To congress or conference? A matter of costs in the end.

Today, 9 September 2010, is the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which came about a month when the Americans founded the Republic of Korea from Seoul within their area of occupation. Today supposedly was also going to be the final day of the unprecedented 3rd Party Conference of the ruling Korean Workers Party (KWP). Much has been speculated that this would be the occasion that Kim Jong-il would introduce his youngest son Kim Jong-un into a public political role, much like how his father did with him at the 6th Party Congress in 1980. However, due to a Pyongyang-imposed media blockout, there have been no reports about this conference, nor has there been even any confirmation that it has even taken place! This pretty much is proof of how isolated North Korea is, and the fact that there have not even been intelligence reports about what is happening in Pyongyang shows how much the West has no idea about what actually occurs in the reclusive country.

What has created much commotion and confusion is what is the significance of a 'Party Conference'? How come a 'Party Congress' like in the old days of the Cold War was not called? What is the difference between the two? Andrei Lankov, an eminent expert on Korea, and backed with his first-hand experience of having grown up in the Soviet Union, is able to give a valuable insight into answering these questions and providing clarification and implications.

In an article he wrote for the Asia Times Online, Lankov explained that since the fall of Leninist states in 1989-1991, the Western media are no longer familiar with the various strata of Leninist party structure and function, thought he adds that younger journalists are now probably better informed about the specifics of various Muslim sects.

Lankov goes on to describe that:
In the Cold War era most communist parties once every few years staged a large and pompous convention that was known as a "party congress". This was where the new central committee was "elected". Some of the representatives were prominent bureaucrats and officials, but a majority came from the party rank-and-file. Exemplary milkmaids and steel workers were dispatched to the congress to demonstrate the broad support communist rule allegedly enjoyed among the ''masses''. Nobody expected from them any meaningful discussion of political issues, and in most cases any attempt at such discussion would be promptly suppressed.

It should be added that footage of these party congresses, in the USSR and China in particular, along with the milkmaids and steel workers, usually also prominently showed ethnic minorities arriving in national costume.

Party Congresses were set a fixed 5-year terms, however North Korea was unique in not following these statutes. Lankov said that:
In the Kim Il-sung era, North Korea, however, was remarkable in its relative disregard for legal niceties. The KWP's statute has all the necessary articles, copy-pasted from Soviet regulations, but these have been ignored. Throughout its 65 years history, the KWP has had six congresses, but none of them ever met within the officially prescribed interval. The last KWP congress took place in 1980, and was the venue at which Kim Jong-il was officially and publicly proclaimed the successor to his father. The next congress was supposed to meet five years later. It has never met (and the coming convention will be not be a congress, but a humbler conference).
So it should be added that the congress prior to the last one in 1980 had happened in 1970, a ten year difference much at odds at the congress intervals rigidly applied in other Eastern Bloc countries such as the USSR and the GDR.

What is supposedly is happening in Pyongyang now is a 'Party Conference'. As Lankov describes: Party statutes also stipulated that a minor version of a congress could be convened if the party leadership considered it fit. The minor version was known as a party conference. Officially, a party conference met to discuss peculiar questions of current policy, but in real life it was, essentially, a minor version of the party congress. Generally speaking, the conferences were much less common then congresses.
This explains why many Western media reports have been stating that this has been the first party conference since 1966, insinuating that such gatherings should be more often and regular. However, it would be more correct to say that this 'party conference' is the first gathering of its kind since the 1980 Party Congress 30 years ago.

So this opens the question why a party conference now and not a party congress? Lankov responds by suggesting that it could be for economic reasons:
In North Korea [as was somewhat the case through the former Eastern bloc] it has become an established tradition that a party congress should be accompanied by lavish celebrations and expensive gifts to both the elite and the general public. This tradition was burdensome, therefore a conference, on the other hand, is not expected to be celebrated on such a lavish scale. These economic considerations seem to be the reason why in Pyongyang we are going to see the third KWP conference, not the seventh KWP congress. Nonetheless, in practical terms, the difference between those two events are negligible.

Once today's celebrations are over, we will await and see whether Pyongyang will confirm whether the conference was on at all, let alone any possible new developments for this unique society.

They can pay their own debts!

