NationStates Jolt Archive

Since I see no one talking about this, I start.
Over 200 Russian school children were taken hostage by pro Al Qaeda chechen terrorists in Russia.
They have threatened to kill the children if Russia does not release the terrorists they are holding.
They said they would kill 40 children for each terrorist that Russia kills and 20 children would die for each terrorist that is injured.
The terrorists have already killed several people, including one child.

This is one of the worst atrocities ever committed by Bin Ladens friends and henchmen.

Hostage Crisis Unfolds in Russia as Guerrillas Seize School
MOSCOW, Sept. 1 — Heavily armed insurgents, some with explosives strapped to their bodies, seized a school in southern Russia today, herded scores of schoolchildren, parents and teachers into its gymnasium and threatened to kill them.

The exact number of hostages remained unclear — estimates ranged from 132 to nearly 400 — reflecting a scene of confusion and fear as parents gathered in anxious vigil, sometimes having to be restrained for trying to approach the school. A handful of other students earlier managed to escape, apparently after hiding in a boiler room, officials said. Earlier Rossiya, a state television network, showed a camouflaged soldier racing a young girl, dressed in a light lavender skirt, to safety, followed by an elderly woman.

The school's seizure occurred the morning after a suicide bomber set off an explosion outside a subway station in Moscow, killing at least 10 others and wounding 50 in the latest convulsion of terrorist violence that has struck fear into Russians. Because of the nature of the explosives, officials said today, the Moscow attack appeared to be linked to the bombings of two passenger airliners, which crashed simultaneously on Aug. 24, killing 90.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/01/international/europe/01CND-RUSS.html?ex=1094097600&en=71e4e1b410137e2a&ei=5059&partner=AOL

Since I see no one talking about this, I start.
Over 200 Russian school children were taken hostage by pro Al Qaeda chechen terrorists in Russia.
They have threatened to kill the children if Russia does not release the terrorists they are holding.
They said they would kill 40 children for each terrorist that Russia kills and 20 children would die for each terrorist that is injured.
The terrorists have already killed several people, including one child.

This is one of the worst atrocities ever committed by Bin Ladens friends and henchmen.
Twit, they have nothing to do with OBL.

I just hope Putin handles it better this time then he did in the theatre.

There already is a thread about this.

Since I see no one talking about this, I start.
Over 200 Russian school children were taken hostage by pro Al Qaeda chechen terrorists in Russia.
They have threatened to kill the children if Russia does not release the terrorists they are holding.
They said they would kill 40 children for each terrorist that Russia kills and 20 children would die for each terrorist that is injured.
The terrorists have already killed several people, including one child.

This is one of the worst atrocities ever committed by Bin Ladens friends and henchmen.

I don't believe I've ever agreed with you ever, but on this one, I do. I just wish more effort was being put into finding Al Qaeda and less into Iraq.. Al Qadea is the real enemy and this is a perfect example!

Twit, they have nothing to do with OBL.
Actually from what I've heard on the news this situation and the airplane bombings seem to be the work of a new group who has ties to AQ.

What are these idiots thinking? Children?

That will never further your cause. In fact it will justify your anialation in many peoples eyes.

Incredible.

I just hope Putin handles it better this time then he did in the theatre.

what? i think its better to lose 150 people than 1500 and it was clear that the thing in the theatre woudln´t take a good peaceful end

Muslim extremeists are everywhere.

Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist violence that has not been caused by Muslim extremeists in the past 3 years or more?

I don't believe I've ever agreed with you ever, but on this one, I do. I just wish more effort was being put into finding Al Qaeda and less into Iraq.. Al Qadea is the real enemy and this is a perfect example!
Wow, except that those people have nothing to do with Al Qaeda at all, besides being muslim.

I never understood why hostage situations occur. I mean, has one ever worked out beneficially for the hostage takers? I suppose it works as a publicity stunt, but so does blowing oneself up in a crowded shopping centre, and the net result is usually the same.

I wonder if they will Screw it up like in the theater hostage where they poised everybody.

anialation

anialation?
The news said they have put children in front of the windows using them for protection against snipers.

Muslim extremeists are everywhere.

Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist violence that has not been caused by Muslim extremeists in the past 3 years or more?
Wasn't the family of Jonny "Mad Dog" Adair fire bombed recently?

