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Fighting for independence intelligently
I just feel like wailing every time I read about the crimes that Russian military clique is committing in Chechnya. But you can’t help the Chechen people by wailing. So what needs to be done then? And can anything actually be done to stop the tragedy of that small yet freedom-loving nation?
These are the sad conclusions that my observations (and I travel across Russia a lot) have brought me to.
First, there is no so-called 'Russian nation' whatsoever. It merely does not exist. It is a myth that weak spineless people are cherishing, and which the authorities are strongly supporting.
So what is there instead? There is only the POPULATION, 95 percent of which are indifferent half-drunken slaves who have no genes of love for freedom at all. There is nothing that will lead these slaves out of that beastly state: they can be getting humiliated and killed, their pay can be withheld from them for months, - anything can be done to them. And there is nothing that they would be interested in except for their little apartments and minimum of cash for vodka and subsistence.
The rest 5 %, or about 4.5 % are greedy and immoral big businessmen and functionaries (fed by those very slaves), who are ready to do anything. Money is the only thing that they are interested in.
The rest half percent are psychos (in a good sense), idealists who are out in their own world (into their job, into art or into science), who are not interested in anything but their own world.
And finally, somewhere among these 0.5 percent there are about 0.05 % (not that much? Well, I’m an optimist) of concerned people, who DO CARE. They are the ones who listen carefully with anxiety to the reports from Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. They are the ones who go to protest rallies, and they are the ones who picket in front of the embassies… But what can they do even if all of them get together at the square all at the same time?
It’s been a few years since outright arrogant criminals, con artists and mobsters came to power in Russia. Today there are no more «mergers of criminal structures with the state structures», today there is one big gang called THE STATE, consisting of those 4.5 %.
It seems like there is not too many of them, but there are millions of slaves serving them, including the armed slaves, well-dressed and well-fed, greedy and PERSONALLY INTERESTED (which is the main thing!) in preservation of the status quo: this is why these slaves are surviving and feeding their families.
So what are Chechens supposed to do? And what does that small amount of concerned Russian citizens has to do? The mobsters who are in power possess missiles, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and a nuclear bomb after all. But what about us? And how many of us there are? But something still has to be done!!!
Well, first, the tactics of sabotage and terrorist acts on the Russian soil probably needs to be reconsidered. Attacks on civilian targets must be stopped, even though there were virtually not too many of them anyway. I can understand the feelings of Chechen mothers, whose children were killed by Russians; I can understand the feelings of fathers, whose daughters were raped by Russians. But I don’t think that blasts in Russia will get the situation seriously changed. In Spain, where ordinary people do care what happens to their neighbors, something can be achieved by doing that. But in Russia the situation is TOTALLY DIFFERENT, and so is the mentality. And 99.5 % of the population DO NOT GIVE A DAMN that someone was blown up somewhere!
They keep quiet even if they know that a half (if not more) of the blasts were carried out by their power structures (FSB/KGB, police and military intelligence). They will be quiet even if they are put against the wall, because, I repeat, they are riffraff.
(To those who have doubts I would like to recommend to watch the movie called 'Kill the Dragon' – it graphically shows: you can stick a fork into an ass of any slave and he will be thanking you!)
This is why the blasts (of course I don’t mean destroying tanks, APCs and military facilities and eliminating Russian soldiers), in my opinion, do not reach the goals that are being set, and are of little effect.
In my point of view, an effective intellectual and political component must be added to the military component, which the Chechen side is operating with when carrying out efficient combat and sabotage operations.
You should think about getting the Chechen Diaspora abroad (which has increased many times due to the migration over the past few years) involved in all sorts of political actions. You should start self-organizing into societies, committees, foundations, forums, cultural centers, etc. And you should be using the practice of mass addresses of Chechens to citizens and governments of democratic states more often. But they should be substantiated addresses, and not emotional ones. Western mass media should be used for that purpose. And you should closely cooperate with them.
