On the Chechnya/Ingushetia terrorism situation
If, like me, you saw this news yesterday:
Suicide Bomber Rams Truck Into Police Station in Russia, Killing 20
New York Times, August 17
At least 20 people were killed and dozens were wounded when a suicide bomber rammed a truck filled with explosives into a police headquarters in Russia's tumultuous North Caucasus region on Monday...The attack seemed to further undermine the authority of Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, Ingushetia's populist president, who came to power last October vowing a softer approach in dealing with rebel violence than that of Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of neighboring Chechnya....It was the bloodiest single attack to hit Ingushetia in some time, though violence against the police and government officials in this and other North Caucasus republics occurs almost daily...The bombing on Monday comes just days after separate attacks in neighboring Chechnya and Dagestan killed over 20 people...
and thought you had been remiss in keeping up with understanding the situation,
I highly recommend this recent backgrounder piece by Megan K. Stack:
Fear stalks Caucasus amid hidden war
Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2009A campaign of killings and torture has mounted in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, rights groups say. Security forces are said to be involved, and signs reportedly point to Chechnya's leader.
Reporting from Ordzhonikidzevskaya, Russia - This is a place where gangs with masked faces come out of the darkness to take the young men away.
Sometimes the bodies turn up with broken limbs, bruises, torn-away fingernails and burns. Sometimes the captives are placed under arrest officially and end up in jail. Lately, many simply disappear.
Russia's hidden war against anti-government rebels across the Caucasus Mountains has reached a terrible intensity here in the small, mostly Muslim Russian republic of Ingushetia.
Day after day, insurgents attack police and government officials with ambushes and bombings. And day after day, security forces unleash what human rights activists describe as a campaign of killings, abductions and torture in their efforts to force calm upon the land.
Now Ingushetia is struggling under the weight of a new terror, one that seeps over the mountains from Chechnya, a neighboring mostly Muslim Russian republic.
Having brutally squashed dissent in his own restive republic, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.....
not the least of which it tells another one of those cautionary tales of how dealing with terrorist threats the wrong way can bring you nightmare blowback.
Other pieces I read which I found helpful; excuse my not taking the time to format links:
Activists, Reporters Leaving Chechnya
The Moscow Times, August 18
Human rights activists and journalists are leaving Chechnya after a series of murders, saying the danger level in the region has reached the highest level....http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/600/42/380876.htm
Charity workers' killing shocks Chechnya
Moscow News, August 17
Less than a month after the kidnapping and murder of a Chechen rights activist, a husband and wife team who helped Chechen children were found shot dead....http://www.mnweekly.ru/news/20090818/55385613.html
Clashes Kill Over 20 in Russia Region
New York Times, August 14
More than 20 people were killed in violent clashes in Russia's North Caucasus region in the last two days, including a mysterious attack on seven women in a sauna, underscoring the Kremlin's continued struggles to bring the volatile area under control....http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/world/europe/15russia.html?hpw
Russia: Gunmen Kill Government Official in Ingushetia
New York Times, August 12
Like neighboring Chechnya, Ingushetia has faced violence related to an Islamic insurgency and official corruption. In June, Ingushetia's reformist president....http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/world/europe/13briefs-Russia.html
Gunmen Kill 5 Police Officers in Chechnya
New York Times, August 3
MOSCOW -- Gunmen attacked a police convoy in the Russian republic of Chechnya on Sunday evening, killing at least five officers and ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/world/europe/04chechnya.html
P.S. Reading the Stack piece, I couldn't get out of my mind a comparison with the occupation story of Israel and Palestine, and how so many in the blogosphere seem to have the impression that the latter is the only place in the world with a similar problem, or the only one that deserves attention. There's also the comparison with our own experience in Iraq, of course....along with our past use of supporting proxies instead of going to full out war and invasion...along with our attempts to deal with things like drug cartels and gangs....
August 18, 2009 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The story of Israel and Palestine has itself taken a bizarre and , I would have thought, attention-grabbing new turn: The Hamas vs. al Qaeda war, which is perhaps the ultimate test of the ancient principle that "the enemy of my enemy is not my enemy," to put it in its weakest form.
The Israeli papers, of course, have covered this:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108251.html
This piece, at least, takes note of that principle:
"on our side people don't want to understand that when the oppression increases and there is nothing to lose, the adversary doesn't surrender and grovel. Just the opposite. He becomes more radical. Hate wins out and the desire for revenge becomes the only hope. So when poverty in Gaza increases and unemployment is on the rise, Al-Qaida will take control. It will happen either in a coup or through elections, and we will long for that terrible Hamas."
