A Case Study of Chechen Terrorism
The lone wolf under the moon is the national symbol of Chechnya, and it is a full embodiment of their national identity. For thousands of years they have maintained and preserved their own culture: under Turks, Tatars, Ottomans, Tsars, Soviets, and modern Russians. Under each they have faced challenges unknown to any American from the earliest settlers to present, yet they have managed to maintain their completely unique language, customs, and way of life in an area the size of Connecticut. The Chechen people are as rugged, mysterious, and violent as the mountains they call home, and their conflict is possibly the most complicated in the history of the world. It is ethnic, it is religious, and it is deeply personal. In modern times, the history of the conflict for this small mountain republic has largely been ignored. The media portrays the Chechens as “Islamist separatists” or “militant insurgency”[1]; however, prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States and its allies were beginning to call for an investigation into the atrocities being committed by Russia in Chechnya. These calls fell silent with the collapse of the World Trade Center, and the United States began to group the Chechen conflict into the “global war on terror” against Al-Qaeda. Though acts of terrorism were used prior to September 11, it is not until the West began ignoring the conflict that acts of terror began to be committed on a large scale in areas far removed from the war zone. This study will examine the history of violence between Chechnya and Russia from ancient to present, offering justification to Chechnya’s modern use of terror as a weapon in their fight against the giant Russian bear.
Under the Tsar
Chechnya’s complicated relationship with Russia began in the middle of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century when the regions of the Caucasus lay firmly in the hands of the Ottomans and the Persians. Tsar Peter the Great attempted 2 pushes south, seizing the costal areas of the Black Sea (at Azov) from the Turks and the Caspian Sea from the Persians[2]; this time also saw the first conflict between Chechens and Russians. The Chechens joined up with Cossack Old Believers, who stood against Peter’s pro-western stance, seeing it as a threat to their way of life. To complicate matters more, the Russians fought the Chechens on their own soil, resulting in a massacre[3]. Catherine the Great launched a new war with the Ottomans in the mid-eighteenth century, annexing areas northwest of the Caucasus and opening the plains to Christian Russian settlement[4]. The region firmly came under Russian control under Tsar Alexandr I with the peace treaty of Adrianople in 1829[5].
The people of Chechnya have always attached great significance to their ancestors. Before the first Chechen War in 1994, journalists saw that a painting of Mansur, a shepherd’s son who led a Chechen insurrection against the Empire in 1785, hung on the wall of then President Dzhokhar Dudaev[6]. Mansur declared himself Imam of Sufi Islam in 1784 and in his sermons called for Islamic unity, an abandonment of the corrupt common law, and a turn to shari’a law. He declared a gazavat, or holy war (what would now be called jihad) against corrupt Muslims who had assimilated into Russian society[7]. Mansur eventually built a force of 12,000 men and marched on Russian territory where he was defeated; however, his insurrection succeeded in completely converting most of the Caucasus to a strict adherence to the Islamic faith, which has not changed to this day[8].
It is following this first rebellion that Russia adopted a hard line toward the Chechens. They were to be “’constrained within their mountains’ and were also to lose the ‘agricultural land and pastures in which they shelter their flocks in the winter from severe cold in the mountains.[9]’” In a string of economic warfare, Chechens who would not submit to Russian rule had their fields and villages devastated and their women sold as slaves or distributed to Russian officers[10]. This time also witnessed the first deportation of Chechens to Siberia, but no figures were kept on the numbers banished[11].
During the Caucasus War, fought between 1840 and 1859, a new historical figure emerged, Imam Shamil. Moshe Gammer has written that he “was a born leader, commander, diplomat, and politician… [who] was far from extremism or blind fanaticism[12].” Shamil sought peace with the Russians and agreed to cooperate with them if he could establish shari’a law in the mountains; however, the Russians did not view his rise to prominence with favor and demanded his surrender[13]. The Russians decided that Chechnya was no longer suited to rule itself and began sending soldiers to the region with permission to seize food, livestock, and weapons from the Chechens[14]. For 20 years, the Chechens fought off the Russians but were inevitably defeated with nearly half of the population dead[15]. Following the combat, Tsar Alexandr II had the region “ethnically cleansed” by forcibly exiling 100,000 Chechens to Turkey, where at least one third died en route[16].
