Talk:Second Chechen War/Temp

The Analyses and Reports of the Second Chechen War was listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion and the consensus was merge with Second Chechen War. As that page is currently a copyvio warning, I have moved it here (Second Chechen War/Temp) in the hope that it can form the basis of an external links section of a new article. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/The Analyses and Reports of the Second Chechen War. —Stormie 10:36, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

Rewritten from scratch

I've taken the time to rewrite the article from scratch to avoid the risk of tainting it with any material that might be under copyright protection. I've also noticed a lengthy and sometimes acrimonious edit history. With that in mind, I have striven to achive as neutral a point of view as possible, and I have tried to restrict my statements to demonstrable facts. I have attempted to ensure that different perspectives on the conflict are represented, and that opinions and analysis are marked as such—and kept to a minimum. Finally, I have tried to present a level of detail (where possible) suitable for an encyclopedia. In the interest of clarity, I have attempted to cover key points of the conflict rather than every detail. It is perhaps a philosophical point, but I believe it very important for an encyclopedia to provide concise, pithy information suitable for the educated layperson...but not so much minutiae as to drown readers in detail.

I would humbly suggest that edits to this page be carried out with the utmost care not to inject inflammatory material or unsubstantiated POV. I encourage all editors—of this article as with all articles—to be frugal in the use of any potentially loaded terms. I have no intention of trying to take 'ownership' of this article, but I would encourage all editors to discuss substantial contributions, modifications, and deletions on the article's Talk page before adding them. Wikipedia doesn't need another edit war, and they leave everybody involved in a bad mood. I would rather see a few extra weeks spent refining and discussing this article than see several days of page protection, revert warring, personal attacks, and an article littered with {{dubious}} or {{NPOV}} tags.

With respect to material from other sources, it's not appropriate to copy text directly, even if a few words are changed. If you don't feel confident paraphrasing other text, provide a link and try to summarize the key points here on the Talk page (please try to indicate what new information is present, and why it is important to add). I'm willing to try to incorporate important information into the article. Because I lack any professional or personal vested interests in this topic, I would welcome the role of informal moderator in editing this article.

That said, I am not an expert on Chechnya. It's actually a topic I've dealt with only in passing until now. Check my contribution history; I've been mostly involved in editing science-related articles, and my area of expertise is molecular biology. Because Chechnya is not my (professional) field of research, I have found that doing this rewrite has been highly educational. :) Please jump right in if I have made demonstrable factual errors: incorrect dates, mispelled names, grammatical errors. Accept my apologies in advance for any major gaffes.

Yours truly in the spirit of cooperation and collaboration,

--TenOfAllTrades | Talk 05:43, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've started the new revision; there are still some sections missing but I'm too tired to write them up tonight. The floor is open for contributions. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 05:43, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

On Referendum

I don't quite know how to tell NPOVwise that the referendum was criticized abroad, for example by the US dept. of state, the mass media then on the spot, for the proper conduct, plus that the occupying Russian troops took part in this referendum. So, the lacking validity of the referendum should be included somehow if this referendum is mentioned here at all.--BIR 13:44, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The truth is the referendum was held by the hostile occupiers in order to stoneset the Chechnya status as a constitient RF part, but, for one, the majority of Chechens never recognized the referendum but went on fighting or supporting the fight until today.--BIR 13:44, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well...the procedure was about the same as everywhere in the old post-WW2 Soviet sphere in Eastern Europe.--BIR 13:44, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Okay, there are a few points to look at there there. With respect to the validity of the referendum, the section as it stands mentions concerns, but I wasn't specific because I didn't dig for a lot of details. If you can point me to some useful sources on that I'd appreciate it. (Organizations that are generally recognized as somewhat neutral—Amnesty International, the United Nations, even the BBC—are better for this purpose than local or state news agencies which often have an ax to grind. On this topic, the U.S. state department or the U.K. Foreign Office are probably pretty good, too.) If Russian troops were allowed to vote, that's quite relevant, and it should be included if there is external support for that claim. Extremely low turnout would also support this argument; what percentage of the population voted? What fraction were registered?

The second point—that Russia pushed through the referendum for their own ends and mostly for show—is a bit tougher to include. That's more of a question of interpretation, unless Putin happened to actually say something to that effect in an interview. If there is sufficient factual material to lead one to such a conclusion, then the article readers should probably be able to come up with it without having it spelled out for them.

Finally, there is the question of whether or not the Chechen people have accepted the referendum result. I honestly don't know. Throw me a few links to show that a majority of Chechens (or a significant minority) reject the result. Widespread protests and rioting, general strikes, that type of thing.

I should reiterate that I don't necessarily disagree with or disbelieve what you've said. I just feel that it's important to have solid sources and research to produce a solid, factual article. Sometimes that may mean I play a bit of a Devil's Advocate, just to be sure that we really know what we think we know. Cheers! --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 18:24, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"What can we say? The more blatant the lie, the more firmly one believes in it, Moscow thinks."