However, it really depends on what you consider a terrorist

what? i think its better to lose 150 people than 1500 and it was clear that the thing in the theatre woudln´t take a good peaceful end
Sure. But most of the hostages then died from the gas the police used.

Wasn't the family of Jonny "Mad Dog" Adair fire bombed recently?

However, it really depends on what you consider a terrorist

Who is Jonny "Mad Dog" Adair and why would anyone want to fire bomb his house?

Muslim extremeists are everywhere.

Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist violence that has not been caused by Muslim extremeists in the past 3 years or more?
Give me 10 (Oklahoma city), and the Snipers come to mind, and these are separatists, not extremists...

25 December 2001

Greece
A bomb placed at a Citibank ATM in Athens exploded, causing major damage to the exterior ATM and to the bank interior, according to press reports. The Anarchists Attack Team claimed responsibility for the attack to show support for the dead prisoners in Turkey.

Sure. But most of the hostages then died from the gas the police used.

Your information is incorrect. There were approximately 900 hostages in the theater. When the Russian forces used the gas and stormed the theater, 105 hostages and 40 terrorists were killed. I don't know where you went to school, but where I went, 105 is NOT "most" of 900.

How would YOU have handled it?

Wow, except that those people have nothing to do with Al Qaeda at all, besides being muslim.

CSW, you know usually we are both in agreement on many issues. However there have been direct ties to Al Qadea with Chechen terrorists. (Unlike Iraq)

Who is Jonny "Mad Dog" Adair and why would anyone want to fire bomb his house?
The Loyalist in Northern Ireland for a long time.

As you can understand, he attracted a lot of attention from the Republican terrorists (he was leader of the Ulster Freedom Fighters).

His family fled to Britain (Glasgow first I think, but have moved since). He is a hard man to forget about.

::EDIT::Clicky! (http://www.fact-index.com/j/jo/johnny_adair.html)

http://newsfeed.tcm.ie/images/people/johnnyadair.jpg

Execute the bastards... cowards hiding behind kids

I would have portrayed an image of charlie chaplin

CSW, you know usually we are both in agreement on many issues. However there have been direct ties to Al Qadea with Chechen terrorists. (Unlike Iraq)
In 1999, U.S. presidential candidate George Bush spoke for much of the American right when he warned the Russians that they "need to resolve the dispute (with the Chechens) peaceably and not be bombing women and children and causing huge numbers of refugees to flee Chechnya."[1] If the Russians did not stop their brutal second war against the Chechens, which had begun in the fall of 1999, Bush threatened to cut off IMF and Export-Import Bank loans to the former superpower that the Republican right, led by Senator Jesse Helms, still saw as a dangerous manifestation of the USSR.

In 1999 the Chechen insurgents were typically portrayed in the United States as Afghan-style "freedom fighters" engaged in a heroic David-versus-Goliath struggle against the neo-Russian imperium. The anti-Russian Chechen resistance was hardly viewed as a component of Osama bin Laden's "World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders," which had been formed to expel the United States from Saudi Arabia in 1998. Condoleeza Rice, the future president's National Security Advisor, best summed up the Bush administration's views of the Chechens when she announced that "not every Chechen is a terrorist and the Chechens' legitimate aspirations for a political solution should be pursued by the Russian government." [2]

Such sentiments were not limited to the American right. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Democratic President Jimmy Carter's influential National Security Advisor, similarly said of the Second Russo-Chechen War: "What should be done? To start with the U.S. should not fall for Russia's entreaty that 'we are allies against Osama bin Laden'...Terrorism is neither the geopolitical nor moral challenge here (in Chechnya)." [3]

Fast-forward two years later to the aftermath of al Qaeda's kamikaze attack on the United States. As the domestically focused Bush administration surveyed Eurasia through the new prism of the global war on terror, the Chechen resistance, whose objectives (that is, national self-determination of the sort achieved by the Baltic states) were once looked upon with a degree of tacit sympathy by the Bush administration, was suddenly discovered to be in league with the "evil ones" responsible for 9/11.