Shortly before the October Revolution in 1917, oil was discovered in the region; greatly increasing it’s value to the Empire[17], but revolution would distract Moscow’s focus from the region. In the time period before the Bolsheviks firmly came to power a group of Chechen intelligentsia created a “Central Committee of the North Caucasus and Dagestan” and on 11 May 1918 declared the region an independent state. By 1919, in the midst of the Russian Civil War, they defeated a force of the Tsar-loyal White Army and declared the entire region the “North Caucasus Emirate.”[18]
Under the Soviet Union
Though the Chechen experience under the Tsars was full of bloodshed, the rise of Stalin’s Soviet Union, with its collectivization program and “war communism” would take the obvious ethnic divide to new heights of violence. Stalin, then the Bolshevik People’s Commissar of Nationalities, cut a deal with the peoples of the mountains. He would grant them sovereignty over their land if they formed a semi-Bolshevik government. The new government consisted of the 6 main regions of the Northern Caucasus (Chechnya, Ingushetia, Ossetia, Karbada, Balkariya, and Karachai) and it would have an Islamic/Bolshevik constitution based on shari’a law[19]. However, this deal was incredibly short lived, lasting only a year and a half, and by 1922 the Soviets began to “pacify” the region: disarming the population and burning down the homes of “bandits” (the rhetorical term “bandit” as John Dunlap points out, will be used again by Yeltsin and later Putin when defending the wars in Chechnya[20]).
Collectivization, beginning in 1929, was hard on everyone in the Soviet Union, but Chechnya was selected to be one of the first places it was implemented. This goes to show just how deeply seeded Russian hatred for the Chechens goes. All private property and real estate was seized, and the kulaks (or semi-wealthy farmers) were “liquidated as a class”.[21]
First Taste of Terror
This time period also witnesses the first acts of “terrorism” in the mountains (“terrorism” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is, “the systematic use of terror [fear] especially as a means of coercion”[22]). In 1931-1933 there were sixty-nine acts of “terrorism” in Chechnya, largely perpetrated against members of the secret police and party officials[23]. Naturally, acts of terror were not one-sided; the GPU, which was the local equivalent of the NKVD and KGB, was also notorious for their acts of violence. A common tactic would be to take a “bandit’s” family hostage in order to force his surrender, after he turned himself in, and despite promises that no harm would come to him, he would promptly be shot and his family forced into the Gulag system[24]. This tactic was incredibly brutal, but it was only the beginning of Stalin’s brutality. It only intensified in the coming years.
In the middle of the night on 31 July 1937 a “General Operation for the Removal of Anti-Soviet Elements” began in Chechnya. Under a single arrest warrant 14,000 people (3% of the population) were rounded up and either executed or sent to concentration camps[25]. In the following 2 years, most civil service workers, lower party echelons, and the educated were also rounded up. In 1937, around 435,922 Chechens were known to live in the USSR; by 1939 the figure was only 400,344[26]. In a final wave of genocide an executive order was issued for the complete liquidization of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The Chechens and Ingush were indicted as an entire people group for supporting Nazi Germany in the war, and by the end of the operation 521,247 people were loaded into rail cars and transported to camps in Kazakhstan and Kirgizstan[27]. After this mass deportation, Chechnya was literally erased from the map much like its population[28]. In the coming decades there were very few uprisings by the Chechens or campaigns against them by the Soviet government; it was a relative peace achieved through wholesale slaughter. The relative quiet was not due to last. In 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new Chechen nationalism emerged and with it a new weapon, militant Islam.