For instance, broadscale educational work must be conducted and it must be explained when and under which circumstances Chechnya was really integrated into the Russian empire by force: that only in 1864 Chechnya was annexed by Russia after the Caucasus war, which was the longest war out of all wars that the Russian empire had conducted throughout its entire history and which was won because Russia greatly outnumbered Chechnya (which can also be seen today).
It is important, because not only in the West, but even in Russia 99 percent of the population really believe that Chechnya is a Russian land!
Every case of violence including sexual violence must be given publicity, and investigation by European institutions must be demanded. I know that the mentality of the Chechen people does not allow doing that, but you can’t keep quiet about it either because only when the facts are brought to the international community can you get the attention to the problem.
Reports about murders of Chechen children and elderly must be extensively publicized, because people are shy to be talking about it too. And at the same time figures must be quoted, for the West believes figures and not emotions.
The same information must also be spread among the Russian population: even though they will be taking no actions, but at least they will have less hatred towards Chechens, which the Russian government is provoking.
Because Russian journalists are presenting it as if Chechens are the ones committing all crimes.
Chechens need their own radio stations and TV channels abroad, which will be the mightiest means to expose Russian lies. Pictures and sounds are capable of doing what a bomb or a machinegun is not. Why there is not a single TV channel that would be releasing truthful information about the things going on in Chechnya? Although, there are quite a lot of rich people among the Chechens. Why would they not get together and organize a Chechen TV channel?
Sure, they shouldn’t be hoping for the international community or for political work too much: look what the Israeli soldiers are doing in Palestine, and nobody is really trying to stop them.
I am against blasts of civilian targets (and ordinary people first of all) in Russia. But there are no two ways about it (at least for Chechens) when economic, military and other facilities of the power structures and some auxiliary bases are targeted. War is war.
Everything must be working in combination. You have to improvise more, and the main thing is that you have to act. Action is everything. Even one person, who plans and implements these plans in practice, can be of great help.
P.S.: To honest Chechens who did not sell themselves out to Moscow's bandits and who will be reading my article:
Thank you! It's a little bit easier to be living when you know that there still are people out there for whom the words FREEDOM, HONOR and FAITH are meaningful! Your fight may not bring quick victory (due to outnumbering forces…), but your descendants will be free. There is no doubt about it.
Oleg Azovsky, Russia
Department of Correspondence,
Kavkaz-Center
http://www.kavkaz.org.uk/eng/article.php?id=2999
First, there is no so-called 'Russian nation' whatsoever. It merely does not exist. It is a myth that weak spineless people are cherishing, and which the authorities are strongly supporting.
So what is there instead? There is only the POPULATION, 95 percent of which are indifferent half-drunken slaves who have no genes of love for freedom at all. There is nothing that will lead these slaves out of that beastly state: they can be getting humiliated and killed, their pay can be withheld from them for months, - anything can be done to them. And there is nothing that they would be interested in except for their little apartments and minimum of cash for vodka and subsistence.
The rest 5 %, or about 4.5 % are greedy and immoral big businessmen and functionaries (fed by those very slaves), who are ready to do anything. Money is the only thing that they are interested in.
The rest half percent are psychos (in a good sense), idealists who are out in their own world (into their job, into art or into science), who are not interested in anything but their own world.
And finally, somewhere among these 0.5 percent there are about 0.05 % (not that much? Well, I’m an optimist) of concerned people, who DO CARE. They are the ones who listen carefully with anxiety to the reports from Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. They are the ones who go to protest rallies, and they are the ones who picket in front of the embassies… But what can they do even if all of them get together at the square all at the same time?
It’s been a few years since outright arrogant criminals, con artists and mobsters came to power in Russia. Today there are no more «mergers of criminal structures with the state structures», today there is one big gang called THE STATE, consisting of those 4.5 %.