In a volte-face that stunned the moderate Chechen leadership of President Aslan Maskhadov, a pragmatic leader known for his struggle to crush Islamic extremists attempting to infiltrate his own republic, President Bush now declared that "Arab terrorists" linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization were operating on Chechen territory and ought to be "brought to justice." [4]. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell went a step further and proclaimed "Russia is fighting terrorists in Chechnya, there is no question about that, and we understand that." [5]

This reassessment in Washington was only the beginning of a process that would ultimately see the secular Chechen Sufi-mystics reconfigured by the Western press into a foaming-at-the-mouth, globe-trotting nation of al Qaeda super terrorists. The Chechens, a Sovietized nation of moderate Muslims that arguably knew the words of Marx better than Muhammad, are now suspected of being tied to Wahhabi-fundamentalist Arabs at war with the West and modernity. In the process, the Western media and government officials began the character assassination of an entire nation, one that had no previous history of animosity toward the United States or the West.

Most notably, as the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom in an effort to destroy al Qaeda's training bases in the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Chechen-watchers and specialists on conflict and ethnicity in the Caucasus were stunned to hear a variety of newly discovered media "talking heads" matter-of-factly proclaim that, in Afghanistan, the United States and Coalition soldiers were confronting hordes of Chechens. Those who had intimately followed the progression of the first Russo-Chechen War (1994-96) and the descent into an increasingly senseless second Russian quagmire in Chechnya could not contain their shock at the veritable barrage of glib media accounts of Chechens fighting on behalf of the Pashtun-Taliban theocracy/al Qaeda terrorist organization in distant Afghanistan.

If one were to swallow uncritically the "expert" testimony of the media "pundits," the outgunned Army of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (currently considered by Russian sources to consist of 1,200 mountain fighters engaged in a life-and-death struggle with 80,000 Russian Federal troops) had somehow developed the logistic capacity (and the desire) to project "hundreds" of apparently unneeded fighters across Eurasia and through American-controlled air space over Afghanistan to defend illiterate Pashtun-Deobandi-Taliban puritans.

Specialists on Afghanistan were as bewildered as Chechnya experts by this blitz of media accounts referring to the important role that Chechens were suddenly playing in the doomed Pashtun-Taliban regime's defense of its puritanical "religious concentration camp." Afghan watchers were quite familiar with the Taliban's increasing reliance on the al Qaeda's "International Islamic Brigade" (that is, the 055 Brigade, a shock unit made up of Uzbek extremists from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Arab jihadis, and Pakistani militants), but no Afghan experts had ever heard of Chechens serving so far from home in the Taliban's increasingly costly spring offensives against the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. While Juma Namangani's Uzbek extremist-jihadis (members of the Northern Afghanistan-based Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan), as well as Arabs (who had openly fought and trained in Afghanistan as mujahideen volunteers and al Qaeda terrorists), and Pakistani Pashtuns from the neighboring North West Frontier Province all had a long and widely documented presence in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan...the Chechen highlanders were encircled in the far away Caucasus by Russian Federation forces and were completely unknown to the Afghans.

Despite the commonsensical queries that should have arisen in the western media surrounding the unsubstantiated rumors of Chechens appearing in Afghanistan as "die-hard al Qaeda fighters," no one in the industry questioned these wild claims in the winter of 2001-2002.

As the "dots were connected" between the Taliban and the Chechens, the western rumor mill also began to speak of the Chechen separatists' nefarious involvement in the global struggle of al Qaeda. On any given moment one could turn on the television and see newly discovered "experts," with no field expertise in Afghanistan or Chechnya, blithely predicting that a cornered Osama bin Laden (an Arab-speaking Wahhabi) would somehow find refuge in the "wild lands of the Islamic militants" of Chechnya (an inaccessible republic encircled by an 80,000-man Russian occupation army).

As the war on terrorism unfolded, uninformed American television audiences were confidently told that Chechens were involved in every manner of al Qaeda global mischief and mayhem, from acting as "white-skinned European-looking Al Qaeda infiltrator-hijackers" (a remarkable achievement for a swarthy, dark-haired Caucasian mountain nation known to the Russians by their racist epithet as cheorny--"niggers"), to providing al Qaeda with ricin chemical laboratories in the rugged mountains of Chechnya and neighboring Georgia (ricin is of course one of the most unstable biological weapons and requires advanced technology and facilities to manufacture). Since the American public discovered the various ethnic groups of Eurasia in the aftermath of 9/11 a veritable Chechen rumor industry has emerged. This would be laughable were it not for the fact that the Chechens, a nation undergoing horrible crimes against humanity at the hands of the brutal Russian Federation forces, are being misconstrued as nation of ubiquitous al Qaeda ethno-terrorists.