Iveta Radičová, the Slovak premier, in an interview with the Athens daily Ta Nea yesterday explained why her country refused to contribute to a 110 billion euro package to save the basket case Greek economy. 'This was not a package in solidarity with the Greek people but with the banks of Europe that were responsible for the crisis in that country'. Radičová insisted that Slovakia did not violate any agreement requiring it to pay its share and that it is past, irresponsible Greek governments that are to blame for the crisis. She also went on to make the point that it would be impossible for her government to convince the Slovak public of having to pay to assist another ostensibly richer country of their recklessness when Slovaks went through greater austerity in order to achieve EU and Eurozone membership. You say it, Iveta!

CIA's 'Red Cell' Hypocrisy on Terror

From the Consortium News blog, by Robert Parry. Interesting reading about US government hypcocrisy about its role of exporting terrorism and harbouring terrorists. Remember, unlike Putin who was just a KGB agent, Bush senior actually headed the CIA!

The Central Intelligence Agency has scoffed at an internal memo that cites a few terrorist acts by some American citizens as possibly causing foreign nations to see the United States as an “exporter of terrorism.” The CIA notes that the paper came from its “red cell” analysts who are assigned to “think outside the box” to “provoke thought.”

However, what’s most striking about the secret three-page memo, dated Feb. 4 and disclosed by WikiLeaks last month, is how it reflects CIA self-censorship regarding the agency’s own long history of supporting acts of terror and protecting terrorists.

Cases of terrorism that implicate the CIA or its operatives, such as the blowing up of a Cubana airliner in 1976 or the arming of Nicaraguan contra rebels in the 1980s, are ignored by the “red cell” analysts even though many of the alleged perpetrators and their funders are still harbored in the United States – and include current and past U.S. government officials.

Yet, instead of citing these well-documented terrorism cases, the “red cell” memo references a few cases of individual Americans who have gone abroad and committed terrorist acts as well as some distant history of terrorism linked to U.S. immigrants.

The “red cell” memo notes that Irish-Americans have supported the Irish Republican Army back to the 19th Century. The analysis then skips to Zionist terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who murdered 29 Palestinians as they prayed at a mosque in Hebron in 1994.

In sketching this background, the analysts jump over a lot of blood-soaked history of CIA-connected terrorism. Though assigned to “think outside the box,” the “red cell” analysts apparently knew better than to open a can of worms that they might have found inside CIA’s document vaults.

So, instead of noting the obvious truth – that other countries might view the United States as “an exporter of terrorism” because the U.S. government and particularly the CIA have had a long history of exporting terrorism – the “red cell” analysts confine their study’s frame to some individual Americans with no connection to the U.S. government or the CIA.

Thus, terrorists who have ties to Official Washington are left outside the frame.

For instance, there is no mention of Luis Posada Carriles, the alleged right-wing Cuban mastermind of the bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed 73 people, nor to any of the former Nicaraguan contras who slaughtered civilians as part of a bloody campaign to destabilize the leftist Sandinista government. Yet, Posada and many ex-contras still openly live in or visit Miami.

The CIA files are surely filled with data about Posada and the contras because the CIA worked closely with and provided material support for them.

Not that self-censorship by the “red cells” is all that surprising. It’s been practiced by U.S. government officials and the Washington news media for decades now.

Otherwise, the American people would have been confronted with the uncomfortable reality that many esteemed U.S. government officials, including Republican icon Ronald Reagan and both Bush presidents, had their hands dipped in the blood of innocent victims of terrorism.

What if ex-President George W. Bush’s dictum – that a government that harbors or helps terrorists should be punished as severely as the terrorists themselves – were applied to the United States or even to his own family? Maybe the “red cell” should have asked that “out-of-the-box” question.

In other words, the U.S. political/media system – including these “red cell” analysts – continue to view the world through a cracked lens that focuses outrage on “enemy” regimes and groups while refracting away a comparable fury from similar actions by U.S. officials.

So, for instance, American officials, pundits and journalists rage against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for allegedly assisting Colombian guerrillas, but are getting ready for a year-long celebration of Reagan’s centennial birthday in 2011.

