From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat Oct 26 2002 - 11:21:25 MDT
On Sat, 26 Oct 2002, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> It is unknown how many casualties if any are due the gas which
> had been used (official claim that out of 104 of which 9 had died none was
> due to gas, which doesn't say much as most of dead remained in the
> building).
Yes, it would be nice to know precisely *what* the "gas" was.
> Claims are that 30 high explosive charges have been found
> (maybe not fakes, after all, though I'd like to see a confirmation from
> another source).
If they went in with fake charges then that is a *really* stupid
idea. It means that in the future people aren't going to take
their threats seriously.
> It is interesting how much of the
> subsequent hard line will be for show, and what will be done to defuse the
> problem. There are of course financial interests involved because of safe
> passage rights for oil and gas pipelines which are highly vulnerable to
> guerilla strikes.
Right. That is why I can't imagine anyone building serious infrastructure
(such as pipelines) would consider going anywhere near Chechnya.
It just doesn't make sense to me. Which is why I've never understood
the Russian insistence on keeping the province. As I understand it
they have a whole bunch of semi-autonomous regions. Why not make
Chechnya one of those and get out of that swamp?
Robert
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