This author has taken great pleasure in collecting particularly preposterous examples of this genre of outlandish media accounts, examples that serve to demonstrate the ways in which the Western press has inadvertently played into the hands of the Russian Federation's "agitprop" spin-meisters. Below are some of my favorites:

--Earlier this month, Russian military sources were quoted as saying that they had intercepted Chechen rebel communications indicating that "mercenaries" fighting in Chechnya were heading to Afghanistan to fight on behalf of the Taliban and that "several hundred" Chechens were already fighting there alongside 3,000-4,000 Arabs and 5,000-7,000 Pakistanis. (Secondhand account critically assessed in the Jamestown Foundation's Monitor, Vol. 7, Issue 216, Nov. 26, 2001.)

--Al-Watan reported that bin Laden had obtained nuclear material from his Chechen contacts. Reportedly, al Qaeda's Chechen branch paid the Russian mafia US$30 million in cash and two tons of opium in exchange for warhead materials that could be used in the making of a "suitcase nuke." (Mark Riebling and R.P. Eddy, "Jihad@Work. Behind the Moscow-Theater Attack." National Review Preview. March 24, 2003.)

--According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S Congress Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the war in Chechnya had been planned during a secret summit of Hizballah International held in Mogadishu, Somalia. The summit was attended by Osama bin Laden and high ranking Iranian and Pakistani intelligence officers. In this regard the involvement of Pakistan's ISI in Chechnya "goes far beyond supplying the Chechens with weapons and expertise: the ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in the war." (Levon Sevunts, "Who's Calling the Shots? Chechen Conflict Finds Islamic Roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan, The Gazette, Montreal, October 26, 1999.)

--It is estimated that a total of 8,000 Chechens fought in Afghanistan and most of them died at their posts covering the retreats from Bagram, Mazar-i-Sharif and other cities. ("Friendless Chechens shield Taliban despite vast differences in beliefs," Straight Goods, Ken Hechtman, March 15, 2002.)

--Antiterrorist police have focused on an alleged Algerian-dominated network whose operatives are believed to have received specialized training with biological and chemical weapons at al Qaida camps in the Russian republic of Chechnya. ("French Believe Poison is tied to al Qaeda Plots," St. Petersburg Times, March 23, 2002.)

My personal all time favorite, however, has to be the following account:

--The U.S. Customs Service issued a bulletin late last week urging law enforcement to be on the lookout for two possible Chechen terrorists who may try to enter the United States through Mexico, then travel to Montana. ("Are Chechen terrorists headed for Montana?" Chris Vlasto, ABC News.)

A google search on "Chechens in Afghanistan" or "Chechens al Qaeda" will bring up hundreds of such nonsensical media hits which would seem to indicate that the Chechen chimera has the potential to send 8,000 (sic) "white skinned" mafia-hijackers armed with suitcase nukes, opium, and biological weapons to Montana to do the evil bidding of Hezbollah (an Arab Shiite organization at war with Israel), the Pakistani ISI, and al Qaeda. Truly an extraordinary global feat for an out-gunned insurgent movement of 1,200 clan-based fighters engaged in a desperate guerilla war against the powerful Russian Federation.

In light of such seemingly preposterous accusations one would expect the media to engage in some investigatory research on the Chechens. In particular, the question that begs to be asked in this frenzied climate is "have the Chechens really taken on the struggle of al Qaeda and the (neo)Taliban as their own?" Is there any shred of evidence to support the claims made above? If "hundreds" or "thousands" of Chechens were, or still are, involved in the Afghan theater and in the atomized al Qaeda movement's global plots, then surely one Chechen fighter/terrorist would have been apprehended, photographed, interviewed, or killed in Afghanistan...or in the breakup of al Qaeda cells world wide.

If there is no proof to substantiate these claims, then this lack of evidence should surely lead to some critical reassessments by the U.S. and allied Coalition governments. Sadly, to date the U.S. government has not launched an in-depth probe into this issue. The Chechens remain a strange new al Qaeda bogey that mysteriously emerged on 9/11 to serve as elusive "super-terrorists" in an Arab megalomaniac's "jihad against the Crusaders and Zionists."

Fortunately, several reliable eyewitnesses (with expertise in both Chechen and Afghan affairs of the sort glaringly absent among the "talking head pundits" rolled out by the Western media after 9/11) have carried out bona fide searches for the mysterious Chechen specters in Afghanistan (though not yet Montana).

