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| quote: | Originally posted by St_Andrew
Exactly how does that make the elections fair?  |
Let me give you a quick summary of events:
In late 1980s, influential Chechens like Dudayev and Mashadov, who finished service in Soviet military pushed for a new wave of nationalism in their republic. At that time it was very stylish to brandish reforms and calls for independence, like in most C.I.S. regions. Soviet and Russian government largely ignored this as nothing more than provocations and silly talk.
In the early 1990s, pretty much entire Chechnya was happily interested in becoming independent, including the ethnic Russians living in there who jumped on the bandwagon. During 1991-1994, Chechen government was growing bolder, and they were clearly becoming more and more independent. Very resilient and pressuring, Chechnya started cutting off important pipelines in the region and encouraging independence movements in the area, stopped paying for electricity, taxes, refused to co-operate with Russian authorities, and massive money laundering system was initiated. Russian government sent in delegates and then small military force to resolve issues in their favour, and these attempts were twarted with humiliating results (the military group was met at Grozny airport, their weapons seized, and they were sent back home next flight).
So basically the war was imminent, both sides wanted it - Russians thought they'd easily win the war and Chechen leadership figured Russians would be easily repealed. Me and more than half of Russians opposed the war. Noone could have ever imagined what was going to happen. At the end of the absolutely brutal, savage and disasterous First Chechen War of 1994-1996 war, both sides realized it was a big mistake. About 80,000 Chechen civilians dead (including ethnic Russians), over 10 thousand Russian 18-year-old conscripts dead or missing and more injured, and the entire country ruined. Over quarter of a million refugees fled the region.
After the war, the well-armed and experienced Chechen militant group seized power, filling the vacuum left by the death of moderate Dudayev. Maskhadov was elected a president, and though he was moderate, he was unable to do anything. He eventually lost control and support of the warlords in general and they betrayed him in 2004.
This extremist group established martial law (shariah) in the republic, and radical wahhabism took over. The local population was terrorized, murders and corruption was rampant, human trafficking (slaves), drugs and prostitute trade was fluent. Many average Chechens were opposed to it, and some were murdered for speaking out.
This system of crime syndicate spread all over Caucasus and into other parts of Russia, I've seen it for myself: a middle-aged man appeared on local television one day, and he described how he was taken hostage from local bus stop, chained and sent to Chechnya for hard slave labour in 1992. He managed to escape in 1996, and he was in bad shape on TV. Here in western media I read similar articles.
In 1999, Chechen warlords decided to convert entire Caucasus to their lifestyle, attacking Dagestan and blowing up apartments buildings in European Russia. This time I supported the war, because it became evident what Chechnya has become to them and to us. Chechens were happy to be liberated (though they were treated quite harsh by the poorly trained poorly equipped conscripts) from all the murderous corruption they experienced in those years.
In the full 3 years (summer 1996 - fall 1999) the de-facto independent Chechen government did nothing to its people. Only in 2002 did the rebuilding of Grozny actually began!
So the Chechens decided to stick with the liberal Russian system than to be locked forever in the radical corrupt and closed-off radical system where women were considered PROPERTY and men had to follow strict rules and had to enroll into various criminal organizations or else they'd be the victims. There was this British journalist who wrote a great book on his travels through Caucasus in 1990s, and he described acumulated stories and experiences of how dead people were regularly seen with no clothes in garbage dumps, sometimes dismembered, how his taxi driver's neighbour was shot and killed for not selling his apartment to a warlord, how human trafficking was a legal and multi-million dollar industry in Chechnya during 1996-1999, etc.
People would walk by a dead man on the street and won't notice - imagine how fucked up it was.
Chechnya suffered terribly in the last 15 years, more than anyone else in the world. They are the true survivors, torn apart between Russian military brutality and Chechen militant retribution, murder and crime (you're with us or against us) ... In 1990, Chechnya's population was over 1 million people, and Russians made up under a half of that. Today, population of Chechnya is about one-third its original size, with about 50,000 ethnic Russians in Chechnya.
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