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Thread: The North Caucasus: Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia

  1. #81
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    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.

  2. #82
    Council Member bourbon's Avatar
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    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.

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    Couple weeks old news. Last summer there was killed head of Dagestan's ministry of interior affairs. Today there is version that killer weapon was "loaned" to killers by Russian military personnel in Dagestan.

    Couple articles in Russian

    http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2010/021/15.html

    http://newsru.com/russia/26feb2010/brigada.html

    http://www.gzt.ru/Gazeta/proisshestv...t-/292192.html

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    In Russia’s Dagestan Region, Police Live in Fear, by Ellen Barry. The New York Times, March 20, 2010.
    It is all a measure of how thoroughly order has broken down in the Russian region of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus. Fifty-eight police officers were killed in attacks here last year, according to the republic’s Interior Ministry, many of them while running errands or standing at their posts. Last month alone, according to press reports, 13 officers were killed in bombings and gangland-style shootings.

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    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.

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    Investigation Links Critic’s Death to Top Chechens, by C.J. Chivers. The New York Times, April 25, 2010.
    The president of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, who has suppressed a separatist insurgency with harsh methods and unwavering Kremlin backing, vigorously denied any knowledge of Mr. Israilov, one of his former bodyguards, or of his death.

    But a 15-month Austrian investigation into the crime has uncovered links between the suspected killers and one of Mr. Kadyrov’s close advisers, a one-legged former rebel who has been described, in unrelated allegations in Russia, as an organizer of Mr. Kadyrov’s dirty work.
    Kadyrov urged to hold back, by Anna Arutunyan. Moscow News, 26 April 2010.
    Two seemingly unrelated court cases involving Chechen bodyguards - one in Moscow, the other in Vienna, but both with a link to an adviser to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov - could indicate that the Kremlin is urging the strongman leader to rein in his security forces and pay more attention to human rights.

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    Default Unintended Strategic Consequences of Security Assistance in the South Caucasus

    JFQ, 2nd Qtr 2010: Unintended Strategic Consequences of Security Assistance in the South Caucasus
    ....This article examines the trends in liberal democracy in the South Caucasus in light of economic development. It relates these trends to regional changes in civil-military relations and the prospects for violence in the region. It then assesses the extent to which security assistance has contributed to stability in the region. Finally, recommendations are made about how future security assistance should be structured....

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    CSIS, 13 May 10: Violence in the North Caucasus, Spring 2010: On the rise, again?
    Since 2008, CSIS staff have tracked, on a daily basis, incidents of violence occurring in the North Caucasus......In this report, we present our data for Spring 2010 (January 1– April 30), with special attention given to the disturbing frequency of suicide bombings.....

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    The FSB captured Ali Taziyev aka Magas on June 9 in Ingushetia. Magas is the Amir of the Madzhlisul Shura’s Military Committee, a position in which he replaced Shamil Basayev. He planned and led the raid on the city of Nazran in June 2004, was linked to the Beslan atrocity (believed by some to have been a participant and escaped), and in addition to other significant terrorist events oversaw the SVBIED attack on the Ingush president this time last year.

    It is notable that the Russian’s attempted to take him alive, let alone were successful in doing so. Senior insurgent commanders are never captured alive. News reports say the FSB had planned the op for two months, and flew in Spetsnaz from Moscow for the take down – which indicates Alfa Group was involved.

    If they get him to talk, Magas will yield considerable intelligence. However, North Caucasus insurgent commanders are easily replaced, and previous elimination of senior commanders has done little to weaken the insurgency overall.


    Magas is a storied figure. He was an Interior Ministry policeman who was kidnapped in 1998 along another officer and the wife of a senior government official they body guarding. They were brought to Chechnya and the wife was held for ransom. The other policeman was found dead in 1999, and the wife was released or escaped; but Magas joined up with the insurgency, though it is also very possible he was in on it all along.

    Presumed kidnapped and murdered, an Ingush court officially declared him dead in 2001. So imagine the surprise his mother gets during the Beslan hostage crisis in 2004 when the FSB shows up at her door and tells her that not only is her son not dead, but he is actively involved and responsible for this horrific event. Oh, and by the way they have to take her away for her “protection”.

