The world held its breath as the tragedy began last Wednesday night. By Saturday some 335 Russians, including 156 children, were dead with 700 others wounded as security forces tried to free 1,000 hostages held at an elementary school in North Ossetia. The hostage takers, Chechen and Arab fighters, wanted Chechen fighters released and Russian troops out of Chechnya. Outrage was universal, although a few claimed that the hostage taking was an instance of resistance, a fight for independence -- a response to the actions of the Russian army in Chechnya. What many seem to have forgotten is that some of today's Chechen rebels were among the Russian troops that invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The Chechnya issue is one that has been distorted over the years. Young men have died for a cause that is part- myth and part-truth. Intelligence agencies and regimes with an axe to grind have conspired to turn youth into cannon fodder, to move them like pawns from one battlefield to another. Hundreds of young Arab men who went to Afghanistan came back to their own countries to wreak fanatical havoc. Others went on to fight in Bosnia, Chechnya and Iraq. Others still found their way to Western countries, where they provide support to other militants around the world. What happened in North Ossetia was a crime in which the US is partner. It was US intelligence that trained Afghan fighters years ago, creating a monster that spread like a cancer, striking with lethal blows across the world, even inside US. Other partners in the crime are Arab and Islamic regimes that depicted the Chechnya crisis as one of a Muslim state demanding independence from heathen Russia. Some Arab and Islamic regimes have used the Chechnya issue, just as they used the Palestine issue before, to bolster their own image. Some of these regimes collected donations, sent assistance, perhaps even arms, to back the secessionists in Chechnya. The Arab media is also partner in the crime, for it romanticised the Chechen rebels as mujahideen and martyrs. How can we seriously denounce Israel as a racist and theocratic state while supporting a Chechnya created on a religious basis? The major partner in the crime, however, is the Russian government, whose botched security operation mirrors years of bungled policy in Chechnya.