The First Chechen War (1994-1996)
The first modern war for Chechnya began under Boris Yeltsin’s Russia in 1994, after Chechnya declared unilateral independence from the newly formed Russian Federation[29]. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, member Soviet Socialist Republics that were not historically part of Russia had been granted independence. Chechnya, on the border of the newly independent Georgia, sought the same for itself. The loss of the southern Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) had wrought havoc on Russia’s economy and regional political standing: the region is wealthy with oil, and, politically, sits between Muslim Iran and Muslim NATO member Turkey[30]. For the region, the Soviet collapse had reawakened a sleeping giant, religion. All of a sudden, the people were free to rebuild the many mosques and churches destroyed during Soviet times, and, as the minarets rose, people began to remember the historical divide between Russia and the Caucasus[31]. This divide was most pronounced by one man, Dzhokhar Dudayev. He was the leader of the newly independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and a former Red Air Force General who served in Afghanistan. Initially, he was a Chechen nationalist, but to secure his foundation with the people, turned to Islam. It is alleged that when he laid eyes on the mountains, he did not say how beautiful they were, but said what great territory it would be for a guerilla war[32].
The push for independence had come at a steep cost economically. By 1994, most ethnic Russians had fled, the super-rich had taken over the government, and gangs had taken over the streets. This all served as great media bait; Russian politicians labeled Chechnya the “first criminal state”[33] and began hedging their bets for invasion. By 25 August 1994, civil society had virtually died in Chechnya, giving the Kremlin an opportunity to put the wolf in its cage. The Kremlin backed a replacement to Dudayev, Umar Avturkhanov, who gained support through being labeled “the only legitimate power structure in Chechnya” [34]. The Kremlin also provided him with helicopters, tanks, and at least “forty billion in cash” (though Dudayev’s secret police chief claimed that Avturkanov’s financial support was closer to 100 billion rubles)[35].
On 26 November 1994 the operation began Russian forces covertly filled the ranks of Avturkhanov’s opposition, and 50 Russian manned tanks poured into the streets of the capital, Grozny. Thinking the fight had been won, the Russian state news agency, ITAR-TASS, announced, without mention of Russian involvement, that the opposition had taken the presidential palace. However, this was simply not true. In a series of ambushes, Dudayev’s forces destroyed the armored columns and sent the opposition into full retreat[36]. Dudayev placed 20 Russian soldiers on TV as prisoners of war (POW), so that the Russian government could no longer deny involvement. The government kept up denials; while the POWs informed the militants and the media of the excessive sums of money the FSK (secret police) was paying them to fight for the opposition[37].
After this failed attempt to take the capital, and with President Yeltsin’s approval ratings down to 8% before reelection, the full invasion of Chechnya was decided[38]. A pro-war team of corrupt officials, generals, and former KGB men supported Yeltsin. They constantly embezzled funds, and when Dimitri Kholodov, a reporter, broke the story of one general using soldiers housing money to buy a Mercedes, a bomb mysteriously killed him; his murder was never investigated[39]. This is just one of the journalists who have mysteriously died for writing negative articles about the Russian government. A total of 52 journalists have been confirmed killed for what they wrote in Russia since 1992, an additional 24 have been murdered, but it is unknown if it was due to what they wrote[40].
The official war began on 31 December 1994 with a full scale bombing campaign against the capital. The Russians claimed that only military targets were being hit, but in reality it was the entire city: neighborhoods, hotels, crowded highways, hospitals[41]. At one point up to four thousand shells were falling on the city in a single hour[42]. Despite the air assault, the invasion was going badly; Russian columns were poorly supplied and could not advance on the capital. Paired with this were guerrilla attacks by the Chechens. Dudayev’s experience in the Afghan wilderness was paying off; the Chechens fought in small, independent, mobile bands that could strike violently then vanish into the hills of their homeland[43].
Even if a Chechen despised Dudayev and his cause, he was drawn to fight from the history and culture of Chechnya. The men were not fighting to rip the Russian bear from his pedestal; they fought for their homes, families, and identity[44]. If you were a young Chechen man, and you did not fight you would enter the Russian extra-judicial “filtration camp” system. These camps operated throughout the conflict with no foreign observation and no journalists allowed near the premises[45]. One year into the conflict over 1,000 Chechens had gone missing at these camps alone (the human rights watchdog, Memorial, says a total of 5,000 went missing[46]); the ones who made it out told stories of true brutality: men kept in pits, pelted with rocks, burnt with cigarettes and boiling water[47]. The brutality went both ways. The “terrorist” Shamil Basayev, took a hospital with 1,500 Russian hostages, but this terrorist act brought the ceasefire that ended the war[48].
