Yet Putin continues to back Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear program, despite the fact that the mullahs hold to essentially the same world view and political ideas as those of the Chechen jihadists. “At least four officers killed in Russia’s Chechnya,” from Reuters, April 19 (thanks to Maxwell):
MOSCOW, (Reuters) – Militants killed at least four members of the Russian security forces on Thursday and Friday in the North Caucasus, where the Kremlin is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency, Russian media reported….
Suicide attackers killed 40 people on the Moscow metro last month and turned the global spotlight on Russia’s mainly Muslim North Caucasus, especially Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.
The Islamist militants say they want a sharia-based, pan-Caucasus state independent of Russia.
In those three regions, at least 862 people were killed last year in clashes, bombing and gun battles, according to the Internet news agency Caucasian Knot.
Despite efforts by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to eradicate what he has called a “cancerous tumour”, critics say poverty, patronage from abroad and heavy-handed tactics by Russian forces encourage the insurgency.
Yes, of course. Poverty — that’s why there are so many Haitian suicide bombers. And the Russians may indeed be heavy-handed, but the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism would still exist even if they weren’t.