CENTRIFUGAL FORCE, PART 2….

The northern Caucasus seems close to civil war. In Chechnya, the fractious opposition has come together under the leadership of Salman Raduev, a founder and leader of the movement to bring Chechnya, Dagestan and other areas in Russia’s northern Caucasus together in a unified and independent state. Raduev accuses Chechnya’s elected President Aslan Maskhadov, who led Chechnya’s successful military campaign against the Russian army in 1994-1996, of insufficient hostility toward Moscow. Raduev and his followers have not yet taken up arms, but they have launched endless demonstrations against Maskhadov throughout the republic. Chechnya’s miserable economic condition, acute poverty made more wretched by war, feeds a political distress brought on by more than a century of ethnic strife. Although the Primakov government seems more sensitive than its predecessors to the dangers of disintegration of Russian rule, Russia lacks the resources needed to support Maskhadov with more than words.

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