John Montgomery Presents This Week's	March 17, 2001	Creep Logo by Alan Fraser
	The Chechen Hijackers
	Rebels Without Applause

Even on a good day, flying on a commercial airline is a degrading pain in the ass. You get herded around, single file, through the airport and the plane like a foot-and-mouth infected sheep being forced down to the shooting gallery. Before you even get into your seat, a 100-pound lady drops a 200-pound suitcase on your head while trying to stuff it into the overhead compartment directly above you. You're stuck in the middle seat, and the guy you have to crawl over to get to the aisle is an overweight, snoring businessman with long, greasy ear hair. And none of that can happen until after you pass though security. There you get poked, prodded, metal-detected and x-rayed over your entire body, which can be especially troublesome for those of you who prefer to travel with a foil-wrapped cucumber taped to your inner thigh. (I've heard.)

And that's on a good day. If you really want to have a bad flight, pick the one carrying the gang of four knife-wielding, couscous-munching, camel-humping lunatics.

This week, just such a gang hijacked a Russian passenger plane carrying 174 people from Istanbul to Moscow. The hijackers were rebels from the Chechen Republic which has been fighting for independence from Russia for over a year. They forced the plane to land in the Muslim holy city of Medina, Saudi Arabia. Along the way, a fight broke out in the cockpit between the crew and the hijackers which caused the plane to plummet from 24,000 feet to 14,000 feet in seconds. One crew member got stabbed in the stomach.

Back in the motherland, Russian President Vladimir Putin had to cut short his skiing holiday in Siberia to monitor the situation. You may recall that last summer, when the Russian submarine Kursk exploded and sunk, Vladimir refused to return from a vacation in the Black Sea and took a beating in the polls. Since when do Russian presidents care about polls? For that matter, when did they start taking polls over there? If I were a Russian citizen, I'd stop worrying about the polls and begin worrying about when Vladimir's next vacation is.

Once the plane landed in Saudi Arabia, events became very confusing. Passengers began escaping from the plane. The pilot and co-pilot barricaded themselves in the cockpit. Women and children got released. No one seemed to know exactly what the hijackers wanted, including the hijackers. One of the problems was that they didn't speak Russian or Arabic. Well, what language do Chechen rebels speak? Swahili? Ubangi? Pig Latin? Don't you think if you were planning a major hijacking, you'd figure out ahead of time some means of communicating your demands?

• Saudi Authorities: What the hell do you guys want?
• Hijackers: You imperialist bastards! We want Brittney Spears to come over and sit on our faces.
• Saudi Authorities: What? We can't understand a single word, you morons! Spit out that camel hair!
• Hijackers: Brittney Spears, assholes!

The surviving hijackers turned out to be related to the former Chechen interior minister and their mission had something to do with Turkey's support of Chechens and the large scale kidnapping industry run by Chechen warlords, not to mention Brittney Spears. They're now awaiting extradition to Russia while being held without bail in the camel stable, which for them, isn't as bad as it sounds.

A few words of cautionary advice for anyone flying the friendly skies in that region anytime soon:

• Get to the airport an hour before flight time.
• Don't carry any packages for people you don't know.
• Don't leave your luggage unattended.
• Whatever you do, don't wear a camel's hair sweater.