#chechen wars

Women in Grozny, Chechnya

Chechen rebel unit moving south

"Many of the Chechen rebels who made it out of the capital, Grozny, are moving south toward the rugged mountains towards western Chechnya, where at least three-thousand of their comrades have fled and are concentrated in various villages. Senior Russian military officials say their forces will head south as soon as federal troops have seized Grozny, but the rebels insists they will continue to fight the Russians in a partisan campaign. Russian forces are raining bombs and shells on the villages inhabited by the rebels in western Chechnya.

This video shows one such group of Chechen rebels in the southern hills. The rebels insist the mountains allow them more mobility to wage a guerrilla war. The Russians have been bombarding the rebel-held Argun and Vedeno gorges, trying to dislodge the militants from their refuges on the forested inner slopes of the gorges. The gorges are key corridors through the mountains that shelter rebels and from which they can mount guerrilla attacks on the Russians. The Russians believe that rebel supplies are also coming through these gorges, some of them believed to be from Georgia, the only foreign country that borders on Chechnya. Russia thought it had crushed the Chechens after Grozny fell in 1995 during the first Chechen war. But the Chechens retreated to the mountains and went on fighting until they retook Grozny in 1996 and forced Russian forces to pull out of the territory. For more than a century, the Chechens have been fighting the Russians for their independence. And there is little sign that they will give up that struggle now."

2:06 into the video you can see Chechen bard Timur Mutsurayev in white, known for singing about the conflict in Chechnya as well as touching on Islamic themes - next to his comrade brandishing a large knife who says: "This is a weapon we saved for Putin personally. I bought it for 500(?) rubles at a market. Inshallah!"

(5th Feb 2000)

I presume this is an irate Russiaboo/communist mad about this post.

The answer is that the Ukrainians include indigenous Crimean Tatars who are predominantly Muslims. Stalin engaged in an ethnic cleansing/cultural genocide/forced population transfer of the Tatars similar to the Trail of Tears.