Page 51 - The Winter of Islam and the Spring to Come

HARUN YAHYA (ADNAN OKTAR)
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that pressure, and for that reason was exposed to great cruelty.
In order to have a correct grasp of what is going on in Chechnya,
we need to concentrate on certain points. The war in Chechnya is not
the kind of conflict where two sides resort to arms because the conflict
between them has reached such a scale that it cannot be resolved by
peaceful means, the kind of war that can be encountered anywhere in
the world. The justice of the Chechens' demands for independence is
being debated in various international circles, and different views are
being expressed. Each one of these views is debatable. The matter that
everyone is agreed on, however, is that the Russians are behaving with
absolutely no restraint and targeting innocent civilians, turning the war
from one involving solely the soldiers at the front into an attempt to
wipe out the whole population of Chechnya. This is unacceptable, and
one of the matters we shall be particularly concentrating on in this
chapter.
In order to portray itself as in the right in the international arena,
Russia suggests that the war in Chechnya is a "domestic matter," believ-
ing that it can thus keep the truth of the savagery going on there from
the public. Yet that pretext is totally insufficient to account for the way
Chechen men are rounded up in the streets and sent off to torture cen-
ters, captured prisoners are tied to tanks by their feet and dragged
along the ground, babies of cradle age are fired upon and all the peo-
ple's assets plundered. A great many political scientists and experts are
agreed that the Russian administration of the period was practically en-
gaged in genocide in the region and employed the kind of savagery that
has seldom before been seen, all in order to keep Chechnya within its
own borders.
On the other hand, the attacks by some Chechen circles aimed at
Russian civilians also need to be unequivocally condemned. The
Chechen people are naturally justified in wishing to live free and hon-
ourable lives. Yet actions of that type cast a stain on that justified de-
mand and make it more difficult to defend the Chechen cause. In
addition, it must not be forgotten that targeting innocent civilians is a
complete violation of Islamic principles. Throughout his life, the