Hear ye, hear ye: Russia tells us Washington is its partner in the fight against international terrorism.
Tell that to Qatar, I say, where Russian agents were convicted last week of one brazen act of such terrorism.
Russian terror, directed at the people of Chechnya, did not begin in recent years, say, in 1994 when Russian troops entered the republic to quash its independence movement, and killed up to 100,000 people.
Russia, a despotic country throughout its history under the totalitarian czars as under the communist commissars, had sought to subjugate the people of the north Caucasus for the last four centuries, including the time in 1816 when Moscow appointed the sadistic Gen. Alexei Yermolov as commander in Chechnya to whom was given the task of bringing Chechens into a state of full submission, a task that Yermolov pursued with extreme brutality; and the time in 1944 when the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin deported the entire Chechen population to Siberia and Central Asia in the middle of winter, which resulted in the death, from the cold, hunger and fatigue, of thousands while on route or soon after arrival.
Both events, clearly acts of genocidal terror, remain etched in the historical consciousness of all Chechens.
Moscow has continued to this day to wage its terror campaign in the Caucasus, a campaign that represents one of the bloodiest wars of ethnic cleansing in Europe, approaching, according to Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post, the level of Cambodian deaths under the Khmer Rouge.
To those few of us who follow the conflict in that forgotten but sad land, the tragedy there has been of major concern.
But of equal concern to us is the hypocrisy that the US displays when it considers Russia, a wanton terrorist state of the first order, a partner in the fight against international terrorism.
Well, if all things are to be considered, lets consider the ruling of a court of law in Qatar last week that convicted two Russian officials of murdering Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a former leader of Chechnya, and determined that the assassination was ordered by Russian leaders in Moscow.
The Russian agents were sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating a car bombing that killed Yandarbiyev on Feb. 13 as he left a mosque in Doha, the Qatari capital.
Peter Baker, a Washington Post correspondent, reported last Thursday: The ruling marked the first time in recent history that a court has found that Russia, a key US ally in the war on terrorism, itself employed terrorist tactics on foreign soil to eliminate one of its enemies.
According to people in the courtroom, the judge presiding over the trial said that the plans for Yandarbiyevs assassination were discussed at Russian intelligence headquarters in Moscow and approved by the Russian leadership.
It may have been the first time that a court of law found Russia employing terrorist tactics on foreign soil, but it was not the first time Russia employed such tactics in pursuit of government policy.
Consider the spectacle that haunted the Russian government when investigative reporters, both Russian and foreign, began serious probes of the strange apartment bombings that took place in Sept. 1999 in Moscow, resulting in the loss of 300 lives.
Predictably, the authorities at the time immediately accused Chechen rebels of responsibility. Now it has been established, however, that the Federal Security Bureau was behind the atrocity, which apparently had been mounted to galvanize public opinion in support of a second war on Chechnya, and which in turn made Putin, founder of the FSB, an overnight hero and a leading candidate for the Russian presidency.
Moscows brutal campaign in Chechnya is nothing new as far back as 2001, concerned by the discovery of a mass grave in the Chechen countryside filled with mutilated bodies, human rights organizations have detailed Russian human rights violations there, including torture and widespread detentions at the hands of Russian troops.
Washingtons two-faced policy on that campaign, however a campaign the US sees as an internal Russian matter is disgraceful.
It is disgraceful not only because of its egregiousness but also because of its hypocrisy, evidenced by how Washington turns a blind eye to terrorism committed by its allies, but gets on its high horse when it is committed by others.
I say lets call terrorism terrorism, just as were expected to call a spade a spade.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=48007&d=8&m=7&y=2004&pix=opinion.jpg&category=Opinion
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