I took the following clip out of a BBC News report. How would you describe russia's involvement in Chechnya? Like Iraq, Vietnam Afghanistan or all of them rolled into one? Or Worse?
Chechnya bloodbath:
Yet the blunders of the Russian military extend much further, and encompass not only the response to terrorist attacks, but also the strategy of preventing these attacks from taking place. During the last 10 years of a vicious war in Chechnya, thousands of young, inexperienced Russian soldiers were sent into unfamiliar territory where they were instantly slaughtered.
Moscow, in turn, responded by carpet-bombing complete villages and cities. With each day that passed, the opportunity to for a peaceful settlement faded even further into the distance.
In Chechnya, towns destroyed by Russian artillery and aerial carpet bombing are now inhabited almost exclusively by old people, abandoned by younger men who escaped to the mountains to continue fighting.
A great deal of the suicide bombers and terrorists now are women - the so-called "Black Widows" - sisters of dead Chechen fighters, sworn to avenge their own families, even at the cost of their own lives.
If there was ever a surer way of encouraging further terrorism, the Russian military has invented it.
Widespread corruption and demoralization among the Russian troops complete this sad picture. In quite a few documented cases, Russian conscripts sold their equipment to intermediaries who then passed it to Chechen separatists. And checkpoints, set up throughout the turbulent southern Caucasus region in order to hamper the movement of terrorists, are easily circumvented with a small bribe.
2006-12-09
03:46:48
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4 answers
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jessica a
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Military