Among those to visit and interview hundreds of foreign prisoners of war captured by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Northern Afghanistan was Robert Young Pelton, a veteran combat reporter. Pelton, who had spent time in the trenches with the Chechen separatists during the Russian siege of Grozny (winter 1999), made his way to Mazar-i-Sharif in search of Chechen fighters, many of whom he may well have expected to know personally. Although Pelton soon discovered scores of Arabs, Uzbeks, Pakistanis, and even one American among the al Qaeda 055 Brigade/Taliban prisoners of war, he encountered no Chechens. For his part, Johnny Walker Lindh (a.k.a. "the American Taliban"), a uniquely qualified source who actually served as a Taliban foot soldier in Mazar-i-Sharif and Kunduz, told Pelton "Here, in Afghanistan, I haven't seen any Chechens."

Carlotta Gall, another correspondent with first hand experience in Chechnya, also went to Afghanistan in search of Chechens and came up empty handed. She had the following to say on the existence of Chechens among the 3,500 al Qaeda/Taliban POWs held by the Northern Alliance at Shiberghan in Afghanistan:

More than 2,000 of the prisoners are Afghans, of whom only the commanders will probably be of interest to the United States. More than 700 are Pakistanis, with smaller numbers from other countries of the Islamic world; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Sudan, Morocco, Iraq, the Muslim republics of Russia, and the countries of Central Asia. Despite assertions by the Afghans that there were many people from Russia's separatist Chechnya region fighting for the Taliban, there is not one Chechen among the prisoners. [6]

A breakdown of the nationalities of the Taliban/al Qaeda "illegal combatant detainees" subsequently taken by the American military for interrogation in Camps X-Ray and Delta, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, supports these first hand accounts that unanimously dismiss the notion of Chechens in Afghanistan. While the American military eventually captured and took to Cuba over 680 suspected Al Qaeda foot soldiers/terrorists from more than forty-two countries (most of whom were Arabs, Pakistanis, Uzbeks, and Afghans), not one Chechen was detained by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The question that begs to be asked if the facts on the ground flatly refute the existence of the Chechens in Afghanistan is "How did the legend of the Chechens fighting for the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan come to have such currency in America after 9/11 that it shaped U.S. foreign policy towards the Russian Federation and Chechnya in subsequent months?" The second part of this paper will critically analyze the history of Chechen links to Afghanistan and al Qaeda and trace the history of the Russian government's surprisingly successful efforts to conflate its war against nationalist insurgents in Chechnya to the Coalition's war against global Islamic terrorism.

FOOTNOTES: 1. For an analysis of the White House's changing post-9/11 perceptions of the Chechens see my forthcoming article, "From Secessionist 'Rebels' to 'Al Qaeda Shock Brigades.' Critically Assessing Russia's Efforts to Extend the Post-September 11th War on Terror to Chechnya." Comparative Studies on South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, vol. 23, no. 2. 2003; Michael McFaul, "U.S. Foreign Policy and Chechnya," The Century Foundation, March 2003, p. 22, http://reports.stanleyfoundation.org/EAIrussiaB03p.pdf . 2. Ibid. p. 26. 3. Zbigniew Brzezinski "Why The West Should Care About Chechnya," Wall Street Journal, November 10, 1999. 4. "Western Leaders Re-evaluate Their Stance on the Chechen War," Jamestown Foundation Monitor, September 27, 2001. 5. Thomas de Waal, "Greetings from Grozny," PBS, Wide Angle, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/chechnya/briefing.html. See also, Ambassador Stephen Minikes, "Statement on Chechnya, " OSCE, Vienna, June 6, 2002, http://www.usosce.rpo.at/archive/2002/06/06chechnya.htm . 6. Carlotta Gall, "Fighters were lured to Afghanistan by Islam, Holy War, and Promise of Escape," New York Times, January 1, 2002.

I don't believe I've ever agreed with you ever, but on this one, I do. I just wish more effort was being put into finding Al Qaeda and less into Iraq.. Al Qadea is the real enemy and this is a perfect example!

Since you mention Iraq, I will take this as a criticism of the Bush adminstration (and since I don't know how else it could be meant).

Are you saying the U.S. should send troops to Chechnya?

I would have portrayed an image of charlie chaplin
http://www.imagemakers.mb.ca/posters/stars/silent/chaplin/chaplin2.jpg

I love this picture :D

But why would you have portrayed an image of charlie chaplin?