It seems like there is not too many of them, but there are millions of slaves serving them, including the armed slaves, well-dressed and well-fed, greedy and PERSONALLY INTERESTED (which is the main thing!) in preservation of the status quo: this is why these slaves are surviving and feeding their families.
So what are Chechens supposed to do? And what does that small amount of concerned Russian citizens has to do? The mobsters who are in power possess missiles, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and a nuclear bomb after all. But what about us? And how many of us there are? But something still has to be done!!!
Well, first, the tactics of sabotage and terrorist acts on the Russian soil probably needs to be reconsidered. Attacks on civilian targets must be stopped, even though there were virtually not too many of them anyway. I can understand the feelings of Chechen mothers, whose children were killed by Russians; I can understand the feelings of fathers, whose daughters were raped by Russians. But I don’t think that blasts in Russia will get the situation seriously changed. In Spain, where ordinary people do care what happens to their neighbors, something can be achieved by doing that. But in Russia the situation is TOTALLY DIFFERENT, and so is the mentality. And 99.5 % of the population DO NOT GIVE A DAMN that someone was blown up somewhere!
They keep quiet even if they know that a half (if not more) of the blasts were carried out by their power structures (FSB/KGB, police and military intelligence). They will be quiet even if they are put against the wall, because, I repeat, they are riffraff.
(To those who have doubts I would like to recommend to watch the movie called 'Kill the Dragon' – it graphically shows: you can stick a fork into an ass of any slave and he will be thanking you!)
This is why the blasts (of course I don’t mean destroying tanks, APCs and military facilities and eliminating Russian soldiers), in my opinion, do not reach the goals that are being set, and are of little effect.
In my point of view, an effective intellectual and political component must be added to the military component, which the Chechen side is operating with when carrying out efficient combat and sabotage operations.
You should think about getting the Chechen Diaspora abroad (which has increased many times due to the migration over the past few years) involved in all sorts of political actions. You should start self-organizing into societies, committees, foundations, forums, cultural centers, etc. And you should be using the practice of mass addresses of Chechens to citizens and governments of democratic states more often. But they should be substantiated addresses, and not emotional ones. Western mass media should be used for that purpose. And you should closely cooperate with them.
For instance, broadscale educational work must be conducted and it must be explained when and under which circumstances Chechnya was really integrated into the Russian empire by force: that only in 1864 Chechnya was annexed by Russia after the Caucasus war, which was the longest war out of all wars that the Russian empire had conducted throughout its entire history and which was won because Russia greatly outnumbered Chechnya (which can also be seen today).
It is important, because not only in the West, but even in Russia 99 percent of the population really believe that Chechnya is a Russian land!
Every case of violence including sexual violence must be given publicity, and investigation by European institutions must be demanded. I know that the mentality of the Chechen people does not allow doing that, but you can’t keep quiet about it either because only when the facts are brought to the international community can you get the attention to the problem.
Reports about murders of Chechen children and elderly must be extensively publicized, because people are shy to be talking about it too. And at the same time figures must be quoted, for the West believes figures and not emotions.
The same information must also be spread among the Russian population: even though they will be taking no actions, but at least they will have less hatred towards Chechens, which the Russian government is provoking.
Because Russian journalists are presenting it as if Chechens are the ones committing all crimes.
Chechens need their own radio stations and TV channels abroad, which will be the mightiest means to expose Russian lies. Pictures and sounds are capable of doing what a bomb or a machinegun is not. Why there is not a single TV channel that would be releasing truthful information about the things going on in Chechnya? Although, there are quite a lot of rich people among the Chechens. Why would they not get together and organize a Chechen TV channel?
Sure, they shouldn’t be hoping for the international community or for political work too much: look what the Israeli soldiers are doing in Palestine, and nobody is really trying to stop them.
I am against blasts of civilian targets (and ordinary people first of all) in Russia. But there are no two ways about it (at least for Chechens) when economic, military and other facilities of the power structures and some auxiliary bases are targeted. War is war.
