Say it ain't so!

Vote-rigging by the criminal enterprise that is the Russian State apparatus? Who'da thunk?

A disturbing look into Russia's "victory" in Chechnya

USNews.com: Chechnya, a War That Is Gone but Not Forgotten

Chechnya slowly - kinda-sorta - rises from the ashes of conflict but does so in an all too familiar manner. Its new "government" is little more than a shell used by local warlords and "big men" to justify their own bases of power. I see signs of the same arising in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian Authority...the facade of government becomes little more than a hasty paint job slapped over criminals, tribal chiefs, militias, and warlords. In fact, Hezbollah's efforts to pull the mask of "legitimate government" over the face of their own actions is essentially the same.

This appears to me as a regression in the development of the State. The power of the State becomes a spoil of war to be captured like any other booty to be found on the battlefield. Institutions like the UN, designed to preserve the sanctity of nation-states, tend to reward such behavior, making it far more difficult to ensure, encourage, or compel good governance.

A snippet from the US News report on Chechnya:

Day-to-day security in swaths of Chechnya is left to locally recruited Kremlin-loyalist forces, who run things much as they please. This makes their de facto chief, Putin-appointed President Ramzan Kadyrov, perhaps the most important man in Chechnya. Kadyrov, 30, is the son of a prominent Islamic leader who in 1999 abandoned the rebels for the Russian side and served as Kremlin-installed local president before being assassinated in 2004.

[...]

What does cause jitters in Moscow is that the bulk of the estimated 7,000 armed men associated with Kadyrov are themselves former rebel fighters enticed or coerced into switching sides. "Everyone knows the so-called pro-Moscow militias in Chechnya are in fact tribal military formations loyal only to their chiefs," said Moscow-based military affairs specialist Pavel Felgenhauer. "Basically, the rebels in Chechnya have entered a rest period and are getting training under the Russian flag."

Hrmph.