Terrorist bombing of Moscow Airport Jan. 24, 2011

[Parashuram1]

Another act of cowrdice once again proving these terrorists to be sheer cowards by killing un-armed and untrained civilians. May the deceased rest in peace.

As one would expect, I can safely assume that Mr. Putin is not the kind of person who would sit quietly through this. If at all Chechen separatists are behind this, then these attacks just invited their doom.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

We all will just have to wait and see:

1. If al Qaida or a related terrorist groups takes credit

2. If there is another explanation.

true....

Myself I separately was aware that Russia just recently, lasts two weeks, signed off on agreement to allow NATO resupply to pass through it's lands to Afghanistan, by road. This in part due to failed security on roads inside Pakistan of fuel trucks now being regularly attacked and burned, with the truck crews often as not also murdered.

and the worst part is that Pakistan is not being compensated for freely allowing these vehicles to traverse and roam about through our roads from south to north of the country.....Pakistan really should be.

3. So, when CNN news on live, and separately TV news in English directly from Moscow (see link on this thread earlier today to Moscow live TV in English) says essentially the same thing, body parts found of suicide bomber indicate it was an Arab...there is the direction of the investigation until or unless someone or something else credibly claims credit.

''body parts indicate it was an Arab''

fascinating.....but that doesnt constitute evidence. You are old and rational enough, i assume, to know that.

It is a no brainer for me to suggest al Qaida and/or an allied terrorist group. The pattern and history sinc e1993 with first World Trade Towers failed basemen bombing is a clear trail of style and evidence to me, at least.

based on patterns and previous attacks in Russian cities, it could be Chechen groups. As you rightly suggested, lets wait and see.

AS for the WMD, it was there, some was found by Belgian troops buried in the desert outside Baghdad...and other WMD intel indicates was trucked into Syria.

rigght....

did they also find those chemical weapons? You know, the ones you sold to Saddam too? The ones which were used on Iranians and Kurds?

The fact that Saddam Hussein was a monsterous dictator does not absolve him of being the 19X violator of the armistace that ended the 1991 War wherein he invaded Kuwait and Northern Saudi Arabia, which facts seem to fade conveniently from the minds of those who wish to avoid the facts of rabid terrorist misuse of Islam as a smoke screen to use to attack the whole world in the name of purifying those who don't believe as the radicals choose to believe.

it's silly to bring up radical Islam and Saddam in the same sentence, considering he was presiding over a socialist secular, Arab nationalist (baathist) government which was almost as much at odds with religious extremists as you are today


anyways....sorry to digress

 

[Meengla]

This is what I wrote to the Comments section of NY Times just a few minutes ago. It is yet to be 'approved' for posting.
RIP.

What a sad day. Another sad day. My heart-felt condolences to the Russians and the world-at-large.
At the going rate of violence--and perhaps growing means with which these terrorists link up with each other I fear that no amount of carpet bombing, policing, profiling is going to make the world 'safe'. What can be done? Extreme measures can alienate a billion-plus people spanning 50+ countries in majority-population stage, along with sizable diaspora. That would be counter-productive. And no appeasement can be done either. So obviously thoroughly 'understanding' of issues are needed. International community needs to work together as part of some grand political measures to reduce, if not remove, the menace of global terrorism.
Ultimately all these acts of terrorism can be traced to political issues disguised in religion, ethnic, and nationalistic shrouds.

My understanding of the Chechen violence is that it is hardly Islamist--certainly not in the mold of the one which originates from the dreaded, dreary and suffocating places like Saudi Arabia and Yemen to invade other countries. The Chechens' is a nationalistic 'cause', dating back centuries. And yet, by these acts of terrorism, as someone rightly says above, 'the tipping point' reaches where no amount of victimhood can be discoursed when that victimhood resorts to such barbaric acts. Shame on those who support and make excuses for such barbarity. No matter how much blood the Russians may have spilled the proper route to 'fight' would be a guerrilla war INSIDE Chechnya by targeting soldiers IF violence is the only means left.

 

[American Eagle]

Chemcial weapons: Yes, missle heads and artillery shells designed to carry chemicals.

Chemicals were put together in mobile labs which as easily as not were driven into Syria.

But NO, no preassembled chemical warheads or shells were found that I heard of.

As for "compensation" for use of Paksitan roads let's deal in free enterprise logic. US leases the tankers which lease costs include fuels, which fuels include road use tax.

It helps to be honest and logical and not avoid obvious truths.

Security for tanker trucks is additionally paid for both to truck lessors and to the Government of Pakistan as part of the very large billions in military aide since 911 paid over to help Pakistan as a NATO Affiliate ally fight their own internal terrorists some of whom I recognize are as much secessionists in the Norhtern areas and Balochistan, who have allied themselves with the Taliban and al Qaida, creating an evil mix determinatal to the soverignty of Pakistan.

The fact that Pakistan until recent years neglected and let drift FATA, the NWFA, Swat, Balochistan, north and south, is evidence of how indifferent Pakistan historically has been to "maintaining" it's own internal soverignty.

Having way too many Pak military assets on the Indian border shorts the ability to effectively manage the Pak/Afghan border, which I know having been there in years past is a wild, mountaineous, virtually impossible to patrol or secure tangle of Himalayan Mountains in the north and hot deserts in the south.