Yet, not only did Reagan arm the Nicaraguan contras, but he continued the covert war after the ruling Sandinistas won an election in 1984 that most outside observers praised as free and fair. He also wasn’t deterred by disclosures of the contras’ human rights abuses – kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering civilians – even when those acts were acknowledged by some senior contra leaders.

Reagan was well aware of the contras’ cruelty (he privately called them “vandals” in a conversation with CIA officer Duane Clarridge), while he hailed them publicly as “freedom fighters” and equated them with America’s “Founding Fathers.”

Reagan kept arming the contras even after Congress ordered him to stop and the World Court denounced the CIA’s secret mining of Nicaragua’s harbors.

Reagan also backed vicious rebel forces in Angola and Afghanistan (including foreign Islamic fundamentalists who later coalesced into al-Qaeda), and he supported state terror against civilian populations in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, killing hundreds of thousands.

By any stretch of the imagination – if any other country had so brazenly violated international law and human rights standards – that government would be condemned by civilized nations and would be treated as a terrorist pariah.

But the vast majority of Republicans and many Democrats view Reagan as a political hero. In a ceremony last year, President Barack Obama feted former First Lady Nancy Reagan at the White House for the signing of a special law to commemorate Reagan’s 100th birthday.

To suggest that the late President was a war criminal or a sponsor of terrorism is unthinkable within the U.S. political mainstream.

Similarly, it is unacceptable to note how the Bush Family has protected Cuban-American terrorists – from 1976 when George H.W. Bush ran the CIA to 2008 when George W. Bush balked at extraditing Posada to stand trial in Venezuela. At times, the hypocrisy was staggering.

On May 2, 2008, more than six years into Bush-43’s “war on terror,” there was a remarkable scene in Miami as Posada, then 80, was feted at a gala fundraising dinner. Some 500 supporters chipped in to his legal defense fund.

Posada arrived to thundering applause. Then, in a bristling speech against the Castro regime in Cuba, Posada told his supporters, “We ask God to sharpen our machetes.”

Venezuela’s Ambassador the United States, Bernardo Alvarez, protested the Bush administration’s tolerance of the dinner. “This is outrageous, particularly because he kept talking about [more] violence,” the ambassador said.

Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen who worked for Venezuela’s intelligence agency in the 1970s, masterminded the Cubana Airlines bombing in 1976, according to an overwhelming body of evidence compiled by the U.S. government and in South America.

Despite the strong evidence against Posada in U.S. government files, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush made little effort to capture Posada when he sneaked into Miami in 2005. Posada was detained only after he held a news conference.

Then, instead of extraditing Posada to Venezuela to stand trial for a terrorist mass murder, the Bush administration engaged in a lackadaisical effort to have him deported for lying on an immigration form.

During a 2007 court hearing in Texas, Bush administration lawyers allowed to go unchallenged testimony from a Posada friend that Posada would face torture if he were returned to Venezuela. The judge, therefore, barred Posada from being deported there.

After that ruling, Ambassador Alvarez accused the Bush administration of applying “a cynical double standard” in the “war on terror.” As for the claim that Venezuela practices torture, Alvarez said, “There isn’t a shred of evidence that Posada would be tortured in Venezuela.”

The kid-glove treatment of Posada and other right-wing Cuban terrorists stood in marked contrast to George W. Bush’s tough handling of Islamic militants. While Posada was afforded all U.S. legal protections and then some, suspected Islamic terrorists were locked away without trial at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In a further ironic twist, the Bush-43 administration allowed Venezuela to be smeared about torture while Bush and his top aides were concealing the fact that they had authorized extensive torture on suspected Islamic “terrorists,” including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other brutal torture techniques at CIA “black sites.”

Posada also made no apologies for his long terrorist career. In 1998, in interviews with a New York Times reporter, Posada admitted a role in a wave of Havana bombings, citing a goal of frightening tourists away from Cuba.

Similarly, his alleged co-conspirator in the Cubana Airlines bombing, Orlando Bosch, showed no remorse for his violent past. In a TV interview with reporter Manuel Cao on Miami's Channel 41, Bosch justified the mid-air bombing that killed 73 people in 1976.

When Cao asked Bosch to comment on the civilians who died when the Cubana plane crashed off the coast of Barbados, Bosch responded, "In a war such as us Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant [Fidel Castro], you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.”

