate in the area...
...should not be surprising that Chechens would be up in arms following this kind of treatment. But their suffering at the hands of Russia extends back much further. Chechnya only became part of Russia after 19th-century wars. During World War II, Stalin was suspicious of their loyalty, and deported almost the entire nation to Central Asia in cattle trucks, a journey which perhaps a third of them did not survive. Unsurprisingly, they declared themselves independent as many minorities in the fomer U.S.S.R. did, starting the first Chechen war, from which they emerged with a limited form of autonomy...
Sometimes it is: McCain will often fill his travel time with animated discussions about global hot spots from Chechnya to China. When a local New Hampshire pol asked him a question about Lebanon last month, he unfurled a lengthy answer that included a consideration of whether Syrian President Hafez Assad will be succeeded by his son Bashar or his brother Rifaat. While McCain swipes at Bush's reliance on foreign-policy gurus--"When there is a crisis," he says, "I won't have to consult advisers"--he talks shop with many members of the foreign-policy firmament, including Jeane Kirkpatrick...