THERE IS NO RUSSIA:

Clashes Break Out in the Caucasus (C. J. CHIVERS, 8/24/07, NY Times)

The shootout followed an outbreak of violence on Thursday in the mountains of Dagestan. Two officers were killed in an ambush, and two other attacks in Ingushetia left a Russian soldier dead. A total of at least 16 police officers and soldiers were wounded, the authorities said.

The attacks in Dagestan were the latest in a series this summer in the republics, which are adjacent to Chechnya. They underscored the degree to which the insurgency, weakened since 2004, has managed to survive and conduct operations against Russia’s numerically superior police and military forces.

They also raise questions about Russia’s official assertions that Chechnya and its neighboring republics, a few hundred miles east of Sochi, where Russia is to stage the Winter Olympics in 2014, are secure and under control.

Someone want to break it to Dilip Hiro<./a>?

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 24, 2007 6:56 AM