Your information is incorrect. There were approximately 900 hostages in the theater. When the Russian forces used the gas and stormed the theater, 105 hostages and 40 terrorists were killed. I don't know where you went to school, but where I went, 105 is NOT "most" of 900.

How would YOU have handled it?
I meant most of the hostages that died, died from the effects of the gas that was used.
How I would have handled it? I dunno. I'm not a cop or soldier. But I sure as hell wouldn't have used an experimental gas.

Regarding the unsubstantiated claims that "thousands" of mysterious Chechens serving in the Afghan theater from 2001-2002 (reflected in the lack of evidence that even a single Chechen fought on behalf of the Taliban in Afghanistan, explained in Part One of this series; see Chechnya Weekly, October 2, 2003), the intelligence community and Western media owe it to themselves to explore the origins of such rumors. This segment intends to clarify this episode in Chechen-Afghan history provide an honest analysis of the Chechens' links to Afghanistan. It is hoped that such an exercise will shed light on one of the greatest myths of the War on Terror, namely, that Chechen resistance fighters are in league with Mullah Omar's Pashtun-dominated fundamentalist-Deobandi movement. By critically exploring the facts surrounding the Chechen resistance one can construct an accurate assessment of the relationship between the pre-existing/localized Chechen insurgency and the Taliban's efforts to construct a fundamentalist Emirate and play host to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda movement.

The first evidence we have of Chechens in Afghanistan hardly lends itself to the linkage between the Chechen insurgents and the movements of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. On the contrary, the first documentation of Chechens in this Central Asian land comes from the period of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1988). Far from serving as members of Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden's brotherhood of international anti-Soviet jihadis, the Chechens fought in Afghanistan fulfilling their "internationalist duty" in the USSR's 40th Limited Contingent invasion/occupation force.

Notably, Chechnya's secessionist president, Dzhokhar Dudaev, served in this early period as a Soviet Air Force general leading a squadron of Sukhoi tactical fighter bombers against the Afghan mujahideen and Arab volunteers. In this period, as now, the Russified Chechens were more an example of Homo Sovieticus than Homo Islamicus. The mud walled villages of Afghanistan and the austere Wahhabi towns of Saudi Arabia would have seemed backward lands to these secularized Marxist-Muslims. Far from striving to reconstruct an idealized Islamic past as it was said to have existed at the time of the Prophet Muhammad (the goal of neo-Wahhabi-Salafites, such as Osama bin Laden, and Deobandis, such as Mullah Omar) the Chechens serving in Afghanistan were fighting for a Communist state that aimed to construct an idealized proletarian future.

Most importantly, the Chechens in the Red Army who spoke the lingua Sovietica (Russian) would hardly have identified with the Weltanschauung of those Arabic-speaking Wahhabi fundamentalists from the Gulf States who spoke the lingua jihadica (Arabic), the language of the transnational proponents of a new endless holy war (the so-called "sixth pillar" of Islam as espoused by Sayid Qutb and Abdullah Azzam--all of which was later redirected against the United States by al Qaeda). Russified Chechens were known throughout the Soviet period as loyal fighters; many of them (including Dudaev) received medals for their military service to the Soviet Union in World War II and the Afghan conflict.

With the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the toppling of the Afghan Communist regime in 1992, Afghanistan and Chechnya would subsequently emerge as vastly different post-communist Muslim societies. The conflict that bound the Soviet Chechens (who underwent over seventy years of communist social construction) to the backward Pashtun tribes of Afghanistan (who were virtually untouched by the Soviets' policies) were to be sundered following the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan. Secessionist Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudaev renewed them on a different basis in 1994.

With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Dudaev and his nationalist leadership took advantage of Russian President Boris Yeltsin's offer to the Federal provinces to "seize as much autonomy as they could," and to declare outright national independence for Chechnya. (Islam was seen as nothing more than a nationalist symbol by the Sovietized Chechen secular leadership at this time.) As the Russian Federation responded with a policy of brinkmanship, Dudaev is reported to have sent one of his most loyal supporters, Shamil Basaev, and forty of his followers, to Peshawar in Pakistan and to the Khost region of Afghanistan (the Al Khaldun Camp) for military training in 1994. [1] Having fought in the Afghan theater in the 1980s, Dudaev must have felt that the Afghan mujahideen could train his own supporters in unconventional guerilla combat techniques.