Everything must be working in combination. You have to improvise more, and the main thing is that you have to act. Action is everything. Even one person, who plans and implements these plans in practice, can be of great help.
P.S.: To honest Chechens who did not sell themselves out to Moscow's bandits and who will be reading my article:
Thank you! It's a little bit easier to be living when you know that there still are people out there for whom the words FREEDOM, HONOR and FAITH are meaningful! Your fight may not bring quick victory (due to outnumbering forces…), but your descendants will be free. There is no doubt about it.
Oleg Azovsky, Russia
Department of Correspondence,
Kavkaz-Center
http://www.kavkaz.org.uk/eng/article.php?id=2999
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Sun Jul 18, 7:21 AM ET
By Peter Graff
LONDON (Reuters) - Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov said at the weekend his fighters had the right to carry their war with Moscow into Russian territory and that the conflict was likely to spread.
The rebel leader, who rarely gives interviews, had previously expressed hope that Western countries would persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to open peace talks to end a war that has raged with only a two-year respite since 1994.
But in an e-mail exchange with Reuters arranged through representatives in London, Maskhadov sounded more pessimistic, placing little store by negotiations and predicting the war would outlast Putin.
"Negotiations for Chechens are not an end in themselves. We look at them as one of the paths to ending the fighting. As sad as it sounds, I think the current Russian-Chechen war will outlive Putin," Maskhadov wrote.
He dismissed a Russian plan to hold an election for a new Chechen leader on August 29 as a "farce" that would only make a peaceful solution more difficult to achieve. The previous Russian-backed leader was assassinated in May.
"Any political figure named by the occupiers ... will be branded a quisling. Quislings have one fate, which no normal person would choose," Maskhadov said.
Maskhadov, a former Soviet artillery colonel, led Chechen rebel military forces during the first phase of the war in 1994-96, before negotiating a peace deal under which Moscow withdrew its troops from the region.
He was elected president of a de facto independent Chechnya in 1997 with the Kremlin's blessing. But when Moscow sent forces back into Chechnya two years later, it declared him an enemy.
ATTACKS IN RUSSIA "LEGITIMATE"
Maskhadov denied being behind a large-scale attack last month in the Russian region of Ingushetia on Chechnya's western border. He said the violence, in which guerrillas killed nearly 100 people, was led by local nationalists though "some Chechens" took part.
But he said he would not be surprised if there were similar operations in other parts of Russia. Attacks in Russian territory, which he has criticized in the past, were an acceptable tactic, he said.
"As for Chechens carrying fighting into Russian territory, my opinion is: this would be absolutely legitimate -- in any case, no less legitimate than the allies in World War II carrying fighting into the territory of Hitler's Germany.
"If Chechens possessed warplanes or rockets, then air strikes on Russian cities would also be legitimate," he wrote.
Apart from a single meeting with a Maskhadov envoy at a Moscow airport in 2001, Russia has refused to hold any talks with the rebels.
Russia has portrayed its fight with Chechen rebels as part of a global war on terror. This has helped mute criticism from Washington and European capitals, although they still urge Moscow to talk to Maskhadov who is seen as a relative moderate.
Maskhadov said Western leaders had become "hostages to their own fear," accepting too quickly Russia's arguments that Chechens were linked to terrorism.
"I have said and continue to say: the Chechen people are waging a war against international terrorism, headed by the Russian leadership," he said.
"All independent media, all humanitarian organizations know and declare that what is happening in Chechnya is the deliberate murder of a civilian population on ethnic grounds. Yet leaders of the top Western countries are unconscionably repeating the Kremlin's lie about thousands of Chechens in Afghanistan or Iraq, supposedly fiercely opposing coalition forces.
"I don't know, maybe some of these al Qaeda people came to Chechnya, although I can't imagine what they were looking for here. We are fighting for our freedom and have no aim of global domination. The United States is not our enemy or competitor."
