Chechen Rebels Kill 9 Russian Troops and Seize 4 Hostages
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: December 15, 2003
MOSCOW, Dec. 15 - A band of Chechen rebels crossed into a neighboring
Russian region today, killed nine border troops and seized four hostages
before disappearing into the rugged, snow-covered Caucasus, officials in the
region said.
The rebels, estimated to number between two dozen to four dozen, appeared to
have stumbled into a firefight with federal forces in a remote mountain
village in Dagestan, not far from Russia's border with Georgia, the
officials said.
None of the rebels were reported killed. The fate of the hostages, including
two hospital workers, remained unclear.
Today's fighting was one of the most significant ground clashes in a
conflict that has increasingly been characterized by partisan warfare and
terrorist attacks. A suicide bomber killed herself and five others outside
the National Hotel in Moscow last week, only four days after a suicide
attack destroyed a commuter train in southern Russia, killing at least 45.
Basyr R. Magomedov, the administrator of the Tsuntinsky region of Dagestan,
where the clash occurred, said in a telephone interview that the guerrillas
had taken four hostages as they fled, suggesting that seizing captives had
not been the intent of the crossing into Dagestan.
The long, bloody war in Chechnya, now in its fifth year, has often spilled
into the neighboring regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia, as well as into
Georgia. Chechen fighters, usually traveling in small groups, use the remote
gorges and dense forests of the Caucasus to enter and exit Chechnya.
Mr. Magomedov said the guerrillas attacked a truck full of troops sent to
investigate reports of rebel movement near the village of Shauri, killing
all of them, including a commander. He said the rebels broke into three
groups and retreated into the mountains.
Although Russia has intensified its patrols along Chechnya's rugged borders,
the incursion underscored the inability of Russian forces to effectively
seal off the guerrillas and their supplies of arms.
"The communication is very bad with this region," a spokesman for Dagestan's
interior ministry, Mark Tolchinsky, said in a telephone interview, adding
that he could not say where the guerrillas were. "It's too far and high in
the mountains."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/15CND-CHECHE.html
--
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or
democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial
and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals,
so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
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