From total football to totalitarian football

Some wag posted that comment on the Guardian, but seriously, what is up with this story? Ruud Gullit is taking the reins at a club in Chechnya? And one controlled by warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, a guy who dare not leave Russia for fear of being picked up by the Hague's war crime tribunal for his part in the bombing and leveling of Grozny? William Burns, former US ambassador recalls, "the president of the province, is not adverse to showering dancers with $100 bills and at a wedding he presented the marrying couple with "a 5kg lump of gold", but that does not necessarily mean Gullit will receive such lavish bounty.

There may be more to Kadyrov, after all, than extravagant generosity (and "dancing clumsily with his gold-plated automatic stuck down the back of his jeans" as Burns described his wedding antics). Because Burns branded him "a warlord pure and simple", while Big Paper tells us that: "Human rights groups say he and his armed security forces have carried out countless abuses including murder, kidnappings, torture and punishment of families whose relatives join the rebels up in the mountains. Kadyrov is also accused of involvement in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the crusading liberal journalist shot dead in Moscow in 2006. She called him a "coward, armed to the teeth". He has been further linked to the murder of the human rights worker Natalia Estemirova, abducted and shot in Grozny, Chechnya's capital, in 2009. He denies both allegations."

If Gullit has not yet met his new employer, he may be wondering how he will recognise Kadyrov when he sees him. Here again Burns's wedding reminiscences may prove helpful. "Most of the tables were set with the usual dishes plus whole roast sturgeons and sheep," quoth Burns in this must-read dispatch. "But at 8pm the compound was invaded by dozens of heavily armed mujahideen for the grand entrance of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, looking shorter and less muscular than in his photos, and with a somewhat cock-eyed expression on his face."

Yikes.

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