The North Caucasus: Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia

[kaur]

October 2009.

Georgia is training and lending safe passage to Al-Qaeda agents planning terrorist acts in the Russian Caucasus, the head of Russia's FSB secret service charged Tuesday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091013...20091013073756

August 2002.

Fighting flared on Russia's border with Georgia today, as Georgian forces moved to drive out Chechen fighters from a lawless region near Chechnya that has become a flash point between the countries.

The gorge, a wide valley north of the capital, Tbilisi, is reported to serve as a base for several dozen Islamic extremists possibly linked to Al Qaeda, as well as several hundred Chechen fighters living among some 4,000 refugees who fled after Russia started its second war in Chechnya in 1999.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/24/wo...irstrikes.html

[bourbon]

Kadyrov says Doku Umarov, the emir of the Caucasus Emirate, may have been killed in a recent raid. Wait till the DNA test gets back, they have had a couple close calls with Umarov before.

[bourbon]

An IED attack 200 miles northwest of Moscow killed 26 people and injured 100 last Friday, when it derailed three cars on a high-speed train running from Moscow to St Petersburg. There are reportedly no credible claims of responsibility so far.

The same rail line was targeted by bombers in 2007 in an attack that injured 30. Two men from Ingushetia were charged in connection to the attack. The Russians allege the attack was masterminded by Pavel Kosolapov, an ex-Russian soldier turned Islamic extremist and associate of Shamil Basayev.

News reports state that authorities suspect Kosolapov and associates may be responsible for the recent attack.

It is notable that militants have not struck the Russian heartland since 2004-2005, confining their attacks to the North Caucasus; this attack is leading some to ask if this is a harbinger of things to come.

Kadyrov says Doku Umarov, the emir of the Caucasus Emirate, may have been killed in a recent raid. Wait till the DNA test gets back, they have had a couple close calls with Umarov before.

False alarm.

[bourbon]

BBC reports that Caucasian Mujahadeen via Kavkazcenter.com are claiming they carried out the Nevsky Express attack on the orders of Doku Umarov. Statement claims the attack is part of a broader campaign of sabotage operations targeting strategic sites in Russia, to include electricity transmission lines and oil & gas pipelines.

A report from Ria Novosti citing St. Petersburg Emergency Control Ministry, says the attack was intended to strike two trains as they passed by each other in opposite directions. The Nevsky Express was reportedly one minute off schedule, averting greater disaster. The charge was reportedly equivalent to 7kg of TNT; I don’t know what that would do to the other train, but given the high speeds involved - it is reasonable to suggest this attack could have been much worse.

There was also reportedly an RCIED attack that targeted responders and investigators; no one died in that bomb.

[Jedburgh]

CSIS, 14 Jan 09: Violence in the North Caucasus 2009: A Bloody Year

Main Findings

In 2009:

• There were more than 1100 incidents of violence compared to 795 the previous year;

• Many of these incidents were deadly, with over 900 fatalities compared to 586 in 2008;

• One third of all incidents in the North Caucasus occurred in the Nazranovskii and Sunzhenskii districts of Ingushetia;

• The number of suicide bombings in the North Caucasus nearly quadrupled from 2008, with the majority occurring in Chechnya.

[bourbon]

Russian 'Bin Laden' killed by Moscow's special forces, by Andrew Osborn. Telegraph, 07 Mar 2010.

The FSB intelligence service said a special forces operation had resulted in the death of Sheikh Said Buryatsky, an Islamist convert whose real name was Alexander Tikhomirov.

Militant Website Confirms Buryatsky's Death, RFERL: Caucasus Report, March 07, 2010.

Hunafa.com, the website of the Ingushetian front of the North Caucasus insurgency, today confirmed official claims that one of the six militants killed during a special operation on March 2 in the village of Ekazhevo, south-east of Nazran, was Said Buryatsky, who over the past two years gained a reputation as ideologue of the Islamic militancy headed by former Chechen President Dokka Umarov.

Sheikh Said Buryatsky was a very effective Jihadi ideologue, and was in-part responsible for the return of suicide bombings to the North Caucasus. It is notable that he was a convert to Islam and was from Buryatia in southern Siberia, and not from the North Caucasus; his mother is Russian and his father was a Buddhist.

[Jedburgh]

Centre for Eastern Studies, 14 Apr 10: The Tribal Areas of the Caucasus: The North Caucasus – an enclave of ‘alien civilisation’ within the Russian Federation

The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of the militant Islamic movement in the North Caucasus, specify its origins, and assess its actual potential. The author will attempt to place this phenomenon in the context of the wider social and political processes ongoing in the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and will try to forecast developments in the North Caucasus in the near future.

Note: Polish and English. English content begins on page 41 of the linked pdf.