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Suspicion falls on Chechens for Iraqi
blasts
By B Raman
There are
indications that Arab nationals of Chechen origin
belonging to al-Qaeda were responsible for the four
explosions in Iraq recently - three in Baghdad and one
at Najaf. The explosions in Baghdad were directed at the
Jordanian Embassy, a building housing the offices of the
United Nations and its allied organizations, and police
headquarters.
The explosion at Najaf, the
deadliest of the four, outside the Imam Ali Shrine,
killed about 120 Shi'ite worshippers coming out of the
shrine, including Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, who
returned to Iraq after it was occupied by troops of the
United States and the United Kingdom from his more than
20-year exile in Iran. He was viewed by followers of
deposed president Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda as a US
surrogate.
According to sources in Pakistan,
which are well informed on the activities of the Osama
bin Laden-led International Islamic Front (IIF), about
50 Arab nationals of Chechen origin, who are members of
al-Qaeda or closely associated with it, have infiltrated
Iraq from the Waziristan area of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
and Jordan. They were responsible not only for the
attacks on US soldiers in many incidents, but also for
the four explosions. They reportedly received the
explosives and other material for the explosions from
the ordnance stocks of Saddam's disbanded army. It is
said that the explosions, using vehicles, closely
resembled those that have taken place in Chechnya in the
past.
Elements close to the IIF in Pakistan have
been saying that the United States is in a vulnerable
position in Iraq at present and that if the jihadis miss
this opportunity to humiliate it, they will not get
another one for some time. They also say that by
teaching the US a lesson in Iraq that it will not
forget, they could protect other Islamic countries from
similar intervention by the United States and weaken its
credibility as a superpower.
The jihadis have
been recalling the Beirut car-bomb attack against US
marines in the early 1980s, which resulted in the death
of more than 200, after which Ronald Reagan, then
president of the United States, ordered a withdrawal of
US troops from the Lebanon. It is reported that the
jihadis are planning a similar massive explosion against
US troops in Iraq, designed to cause a large number of
casualties, possibly coinciding with the second
anniversary of September 11, 2001.
Many
Chechens, whose ancestors left the Caucasus during the
1817-64 Caucasian war, now live in Jordan, Saudi Arabia,
Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Egypt and Persian Gulf countries
and have acquired the local nationality. A large number
of them had joined the 6,000 plus jihadi mercenary force
raised by the US Central Intelligence Agency through
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the
1980s to fight against the Soviet troops and they fought
in Afghanistan under 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
worked as instructors in training camps in Afghan
territory. They were also used by the ISI for training
the Taliban militia after 1994 and for assisting 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 jihad
against Moscow for an Islamic caliphate.
B Raman is additional secretary
(retired), Cabinet Secretariat, government of India, and
currently director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai; former member of the National Security Advisory
Board of the government of India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. 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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