Another jihad front opening up in Russia. Oliver Bullough writes in Dawn, with thanks to Two Stellas.
MOSCOW: Take Chechnya’s embattled police force, corrupt government, poor population and violent Islamists, then add dozens of feuding ethnic groups. Welcome to Dagestan, the new front in Russia’s spreading Caucasus war.Unlike the Chechens, who have fought Moscow’s rule for a decade, the Dagestani peoples stayed largely peaceful after the Soviet collapse in 1991. They are not any more.
“There are attacks on police, terrorist acts, attacks on deputies and ministers,” said Saigidpasha Umakhanov, the ethnically Avar mayor of the town of Khasavyurt, who says the government is too corrupt to stop the carnage.
“The government has seized the whole republic, so as to divide up all the money for itself. Well, for the people that is a problem,” he said by telephone. “The government is fighting the people.”
On Thursday, a train was derailed by a bomb north of regional capital Makhachkala. The blast followed a gun battle in the town centre on Wednesday, and an explosion in the town last Friday that killed 10 Russian servicemen.
Police say they have lost at least 28 officers to attacks this year. Militants and federal forces have lost many more, and civilian losses are unknown.
“There is 60 per cent unemployment, there is uncertainty about the government, there is tension between the Avars and the Dargins, who are the two main peoples who want their representative (as local leader),” said Alexei Malashenko, an analyst from the Moscow Carnegie Centre think tank.
“The situation is just getting worse, in every way. This terrorism is a war against the police by the Islamist groups, who are getting bigger alongside their criminal allies.”...
I wonder what South America and Mexico are going to look like in 25 years...
Unless this is met with the ferocity with which the Nazis and the Japanese supporters of Kodo militarism were met, there will be no end to this. That will not be enough. It will have to be accompanied by an effort to force Muslims to recognize for themselves that their political, economic, social and intellectual failures are to be attributed not to Infidels, but to the very nature of Islam itself. There are ways to create such conditions -- or at least to do nothing to inhibit or prevent the creation of such conditions. But military force is also part of the response, wherever and whenever it makes sense -- as it did in Iraq two years ago, and does not, in Iraq, today.
Hugh, you may be interested in reading the following not-quite-secret report as found on Drudge:
SECRET PLAN TO QUIT IRAQ
Your comment implies that the comparison of Mexico and South America with Russia's problems in Chechnya and Dagestan are obvious. Not to me at least, and there's nothing specific in that article that would lead one to make the leap to wondering about Mexico or South America "in 25 years."
What is it you're wondering about? Is it specifically related to Islamist terrorism or to the problem of having poor neighbors so close to the U.S? Islam has been present in South America for decades among certain communities and naturally any percentage increase will seem great because of the small initial numbers. Have you spotted trends there that you lead you to think, "Hmmmmm, in twenty-five years, ten percent of Mexico will be Muslim?" or something similar?
Which is not to say that "corrupt governments" and "poor populations" are not worrisome, but absent the third ingredient "violent Islamists," I don't see any relation between the article and Spanish-speaking America.
The other comment regarding the assumed non-assimilation of some Mexican-Americans is an unrelated issue (esp. to the original article), unless one really stretches the dangers of Islamist terrorism to cover non-English speaking immigrants in general. In that, I see the fear of a known danger rapidly including any different group.
Adding to what JohnathanStrange said, Latin American cultural is incompatible with Islam at all levels. Their love of life just doesn't fit with the culture of death and victimization.