The war officially ended on 31 August 1996 with the Khazavyurt Accords[49], but the violence did not. In December, 6 employees of the International Red Cross were murdered in their sleep, and scores of journalists were kidnapped. None of this was investigated[50]. Estimates for civilian deaths remain unknown, but it is believed to be between 40,000 and 100,000 people from the total population of one million[51]. A conservative estimate of combatant deaths stands at 7,500 men for the Russians, and 4,000 men for the Chechens[52].
The Second Chechen War (1999-Present)
Again, Chechnya was independent, in ruin, and lawless. The Kazavyurt Accords had left the status of Chechnya as a state to be determined in 2001; however, the Russian government officially declared an end to 400 years of war, and even recognized the country by its title, “the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria”[53]. It was the first and last time the Chechens would get such recognition. No other country recognized an independent Chechnya, no aid through loans ever came, and the Russian government paid no restitution. Infant mortality stood at 100 out of every 1,000, and evidence suggests the Russians used chemical weapons during the war that destroyed foliage, caused rampant disease and birth defects[54].
Crime also ran rampant. The new Chechen president, Mashkadov, was believed to have connections in Moscow that profited from kidnapping and human trafficking[55]. Simultaneously, political circumstance drove the fledgling nation closer and closer to becoming an Islamic republic. Islam became the uniting force for nationhood, as it had in the past, since any sort of détente with the Kremlin was unobtainable[56]. It is during the second war that Chechen terrorism tactics take the appearance of the Tamil Tigers: suicide bombings. The 1994-6 war left a surplus of people with no families and a desire for vengeance. Tony Wood in particular attributes the rising prevalence of female suicide bombing to the widespread use of rape as a weapon by the Russian army[57]. The use of Islamist rhetoric proved too valuable for Chechnya to live without; it drew large amounts of financing from abroad that could pay soldiers and their families[58], but it came at a cost. It cemented the resolve of the Russians to crush them, and the West to ignore them.
Spearheading this front was Shamil Basayev (named after Imam Shamil from above), who launched a raid into neighboring Dagestan under the pretext of creating “a single, Islamic Chechen-Dagestani state”[59]. These activities were attempts to draw attention from the international community to the atrocities committed in Chechnya, but no attention was given. The West was trying to appease Russia during the bombing of Yugoslavia, and any sort of outcry about the problems in Chechnya would’ve led to a nightmare in the Balkans. There was equal silence from the UN: no tribunals, no amnesty, no communiqués of any type were issued about the violence in Chechnya.
With the Russian army already sitting on the borders of Chechnya, a string of bombings hit Moscow and other cities causing nearly 300 deaths. It was immediately blamed on the Chechens, but was never proven[60]. In fact, an unexploded bomb was found in Riazan, and the people who placed it turned out to be FSB (formerly the FSK and KGB) agents; they said it was a “training exercise,” and that the bag of explosives found was only sugar[61]. Putin stated it was time “to wipe [the Chechens] out of the shithouse”, and that the Russians “would destroy the bandits, their camps and infrastructure.”[62] Under the guise of a war on terror, Putin launched an invasion and bombing campaign that made the first Chechen war look like the US invasion of Granada. Dams, bridges, oil wells, even the central market in Grozny were bombed killing scores of civilians[63]. Refugees fled by the thousands; all were “terrorists”, and Russian aircraft fired on them[64]. In one instance, groups of surviving inhabitants were told by the Russian military that they could leave the town of Katyr-Yurt in buses marked with white flags. After their departure, the busses were hit by an airstrike killing 363 men, women, and children[65].
By 2000, the “filtration camp” system was back in operation, with Human Rights Watch claiming that by February 2001 853 illegal executions had occurred[66]. The United States had also become aware of this. In May 2001, Paul Wellstone of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent a letter to George Tenet, the head of the CIA, requesting satellite imagery to “document publically the existence of mass graves and concentration camps in Chechnya”[67]. However, on September 11, 2001 this was swept from the public’s mind. Chechens are, according to President Bush, in league with Al-Qaeda despite denials from the Chechen deputy prime minister[68]. This sudden shift of position on Chechnya allowed the United States to use Russian airspace for the war in Afghanistan[69], and with that shift, the door shut and, outside of an upcoming hearing on human rights abuses by the Senate Foreign Relation Committee[70], remains closed to any hope of international involvement in favor of Chechen independence.