Maskhadov said he moved around between undisclosed locations inside Chechnya and was in complete control of his commanders.
But he said commander Shamil Basayev, Moscow's most wanted man who is known for a number of sensational and bloody raids, was now operating outside "our official structures."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=5&u=/nm/20040718/wl_nm/russia_chechnya_maskhadov_dc
By Peter Graff
LONDON (Reuters) - Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov said at the weekend his fighters had the right to carry their war with Moscow into Russian territory and that the conflict was likely to spread.
The rebel leader, who rarely gives interviews, had previously expressed hope that Western countries would persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to open peace talks to end a war that has raged with only a two-year respite since 1994.
But in an e-mail exchange with Reuters arranged through representatives in London, Maskhadov sounded more pessimistic, placing little store by negotiations and predicting the war would outlast Putin.
"Negotiations for Chechens are not an end in themselves. We look at them as one of the paths to ending the fighting. As sad as it sounds, I think the current Russian-Chechen war will outlive Putin," Maskhadov wrote.
He dismissed a Russian plan to hold an election for a new Chechen leader on August 29 as a "farce" that would only make a peaceful solution more difficult to achieve. The previous Russian-backed leader was assassinated in May.
"Any political figure named by the occupiers ... will be branded a quisling. Quislings have one fate, which no normal person would choose," Maskhadov said.
Maskhadov, a former Soviet artillery colonel, led Chechen rebel military forces during the first phase of the war in 1994-96, before negotiating a peace deal under which Moscow withdrew its troops from the region.
He was elected president of a de facto independent Chechnya in 1997 with the Kremlin's blessing. But when Moscow sent forces back into Chechnya two years later, it declared him an enemy.
ATTACKS IN RUSSIA "LEGITIMATE"
Maskhadov denied being behind a large-scale attack last month in the Russian region of Ingushetia on Chechnya's western border. He said the violence, in which guerrillas killed nearly 100 people, was led by local nationalists though "some Chechens" took part.
But he said he would not be surprised if there were similar operations in other parts of Russia. Attacks in Russian territory, which he has criticized in the past, were an acceptable tactic, he said.
"As for Chechens carrying fighting into Russian territory, my opinion is: this would be absolutely legitimate -- in any case, no less legitimate than the allies in World War II carrying fighting into the territory of Hitler's Germany.
"If Chechens possessed warplanes or rockets, then air strikes on Russian cities would also be legitimate," he wrote.
Apart from a single meeting with a Maskhadov envoy at a Moscow airport in 2001, Russia has refused to hold any talks with the rebels.
Russia has portrayed its fight with Chechen rebels as part of a global war on terror. This has helped mute criticism from Washington and European capitals, although they still urge Moscow to talk to Maskhadov who is seen as a relative moderate.
Maskhadov said Western leaders had become "hostages to their own fear," accepting too quickly Russia's arguments that Chechens were linked to terrorism.
"I have said and continue to say: the Chechen people are waging a war against international terrorism, headed by the Russian leadership," he said.
"All independent media, all humanitarian organizations know and declare that what is happening in Chechnya is the deliberate murder of a civilian population on ethnic grounds. Yet leaders of the top Western countries are unconscionably repeating the Kremlin's lie about thousands of Chechens in Afghanistan or Iraq, supposedly fiercely opposing coalition forces.
"I don't know, maybe some of these al Qaeda people came to Chechnya, although I can't imagine what they were looking for here. We are fighting for our freedom and have no aim of global domination. The United States is not our enemy or competitor."
Maskhadov said he moved around between undisclosed locations inside Chechnya and was in complete control of his commanders.
But he said commander Shamil Basayev, Moscow's most wanted man who is known for a number of sensational and bloody raids, was now operating outside "our official structures."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=5&u=/nm/20040718/wl_nm/russia_chechnya_maskhadov_dc
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