 

[nightcrawler]

Thank God Putin didn't go for a 'Scotland Yard' investigation

 

[BlackDiamond]

R.I.P to the fallen

 

[American Eagle]

Thank God Putin didn't go for a 'Scotland Yard' investigation

If they didn't immedidately erase as in clean up the evidence a Scotland Yard and FBI teams to join up with the Russian investigators might speed a finding of facts along...my view, of course.

 

[roadrunner]

Chechens are also muslims so i guess that is the reason Pakistanis support there freedom.

Don't be ridiculous.

What genuine claim does Russia have to Chechnya?

Was it conquered through force? Did it have a referendum and join the Russian Federation? What is the basis of Russian control of the region?

 

[roadrunner]

You can't tell from body parts that someone is an Arab. Very CNN

 

[SekrutYakhni]

Don't be ridiculous.

What genuine claim does Russia have to Chechnya?

Was it conquered through force? Did it have a referendum and join the Russian Federation? What is the basis of Russian control of the region?

Source: Wikipedia--not an academic one but a short summary...

Pre-Conquest:

The onset of Russian expansionism to the south in the direction of Chechnya began with Ivan the Terrible's conquest of Astrakhan. Russian influence started as early as the 16th century when Ivan the Terrible founded Tarki in 1559 where the first Cossack army was stationed. The Russian Terek Cossack Host was secretly established in lowland Chechnya in 1577 by free Cossacks resettled from Volga River Valley to the Terek River Valley.

Turco-Persian and later Turco-Perso-Russian rivalry in the Caucasus:

Beginning in the late 15th and early 16th century, the Ottomon and Safavid Empires fought for influence over the Caucasus. Caucasian peoples grew wary of both sides, and attempted to play one side off against the other. The rivalry was embodied by both the struggle between Sunni and Shia Islam and the regional conflict of the two empires. The only major success for either side was the conversion of the Azerbaijanis by the Persians to Shia Islam. Originally, relations with Russia was seen as a possible balance to the Ottomon and Safavid Empires, and a pro-Russian camp in Chechen politics formed (there were also pro-Ottoman and pro-Persian camps; each viewed their favored empire as the least bad of the three). In reality, the most favored empire from the beginning was the Ottoman Empire, but that did not mean the Chechens were not wary of a potential Ottoman attempt at conquering them. Any hope towards positive relations with Russia ended in the late 18th century and early 19th century when tensions with the Cossacks escalated and Russia began trying to conquer the Caucasus, starting with Georgia. After this point, many Chechens sealed, forever, their preference towards Istanbul against Estafan and Moscow by converting to Islam in an attempt to win the sympathy of the Ottomans. However, they were too late- the Ottoman Empire was already well into its period of decline and collapse, and not only was it no longer willing to assist Muslims (especially newly converted people, who were viewed as "less Muslim" than peoples with a long Islamic heritage), but it was no longer able to even maintain its own state. Hence, the rivalry between Turkey and Persia became more and more abstract and meaningless as the threat of conquest by Russia and being pushed out of their lands or even annihilated by the Cossacks grew and grew.

 

[SekrutYakhni]

The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center caused a disaster for the Chechens, as much of the West went from passive sympathy to hostility as Russia was able to brand Chechen separatism as Islamist.
As Amjad Jaimoukha puts it, The al-Qaeda attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 resulted in a major setback to the Chechen cause and robbed the Chechens of the small modicum of sympathy they had had in the West. Russia played its cards right and quickly associated Chechen legitimate struggle for independence with Muslim extremism.

 

[roadrunner]

Why did Cossacks try and conquer Chechnya?

Ivan the Terrible is not a very good piece of evidence to lay claim to a region.

 

[American Eagle]

Ivan the Terrible quote is just to help focus that this is anciently a part of old Imperial Russia down to modern times. It also tells you of the various ethnic and religious mixes. The area was once pagan, then Christian, now majority Islamic minority Christian. And of course the ethnic mix there is more than 30% Jewish blood line extraction, worth nothing by those who are terrorist heretics to Islam. Here was a place which sheltered the early Jewish Dispora people and intermarried with them.

 

[SekrutYakhni]

Why did Cossacks try and conquer Chechnya?

Ivan the Terrible is not a very good piece of evidence to lay claim to a region.

Short peice--

The Cossacks, however, had settled in the lowlands just a bit off from the Terek river. This area, now around Naurskaya and Kizlyar was an area of dispute between the Mongols' Turkic vassals and their successors (the Nogais) and the Chechens. The mountainous highlands of Chechnya were economically dependent on the lowlands for food produce, and the lowlands just north of the Terek river were considered part of the Chechen lowlands (Chechnya is no longer economically dependent on the region because of somewhat more efficient agricultural production as well as globalization (or regionalization), nonetheless, sensitive to the issue, they were added to modern day Chechnya by Khrushchev's government to compensate for the loss of Prigorodny, in 1957). The Cossacks were much more assertive than the Nogais (who quickly became vassals to the Tsar), and they soon replaced the Nogais as the regional rival. This marked the beginning of Russo-Chechen conflict, if the Cossacks are to be considered Russian. The Cossacks and Chechens would periodically raid each others' villages, and seek to sabotage each others' crops, though there were also long periods without violence.

 

[SekrutYakhni]

" The area was once pagan, then Christian, now majority Islamic minority Christian."

It also mentions the political aspect of conversions into Islam...