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Moscow's muddled objectives
By
B Raman
Chechnya in Russia continues to bleed,
with no respite from the scourge of pan-Islamic
terrorism. At least 80 persons are reported to have died
on or after December 27, 2002, when two vehicles filled
with a large quantity of explosives rammed into a highly
protected building in the Chechen capital of Grozny,
which housed the headquarters of the provincial
government. Chechnya's Moscow-nominated President,
former mufti (Muslim scholar) Akhmed Kadyrov, and
Prime Minister Mikhail Babyche were reportedly not in
the building when the strike took place. The incident
has been described as a case of suicide bombing.
Coming as it does within two months of the
October capture of a theater in Moscow with over 700
spectators inside by a group of about 50 Chechen
terrorists, which was terminated by the Russian security
agencies with heavy civilian casualties, the Grozny
attack highlights the ground reality that the morale and
motivation of the Chechen terrorists remain undiluted
despite the disastrous failure of their Moscow operation
of October, and that the Russian security agencies are
nowhere near getting the better of the ground situation
in Chechnya.
Since July, 2002, there has been
speculation in Grozny about the plans of the group of
foreign mercenaries led by Abu al-Valid, who succeeded
Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem, alias Ibn-ul-Khattab
(killed in April, 2002), as the head of the mercenary
force, to carry out a major strike against the
provincial government headquarters in Grozny and the
local railway lines. Pravda, the Russian daily, referred
to this in its online edition of July 8, 2002. The fact
that the terrorists were able to carry out the strike
despite this indicates that either security outside the
building was lax or that strict security could not
prevent the terrorists from penetrating the protected
area, possibly with the help of accomplices in the
government security set-up. In the past, too, there have
been instances of Chechen policemen, sympathetic to the
terrorists, facilitating their operations.
If it
is finally established that this was a suicide strike,
this is the most serious act of suicide terrorism since
it made its appearance in Chechnya in June 2000 under
the influence of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic
Front, (IIF) formed in Kandahar in Afghanistan in 1998.
It may be recalled that in India's Jammu and Kashmir,
too, suicide terrorism made its appearance for the first
time only in 1999 after the Pakistani pan-Islamic
organizations joined the IIF in 1998.
No
organization has so far claimed responsibility for the
Grozny incident. The pro-independence Chechen groups are
reported to have denied any responsibility for it. The
pan-Islamic elements have been silent. Unless some of
those who participated in the conspiracy are arrested by
the Russian authorities and interrogated, it is going to
be difficult for them to determine which of the
innumerable terrorist groups in Chechnya carried out the
operation.
A peculiar characteristic of the
Chechen situation is that there is hardly any distinct,
identifiable organization. There are many warlords
heading groups of people owing allegiance to them, but
hardly any organization with a personality, a clearly
explained objective and typical modus operandi of
its own. This renders an analysis of the situation quite
difficult. The dramatis personae can be divided
into the following two groups.
Those fighting
for national independence for Chechnya, who claim to
have no affinity with the Islamic extremists and do not
call for an Islamic state. Prominent in this category
are Aslan Maskhadov, who was elected as the president of
the Republic in February 1997, but was subsequently
deposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his
closest supporters, like the former foreign minister
Ilias Ahmadov, with suspected links to US intelligence,
former vice premier Ahmed Zakayev, with suspected links
to European intelligence, whom the Russians
unsuccessfully tried to get extradited from Denmark
after the October terrorist incident in Moscow, and
Movladi Udugov, former Information Minister, who
reportedly runs many of the anti-Moscow Chechen websites
using US-based servers. All of them are generally
critical of the Islamic terrorist groups, but consistent
in their demand for an independent Chechen state.
However, they are reportedly prepared to give another
try to the agreement worked out in 1996 under former
Russian president Boris Yeltsin, under which Moscow gave
considerable autonomy for Chechnya, with a decision on
its demand for independence deferred to a later date.
This agreement collapsed in 1999 when the pan-Islamic
terrorists based in Chechnya raided Dagestan and
organized a series of terrorist strikes in Moscow and
other non-Chechen cities.
Those fighting for
an independent Islamic state to be ruled under
Sharia law, as the first step towards the formation of
an Islamic caliphate consisting of Chechnya and
Dagestan. Prominent in this category are Shamil Basayev
(who recently died in Russian custody), a former Russian
army and military intelligence (GRU) officer who
projects himself as the "Islamic Che Guevara", Zelimkhan
Yandarbiyev, who reportedly operates from Qatar, Salman
Raduyev and Abu al-Valid.