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    Default Khloponin, Caucasus and western intelligence services

    Via Goolge Translate.

    Western intelligence agencies are trying to undermine the situation in the North Caucasus. About it as transmits RIA Novosti news agency said on Tuesday the Russian president's envoy in the region Khloponin during the "straight line" with the residents of the district, when asked about the leading security issues.

    "Obviously, on the eve of the Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014 Caucasian subjects, heating or reheating of inter-ethnic or inter-ethnic conflict - this is a very serious challenge, now the secret services of Western countries and simply provocateurs" - said Khloponin
    http://newsru.com/russia/26oct2010/chlopo.html

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    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default History

    Book review on the region's history:
    The Caucasus is often depicted as a region of peoples locked in enduring and invariant nationalist enmity. The reality is more complex and therefore more hopeful, says Thomas de Waal.
    Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/thomas-...ry-in-caucasus
    davidbfpo

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    High ranking FSB officer killed in Dagestan.

    http://nv-daily.livejournal.com/401530.html

  14. #94
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    Default From the Wikileaks dump and hosted by The Guardian.

    Chechnya: The Once and Future War, by Ambassador William J. Burns. 30 May 2006.
    1. (C) Introduction: Chechnya has been less in the glare of constant international attention in recent years. However, the Chechnya conflict remains unresolved, and the suffering of the Chechen people and the threat of instability throughout the region remain. This message reinterprets the history of the Chechen wars as a means of better understanding the current dynamics, the challenges facing Russia, the way in which the Kremlin perceives those challenges, and the factors limiting the Kremlin's ability to respond. It draws on close observation on the ground and conversations with many participants in and observers of the conflict from the moment of Chechnya's declaration of independence in 1991. We intend this message to spur thinking on new approaches to a tragedy that persists as an issue within Russia and between Russia and the U.S., Europe and the Islamic world.
    It is in the open now, and the piece is too good not to share with those who have an interest in Chechnya.

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    Default Putin's Failure in Chechnya

    An interesting Op-ed article on the Guardian's web site, by way of World Politics Review's Media Roundup.

    Basic gist of the article is that Putin's heavy-handed approach has caused the Chechen insurgency to metastize and spread. Definitely seems like they are not using classic counterinsurgency tactics.

    I'm curious to hear what our learned folks here think.

    V/R,

    Cliff

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    They seem to be using classic Russian counterinsurgency tactics.

    Leo Tolstoy's short novel The Raid is well worth a read when seeking perspective on Chechnya. Plus c'est la change...

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    yeah - he should obviously learn from us in Afghanistan. Our use of "classic counterinsurgency techniques" is winning the war over here, didn't he realize? There's no metastisizing or spreading here.

  18. #98
    Council Member bourbon's Avatar
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    In the eyes of Putin and the Siloviki, Chechen nationalism was a concrete threat to Russia and the Jihadis were an abstract threat and a useful tool.

    The nationalists defeated the Russian Army in the First Chechen War achieving de facto independence, and had legitimacy in the eyes of the international world. The Siloviki were convinced of foreign meddling in the conflict, and viewed the issue in the context of a greater process of the fracture and disintegration of the Russian Federation.

    You let one tribe go free and soon all the others will want independence. As go the Chechens, so go the Ingush…the Dagestanis…the Karachays…etc. Then goes the North Caucasus, and much of Russia’s access to the Caspian.

    To Putin and company it is about keeping and maintaining control. The Jihadis are the cost of defeating the Chechen nationalist movement and maintaining control. The loss of innocent life - both ethnic Russian and Caucasian, does not factor into their decision making.

  19. #99
    Council Member bourbon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
    They seem to be using classic Russian counterinsurgency tactics.
    Or as I call it: The Gimme Shelter Doctrine.
    "Rape, murder! It's just a shot away, It's just a shot away…"

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    Default Sword or Samovar: eight articles

    Maybe of value, an eight part series as a US reporter moves through the region, which I'd missed. Link:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/categor...ord_or_samovar
    davidbfpo

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