“But don’t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?” Cao asked.

“Who was on board that plane?” Bosch responded. “Four members of the Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese.” [Officials tallies actually put the Guyanese dead at 11.]

Bosch added, “Four members of the Communist Party, chico! Who was there? Our enemies…”

“And the fencers?” Cao asked about Cuba’s amateur fencing team that had just won gold, silver and bronze medals at a youth fencing competition in Caracas. “The young people on board?”

Bosch replied, “I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant. … She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant.

“We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that everyone who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.”

[The comment about Santo Domingo was an apparent reference to a meeting by a right-wing terrorist organization, CORU, which took place in the Dominican Republic in 1976 and which involved a CIA undercover asset.]

“If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn’t you think it difficult?” Cao asked.

“No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba,” Bosch answered.

Though Bosch and Posada have formally denied masterminding the Cubana Airlines bombing, Bosch’s incriminating statements and other evidence make the case of his and Posada’s guilt overwhelming.

Declassified U.S. documents show that soon after the Cubana plane was blown out of the sky on Oct. 6, 1976, the CIA, then under the direction of George H.W. Bush, identified Posada and Bosch as the masterminds of the bombing.

But in fall 1976, Bush’s boss, President Gerald Ford, was in a tight election battle with Democrat Jimmy Carter and the Ford administration wanted to keep intelligence scandals out of the newspapers. So Bush and other officials kept the lid on the investigations.

Still, inside the U.S. government, the facts were well known. According to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines bombing that tied in Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela’s intelligence agency, DISIP.

The Oct. 14 cable said Bosch arrived in Venezuela in late September 1976 under the protection of Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, a close Washington ally who assigned his intelligence adviser Orlando Garcia “to protect and assist Bosch during his stay in Venezuela.”

On his arrival, Bosch was met by Garcia and Posada, according to the report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch’s honor. “A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, ‘we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,’ and that ‘Orlando has the details,’” the CIA report said.

“Following the 6 October [1976] Cubana Airline crash off the coast of Barbados, Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia escorted Bosch to the Colombian border, where he crossed into Colombian territory.”

In South America, police began rounding up suspects. Two Cuban exiles, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, who got off the Cubana plane in Barbados, confessed that they had planted the bomb. They named Bosch and Posada as the architects of the attack.

A search of Posada’s apartment in Venezuela turned up Cubana Airlines timetables and other incriminating documents.

Posada and Bosch were charged in Venezuela for the Cubana Airlines bombing, but the case soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could embarrass President Andres Perez.

After President Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush took power in Washington in 1981, the momentum for fully unraveling the mysteries of anti-communist terrorist plots dissipated. The Cold War trumped any concern about right-wing terrorism.

In 1985, Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison, reportedly with the help of Cuban-Americans. In his autobiography, Posada thanked Miami-based Cuban activist Jorge Mas Canosa for the $25,000 that was used to bribe guards who allowed Posada to walk out of prison.

Another Cuban exile who aided Posada was former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, who was close to then-Vice President Bush. At the time, Rodriguez was handling secret supply shipments to the Nicaraguan contra rebels, a pet project of President Reagan.

After fleeing Venezuela, Posada joined Rodriguez in Central America and began using the code name “Ramon Medina.” Posada was assigned the job of paymaster for pilots in the White House-run contra-supply operation.

By the late 1980s, Orlando Bosch also was out of Venezuela’s jails and back in Miami. But Bosch, who had been implicated in about 30 violent attacks, was facing possible deportation by U.S. officials who warned that Washington couldn’t credibly lecture other countries about terrorism while protecting a terrorist like Bosch.

But Bosch got lucky. Jeb Bush, then an aspiring Florida politician, led a lobbying drive to prevent the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from expelling Bosch. In 1990, the lobbying paid dividends when Jeb's dad, President George H.W. Bush, blocked proceedings against Bosch, letting the unapologetic terrorist stay in the United States.

In 1992, also during the Bush-41 presidency, the FBI interviewed Posada about the Iran-Contra scandal for 6 ½ hours at the U.S. Embassy in Honduras. Posada filled in some blanks about the role of Bush’s vice presidential office in the secret contra operation.

