How legitimate is 'Chechen terrorism'?

Every time the ringleader of the Kremlin regime starts mumbling his monotonous spell from a TV screen persistently like a parrot after getting hit in the head: «Our task is to put an end to terrorism once and for all!», the feeling of embarrassment is increasing, which has never left the Kremlin offices throughout all these years.

Putin, as a master of petty espionage, is supposed to know that terrorism cannot be defeated by repressive and punitive methods, which he keeps stubbornly spreading in Chechnya like a maniac. And if he does know, that's not what he can handle.

What is 'terrorism'? 'Terrorism' is one of the most impressive myths of the modern times. Mass consciousness defines 'terrorism' at the impulsive level in the heat of emotion. It is being perceived as something horrible, as violation of the foundation of the very existence or even as 'intrigues by unmen', as banana ringleader Kadyrov once put it.

Modern society has to encounter all kinds of manifestations of so-called 'terrorism'. Nonetheless, under the influence of mass media, this capacious definition no longer has its original plain meaning.

From the etymology of this word (meaning 'terror' or 'horror') it is evident that the term 'terrorism' implies any power action aimed at causing an intimidating effect among the targets.

The US however has developed its own legal definition of this term, which under the pressure of mass propaganda has been accepted as basic (with only some reservations) virtually in all countries around the globe.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines terrorism as «the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives».

The US Department of Defense (DOD) defines terrorism as the «unlawful use of-or threatened use of force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious or ideological objectives».

(Interestingly, Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Article 205) virtually repeats the meaning of all these definitions).

In the law theory terrorism is defined as «systematic use of violence to attain political goals, such as conquest, remaining in power and use of power».

This definition applies to totalitarian regimes for example. But in this case it is more of a matter of state terror rather than terrorism as a whole.

The terms 'terror' and 'terrorism' originally had common meaning and were used in similar circumstances. But in the modern conditions they got filled with fundamentally different contents.

Terror is a policy of severe repressions committed by the state when it relies on the force of its power structures on the one hand, and armed aggression or threat to use an armed aggression against another state to achieve certain political objectives, on the other. And terrorism is a retaliatory power action carried out by military and political groups opposing the terrorist state, when such groups take up arms to oppose its total terror. Terrorism also implies armed resistance to the aggressor state involving use of all forces and means available.

Proceeding from such definitions, there is a logical conclusion that the weapon of terror is a punitive repression and a threat to use a punitive armed action; and a weapon of terrorism is a so-called 'terrorist act', which actually is a retaliatory power action, which most of the time is manifested in a form of an act of sabotage or a guerrilla operation.

Let's give an example from a modern Russian life. If some Russian citizen who likes to booze systematically commits domestic violence against his own family, beats his wife and children, -- this is called terror. And if his wife gets sick of it, loses patience, goes ahead and smacks her drinking husband in his head with a frying pan – that will be called terrorism. The difference can be seen even theoretically, without resorting to the sad practice.

If we discuss political terrorism in this direction, it won't be that hard to come to a conclusion that state terror virtually stimulates the start of 'oppositional terrorism'. In other words, you can say that so-called 'terrorists' are the ones who represent the radical opposition against the state terror.

Terrorism per se means resistance with 'small forces' against outnumbering total violence. According to the tradition, it is defense of insulted dignity.

It's as if a 'terrorist act' is reproducing a situation at a duel, where the 'terrorist' uses a retaliatory power action as the last resort to defend his rights, his dignity and even his physical existence before the outnumbering unjust brute force.

Morality-wise it would be hard to raise any claims against the 'terrorist'. In Russia back during the times of secret Decembrist societies (early 19th century) the idea of regicide (assassinating the Czar) by using a 'terrorist act' was coming around. This is what Russian poet Pushkin writes about it in his novel 'Eugene Onegin':

«Seemed like melancholic Yakushkin was silently unsheathing his regicidal dagger».

At the present moment the society has not come to the idea of such political regime that would be strongly protected from terrorism. The problem of terrorism equally concerns both dictatorships and democracies.

For example, there are still strong 'terrorist organizations' existing on the territories of Great Britain, Germany, France, and let alone Israel. And Russia, which has been conducting a severe genocidal war against the Chechen people, has been sitting on the top of a mighty volcano of terrorism for quite a while.

