What Russia taught Syria: When you destroy a city, make sure no one -- not even the story - gets out

[tabatha]

I made my call. It was short. Then the commander made a call; he quickly hung up and handed me back the phone. "Enough," he said, motioning for me to remove the battery.

As we walked briskly back to the safe house, it was exactly 10 minutes before the cascade of double wa-whumps announced the Grad rocket batteries pounding the vacant neighborhood we had just left.

It was December 1999, and the Russian assault on Grozny was unfolding in all its gruesome detail. After the dissolution of so much of the former Soviet empire, Chechnya was one country that the newly minted prime minister, Vladimir Putin, refused to let go of. His boss, Boris Yeltsin, and the Russian army had been defeated and then humiliated in the media by Chechen forces in the first war. Five years later, Russia was back. And Putin's new strategy was unbending: silence, encircle, pulverize, and "cleanse." It was a combination of brutal tactics -- a Stalinist purge of fighting-age males plus Orwellian propaganda that fed Russians a narrative wherein Chechen freedom fighters were transformed into Islamist mercenaries and terrorists. More than 200,000 civilians were to die in this war, the echoes of which continue to this day.

...

Russia has spent a long time perfecting these techniques. On April 21, 1996, Chechnya's breakaway president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was speaking on a satellite phone with Russian envoy Konstantin Borovoi about setting peace talks with Yeltsin. During the phone call, he was killed by a signal-guided missile fired from a Russian jet fighter. The warplane had received Dudayev's coordinates from a Russian ELINT (electronic intelligence) plane that had picked up and locked on to the signal emitted by the satellite phone. It was Russian deception and brutality at its finest.

... Flash forward to Syria today.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/02/kill_the_messenger?page=full

[Turbineguy]

1. The Rooskies are masters at it.

Practice makes perfect.

[Odin2005]

2. The usual suspects will call it all a "Western Imperialist lie".

[redgreenandblue]

9. I am an anti-imperialist.

And as such I don't mind the passing of the Soviet Union, which was an Empire.

In this particular case I would not call the destruction of the city an imperialist lie. I would however advise people not to be sanctimonious and point out that the "Western Empire" has destroyed many cities in gruesome ways. There are cities in Iraq and Vietnam which are "just as destroyed" as this one and have toxic substances spread all over them which will generate birth defects in generations to come.

[joshcryer]

3. A lot of journalists killed at the beginning of the escalation.

[jsmirman]

4. What do you think about the two journalists getting out

it seems like that should be really damaging to the regime (I hope)?

[tabatha]

5. I guess in the end they won't care.

The Syrian TV station is spouting lies, and they are continuing with their brutality.

All the journalists can do, and have done, is verify the videos that have been uploaded by activists.

Video: CNN – Paul Conroy interview on AC360, “It’s a slaughterhouse.”

http://mar15.info/2012/03/video-cnn-paul-conroy-interview-on-ac360-its-a-slaughterhouse/

[pokerfan]

6. n 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on earth

On December 5, Russian planes, which had been dropping bombs on Grozny, switched to leaflets with a warning from the general staff. The Russians set a deadline, urging residents of Grozny to leave "by any means possible by December 11, 1999:

“Persons who stay in the city will be considered terrorists and bandits and will be destroyed by artillery and aviation. There will be no further negotiations. ”

The Russian commanders prepared a "safe corridor" for those wishing to escape from Grozny, but reports from the war zone suggested few people were using it when it opened on December 11. Desperate refugees who got away were telling stories of bombing, shelling and brutality.[15] Russia put the number of people remaining in Grozny at 15,000, while a group of Chechen exiles in Geneva confirmed other reports estimating the civilian population at 50,000. The Russian troops repeatedly fired on the refugees fleeing along a designated corridor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_%281999%E2%80%932000%29

[Posteritatis]

7. Grozny's even eerie from orbit in that regards

Check around the edges of the city in Google Maps - you can still see scarring everywhere, and that's before going into the empty street grids.

[JDPriestly]

8. And our military now has the authority to arrest and imprison us indefinitely (and

who knows what might happen to us in prison). The entire world is moving toward Fascism at a rapid rate.

All it takes is labeling someone you don't like as a "terrorist." I cannot say precisely what a person has to do to be labelled a "terrorist." I say this because the individual who shot Gabrielle Giffords was not tried as a terrorist -- at least no yet, but in my view, he was a terrorist. Was he crazy? Perhaps. But then aren't all terrorists first of all crazy and only secondarily terrorists?

"Terrorist" is a vague term.

Worse yet, there does not seem to be any attempt to try to define supporting terrorism or supporting a terrorist group. Those are not the precise terms, but then the terms for whatever they are referring to are by nature not precise.

Either someone has done an illegal act and may be investigated, arrested, tried and sentenced, or that someone is innocent and should be left alone.

[redgreenandblue]

10. Why single out Russia? Why not suggest that Syria "learned" from Fallujah?

[denem]

11. Umm ... because Grozny came first? Because Russia is Syria's ally?

Yes, I understand your point. Fallujah's destruction was cut from the same cloth.

[redgreenandblue]

12. Sadly, the destruction of cities is not a novum to human history...