According to a 31-page summary of the FBI interview, Posada said Bush’s national security adviser, former CIA officer Donald Gregg, was in frequent contact with Felix Rodriguez.

“Posada … recalls that Rodriguez was always calling Gregg,” the FBI summary said. “Posada knows this because he’s the one who paid Rodriguez’ phone bill.” After the interview, the FBI agents let Posada walk out of the embassy to freedom.

The double standards on terrorism are now so deeply engrained in Official Washington that the well-established history of U.S. government officials collaborating with terrorists is not only kept “outside the box” of the city’s conventional wisdom but is ignored by the CIA's “red cell” analysts who are assigned to “think outside the box.”

So, the “red cell” analysts may take note of Irish-Americans filling coffee cans with cash for the IRA, dating back to the 1880s, and of individual Americans conducting outrages on their own, but the analysts know better than to look into their own agency’s files for the real reasons why foreigners might “see the United States as an ‘Exporter of Terrorism.’”

So has it started yet?

The long awaited Korean Workers Party conference, that is. The historical meeting of the ruling party of North Korea, the first of its nature since 1980, has been anticipated as the vehicle to introduce Kim Jong-il's son and successor, Kim Jong-un, into the political limelight. However, even though the DPR Korean media have mentioned in past weeks that the conference will be held from the 6th to 9th of September (finishing in time for the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the DPR Korea), a total media blackout has been ordered and no news is coming out of Pyongyang. So where is that Chinese businessman that Radio Free Asia seems to get all of its news from? The only reliable item comes from the Chinese Xinhua News Agency that posted a report about how loyal Pyongyang citizens spent Sunday rehearsing the parade to herald national celebrations on the 9th. But not much else. So will all the speculation about Kim Jong-un actually end up being right? Watch this space and you'll know.

Devastated! Mica Trofrtaljka will not be on Serbian VIP TV show

Who? Well, check out this link to a previous post and you'll find out who this amazing anti-hero is. The third season of the mega-popular VIP reality TV show 'Farma' (Farm) will be starting on the infamous Balkan TV station Pink this Sunday. The previous season, also subject to a post here, produced much controversy and, hence, plenty of free publicity for a whole bunch of talentless has-been Balkan celebrities. Like flies to shit, a new load of publicity-craving Serbian showbiz once-weres are to be unfurled onto an unrelenting Balkan viewing public.

Trofrtaljka, who despite being a huge star since the 1960s still lives modestly in her birth village, was mooted as a favourite to be on the show. However, she has turned down being on the televised Farm. In a statement given to a Belgrade newspaper, Trofrtaljka said that 'What Farma! What a load of noise! I told them that if they give me 5000 euros a week, then maybe I would go, but like this, no way! I would scare them all off... within a day' (OK, she said that she would scare them off u pičku materinu - ask someone open-minded who knows a Balkan Slavic language what that means). The earthy woman of the people described the Farmers as 'idiots and prostitutes' and that she has no business with them. Well said Mica!

By the way, the new film about Trofrtaljka's life premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival late July. Here are some details.

No more Aussie Ana?

The Serbian tabloids are in delirium... word has it from London's Daily Mail and the Sydney Morning Herald that Serbian tennis player Ana Ivanović and Australian gold Adam Scott have broken up. No official statement has been released as yet by their publicists but the papers have pretty much decided it's game, set and match for the young professional sports couple.

Much was publicised earlier this year in Serbia about Ana's extended trips over Christmas and New Year in Australia staying at Scott's family's place in Queensland. Of course it had nothing to do with acclimatising and participating in warm-up tournaments prior to the Ausralian Open on at the end of January. Ivanović even apparently said that she was delighted to be called 'Aussie Ana' (which the Serb press wrote as 'Ozi Ana' - be sure to say it in a Borat accent). Alas, the most significant tennis-ish couple in Australia since Lleyton Hewett and... whatever she's called... talentless chick from Home and Neighbours or something...I digress... will mean that this is just the start of a new fodder trough of photo exposés and exclusive scandals involving La Ivanović (who really cared about Adam Scott anyway?) in tabloids and celebrity rags worldwide. Already, the Serbian forums are going off! My favourite comment from the Svet.rs website: It's about time she finds herself some nice Serb boy.

