Global Issues IRE Resources '11-'12

The collapse of Communism in Eurasia has led to many events that few analysts in the West could have predicted during the Cold War. One of the most improbable of these events was the stunning military victory of the tiny autonomous republic of Chechnya in the 1994-1996 war for independence against the Russian Federation.

While the Chechens can officially claim to be victors in the first Russo-Chechen war of the 1990s, there was in actuality no winner in this bloody conflict. Scores of Chechen villages were destroyed, the Chechen capital of Grozny was bombed to rubble in the heaviest bombardment in Europe since the bombing of Dresden, tens of thousands of Chechens and Russians living in Chechnya lost their lives, hundreds of thousands more were made refugees, and the economy of the independent statelet of Ichkeria, as Chechnya is now known, lies in utter ruin.

Rather than accepting autonomy within the Russian Federation, as the Republic of Tatarstan has, for example, the Chechen people rallied behind such leaders as Dzhokhar Dudaev, Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basaev, and chose to fight the might of transcontinental Russia in a bitter struggle for total freedom. The heavy cost of this independence for the Chechen people has been incalculable in socioeconomic terms.

South Ossetia, where Russia accused Georgia of genocide, citing the murder of more than 1,500 civilians for a humanitarian invasion of Georgia.

regard Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as reckless, irrational, and megalomaniacal.

attack look well pre-planned, not spontaneous. And the authentic death toll makes the justification appear to be a pretext for that attack.

The collapse of Communism in Eurasia has led to many events that few analysts in the West could have predicted during the Cold War. One of the most improbable of these events was the stunning military victory of the tiny autonomous republic of Chechnya in the 1994-1996 war for independence against the Russian Federation.

been wars there within the Republic of Georgia and between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. There, too, occurred the RussianChechen conflict in 1994-96, which resumed in 1999 when forces from Chechnya, probably not controlled by the national leadership of the republic, attacked neighboring Dagestan.

been wars there within the Republic of Georgia and between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

There, too, occurred the RussianChechen conflict in 1994-96, which resumed in 1999 when forces from Chechnya, probably not controlled by the national leadership of the republic, attacked neighboring Dagestan.

At the time of writing of this review of Matthew Evangelista's clearly written book on the wars between Russia and Chechnya, there are reports of several people being killed in an explosion on a commuter train in south Russia, close to Chechnya.

The Russian authorities immediately blamed "Chechen terrorists.

Georgia contends that its primary conflict is with Russia, which has supported separatism in Georgia's breakaway regions since the early 1990s. Russia, conversely, insists that the conflict is between Georgia on one hand and South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the other; its own role is simply that of a mediator. As a result, Russia’s lawyers argued in court, it could not be in dispute with Georgia in this case. The judges disagreed. Russia’s claim to third-party status, Ms Kalandadze insisted, is now untenable.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia tend to defer to their Russian sponsors. Talks failed to prevent Russian vetoes from hastening the departure of OSCE and UN missions from both territories, where Russia has stationed overwhelming military forces.

Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, made a unilateral declaration to that effect at the European Parliament last November. The authorities in the two breakaway provinces followed suit. But Moscow then insisted that the three parties should put their pledges in writing, while refusing to commit itself to such an agreement. Georgia objects to the implicit legitimacy this would lend South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and instead wants a bilateral agreement with Russia. The result: stalemate.

the powers, struggling for the independence, finally divided into two camps. The most popular in the public was the political block "The Round Table". The famous leader of this block was the former dissident, philologist, Zviad Gamsakhurdia (1938-1993). Exactly his personal popularity conditioned the victory (62% votes) of "The Round Table" after October 28, 1990 elections (the first many-partied elections in Georgia since 1921). Thus, it was a peaceful end of the Communist governance in Georgia. Z. Gamsakhurdia soon became the president of the country, and during the period of his reign, the inner political situation in the Republic aggravated. Because of the inflexible, ambitious policy of Gamsakhurdia, the relations between the governing "The Round Table" and the rest opposite part, became bitter. The condition in Autonomies was strained too, especially in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Gamsakhurdia's nationalistic phraseology disturbed the ethnic minorities. If in 1981 the partial compromise with Abkhazia was managed, the conflict with Ossetia became the armed opposition. The reason of this was the abolishment of Autonomous Region of Ossetia by the Parliament of Georgia. This solution was provoked by Ossetians, declaring the Autonomous Region as the Sovereign Republic. It must also be notified that in Georgia of this period, one of the reasons of existing ethnical conflicts (and also the split in Georgian national movement), except the local radical actions, was, as it seemed, the hidden activity of SSC of the Union, which used the tried imperial methods - "separate and dominate".

Unfortunately, Gamsakhurdia's commitment to democracy and rule of law was not as strong as his romantic Georgian nationalism, which encouraged chauvinist and intolerant tendencies among his fellow Georgians. Not only did he favor ethnic-Georgian dominance in a population composed of nearly one-third non-Georgians, he dreamed of Georgia as a regional great power, a kind of Caucasian fulcrum between Russia, Turkey and Iran.

Tensions increased with all the country's minorities (including Armenians, Mengrelians and Azeris), but with real ferocity in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There had been serious interethnic violence in both regions starting in 1989, which led to South Ossetia's secession in 1990.

Gamsakhurdia was deposed in early 1992 in favor of an unelected Shevardnadze.

30 percent of its territory literally under FARC control,

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Causes of Displacement Young people's vulnerability to abuses is the motivating factor for fleeing in many cases. The UNHCHR reports that threats by guerrillas and paramilitaries are the primary reasons for families to seek refuge elsewhere. According to CODHES, in 1998, 36 percent of families fled with their children because of direct threats; 25 percent because of fear; 22 percent because of massacres and killings; 8 percent because of battles; 4 percent because of "disappearances"; 3 percent because of armed attacks; and 2 percent because of torture. According to the ICG, armed conflict accounted for 66 percent of displacement cases in Putumayo in 2002. Families regularly cited fear of forced recruitment of children into armed forces as a reason for fleeing from their homes. For example, 60 families fled from their homes in the municipality of Cunday, in Tolima department in August 2002, following the announcement of a recruitment order by the FARC-EP for everyone over the age of 12, according to the UNHCHR (E/CN.4/2003/13, Annex). In 2002, fighting for territorial control between guerrillas and paramilitaries in western Urabá forced a group of 64 civilians, including 36 children, to flee to the Punusa area of the Darién jungle in Panama, near the Colombian border (UNHCR). World Vision Colombia reports in Victimas Civiles en Medio del Conflicto Armado, 2002, that paramilitary forces committed six massacres during the last quarter of 2002 that provoked displacements of at least 170 people each in Antioquia, Chocó and Córdoba departments. The report also cites 11 massacres by unidentified forces committed during the same period that also forced residents to flee. No specific locations or dates of these events are provided.

Drugs provide Colombia's biggest source of foreign income, nearly 36 percent of

UN estimated the annual illegal drug sales in the world at $500 billion.

"This life was taken simply because he resisted being captured," Colombian prosecutor general Gustavo de Greiff said in a television interview from Bogota, monitored in Miami. "Let this be a lesson to all criminals that sooner or later we will catch them."

In this context, the FARC has adopted strategies to strengthen its presence at the local level that play upon the weak mechanisms of accountability that exist in local and regional government. For example, by kidnapping or threatening municipal authorities, the group has sought to establish "armed oversight" over the use of municipal funds

Based on this information, the insurgents have targeted corrupt politicians in their kidnapping and extortion campaigns, though they often utilize public funds to finance their own activities. L