Groups.yahoo.com/Chechnya short list [1]

The so called Chechnya referendum was held in March 23, 2003.

Here are my pick-ups of the relevant messages ( the most relevant ones marked ! ) derived from reputable sources which may be traced back identically to the original files in situ of the medias and organisations.

29925 (!), 29939 (!), 30029, 30033, 30150, 30167, 30186, 30210, 30217 (!), 30218, 30282 (!), 30289, 30290 (!), 30291 (!), 30295, 30311, 30329 (!), 30333, 30335, 30353, 30357 (!), 30371, 30381 (!!), 30383, 30414 (!), 30415, 30416, 30418, 30425 (!), 30455 (!), 30509 etc.

The only trouble is just the abundance of details. You need to know dates etc. to be able to search this wide database and to focus properly on.--BIR 13:01, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wow, there's a lot there. I've taken a stab at distilling the key concerns about the referendum; are there any additional suggestions?

The sheer number of references you've provided is overwhelming--might I suggest limiting your links to one or two examples related to each point? (I'd again recommend preferentially citing the major wire services (Associated Press, Reuters), internationally-recognized news organizations (BBC, New York Times), and reports from major organizations (US/EU governments, UN, OSCE). It is much more difficult to assess the credibility and accuracy of smaller independent news organizations, or of guest editorials in the major newspapers.)

I also haven't written anything about what happened between the Russian occupation of Grozny in February 2000 and the constitutional referendum in 2003. What do you think the highlights are from that period? Point form is fine, I'm interested in key names, dates, and events. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 20:17, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Category analysis of valid sources - the news institutes tend to weight only another institutes

Seen from the world's high street news agencies the crisis in Chechnya is nothing but local, desides, the adverse parties of the conflict are one remarkably overwhelming superpower and one tiny nation. The former has had locally all the institutional news medias at disposal, and the later has had only some sporadicly spontaneous channels of news. Eventually, the mainstream agencies worldwide have automaticly echoed, first and foremost, the points of view "filtrated" in the former one's sphere rather than delivered from the later one's reality on the spot.

So, in oder to lighten your burden, I wouldn't weight a lot the above mentioned daily news but rather their in-depth analyses here. Instead, I would prefer some other more professionally focused kinds of directions like human rights organisations, national academies of military studies, and even private conflict-oriented institutes in this peculiar issue. The researchers of those have already evaluated the details taken from the local news sources of the both adverse parties quite neutrally and coherently.

The problem has been that the later tiny adverse party never could "institutionalize" the news from its reality well enough for the world headlines - exept some infamous media-atractive incidents of indefinite origin which ended up in headlines quite hasty while the organised large scale human rights abuses never did as a whole.

About sources: one has better to read first the analyses and reports and take notes of dated interesting details. Then, in order to widen the scope one may, for example, search the yahoo.groups database. Here are just a few topics: 5836, 5877, 5887, 5913, 5942, 5949, 6113, 6138, 6303....etc. until you can cover the rest from February 2000 to March 2003 by these [2] two links [3]

This far, you've proceeded quite well with the renovation of the article. Just go ahead for free on your way. We might focus on details, at long least, when it's complete.--BIR 13:21, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Chechnya abuses on the map

[4] Among other things, Chechnya was mentioned in the regards of the latest Bush Putin Summit.--BIR 06:54, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

List of links

Below are all of the links that were in the original Second Chechen War article. I think it might be best to select the most relevant/comprehensive/accessible/representative of them, but leave the vast majority out of the article. (Yes, I know that list of traits may be hard to satisfy.) We want to give a representative sample, not drown the reader in data, speculation, and virtual paper.

Since each section below has a specific thesis it aims to demonstrate, it might be sufficient to take the most comprehensive/representative article from each section for the article's link list. We don't need to hit our readers over the head with these things.

Any thoughts on what should be kept—or added—, and why?

Cheers, TenOfAllTrades | Talk 04:38, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The beginning of the crisis

Just see how the crisis was purposely developed in order to launch a reconquest of this tiny peace of the collapsed empire and to establish a new rule.

In the heat of the crisis

Here one may read how the reconquest ended in Grozny demolition, invading troops got stuck on the partisan warfare, and how the wide-scale human righs abuses were conducted to break the resistance of the Chechen population.

Signs of 'Realpolitik' on Chechnya developments

Here are sources pointing out how the international community gradually swapped some scattered concerns of a 'political solution' and human rights for the downright acceptance of the Kremlin politics in Chechnya resulting more war crimes and human rights abuses.

Samples of judgement

Merger back into Second Chechen War

Hi,

I'm merging the content here back into a non-copyvio reverted version of Second Chechen War. I would urge moderate, reasoned, NPOV edits for the future. I would also urge editors to limit their use of templates on the article page. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 17:34, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please, go on

Ok. So far the stuff looks great. The "ugly boxes" just reflect the minds of totalitarianism where they are accumulated from. --BIR 15:40, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)