And now, after setting the two things apart, let's figure out who are the 'bad guys', who the main Kremlin's expert in sewers is offering to 'ice in outhouses'. And the main thing is to figure whether such 'icing' will ever make any sense at all.

Let's start from the beginning. That is, from the legal competence of the «chief Kremlin fighter against terrorism».

The Russian-Chechen war, which has been going on longer than the World War II was, stubborn political maniac Putin is calling a 'fight on terrorism'. And Armed Forces of Ichkeria he is persistently calling 'militants' at best, or normally just 'bandits'.

But terrorism and banditry are not an incursion by some wild exotic beings, who «run around the mountains and woods», like the Kremlin's ranger likes to be claiming and sputtering about it. Nor is it any fit of temporary insanity.

Moreover, everybody knows that law enforcement is supposed to fight bandits, and an army can only be fighting against another army.

From the worldwide experience it is known that in normal conditions it is virtually impossible to solve the problem of terrorism with power methods. This is a version of a civil war (the history also calls it a «diffused war of small intensity»). Therefore there are objective reasons that this phenomenon is based on: social, economic and political reasons.

As far as imperialist Russia goes, it has encountered not terrorism (even though Russian undertaker of truthful information Yastrzhembsky has been trying to convince the duped Russians of that), but classical sabotage and guerrilla warfare, which started right at the moment of the incursion of Russian criminal militarized gang formations consisting of mercenaries and butchers into Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

The side that was targeted for a bold aggression has always been resorting to acts of sabotage in any wars, more or less.

As long as the 'saboteurs' (or it would be more correct to call them the defenders of their Homeland!) have the rear support and the territory (like the Chechen people have in our case), there will be no guarantee that the acts of sabotage (which actually means combat operations and raids!) by Chechen Mujahideen will ever stop.

Thus, Zionist government of Israel, which established its power in Palestine by using a total terror, has been calling the acts of sabotage by Palestinian guerrillas 'terrorist acts'. It was calling the PLO a 'terrorist organization' and was trying to solve the problem by purely military methods.

But as long as the Palestinians had the rear support, - which is actually the entire Arab world, - Israel never succeeded in putting an end to guerrilla warfare (during which the Israelis lost 3 times more people that in all usual wars that Israel has been conducting throughout the entire period of its existence).

The problem was partly solved by signing an agreement with the PLO and by creating the so-called 'Palestinian Autonomy'. But today it turns out that the problem is not solved by partial satisfaction of rightful demands of Palestinians to have their own independent state.

The same picture can be seen in the war between Russia and Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Russia will never solve the 'problem of terrorism' in Chechnya by using punitive combat operations in the form of all sorts of 'cleansings' and raids. The reason for today's so-called 'Chechen terrorism' is completely rooted in the Kremlin's traditional imperial policies.

In 1994-1996 the Yeltsin's government bombed everything in Chechnya that could ever be bombed and after losing the First Russian-Chechen War it started gradually building up forces for the second (revanchist) incursion into totally devastated Ichkeria.

The Second Russian-Chechen War has shown that the Kremlin is going to 'conquer' Chechnya (like during the Czars) and crush any resistance using the practice of mass terror against civilian population of Ichkeria. But this plan is extremely hard to be implemented equipment-wise even in this modern age of advanced technologies.

And the main thing is that it gives no guarantees whatsoever that the so-called 'terrorist acts' against the terrorist aggressor will ever be stopped. After being devastated and bombed, Chechnya, filled with righteous anger and burning hatred towards anything Russian, will keep posing a serious threat to Russia's security as long as even one Russian invader remains on its soil.

And on the other hand, in order for Chechnya to stop posing such a threat, the aggression must be stopped and all Russian criminal militarized gang formations must be withdrawn immediately and independence of Chechnya must be declared without delay by signing a proper agreement with the legitimate authorities of Ichkeria. I.e. causes of 'terrorism' must be liquidated completely.

But so far protracted war operations are still going on in Chechnya. There is no shadow of a doubt that Chechen Mujahideen have all forces necessary for a prolonged guerrilla warfare. It is a known fact worldwide that such guerrilla warfare can last for decades, while turning into a permanent background for political and economic activities of some people and into a way of life for others. In Myanmar (Burma) and in Colombia, for example, guerrilla war has been going on since 1940s and is still continuing to this day.

And in the Caucasus Russia has been waging war for over 400 years with only short interruptions.

Abu-Aslan Berdushin, journalist of The Caucasus Herald.