When Are Terrorists Not Terrorists?

[David McDuff]

Following the mysterious February 6 Moscow subway explosion, which Russian president Vladimir Putin quickly blamed on Chechen separatists, came the news on February 13 of the assassination in Qatar of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.

Yandarbiyev was an authentic supporter of Islamic extremism among Chechens -- as opposed to an Arab adventurer posing as a member of the Caucasian mountain nation. He had once led a peace delegation to meet with former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, but he also arranged for a Chechen "diplomatic office" to be opened in Kabul, Afghanistan, under the rule of the Taliban. After that absurdity, the mainstream Chechen leaders relieved Yandarbiyev of all responsibility, and repudiated any alleged link with the Taliban.

Stephen Schwartz examines the matter further in a recent article for TCS:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/021704D.html

[Allene]

I have always had a hard time sorting the good guys from the bad guys in this on-going drama.

[Robert Harris]

And a new generation of Russians may be prepared to fight...

See: http://www.moscowtimes.ru/photos/photo-of-week/86.html

[David McDuff]

And a new generation of Russians may be prepared to fight...

See: http://www.moscowtimes.ru/photos/photo-of-week/86.html


While others are prepared to demonstrate in support of peaceful Chechens =

24.2.2004
>
> Peaceful demonstrators arrested in Moscow
>
> Moscow, RUSSIA. The Moscow police arrested at least nine people who
> were taking part in a peaceful daytime demonstration on Lyubyanka
> Square on 23 February. Some 300 people gathered today at noon
at
> the Solovetsky flame on the square in front of the Polytechnical
> Museum, to remember the Chechen victims of Stalin's genocide and
> the two subsequent wars in Chechnya.
>

http://www.prima-news.ru/news/news/2004/2/23/27579.html

[Robert Harris]

I wish them luck. But I suspect Putin cares as much for demonstrators as Bush.