Well, let's say, "the enemy of my worst enemy is not my worst enemy anymore," which is tautological, but beyond the grasp of, say, Mike Huckabee.
Yes, the story about Russia's terror problem, and our proxies and blowback, kept me up last night ,too:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/diachronic/2009/08/that-secret-operation-was-an-e.php
I can't format links: html code (that's what it is, right?) is beyond hell for this dyslexic.
August 18, 2009 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I saw your Zbig post, and thank you for it, that's the type of thing that interests me a great deal; I was one of the recommenders.
And now I thank you for the Haaretz piece and your thoughts on it.
Re:
I can't format links: html code (that's what it is, right?) is beyond hell for this dyslexic.
I am not dyslexic but for years I had a sort of dyslexic relationship to html except for the basic italics and bold, as my touch typing education was short and not complete and I ended up with dyslexic fingers in a way. I especially hate the caret keys, as well as many of the other symbols and the numbers.
Just in the last year I forced myself to really learn the "a href" thing for links, but I still make mistakes on executing it all the time, and it takes forever. I also hate using the pop up box of text editors for inserting links, like on the blog entry system here, it takes forever because it is blocked by both browsers I use as well as when you finally allow it, you have to erase the http already in the box before you paste.
Luckily, with this software, it doesn't matter, as pasted urls turn automatically into links in both comments and in blog entries. It's really so much easier and I don't understand why it is not acceptable form to some people instead of using the word links that some seem to think are the only appropriate way to publish. After all, it's the correct way to cite an internet source as a footnote in a scholarly paper, take that, hah! Not to mention, with urls then you as a reader have the address information in front of you and don't have to go to "Properties" or click through to see what the address actually is.
I think your haaretz url paste probably didn't turn into a link because you left out a space in front of it (you have no space between "this:" and "http".) There needs to be a space on either side of an url to let the system know it's not part of a word. I will prove it by putting it below and it will turn into a link:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108251.htm
August 18, 2009 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your appreciation is much appreciated, artappraiser.
I remember a blog you wrote about spiderwebs- it was written around the time I had other crises to deal with and could not come here and comment. But I'll fish it out of the archives. It seemed to be a methodology for a new way of operating here, that appealed to me tremendously.
Thanks too for the tips on links. I tried to learn it last year, but the nonword nature of the sequences continually tripped me up- I can't process it holistically, which means I never process it as the same thing twice- and it isn't, as you say, time economical.
The Stack piece blew me away. As she says:
"Each bureaucracy points to another. Nobody knows anything. You look closely and the case falls apart. This is just one disappearance among hundreds."
Some things never change.
August 18, 2009 8:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe it was this one- http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/artappraiser/2009/06/pakistan-reaching-a-mini-civil.php
this certainly identifies a key node in the big picture , and you had extensive comments by lally to add to your Pakistan archive!
I have never been so lucky.
August 18, 2009 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh I see, by spiderweb, you were not referring to something I said on meta issues, but what an Australian friend on another forum and I used to call "geez, the news, it's all interconnected!"
I think it was on this one of more recent times:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/artappraiser/2009/06/speaking-of-political-protest.php
that I was doing some of the old "it's all interconnected."
It's kind of a sophist thing to do at times, but if you make it clear you don't have any agenda except perhaps trying to see where there are patterns that might lead to understanding, I don't see what's wrong with that. And the more minds on it, the better.
August 19, 2009 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, that link provided the quote I thinking of:
"To be honest I was also thinking about a lot of the things. Like the way we cover global news is that only the loudest squeaky wheel gets the grease, and we seem to only be able to handle one story at a time, and want to learn all the details on that one story, and this is getting worse with the internet, not better as one might have predicted a couple years back.
Meanwhile, our leaders don't have that luxury, they are, rather, looking at a global spiderweb, where all kinds of shit is going on allover the world, and where one tiny thing they do might influence a lot of other important things elsewhere."
Thanks for fishing that one out. It reminds me, not to be too pretentious, of Quine's idea of the "web of belief," where new data causes preferentially adjustments in the periphery of belief, e.g., new discrepancies between the presumed age of quasars and the presumed age of the universe (periphery: The method for determining quasar distance is flawed; core: Differential transmission of the light signal in different directions of the universe. Problems/revisions in the periphery cause smaller change in policy than all-out paradigm shift (and after all, policy that 'seems to work' can't be abandoned easily, because we operate in media that shape our perceptions themselves. A flawed and oversimplified analogy, but I'm in a hurry this morning, and I hope the gist comes through. Thanks, again, for fishing this out.)
