Subject: U.S. Aids Russia's Crimes In The Caucasus
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:29:24 -0400
From: The Wisdom Fund <•••@••.•••>
U.S. Aids Russia's Crimes In The Caucasus
by Eric Margolis
... Once again, unbeknownst to most Americans, their government was
supporting one of the worst human rights violations of this decade.
... Clinton ordered the Pentagon to rush Moscow state of the art
night-vision and communications equipment for Russian helicopters being
used against insurgents in the Caucasus. In 1996, Clinton reportedly
ordered CIA to supply Moscow top-secret electronic targeting devices that
allowed the Russians to assassinate Chechen president, Dzhokar Dudayev,
while he was conducting peace negotiations with Moscow on his cell phone.
full story at http://www.twf.org/News/Y1999/1012-RussiaCrime.html
[Eric Margolis is a syndicated foreign affairs columnist and broadcaster
based in Toronto, Canada.]
The Wisdom Fund
http://www.twf.org
*******************************************************
From: The Wisdom Fund, P. O. Box 2723, Arlington, VA 22202
Website: http://www.twf.org -- Press Contact: Enver Masud
Article: http://www.twf.org/News/Y1999/0928-Disgrace.html
America's Disgraceful Silence Over Chechnya
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
by Enver Masud September 28, 1999
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- America's silence over Russia's
indiscriminate bombing of Chechnya, even as
"peacekeepers" undertake their "humanitarian
intervention" in East Timor, is a disgrace.
"Russian jets pounded dozens of Chechen targets
yesterday," reports The Times of London, as a swelling
flood of refugees headed for a border that Russia is
fortifying as if for war. Two big oil refineries, three
bridges and a half-built television centre in Grozny
were destroyed in the fifth consecutive day of bombing."
Experts say that Moscow may be hoping to fight a
sophisticated air war modelled on NATO's Kosovo
campaign.
BBC News is reporting a "humanitarian catastrophe in
Chechnya" where 30,000-100,000 Chechens have fled into
the neighboring southern Russian republic of Ingushetia.
Following a recent spate of bombings in Russian cities,
which killed 300 people, Russian police have arrested
more than 100 people, while thousands who look like
Chechens have been interrogated. Chechen officials deny
that they are behind the killings.
The Chechens have endured 250 years of savage Russian
colonial rule. Peter Daniel DiPaola, in A Noble
Sacrifice? Jus ad Bellum and the International
Community's Gamble in Chechnya, writes that the Chechens
are a subjugated people. They have fought continual wars
of independence against the Russians. The way the
Russians treat the Chechens illustrates that the
government does not represent them, and the Chechen
people have been the victims of widespread job and
educational discrimination.
In their 1994-96 war for independence, says Aleksander
I. Lebed, the former Russian security chief, "about
80,000 people had been killed in the fighting and that
some 240,000 had been wounded."
President Clinton supported Russia's 1994-96 war in
Chechnya. He personally pushed a new, $10.2 billion loan
for Yeltsin through the International Monetary Fund
saying that he backed Russia's need to "maintain its
territorial integrity." He had no such qualms regarding
Indonesia's integrity when he threatened to delay a $42
billion IMF loan package to get Indonesia to agree to
the Australia led UN occupation of East Timor.
Neither the Chechen freedom fighters, nor their support
of neighboring Dagestan's quest for independence from
Russia gets any encouragement from the West. There is no
talk of witholding IMF loans. The U.S. has offered
Russia "technical and investigative assistance" in its
investigation of the explosions reports the Associated
Press. But the U.S. offer of help in shutting down
Dagestani web sites is hardly in keeping with America's
professed ideal of free speech.
According to David Hoffman of the Washington Post,
political commentator Andrei Piontkovsky says that
Russia will bomb "Chechnya into the Stone Age.
Unfortunately, I am sure this is the thing they are
certain to do now. The Chechens will react with more
bombs. Moscow will react with pogroms against people
from the Caucasus."
Reports Eric Margolis of the Toronto Sun, the respected
Georgian writer, Melor Sturua, a columnist for the
leading Russian newspaper Izvestia, wrote of America's
disgraceful silence over Chechnya: "I remember a time
when the arrest of even one Soviet dissident would
create a storm of indignation here (in the US). Soviet
embassies were picketed, Soviet goods boycotted, Soviet
crimes were condemned." Congress imposed trade sanctions
on the USSR to force it to allow Jewish emigration to
Israel.
Unfortunately the Chechens do not have anything like the
Israeli lobby to advance their cause, and Chechnya just
happens to be a gateway to the Central Asian oil coveted
by Russia and the U.S.
[Enver Masud visited Russia several times in the
early-1990's as a consultant for the U.S. Agency for
International Development. He is founder of The Wisdom
Fund.]
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