Word: wars
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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 of mounting casualties, the political logic of the war may require that once the battle for Grozny has begun, Moscow must see it through...
...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...
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...
...easy solutions. We must be wary of sliding into the classic response of seeing an oppressed minority and leaping forward, enthusiastic they they should have their own state. Nor should we relax, confident that Russia's 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...
...deal with Syria, first mooted by slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, involves returning the Golan to Syria, but as a demilitarized zone monitored by the U.S. or some other international authority. A deal that treats any movement of Syrian military hardware into that zone as an act of war may be acceptable to Israel's generals. Of course, many Israelis are loath to trust their Arab neighbors, and would just as soon hang on to all the real estate they can. But Barak holds a trump card: Israel continues to pay a heavy price in human life for its occupation...