The various
pan-Islamic terrorist groups are estimated to have a
total strength of about 6,000, including a large number
of foreign mercenaries. There are widely varying
estimates of the strength of the foreign mercenaries,
ranging between 200 (Western estimate) and 1,100
(Moscow's). The foreign mercenaries, many of them
trained by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
during the first Afghan war of the 1980s through
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for use
against Soviet troops, come from countries such as
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, the Lebanon, Indonesia
and China (Xinjiang).
The largest and the most
fiercely motivated components of the mercenary force
come from the Chechen Diaspora in West Asia and
Pakistan. The favored routes of the foreign mercenaries
for infiltrating into Chechnya lie through Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Many thousands of
Chechen mohajirs (refugees), whose ancestors left
the Caucasus as a result of the 1817-1864 Caucasian war,
now live in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Lebanon, Turkey,
Syria, Egypt and the Persian Gulf countries.
Hundreds of Arab nationals of Chechen ancestry
joined the 6,000 plus jihadi mercenary force
raised by the CIA through the ISI in the 1980s to fight
against Soviet troops, and they fought in Afghanistan
under Osama bin Laden. They maintained their links with
bin Laden after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from
Afghanistan in 1988. Some of them were taken by bin
Laden into his al-Qaeda and IIF, and they worked as
instructors in the training camps in Afghan territory.
They were also used by the ISI to train the Taliban army
after 1994 and to assist the Taliban in its fight
against the Northern Alliance. Many others were sent to
Chechnya by bin Laden after 1994 to assist the
indigenous Chechen groups in their fight for an Islamic
caliphate. They were initially led by Khattab, and after
his assassination through a booby-trap by the Russian
intelligence in April, 2002, they have been led by Abu
al-Valid.
The Russians do not identify these
pro-bin Laden Chechen mercenaries from the Diaspora as
Chechens. Instead, they identify them as Arabs. Khattab
and Abu al-Valid are described by the Russians as Arabs,
but they are believed to be of Chechen ancestry -
Khattab from Saudi Arabia or Jordan and Abu al-Valid
from Jordan. Russia itself has a large Chechen
population outside Chechnya in Moscow and other cities.
The total Chechen population of Russia is estimated at 1
million plus, most of whom used to live in Chechnya
before 1994. After the terrorist violence broke out in
1994, nearly a half of them migrated to other cities,
either due to fear or due to the serious unemployment
problem in Chechnya because of the set-back to the
economy. The presence of a large Chechen population in
Moscow and other cities enables the pan-Islamic
terrorists to carry out terrorist strikes in those
areas, as one saw in Moscow in October, 2002, and
earlier in 1999.
Next to the Chechen
mohajirs, the second largest component in the
foreign mercenary force consists of Pakistani nationals
belonging to the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and the
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI). The TJ is not a member
of bin Laden's IIF, but the HUM and the HuJI are. It is
not clear whether Abu al-Valid acts as the head of the
Pakistani component too, or whether it acts
autonomously.
In an article in the prestigious
weekly Friday Times of Lahore (October 4 to 10, 2002),
Khaled Ahmed, the well-known Pakistani columnist, wrote
as follows on the role of the HuJI in the Central Asian
Republics and the Caucasus: "Pakistan's jihadi
penetration of Central Asia was conducted through
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami led by Qari Saufullah Akhtar
of Pakistan and based in Kandahar [in Afghanistan]. The
outfit with a wide network of seminaries and camps in
Pakistan was close to Mullah Omar [Amir of the Taliban]
because of its early allegiance to Maulvi Nabi
Muhammadi, whose own Harkat activists formed the new
Taliban cadres. These were the men often called 'Punjabi
Taliban'. Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami was the Taliban
spearhead in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The leader
of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami in Uzbekistan was
Sheikh Muhammad Tahir al-Farooq. Twenty-seven of its
fighters were killed in battle against Uzbek President
Islam Karimov, as explained in the Islamabad-based
journal Al Irshad. The war against Uzbekistan was bloody
and was supported by the Taliban till in 2001 the
commander had to ask the Pakistanis in Uzbekistan to
return to the base."
He added, "In Chechnya, the
war against the Russians was carried on under the
leadership of commander Hidayatullah. Pakistan's embassy
in Moscow once denied that there were any Pakistanis
involved in the Chechen war, but the journal Al Irshad (
March, 2000) declared from Islamabad that the militia
was deeply involved in the training of guerillas in
Chechnya for which purpose commander Hidayatullah was
stationed in the region. It is estimated that dozens of
Pakistani fighters had been martyred fighting against
Russian infidels. When the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami men
were seen first in Tajikistan, they were mistaken by
some observers as being fighters from Sipah Sahaba [the
Sunni extremist organization of Pakistan], but in fact
they were under the command of commander Khalid Irshad
Tiwana, helping Juma Namangani and Tahir Yuldashev
resist the Uzbek ruling class in the Ferghana Valley."
