Last week, the brutal war in Chechnya reached anew nadir of barbarity when Chechen fighters seized 700 hostages in aMoscow theatre. Bungled efforts by Russian security forces to gas theattackers caused the deaths of 118 hostages.
About 50 unconscious Chechens were summarilyexecuted. Russia has come under heavy international criticism forusing a modified anesthetic, Fentanyl, against the assailants. YetRussian security forces were right to use an opiate gas in ahostage-taking where the attackers were ready to detonate powerfulexplosives and kill all 700 captives. Tragically, the operation wasbadly executed. Worse, security forces refused to tell hospitals whatgas they had used.
One fascinating reason for trying to keep the gassecret: In 1988, a C-130 carrying President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistanwas sabotaged by a still mysterious gas. The aircraft went out ofcontrol and crashed, killing Zia -who was primarily responsible fordefeating the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The Soviet KGB, which often employed chemicalweapons, remains the prime suspect in the assassination. The samepotent Fentanyl derivative may have been used to quickly render theair crew and passengers unconscious.
There is no excuse for taking civilians hostage.The Moscow outrage was an act of terrorism, as Russia insists. But itwas a smaller act of terror within a greater one: Moscow's ongoingwar to crush the Chechen independence movement, an inconvenient causeignored by the outside world. The hostage-taking in Moscow was adesperate act by desperate people without voice or hope.
The Chechen, a Muslim people of the CaucasusMountains, have fiercely battled Russian occupation for 300 years. Inhidden genocide during the 1940s, Stalin had thousands of Chechenshot and 500,000 (half the population) sent in cattle cars to frigidCentral Asian concentration camps, where 25% died.
Survivors of Stalin's gulag filtered back toChechnya in the 1960s.
Oil pipelines
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Chechnya,led by Gen. Jhokar Dudayev, declared independence. While Moscowallowed other republics independence, Chechen were denied freedombecause of important oil pipelines that ran through their territoryand Kremlin fears other Muslim peoples of the Caucasus would seekindependence. In 1994, Boris Yeltsin ordered an invasion of breakawayChechnya. Much of the cost of the war was financed by the UnitedStates, which sought to support Yeltsin against his domesticpolitical enemies. President Bill Clinton even called Yeltsin"Russia's Abraham Lincoln." In a near military miracle, lightly-armedChechen fighters defeated and drove out the Russian army, but atappalling cost. Russia razed the Chechen capital, Grozny, and killedan estimated 100,000 civilians. President Dudayev was assassinated bythe Russians, thanks to secret electronic equipment supplied to theKGB by the U.S.
In 1996, Russia granted Chechnya de factorecognition and promised a referendum within five years to decide itsfuture. Chechnya seemed free. But in 1999, in an eerie harbinger ofthe 9/11 attacks on the U.S., a series of mysterious explosionsdestroyed apartment buildings in Russia, killing 300 people.Then-prime minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, blamed"Islamic terrorist" Chechens "linked to bin Laden." Russia was sweptby nationalist fury and anti-Chechen hatred.
When a FSB (formerly KGB) team was caught plantingbombs in another building, and a KGB officer blamed the bombings onthe war party in Moscow, the news was hushed up. Putin becamepresident, almost by acclamation, and promptly ordered anotherinvasion of Chechnya.
In the second Chechen war, 60,000 civilians haveso far died in Russian shelling and bombing, according to Chechensources; 170,000 are refugees. The tiny nation has been shattered,covered with mines, and turned into a nightmare free-fire zone for80,000 badly disciplined, often drunken Russian soldiers and InteriorMinistry troops, who are paid special monthly bonuses to fight inChechnya.
In spite of massive firepower, includingdevastating fuel air explosives and carpet bombing, Russian forceshave failed to crush small bands of fierce Chechen mujahedin. In massroundups called zachistki, Russians seize all male Chechens over 16,routinely torture and, often, execute them. International rightsgroups accuse Moscow of widescale murder, torture, rape, and looting.
War in Chechnya has degenerated into a savagebattle of attrition, with atrocities and banditry committed by bothsides. Moscow conducts its brutal operations under a blanket ofsecrecy. Foreign and Russian journalists who try to report the uglytruth about this conflict are killed or silenced. Russia has lost anestimated 10,000 soldiers, 66% of their total losses in Afghanistan.
The George Bush administration has shamefullyadopted Moscow's propaganda line by branding the Chechen independencefighters "Islamic terrorists," the price of Kremlin support for itsanti-Islamic campaign. The Kremlin now claims the hostage-taking was"Russia's 9/11."
Not so. "Terrorism" is the only weapon the weakhave against the mighty. Russia could end "terrorism" by finallygiving Chechens the independence they have long sought and richlydeserve - and be well rid of this pointless bloodbath. If Americatruly cared about human rights, it would be encouraging Moscow to setthe Chechen free instead of turning a blind eye to what the rightsgroup, the International Helsinki Federation, calls a secondattempted genocide against this tortured, forgotten people.