The blast in a Kashyrsky Highway apartment block on the day of mourning announced by President of Russia Boris Yeltsin has shown how unpredictable and dangerous can be the consequences of the North Caucasus War. But are these so unpredictable indeed? During the Chechnya war, it was the threat of terror that stopped Russian aerial bombings of the republic. And who said they had forgotten this horrible recipe and would not turn to it when the bombings resumed?
The North Caucasus became Russia's Near East long ago — with all that this comparison implies: guerrilla warfare against the regular army and security forces, attempts of territorial expansion (suffice it to recall the attempt of Palestinians to seize power in Jordan and their involvement in the Lebanese Civil War), and terror on the inland territory of the mother country. The Israelis have been combating terrorism, every day and with no holds barred for several decades by the efforts of the army and the world- renowned Mosad, but it is the Israeli front-line generals (who, unlike today's Russian military, could defeat a strong and perfidious enemy) who came to a conclusion that one must negotiate a settlement with the enemy: otherwise, the latter would further kidnap and kill schoolchildren and plant explosives on buses. Frankly, I would only be glad if one of the Chechnya leaders were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — even together with Yeltsin or Putin — in exchange for a situation when no other Moscow buildings will turn into mass graves for their residents.
The Russian elite decided, however, that it is better to live with their eyes closed, as if not noticing virtually independent Chechnya, corrupt Dagestan, and the Russian contingents whose morale was in fact melting in the Caucasian sun. When the boil came to a head, they began their customary course of treatment with explosives, the same way they did in Chechnya. And history began to repeat itself, but on an enlarged scale: instead of the Budionnovsk raid, brick buildings that cave in like the houses of cards, instead of a grief in faraway Stavropol, the pain was here, on Moscow's own streets. But the Russian leadership, like an unskilled surgeon who amputates the infected part together with the sound, keeps repeating: we must give an adequate reply, reregister all Moscow guests and see what they are doing here (what inspires Mayor Yuri Luzkov to do so? Maybe, 1933?). Nobody thinks now about negotiations in the North Caucasus, the need to make a final choice about the status of Chechnya, the necessity to understand the sentiments of the Dagestan population and stop supporting the marginal population of that republic, whose stupidity, incidentally, alienates many Dagestanis from Russia. Elections are approaching. The elite needs a small victory. This elite has already lost in economics, gone bankrupt in politics, and proved unable to resolve the Caucasus's problems.
Who will now fall hostage to this elite's incompetence and lust for power? The common folk, of course, who, upon going to bed, do not know if they will wake up in their apartments, so safe until so recently.






