The Arsonists of Chechnya

Another horrifying dispatch from the New York Times about the war the world would rather forget:

In a campaign to punish families with sons suspected of supporting the insurgency, at least a dozen homes have been set ablaze since midsummer, residents and a local human rights organization said. The burnings have been accompanied by a program, embraced by Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s president, that has forced visibly frightened parents of insurgents to appear on television and beg their sons to return home. “If you do not come back I will never forgive you,” one father, Ruslan Bachalov, said to his son on a recent broadcast. “I will forgive the man who will kill you.” “I have no other way out,” he added. “The authorities and the president demand that I bring my son back.”