The video showed a young man pleading in Russian as a Chechen kidnapper cut off his ear and repeatedly kicked at the stump.
"I beg you to give them money, please. I can't bear it any longer. Let my brother come and help. Give them money. After all, we do have it, I beg you. They are beating me . . . oh . . . every day . . . I beg you, dad, give . . . Or tell them to kill me. I beg you. I can't bear it. Please . . . I can't bear this beating. Give them money. We have it. Why do you say we don't have it. Please, don't beat me . . . please . . . if you contact the police they will kill me. Don't do it. Please . . . Don't cut it off . . . Don't do it, I beg you very much. Please . . ."
Another video showed a Chechen holding Herbert Gregg, a U.S. missionary kidnapped in November 1998 and still in captivity, as a comrade cut off his finger.
Another one featured two Russian children showing their bruises and missing patches of hair.
"Who pulled out your hair?"
"Ismail [the Chechen] did."
"That happened where you were held, did it?"
"Yes."
All of this had been videotaped by Chechen kidnappers and sent to the relatives of their hostages in attempts to extort a ransom.
Yevgeny Radionov, a 19 year-old-Russian soldier, was captured and killed by Muslim Chechen fighters in 1996 after he refused under torture to take off his cross and renounce his Russian Orthodox faith. The fighters who related this story to his mother led her to his grave for a $4,000 ransom. The cross was still among his bones.
I can describe hundreds of such examples as "ample evidence of the hideousness of" Chechen terrorism against both Russians and foreigners. In fact, during Chechnya's brief period of independence from 1996 until 1999, 1046 people were kidnapped and held inside the country. Like Adil Ahmad in his article titled "They're Just Meat" (The Dartmouth, Nov. 19), in which he unconditionally vilifies the Russians and glorifies the Chechens, I can also describe many examples of Russian military atrocities in the Chechnya War.
Yet I did not cite the above examples to prove that the Russians are right and the Chechens are wrong. I cited them to show that using subjective, emotion-inducing evidence without providing a trace of analysis is a cheap and misleading way to get people to agree with your position. It is a method emloyed by those who can't find substantive arguments to defend their positions and one that works on those who do not have enough objective knowledge to form an educated opinion on an issue. It has been used by the likes of McCarthy, Hitler, a certain war-obsessed American administration and other purveyors of empty demagoguery to convince people to agree with them when they can't do so through objective reasoning. Ahmad went no further, and although his article could be counted on to elicit an emotional response, it dismally fails to provide the reader with any rational knowledge of the Chechen war.
Making shrill one-sided accusations of atrocities only engenders further conflict by building hatred between the hostile parties and clouding the objectivity of the observing parties. Conversely, a sober analysis of the circumstances and tactics of the Chechen war can show exactly to what extent each side is justified in its hostile actions toward the other. I have previously made the argument, which I feel has heretofore not been successfully rebutted by Ahmad, that this is a war initiated by the Chechens and driven by a confluence of old grievances over Russian imperial domination and a fanatical Islamic fundamentalism. Throughout the conflict, Russian tactics were based on the fact that Russian soldiers hold their own lives dearer than the lives of Chechen civilians, and Chechen tactics have been a combination of guerilla warfare and a deliberate targeting of civilians in terrorist activity meant to maximize casualties and achieve through fear what could not be achieved through force. Both are immoral but, to use a legal analogy, the former is akin to manslaughter whereas the latter is none other than premeditated first-degree murder. Furthermore, the war is actually two distinct wars, the first occurring 1991-1996 and the second beginning in 1999 and continuing until the present. The two wars had two separate causes of differing legitimacy. The first was a struggle for independence whereas the second was a direct cause of Chechen aggression against Russian civilians and territory.
I firmly believe that the decision by Chechen separatists to engage in hostilities with Russia in 1991 through an armed struggle for independence was a stupid decision. Although they gained independence, they became sovereign rulers of a heap of rubble and corpses. Regardless of the atrocities committed by the Russians and regardless of those committed by the Chechens, the ultimate responsibility for the death and destruction lies with the people who decided to forgo alternative peaceful means of gaining freedom and instead to go to war, knowing full well the results of such a war against a former superpower -- the Chechen separatists. There are 14 new countries that won independence from Russia in 1991 and every single one of them chose the path of nonviolence. The claim that the only choice for Chechnya was war is simply false and although their cause was subjectively legitimate (and one with which I slightly agree), the Chechens' decision was anything but. Consequentially, they have no one to blame for the tragic results but themselves.
During its three years of independence, Chechnya launched upon Russian territory numerous apartment block bombings, cross-border kidnappings and a full-fledged invasion of sovereign Russian land by an army of Chechen militants in 1999. Meanwhile, internally, Chechnya deteriorated into an economically stagnant and ubiquitously criminal morass. The second phase of the current Chechen war started in 1999 as a direct result of Chechen aggression against Russia. There was no grand cause of fighting for independence, neither was there any Russian subjugation or domination of Chechens. In fact, the only Russians consistently present on Chechen territory during that time were those sitting as hostages, covered in chains and missing fingers. The decision by Chechen militants to engage in hostilities with Russia throughout 1996-1999 was not simply dumb, it was irrational and fanatical. The irrationality was mainly a result of Chechen misinterpretation of their victory in 1996 as evidence of their superior military might. The fanaticism was spurred on by hatred caused by expansionist Islamic ideology, wherein all territories outside of dar-al-Islam, "the world of Islam", are dar-al-Harb, "the world of war" and must be conquered. Websites run by Chechen separatists are replete with calls for Jihad "until Moslems and Chechens are at the gates of Moscow." Just over this New Year, a 60-man Chechen group with Arab commanders loyal to al Qaida entered Russian territory and was defeated in its attempts to seize control over the area. Again, the responsibility for the death and destruction that followed 1999 almost entirely lies with the Chechens. No country in the world would fail to respond with war to threats to its territory and murders of its most vulnerable civilians by a weaker aggressor; this is exactly what Russia has done. Furthermore, because this is an aggressive war initiated by the Chechens, international law allows for punishment of the losing aggressor in the form of loss of territory or even sovereignty. This punishment was meted out by Russia and it was meted out justly.
I hate to sound redundant but some people just do not understand rational reasoning the first time around. These are the same people who cry "massacre" when it's convenient and argue "freedom fighting" when murder suits their cause. These are the people who claim, as Ahmad has, that "suicide bombings, terrorism, hostage taking and kidnapping have become just as legitimate tactics of war as any other." These are the people who defend the actions of some of the worst people on earth simply because they allow their emotions and ideologies to veil their reasoning and objectivity. So again I insist that this and other similar conflicts around the world will not end until murder and violence are no longer legitimized and history is no longer obscured for the purposes of causes and ideologies. Aggressive war is not the legitimate solution to problems of self-determination and national freedom, and justifying such war and at the same time railing against defensive measures taken in response to it is simply hypocritical. As long as this continues, whether through suicide bombs in Russian cities or through pseudo-intellectual editorials in American college newspapers, peace will always remain beyond the horizon, blocked by mountains of injustice, inequity and hatred.
