*I knew it was Basaev as soon as I heard that a bold
swarm of Caucasus rebels had methodically shot up
an entire town.
http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/sterling/index.blog?entry_id=1146890
The continuing adventures of....
RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 9, No. 195, Part I, 17 October 2005
A daily report of developments in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Southwestern Asia, and the Middle East prepared by the staff of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
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RADICAL CHECHEN FIELD COMMANDER DIVULGES DETAILS OF NALCHIK RAID...
In an e-mail to the website kavkazcenter.com that was reposted on 17 October on chechenpress.org, Shamil Basaev said that he contributed to the planning of the 13 October multiple attacks on police, army, and Federal Security Service (FSB) facilities in Nalchik, capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, in which he said 217 militants participated. (((For those of you still wondering about the ever-growing prevalence of terrorist emails – in the days of yore before he became a "radical field commander," Basaev was a computer salesman.)))
Basaev confirmed earlier reports that the fighters who
staged those attacks belong to the Kabardino-Balkar sector of the
Caucasus Front, and he named the commander (amir) of that sector, who he said also commanded the Nalchik raid, as Seyfullah. Seyfullah was one of 10 amirs appointed in May by Abdul-Khalim Sadullaev, the successor to slain Chechen President and resistance commander Aslan Maskhadov (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 18 May 2005). Basaev said two other commanders (of the Ossetian and Krasnodar sectors) also participated in the Nalchik attack and were slightly wounded.
Basaev said his own deputy, whom he identified as Ilyas Gorchknanov, amir of the Ingush Djamaat, was killed in the Nalchik fighting. LF
... CITES CASUALTY FIGURES. In the same statement posted on
chechenpress.org, Basaev said the total losses sustained by the
Nalchik attackers were 42, which is less than half the figure of 91
that KBR Interior Minister Khachim Shogenov cited on 15 October.
Basaev said the militants attacked 15 separate targets at 9:14 local
time, and retreated exactly two hours later, having killed or wounded approximately 300 Russian and local police and military personnel. Basaev acknowledged that the attackers' losses were "serious," and he attributed the high casualty figure to a leak of information several days earlier. He said that acting on that intelligence, the Russians deployed an additional 1,000 spetsnaz to Nalchik. LF (((A thousand spetsnaz here, a thousand spetsnaz there, pretty soon that adds up.)))
KABARDINO-BALKAR MILITANT GROUP CONFIRMS ITS TIES TO CHECHEN RESISTANCE. The press center of Kabardino-Balkaria's Yarmuk djamaat issued a statement, carried by chechenpress.org on 17 October, confirming its members' participation in the Nalchik raids. Russian media quoted local security personnel as having claimed to have wiped out Yarmuk in two raids in Nalchik in January and late April of this year (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 26 January and 2 May 2005). The statement confirmed that Yarmuk is part of the Kabardino-Balkar sector of the Caucasus Front.
(((If you are a New World Disorder terrorist hero, you want to be the "field commander" of a "sector" of a "front," as opposed to, say, one of a bunch of mountain bandits toting laptops, AKs, and shoulder-launched rockets.)))
Yarmuk further adduced and refuted three factors frequently cited in the Russian media as contributing to the rise of radical Islam in the North Caucasus. Those factors are economic stagnation and high unemployment, Russia's misguided and counterproductive policy towards the North Caucasus, and a struggle for power among local clans. The Yarmuk statement affirmed that its members are Muslims and are fighting "the Russian occupiers and their godless local minions in order to impose the law of Allah, protecting
our religion, honor, and native land." LF (((And woe betide any Moslem schoolchild we can seize at gunpoint.)))
PUTIN TALKS TOUGH AFTER NALCHIK RAID... Speaking at the Kremlin with Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev, Defense Minster Sergei Ivanov, and Federal Security Service First Deputy Director Nikolai Klimashin, President Vladimir Putin said on 15 October that people who try to attack Russian targets in the future will be decisively crushed, Channel One and other Russian media reported. (((We had to decisively crush the village in order to save it.)))
It is bad that the security services failed to prevent the attack on Nalchik, but good that special forces acted efficiently, Putin said. According to official data from 17 October, 91 attackers were killed in Nalchik and over 40 captured. Thirty-three federal troops and 12 civilians were also killed. "Our actions must be commensurate with the threats that bandits pose in our country. We will [in the future] act as toughly and consistently as we did on this occasion," Channel One reported Putin as saying. VY
...AS SECURITY AND DEFENSE MINISTERS GIVE DETAILS OF OPERATION.
Interior Minister Nurgaliev, whose ministry coordinated the security
operation in Nalchik, said in an interview with Channel One on 16
October that most of the attackers were local residents between the
ages of 20 and 25. He said that the goal of the militants was to
capture the local security services' weapons and the airport in
advance of a large-scale operation scheduled for 4 November. (((That would have been the rumored flight of an explosives-laden hijacked military aircraft straight into Moscow. Imagine the world press reaction if the Kremlin were smoldering right now.)))
The November date would coincide with the end of the Ramadan fast. However, on 10 October, law-enforcement agencies in Nalchik discovered a large arms cache, including 550 kilograms of explosives, and obtained information about the impending attack. This, according to Nurgaliev, pushed the militants into starting their attack earlier.
Nurgaliev said that the local militant group Yarmuk appeared
to be much stronger in Kabardino-Balkaria than security organs had
thought (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 26 January and 2 May 2005).
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in India on 15 October that there was no "attack" on Nalchik, NTV reported. "Nobody invaded Nalchik. It was local underground bandits," he said. VY
SPECIALISTS SKEPTICAL ABOUT OFFICIAL VERSION OF NALCHIK EVENTS.
Mikhail Aleksandrov, the head of the Commonwealth of Independent
States Institute's Caucasus department, said that Nalchik is not an
isolated event, but one element in a continuing underground war in
the Caucasus, apn.ru reported on 13 October.
"The war continues in the North Caucasus, in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Daghestan, North Ossetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria," he said. He also said that he believes that Chechen attackers were involved in the Nalchik raid and that he does not agree that unemployment and poor living conditions fuel the fires of militancy in the North Caucasus. "In Tver Oblast, there is unemployment and a grave economic situation, but there are no Wahhabis there," he said.
Meanwhile, former KGB Colonel Sergei
Goncharov, the chairman of a veterans' association for the Alfa
antiterrorism force, said the political and economic conditions are
ripe for an explosion of violence in the Caucasus, TV-Tsentr reported on 15 October. "Politically, there is no leader in the North Caucasus who controls the situation in his republic. Economically, all
republics are living on federal handouts and the ruling clans are
competing for the right to steal federal funds," he said. VY
(((Back when we were scared of a Soviet empire instead of being scared of failed states, we thought this Basaev guy was swell.)))