Keeping up with the Kadyrovs!

Something that alt-world-watch has a particular fascination with, other than the overuse of the word 'particular', is nepotism, and the accompanying amassing of power and weath this practice bolsters. We would like to believe that this is something only done in 'bad' countries, but it's universal. Just that different countries and societies practise it to different degrees. However there is one place that seems to be in the news, but not, at the same time, which is quietly but surely is set to break world records and score lucrative deals and endorsements in its achievements in this widespread practice.

The Russian republic of Chechnya is, in all intents and purposes, now the private fiefdom of the Kadyrov family ever since the hereditary change of leadership when former Muslim imam and separatist-turned-Moscow-man Akhmed Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, was killed in a terrorist attack at the Victory Day parade celebrations in the Chechen capital Groznyy in May 2004, passed power to his thuggish, spoilt and immature son Ramzan, then aged 27. Since then Chechnya has experienced peace and stability, but at a very high cost. With Moscow's blessing, the republic is ruled by the mafia-style showboating and sometime eccentric style of the Kadyrov junior, complete with a cult of personality, grandiose construction projects funded from Chechnya's oil wealth, and massive corruption. At the same time, the Chechens continue living in Third World poverty conditions, enjoying little of the apparent excess lavished to such noticeable signs of wealth like the largest mosque in Europe constructed on the ruins of Groznyy.

Chechnya has had a very violent and extremely tragic history. The region only became a part of the expanding Russian Empire in the early 19th century, after many centuries of superficial Persian and Ottoman Turkish rule. The Russians did not grab full control of the region at first and were engaged in a fifty year campaign to subdue the independent-minded and pious Chechens, earning them the monicker of 'warrior-like'. The Chechens call themselves 'Nokhchii', with the term 'Chechen' applied by the Russians coming from the name of the first Chechen village that they conquered. That proved to be the only lasting feature of Russian conquest on the Chechens as they have always been the unruliest of subjects. When the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, the Chechens declared their independence, though the Red Army was to later subdue and incorporate them into a 'Northern Caucasus Republic' within the new Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic. Again, the Chechens put up stiff resistance to this and continued fighting the Red Army for many years into the late 1920s. Chechen spirit for independence and devotion to Islam conflicted with the Communist ideals that Stalin forcefully imposed on all peoples of the USSR, leading to continued Chechen resistance and, consequently, much repression from the Soviet authorities. When the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941, one of Hitler's main battle aims was to take Groznyy due to its large oil supplies and willing and anti-Soviet/anti-Russian population. Hitler did send envoys to recruit the Chechens to fight with the Nazis, but nothing came out of it as the Wehrmacht were held up and ultimately defeated in Stalingrad. However, this act of potential Chechen 'treachery' was reason enough for Stalin to deport the entire Chechen population - that's every Chechen person - to Siberia and Central Asia in 1944. Effectively, the Chechens (along with some other ethnicities) were ethnically cleansed from their homeland, and at great expense to the Soviet authorities, as the resources required to undertake such a large campaign involving the forced movement of millions of people could have been better used in more pressing areas such as the Red Army's then push to liberate Eastern Europe during the final stages of World War 2. Having been uprooted from their homeland and almost destroyed as a people, the Chechens were left to rot in barren and remote parts of the USSR until 1957, when part of the Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation programme, he granted the Chechens and other (though not all) uprooted peoples amnesty and free passage back to their ancestral home. Many thousands of Chechens had died from this Moscow-imposed exile, though the survivors did take the offer to return. Nevertheless, the trauma of this exile only added to already high anti-Russian feeling amongst Chechens, and a reason why this feeling is still quite high in Chechnya to this day. Following the collapse of the USSR in late 1991, Chechnya seized the opportunity to declare its independence. Moscow had enough problems dealing with the shock of the fall of such a monolithic system that it left Chechnya alone. However, in an effort to regain some national pride, and to gain some popular support in what otherwise were then sagging ratings for Russian president Yeltsin, while also showing the world that Russia is still a superpower, in December 1994 Moscow launched an assault on Chechnya in an effort to regain control of the region. The Chechens, like all times before, held the Russians down with determined resistance. The Russian response was to quickly make Groznyy live up to its Russian meaning - 'Ugly', destroying this once thriving oil-producing centre. With the war proving to be no walk through the park, the threat of the conflict spreading to neighbouring Russian Muslim regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia, along with the increase of 'terrorist' activity, popular support in Russia for Yeltsin's war was practically nil. It wasn't until 1999 when suspicious attacks on Moscow apartment blocks led to the deaths of about 100 victims lead to a new Russian military assault on Chechnya, all with the public-pleasing intent of avenging the 'terrorists'. This time Chechnya was subdued but at a great cost to the Chechens. So many massacres and human rights violations occurred, though with the 'War on Terror' climate that overcame the World then, these crimes have been conveniently overlooked and forgotten. So there we come to today, where Chechnya is now Kadyrovistan.