August 19, 2009 8:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
I get it and appreciate knowing of the link you see, as I am very weak on science in general. And I forgot that I put the "spiderweb" comment there. because it is something that I strongly believe and am always thinking about when I go about the blogosphere and compare what the blogosphere is focusing on to the news I have read, it just seems like an essential given. Specialization is the glory of and the bane of the modern world...(come to think of it, specialization is also something that made my own career real boring, so I guess it's personal for me, too, hah.)
August 19, 2009 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Stack piece blew me away
I had the same reaction. I even did a quick look into her career because of that. She travels allover the place, no regular beat for long. I cannot imagine spending a few weeks or months in a place and then to synthesize what you have found out and be able to sit down and come up with that level of big picture lucidity. I would need years to let my mind sit on it and sort it out, and years longer to edit it.
August 19, 2009 12:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this. I hearkened bak to ciachronic's illuminating post and each made the other make more sense, if that sentence makes sense. (It's hot and late, and sense-making may be beyond me).
I blush to say I had never heard of Ingushetia, and Ordzhonikidzevskaya sprains my eyes to read, and I'm sure it will sprain my tongue before I learn how to pronounce it.
What I find interesting is that simultaneously with the globalization which makes a kind of mockery of the modern nation-state we see the rising of mini-nationalism and a resurrection of the tribe as the basic social unit. I think we're becoming more tribal in the United States--maybe the musical Hair was on to something. Except the end doesn't seem to be harmony and understanding, but fighting more and more over smaller and smaller places.
August 18, 2009 10:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think we're becoming more tribal in the United States
Have you read any of Appiah's work on cosmopolitanism vs. tribalism? If not, there was this good sample as the cover story of New York Times magazine in Jan. 2006: "The Case for Contamination":
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/magazine/01cosmopolitan.html
I hearkened bak to ciachronic's illuminating post and each made the other make more sense
The whole internet forum thing is still made worthwhile when those neural nets spark each other, ain't it? Kind of magical.
You have no idea how I much I can really relate to your "it's back to school post." I didn't feel it appropriate to comment there, it just didn't seem right to do so, I don't know why. You have already made a decision with a date for when to enforce discipline on yourself and you clearly have more discipline than I, I guess that's part of it.
But already long ago, I recognized how the addiction is "bad for me." My moment of clarity came way back when I took some time away because I was so pissed at infantile behavior and useless debate on another forum. In spending so much time there, I had stacked up tons of superb periodicals that my S.O. gets, along with unread dead tree NYTimes sections until it was embarassing, like I was one of those famous packrat people. I starting attacking the pile in order to clean up and was ashamed at myself how I had let the level of reading matter drop, how much garbage I had been reading on the net, and how I had been tossing aside so much far better, more stimulating stuff. The S.O. had been getting far better informed in far shorter time and with far less angst.
But now here in your comment, you are actually pointing out, bringing up how it can be "good for you." That's why I feel like commenting a bit about your post here.
The "good for you" vs. the "bad for you" is why I am so into the "meta" of sites like this. It's like a personal mission, it also helps remind me when I am spending too much time reading garbage and too much time suffering fools gladly and too much time being dragged down. (Someone here, I think Billy Glad, said it well to me once, "I know the feeling of the crowd dragging you down." That made him ornery and he didn't have the discipline to just walk away from fools, but ended up playing their games.) I still hope to see places develop where one is not even tempted into those kind of depths, but where you mostly get the good side. I believe it is possible and it is only not that common now because the medium is still in its infancy.
I know that as a professor, you know what we like about what we like is not truly "elitist" nor dreaming of a pony. That's because it's just a simple, clear matter in a college classroom--people don't come to a college classroom to disrupt or to role play, to play other manipulative games, to chant cheap rhetoric or verbal abuse, or to drag conversation down to a high school level, or to give a strident black/white opinion when are barely familiar with the topic--or they are out of there. Ah but, they are paying tuition! Maybe your own meta suggestions are that a site like this is paid for by subscription rather than advertising is the key. :-)
P.S. You are so correct that it is not worth writing long original blog posts of quality for publishing here. It's not because of the need for a large audience, as a small audience can provide the "magic," perhaps even better, it's just that system is set up for churn and not long term exchange and thoughtfulness on a subject. Also, if there was truly decent tracking, there would also be no need to visit so often and less temptation to be dragged into that which is "bad for you." But that's how they get the traffic to get that advertising you say? Uh huh. :-)
August 19, 2009 12:09 AM | Reply | Permalink