Russia's Dirty Secret

Nothing justifies the appalling bomb attack at Moscow Airport, killing 35 innocent people awaiting friends coming in from their flights, and injuring many more. It feeds a cycle of violence from which it is increasingly difficult to escape. But the attack - by a suicide bomber identified this morning as from the North Caucasus region - is a tragic consequence of the war Russia would rather we didn't talk about. The war against the Chechen people. To date, untold deaths have resulted (in 1999-2000 the estimated toll was 50,000 in that year alone) and the Chechens have had foisted on them a mafia regime under the Islamo-fascist leadership of Ramzan Kadyrov.

The Russian people have suffered at the hands of 'Putin's War', as this record of terrorist attacks shows, but it is nothing compared to the suffering of the Chechens. Russia's people hardly live in a free and open democracy, but they may want to reflect this morning on the pass to which their mercilessly ambitious prime minister's North Caucasian policy has brought them. Many Chechens don't have even that luxury.