Russia and
its people have been the victims of four terrorist
strikes of the International Islamic Front (IIF) since
August 24, resulting in the deaths of about 450
civilians, many of them young children.
During
these 10 days, more innocent civilians have been killed
in Russia than since the beginning of this year in
India's Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) by Pakistani
jihadi organizations belonging to the IIF. More
civilians have been killed by jihadi terrorists in
Russia in 10 days than since the beginning of this year
in the rest of the world, minus South Asia, Afghanistan
and Iraq.
Of these four strikes, three were in
Moscow and the fourth, directed at school children,
their parents and teachers, took place at Beslan, a
small town in North Ossetia. While the Moscow strikes
were indiscriminate and did not make any distinction
between Muslims and non-Muslims, the Beslan strike would
appear to have been directed at non-Muslim children.
The Moscow strikes were directed at means of
transport and commuters, while the Beslan strike was
intended to use children as hostages in order to achieve
certain demands of the terrorists. During the ensuing
negotiations between the terrorists and the local
authorities to secure the release of the children,
things went horribly wrong, resulting in an exchange of
fire between the security forces and the terrorists and
the alleged use of explosives and mines by the
terrorists, resulting in the death of 322 civilians,
plus 20 terrorists. Young children constituted a half of
the civilians killed.
Of the three incidents in
Moscow, two involved women suicide bombers, reportedly
Chechens from Grozny, the Chechen capital, and the third
a man of unestablished identity, who seems to have
activated the explosive device through remote control.
The first two incidents in Moscow - an explosion
at a bus stop on the road to one of the local airports,
which did not result in any fatal casualties, on August
24 and two other explosions on board two aircraft a few
hours thereafter which led to the disintegration of the
planes and the death of 90 persons, including all the
passengers and crew members - preceded presidential
elections in Chechnya on August 29. Both planes had
taken off from a Moscow airport.
The third
outside the entrance to a metro station on August 31,
resulting in the death of 10 persons, coincided with the
hearing by a local high court of an appeal filed on
behalf of Zarema Muzhikhoyeva, a Chechen woman terrorist
arrested in July 2003 and sentenced to 20 years
imprisonment on a charge of trying to carry out a
suicide mission.
The Russian authorities claim
to have established that two Chechen women from Grozny
named Amanat Nagayeva, 30, and Satsita Dzhebirkhanova ,
37, had a role in the explosions on board the two planes
and a third woman named Roza Nagayeva, who is said to be
the sister of Amanat, had carried out the suicide
bombing outside the metro station.
Frantic
searches are being made all over Moscow for two other
suicide bombers, one of them named Maryam Taburova,
while the name of the other is not known, who had
reportedly traveled together to Moscow from Grozny along
with the other three for carrying out suicide strikes.
The authorities claim that the Chechen terrorists have
trained eight other women suicide bombers, who may be
available for similar missions in coming days.
While the Russian authorities claim to have
established that the disintegration of the two planes
was caused by an improvised explosive device (IED), they
have not yet been able to establish how the device was
smuggled into the planes and activated.
Among
the various theories reportedly under examination are:
The devices, with a timer, were concealed in the
checked-in baggage belonging to the two Chechen women,
who were made to travel by the aircraft, with or without
the knowledge that their baggage contained the explosive
devices. If after having successfully got the baggage
checked in, the women had dropped out of the flights,
this would have set off an alarm resulting in the
off-loading and checking of their baggage.
The women had carried the IEDs on their person or
concealed in their shoes and had activated them
manually.
The IEDs were either in their checked-in baggage or
had been smuggled into the aircraft by accomplices of
the terrorists in the ground staff of the airline
company and had been activated by the women through a
remote control device or a mobile telephone.
The IEDs were in the checked-in baggage of the two
women, with or without their knowledge, and had been
activated from the ground through mobile telephones.
The responsibility for the explosions on board
the two planes and outside the metro station has been
claimed by the Islambouli Brigades, headed by Mohammad
Islambouli, younger brother of Khaled Islambouli, both
of whom were involved in the assassination of president
Anwar Sadat of Egypt in Cairo in 1981.
While
Khaled Islambouli was arrested by the Egyptian
authorities, tried and executed in 1982, Mohammad
Islambouli, along with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No 2 of
al-Qaeda, and the late Mohammad Atef, the former
operational chief of al-Qaeda, escaped to Afghanistan
and joined the Arab mercenary force, which was trained
by the US's Central Intelligence Agency and Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence and used against the Soviet
troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
After the
withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan in
1988, Mohammad Islambouli and his followers stayed
behind in Afghanistan and carried out a terrorist strike
against the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad in 1996. They
started cooperating with Osama bin Laden after he
shifted to Afghanistan in 1996 and the Islambouli
Brigades, along with two other jihadi terrorist
organizations of Egypt joined his IIF, when it was
formed in February,1998. Initially, it consisted of only
Egyptians and other Arabs, but after the US air strikes
in Afghanistan post-September 11, it started recruiting
Chechens, Uzbeks, Uighurs and Pakistani jihadis too. It
is not clear why it generally refers to itself in plural
as "the Islambouli Brigades" and not in singular.
Since October 7, 2001, it has been operating
from the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of
Pakistan. It had also claimed responsibility for the
unsuccessful attempt to kill Shaukat Aziz, the new
Pakistani prime minister, in the last week of July, at
Fateh Jung in Pakistani Punjab.
No organization
has so far claimed responsibility for the carnage in
Beslan. While the Russian authorities have claimed to
have killed nine Arabs involved in the incident, the
indications until now are that it was carried out by a
recently-formed organization called the North Caucasus
Islamic Front (NCIF), which is reportedly a united front
of the jihadi organizations of Chechnya, Dagestan and
Ingushetia and has as its objective the establishment of
an Islamic caliphate in the region. It is patterned
after the Pakistan-based IIF and the Jemaah Islamiyah of
Southeast Asia.
It is reported that among its
founding members are a Chechen organization called the
Salakhin Riadus Shakhidi headed by Shamil Basayev, an
organization of Ingushetia (name not known) headed by
Magomed Yevloyev, another Chechen organization (name not
known) headed by Doku Umarov and an unidentified
organization of Dagestan.
It is reported that
since its formation early this year, the NCIF has been
closely collaborating with the IIF, but it is not known
whether it has formally joined the IIF.
The
series of terrorist strikes since August 24 have caused
fears of a possible act of catastrophic terrorism by
these ruthless elements. The Moscow Times of September 2
reported as follows:
"Given that a series of deadly attacks,
including coordinated raids in Ingushetia in June and
a string of suicide bombings in Moscow, have failed to
affect the Kremlin line, the extremists might opt for
attacks of catastrophic proportions in the hope that
the greater casualties and psychological shock would
cause a capitulation. In a clear recognition of this
threat, the Federal Nuclear Power Agency announced
[September 1] that security has been boosted at
nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities
across Russia. During Russia's first military campaign
in Chechnya in 1994-96, the Chechen rebels acquired
radioactive materials, threatened to attack nuclear
facilities, plotted to hijack a nuclear submarine, and
attempted to put pressure on the Russian leadership by
planting a container with radioactive materials in
Moscow and threatening to detonate it. Russia's second
campaign, which began in the fall of 1999, has already
seen Chechen-based radical separatists plant
explosives in tanks filled with chemical substances,
scout nuclear facilities and establish contacts with
an insider at a nuclear power
plant."
B Raman is Additional
Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of
India, New Delhi, and presently director, Institute for
Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and
Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai
Chapter. Email: corde@vsnl.com
