Chechnya

I don't know why it is but for some reason I am mentally drawn to the problems in Chechnya. Maybe I am subconsciously tuning into all the misery there. The population of Chechnya is about 1.3 million. The chief economy of the region is farming and petroleum processing.

Although Russia is a large country in term of land coverage, only the western portion is hospitable to any significant degree. Everything east of the Ural mountain is commonly referred to as a whole as Siberia, the legendary no mans land, which is more than two thirds of the country. Western Russia for all practical purposes is a land locked country. Every inch of real estate to coastal land on the Black and Caspian seas is vital to the country's economic welfare. Furthermore the southern portion of Western Russia, including Chechnya and it's bordering neighbors is vital farming land.

If Chechnya were to fall, it's likely that other nations in the region, especially coast regions, would follow suit and seek independence. Furthermore Russia has been invaded time and time again over the millennia and it's usually been through the Balkan's or the Caucus mountains. If there were no other concerns, Russia couldn't afford to lose the Region for strategic reasons alone.

For over a hundred years the people in the region have been trying to declare independence. But they just don't get it, it's not going to happen. Stalin back in the 1940 was so concerned about them he deported much of local population to Siberia for fear of them conspiring with the Germans and started ethnic Russian colonization. The ethnic population was later allowed to return.

But after the split up of the USSR the separatist elements couldn't let it go and as a result the civilian population has suffered over the past 15 years. At first they were able to take the region and from what I can tell the Russian authorities let them, both because they already had too much on their plate already, and second to give the separatists time to think. But what the Separatists did was rape and kill much of the ethnic Russian and non Islamic population. They didn't just kill, they imprisoned, raped, tortured, extorted money before they killed. Russia couldn't reason with them ultimately tried to retake the country, trying to use minimal forces and no strategy, got their asses kicked over and over the first few years. But finally the Russians deployed a sizable enough army to retake the country. And what they did after in retribution is what we all don't like to think about. It's what's happening currently although to a lesser extent.

The Russians are repaying the Chechnyan crewlty with their own. Nothing the Chechnyan's didn't do themselves, but just on a larger scale. They detain, torture and cripple men and young boys of fighting age. The men in the military aren't paid much and are encouraged to take whatever they want from the local population in compensation. They hold civilians prisoner and extort money from their family's for release. They imprison, and rape women and young girls as their fancy suits them; the community being Islamic, the women keep quiet because men by course will not take back their wives and daughters if they have been raped.

One story specifically I will mention is a fourteen year old that paid a ransom just to see and speak with her detained mother, instead she was escorted to a cell and gang raped by the guards for hours while all the male prisoners suffered her screams. Just to satiate their desires soldiers will storm a mans house and take one of his daughters away, age mattering very little. These things are still happening to a lesser extent today folks. Again this isn't anything the Chechnyan's themselves didn't do. But women and children don't fight in armies yet it's civilians such as these that are punished. Rape shouldn't be a tool of war, only bullets.

I don't know what Russia is thinking by letting such men do such things when they will eventually have to accept them back into society. Why is death always seen as the worse thing that can happen to a person? Death is a mercy compared to surviving the brutality of war. I feel for those of the Cheneyan people that are suffering right now but they really need to get a clue. They have to take charge and wage war on the separatists. But they won't, and with so few ethnic Russians in the area it is likely that Russia will have to some day wipe their hands of the matter and exterminate everyone in the region. It may be evil to say it, but you don't let those that have suffered you to live. You can't beat a dog and then expect to make a pet out of it.