The vast scale of nepotism in Chechnya makes the practices current in Central Asia look like examples of the triumph of democracy and human modesty. Having built a mosque on the square named after his father and next to the monument to him, Ramzan Kadyrov continues to create memorials to his ancestors, installing members of his immediate family in the institutions of power as he goes along.

Taking what seems to be a leaf out of the eccentric style of Turkmenistan's late crazy dictator Sapamurad Niyazov Türkmenbashi, last year Chechnya’s Minister of External Relations, National Policy, Press and Information (wow, what a title!) Shamsail Saraliyev announced that Chechnya will soon have televisions, mobile phones and computers marked with the brand name "Aymani", which, coincidentally, is the name of the Chechen president’s mother.

While Kadyrov senior was careful to select a wide range of people to be part of his administration to bring together all warring clans, Junior has gone much further – the system of power he has constructed possesses the features of a mature and fully developed tyranny in which all the rules of transparency have been conveniently tossed out of the window. Basically, he's keeping it in the family. Outdoing Romania's Ceausescu, Razman made his maternal uncle Odes Baysultanov Prime Minister. Soon after, posts also appeared for other close relatives. Ramzan’s sister Zulay holds the post of presidential adviser (i.e. she's gets money for doing nothing, but you need to bribe her if you want something big to be done in Chechnya so she can say good things to her brother). Akhmad-Khadzhi’s brother Magomet Kadyrov is a member of the Chechen parliament. Ramzan’s uncle once removed, Khozh-Akhmed Kadyrov, is chair of the Council of Alims.

But the most important position now goes to mama. Ever determined to show how much he is a mummy's boy, and that means more than just getting a range of electrical goods named after her, Junior has also appointed mama Aynami as head of the Akhmat Kadyrov Regional Charitable Foundation, a body not lacking in funds and run in grand style, often functioning as the sponsor of all kinds of investment projects and programmes connected with the republic’s reconstruction and development. So yet another Evita Peron. How nice!

Ramzan Kadyrov, when not parading around wearing shell suits while driving around in expensive cars, is busy thinking up new and weird ideas. Some of these include proposing that Groznyy be renamed after his father, ordered that all Chechen women wear headscarves and set up a group of teenagers to go around squirting 'immodest women' with waterguns, closed the many refugee camps in Chechnya because they are full of "international spies who are interested in stoking conflict between Chechnya and Russia, who are seeking to destabilize the situation in our region", stated his approval of honour killings, and his own private horse Mourilyan camed third in the 2009 Melbourne Cup - earning him US$380,000. He is also (rightfully) accused of severe human rights abuses, war crimes and corruption, having also been implicated in the extra-judicial shootings of human rights campaigners like Nataliya Estemirova, and opponents like Sulim Yamadaev in Dubai earlier this year.

So what to do? Despite human rights groups doing their best to publicise his crimes, Kadyrov still receives tacit support from Moscow, and indirectly from the West, as he is seen as a plug to the spread of Islamist expansion and terrorism... oh, and because Chechnya has oil. The Chechens are still sufferring under Russian rule, though not directly but at the hands of the family they have placed in power. This cannot last, as the Chechens have always been independent-minded. No matter what 'stability' exists now, Chechnya is just a ticking time bomb. It should have been given its well-deserved independence in 1991. Instead, the situation since has only lent to create what will be a worse fall-out in the future, all to the detriment of the long-suffering Chechens.