With the door to international attention closed and with the West now grouping the Chechen struggle with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, the Islamist rhetoric and use of terror tactics intensified. In 2002, a group of Chechen militants took over a theater in Moscow demanding an end to the war. The Russian FSB used toxic gas to subdue the attackers; however the gas also killed 117 hostages[71]. Then came the most notorious attack, the Beslan School Hostage Crisis. In September 2004, a group of Chechens took over an elementary school in Russia, again calling for an end to the war. There were more than 1,000 people in the building; most were children. When Russian forces stormed the school a series of explosion ripped through the area where hostages were held killing 331 people including 186 children[72]. In 2010, the Moscow Metro was hit with a double suicide blast killing 34[73], and, in 2011, a suicide bomber detonated himself in the international terminal of Moscow’s Domodedovo airport killing at least 35[74]. These attacks were one of the only times the Chechen question entered the international media cycle since the “War on Terror” began, and they are the first time in modern history that the Chechens have taken the fight to the Russians. While unbelievably terrible, they pale in comparison to the state-sanctioned violence that has ravaged Chechnya for nearly 20 years. Terrorist tactics enabled the Chechens to find weak points in Moscow’s politics and effectively swayed public opinion[75]. It took what seemed like a distant war and dropped it on the average persons doorstep. The Russian “counter-terrorism operation” ended in Chechnya on 16 April 2009, but violence has continued to flare up in neighboring areas[76]. In reality, the war is not over. It has simply entered a new phase where the Chechens discretely move from place to place planning their payback.
Now more than ever, the wolf is
alone on its mountaintop. The eyes
of the world no longer see the wrongs that have been inflicted on this nation;
even worse, they now look with favor on the country that has committed
them. The wolf has learned that
violence and the cries of the innocent are the only things that bring attention
to their plight. Even if that
attention is outrage against their tactics. This study was never planned to be in favor of the Chechens;
in fact, it was supposed to be the opposite. However, when reading the history -the use of nerve gas, the
attacks on civilians, the “filtration camps”, journalists being murdered for
their criticism, rape as a weapon, forced disappearances, and the West’s approval
of the aforementioned tactics as the right way to defeat terror- it is
overwhelmingly apparent that, because of politics, hundreds of thousands of
people were allowed to die. The Chechen struggle will not end anytime
soon. If anything, it will only
become more violent. The
international community must accept their acquiescence and role in a conflict
that could have and should have been prevented. The perpetrators must be held accountable, and the Chechens
must be allowed their independence. Only then will this cycle of violence draw
to a close.
[1] Maxim Tkachenko, Series of blasts kill 1, injure dozens in Russia's Dagestan, September 22, 2011, http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/22/world/europe/russia-attacks/index.html?iref=allsearch (accessed December 13, 2011).
[2] Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar (Portland: Frank Cass, 1994)(pg. 2-3).
[3] John Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) (pg 7).
[4] Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar (Portland: Frank Cass, 1994). (pg. 3-4)
[5] Ibid (pg 5-7)
[6] John Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) (pg. 9).
[7] Ibid (pg. 10).
[8] Ibid (pg 12)
[9] Ibid (pg 15)
[10] Ibid (pg 15).
[11] Ibid (pg 16)
[12] Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar (Portland: Frank Cass, 1994) (pg 292).
[13] John Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) (pg. 25).
[14] Ibid (pg. 25-26)
[15] Ibid (pg. 29)
[16] Ibid (pg. 30)
[17] Ibid (pg. 34).
[18] Ibid (pg 36-39).
[19] Ibid (pg 42-43).
[20] Ibid
[21] Ibid (pg 49).
[22] Definition of "terrorism", http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terrorism (accessed December 13, 2011).
[23] John Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) (pg 50).
[24] Ibid (pg 52).
[25] Ibid (pg 55).
[26] Ibid (pg 56).
[27] Ibid (pg 61,63,67).
