Word: wars
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
Much of the suffering of this war has been caused by Russia's strategy. In the last war, poorly trained and demoralized conscripts were badly mauled by Chechen guerrillas. Now the Russians have decided to avoid direct fighting. Instead they are 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...
...Chechens innocent in these conflicts. In the last war some Chechen commanders were notorious for raiding Russian territory and taking villagers hostage, in one case even seizing a hospital and its patients...
...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...
...Chechnya's experience with autonomy dashes this romantic longing for independence. After Russia was badly mauled in the first Chechen war earlier this decade, the peace settlement gave Chechnya five years of autonomy before a referendum on independence. Despite the election of a moderate president, the country quickly descended into chaos as warlords carved out fiefdoms and law and order almost completely broke down. Foreign aid workers were captured, several were beheaded and the notorious Chechen mafia had a field day in the chaos...