Word: russianness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This could be where it gets bloody, although by now the battle for Grozny may be mostly symbolic. Chechen forces repelled a Russian armored assault on the center of their besieged capital Wednesday, with the AP reporting that guerrilla fighters had killed a number of Russian troops and left a column of tanks and armored personnel carriers burning in the streets. Russia took heavy losses when it stormed Grozny in the 1994-1996 war, and the capital?s outnumbered and outgunned defenders are hoping to make the Russians pay a heavy price for taking the city. Despite the specter...
...Chechnya were to gain independence in this war, the devastation would be even worse and Russian aid even less forthcoming. Life for most people in Chechens would be nasty, brutish and short. The unfortunate fact is that the rule of a distant, incompetent and corrupt government is a better way to live than the war of all against all which would ensue in an independent, but devastated Chechnya...
...keeping Chechnya under Russian control is stricken with almost as many problems. The devastation the Russian army has left in its wake has done irreparable damage to any sort of legitimacy the Russian government might have had to rule the Chechens. Russia recently tried to organize a loyalist government--the only Chechen who would co-operate with them was a former mayor of Grozny in Russian prison following his conviction for embezzlement. In every shelled village, everyone who is killed or maimed leaves behind several family members who fiercely hate the Russian army and its rule...
Hopes that the U.S. could somehow influence Russian policy are equally naive. The war has proved exceedingly popular in Russia, and the only two politicians to oppose it are a catspaw of the Chechen mafia and Grigory Lavlinsky, the hopeless neo-liberal whose principled stand got him denounced as a traitor to the Russian cause. As the generals leading the war make veiled threats to politicians who might oppose the war, the talk of cutting off foreign aid and diplomatic pressure is an exercise in unreality. At present, the only U.S. policy that could bring real comfort to the Chechen...
...reconquest of the province will restore stability. The only sure consequence of this war is that Chechnya will be destabilized for years and possibly decades to come. Perhaps the West can serve a useful role when the fighting has ended in advising or reconstruction. Regardless, for the corpses of Russian conscripts and Chechen civilians mouldering amidst the harsh beauty of the Caucasus, this war has been worth very little...