[28] Ibid (pg 73).
[29] Sebastian Smith, Allah's Mountains (New York: I.B. Taris & Co Ltd., 1998) (pg. 3).
[30] Ibid (pg 70).
[31] Ibid (pg 74-75)
[32] Ibid (pg 125)
[33] Ibid (pg 129).
[34] John Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) (pg 156).
[35] Ibid (pg. 157-158)
[36] Sebastian Smith, Allah's Mountains (New York: I.B. Taris & Co Ltd., 1998) (pg 137).
[37] Ibid
[38] Ibid (pg 138).
[39] Ibid (pg 141).
[40] 52 Journalists Killed in Russia since 1992/Motive Confirmed, http://www.cpj.org/killed/europe/russia/ (accessed December 13, 2011).
[41] Sebastian Smith, Allah's Mountains (New York: I.B. Taris & Co Ltd., 1998) (pg 146-147, 150, 251).
[42] Ibid (pg. 164).
[43] Ibid (pg 152-153).
[44] Ibid (pg 154-155).
[45] Ibid (pg. 90).
[46] Ibid (pg xxiii)
[47] Ibid
[48] Ibid (pg 1)
[49] Tony Wood, Chechnya: The Case for Independence (New York: Verso, 2007) (pg 82).
[50] Sebastian Smith, Allah's Mountains (New York: I.B. Taris & Co Ltd., 1998)(pg. 260).
[51] Ibid (pg 260).
[52] Tony Wood, Chechnya: The Case for Independence (New York: Verso, 2007) (pg 75).
[53] Ibid (pg 82).
[54] Ibid (pg 84).
[55] Ibid (pg 85-87).
[56] Ibid (pg 90).
[57] Ibid (pg 140-141).
[58] Ibid (pg 137-139).
[59] Ibid (pg 92).
[60] Ibid (pg 98)
[61] Ibid.
[62] Ibid (pg 97, 99)
[63] Ibid (pg 99-100).
[64] Anna Politkovskaya, A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003) (pg 32-33).
[65] Tony Wood, Chechnya: The Case for Independence (New York: Verso, 2007) (pg 101).
[66] Ibid (pg 102)
[67] Paul D. Wellstone, "To the Honorable George J. Tenet," Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room, May 14, 2001, http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000650588/DOC_0000650588.pdf (accessed December 9, 2001).
[68]Center for Defense Intelligence, CDI Russia Weekly 28 September 2001, September 28, 2001, http://www.cdi.org/russia/173.html#%236 (accessed December 9, 2011).
[69] Ibid
[70] THE STATE OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE RULE OF LAW IN RUSSIA: U.S. POLICY OPTIONS, http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=08d381d8-5056-a032-52d2-1c872efe21b0 (accessed December 13, 2011).
[71] CBWNP, The Moscow Theater Hostage Crisis: Incapacitants and Chemical Warfare, November 4, 2002, http://cns.miis.edu/stories/02110b.htm (accessed December 10, 2011).
[72] BBC, Beslan School Seige, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/04/russian_s/html/7.stm (accessed December 10, 2011).
[73] BBC, Moscow Metro hit by deadly suicide bombings, March 10, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8592190.stm (accessed December 10, 2011).
[74] Luke and Tom Parfitt Harding, Domodedovo airport hit by deadly bombing, January 26, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/24/domodedovo-airport-bombing-moscow (accessed December 10, 2011).
[75] Dianne Leigh Sumner, "Succcess of Terrorism in War: The Case of Chechnya," in Chechnya Revisited (Hauppauge: Nova Science Publishers, 2003) (pg 116).
[76] BBC, Russia 'ends Chechnya operation', April 16, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8001495.stm (accessed December 10, 2011).
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This post is not as much about the President confirming our covert war in Pakistan as it is about the use of drones worldwide. UAV's are remarkable weapons that are a tremendous benefit to our soldiers in combat. They provide realtime intelligence to men on the ground, can fire on enemies with 1000lb guided bombs, can laser designate targets for larger air strikes, and can track multiple individuals simultaneously all while keeping the pilot safe in a warehouse somewhere in America's heartland. The technology is pretty damn incredible.