There used to be seven training camps in the
Serzhen-Yurt district of Chechnya. Of these, one was run
by Khattab and another by Hidayatullah. Initially, these
two camps of Khattab and Hidayatullah trained only those
foreign mercenaries meant to fight against the Russians.
After the US cruise missile attack on his training camps
in Afghan territory in 1998, bin Laden started sending
some of his own men to the Chechen training camps. In
the past, sections of the Russian media have claimed
that Georgian intelligence operatives suspected that the
militants, who had tried to assassinate President Eduard
Shevardnadze on February 9, 1998, were trained at camps
in Chechnya.
The pan-Islamic terrorists in
Chechnya and the innumerable organized Chechen crime
mafia groups operating in Chechnya and outside have
never been short of funds. It is believed that their
main sources of funding are:
Narcotics (essentially heroin) smuggling: US$800
million per annum.
Money diverted from banks controlled by Chechen
businessmen in different parts of Russia: $600 million
per annum.
Illegal production and sale of oil: $36 million per
annum.
Hostage-taking for ransom: In 1997-1998, more than
60 Chechen groupings kidnapped a total of 1,094 people
for ransom, and in 1999, 270. The number of hostages
kidnapped for ransom still remaining in captivity is
estimated to be more than 1,500. No estimate of the
total ransom payments received is available.
Money diverted from government funds: Moscow heavily
subsidizes the Chechen state budget. A large portion of
this money goes into the hands of various terrorist and
mafia groups. (These estimates are by pro-government
Russian analysts and could, therefore, be on the higher
side.)
The external sources of finance for the
Chechen terrorists are as follows:
Contributions from Saudi Arabia: Most of this amount
is sent from Saudi Arabia to Pakistani fundamentalist
organizations such as the Jamaat-i-Islami and the
Jamaat-ul-Ulema Islam, which in turn have the money
smuggled to the Chechen terrorists through the Tablighi
Jamaat, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami. The six-party religious
coalition called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, which has
come to power in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province
and Balochistan after the elections held on October 10,
2002, had promised in their election manifesto that they
would step up assistance to the Chechen
"freedom-fighters". Some of the Saudi funds also go
through Islamist charities such as the Global Relief
Foundation and Al-Haramayn.
Contributions from the Chechen Diaspora in West
Asia. (Pro-government Russian analysts have estimated
the fund flow from Saudi Arabia at $55 million since
1994, and from the Diaspora at $20 million. These
estimates, too, could be on the higher side.)
Yeltsin followed a policy of distinguishing
between those seeking independence and those with
pan-Islamic objectives and reached accommodation with
the former in 1996 to isolate the latter. Putin, on the
other hand, does not make a distinction between
indigenous and foreign terrorists and between those for
independence and the pan-Islamists. He tends to treat
all of them as one and the same, inspired and guided by
bin Laden and his ilk from outside. This is making the
problem intractable. However, in an attempt to appeal to
the religious sentiments of the population and to
project himself as not anti-Islam, he nominated after
1999 the Chechen mufti Akhmed Kadyrov as the head of the
Chechen state, despite the fact that before the
ceasefire of 1996 the mufti had supported the
separatists, though he subsequently came over to the
government side and condemned the pan-Islamic
terrorists.
Putin's unqualified post-September
11 support to the US in the war against international
terrorism had two objectives:
To facilitate an active and pre-eminent role for the
Northern Alliance in the post-Taliban government in
Kabul.
To have the scourge of terrorism in Chechnya
acknowledged by the US and other Western countries as
part of the international terrorism of the bin Laden and
al-Qaeda kind.
While he has achieved the first
objective for the time being, his hopes in respect of
the second remain belied to date. The US and the rest of
the West have strongly condemned specific acts of
terrorism, such as the Moscow theater seizure and
attacks causing civilian casualties in Chechnya and
extended moral support to Moscow in its fight against
terrorism, but are still reluctant to accept the Russian
argument that what has been happening in Chechnya is
totally due to terrorism, inspired by bin Laden and
company. Despite repeated Russian requests, Washington
has desisted from designating any of the Chechen
terrorist groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret),
Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and presently
director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; member
of the National Security Advisory Board of the
Government of India. He was also head of the
counter-terrorism division of the Research &
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency,
from 1988 to August, 1994.
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