Basaev stayed in these camps for only a short period of time, according to the testimony of one of the members of his Abkhaz Battalion (a Chechen unit that fought against the Georgians in the 1991-92 Abkhaz conflict). Nonetheless, this training mission has been construed by conspiracy theorists (most notably Yossef Bodansky, the author of a best seller on Osama bin Laden) as the first example of a Chechen-Afghan-al Qaeda conspiracy. [2] It should be recognized, however, that only a small number of post-Soviet Chechen fighters made their way to train in the ISI-run military camps in the Khost region, and that Osama bin Laden was actually living in Sudan at this time (1994). To use this visit as the basis for linking the Chechen resistance to the Taliban or al Qaeda at this early stage is to propagate a sloppy or conspiratorial anachronism. It was not until the year 1996 that the Taliban were to conquer this training camp region and grant it to Osama bin Laden for training transnational jihadis in military-terrorist tactics.

As links between a few Chechen fighters and pre-Taliban ISI training camps were developed, they were subsequently seized upon by the Kremlin as a public relations coup. During the First Russo-Chechen War of 1994-96, for example, the Kremlin began the process of undermining its Chechen opponents by linking them to the increasingly dangerous network of Taliban fanatics and al Qaeda terrorists who began to dominate Afghanistan two years after Basaev's visit. Russian officials made accusations that 6,000 Afghan mujahideen were fighting as volunteers against Russian forces in Chechnya (an absurd claim in light of the fact that the Chechen resistance then had a maximum of 10,000 part-time fighters), but no Afghan contingents were ever seen in Chechnya by the scores of Western journalists reporting there at the time. While several hundred transnational Arab holy warriors made their way to Chechnya in 1995 under the command of one Emir Khattab to assist the Chechen resistance against the Russians, the evidence of Afghans in the first Russo-Chechen conflict is non-existent.

The traditionally conservative Pashtun tribesmen of Afghanistan would of course have had little inclination to fight for secessionists in the distant Russian province of Chechnya when their own lands were experiencing such turmoil in the period of the Afghan civil war (which ended in 1996).

Similarly, in the aftermath of the Chechen victory in the First Russo-Chechen War in 1996, the people of Chechnya demonstrated to the world that their future that had nothing in common with the medieval religious time warp being forcefully constructed in post-1996 Afghanistan by the Pashtun-Taliban. The Chechens displayed to the world the moderate-secular future they envisioned for their land by overwhelmingly voting for Aslan Maskhadov, a secular pragmatist willing to work with the Kremlin, as president (1997). By contrast, the Pashtun-Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, symbolically wrapped himself in the "Robe of Muhammad" (a cherished Pashtun relic) in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and turned his back on the very Western world with which President Maskhadov desperately sought to establish diplomatic ties.

With the outbreak of the Second Russo-Chechen War in 1999, however, the differences between the secularized Chechen highlanders and the fundamentalist Pashtun-Taliban were overlooked (or deliberately blurred) by Russian leadership. Paranoid Russian officials saw the August-September 1999 invasions of the Russian province of Dagestan by Shamil Basaev, Emir Khattab, and Dagestani Wahhabis as a "Caucasian front" of a much-hyped trans-Eurasian united jihad that was said to be directed from the pariah Taliban state. In particular, Kremlin officials claimed that the 1999 "Chechen" invasion of Dagestan (which was actually condemned by Chechen President Maskhadov) represented the western pincer of an extremist front that stretched across Eurasia, from the Caucasus to Uzbekistan.

Russian conspiracy theorists found sufficient grounds for suspecting the Taliban-sponsored Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) raiders, who in 1999 were creating chaos in Central Asia, and the radical "Chechen" invaders of Dagestan. In Uzbekistan at this time Islamic militants belonging to Juma Namangani's IMU had begun a series of invasions designed to undermine the regime of President Islam Karimov. [3] The Russian government felt that the IMU's raids resembled the incursions from Chechnya into Dagestan. Most alarmingly for the Kremlin, the 1999 IMU forays into Uzbekistan and the Batken region of Kyrgyzstan were launched from Taliban territory in the Mazar-i Sharif area of northern Afghanistan, where Juma Namangani's militant Islamists had found sanctuary.

It should be clearly stated that there is no evidence linking the August-September 1999 "Chechen" invasion of Dagestan to Namangani's 1999 IMU razzias into Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. While there is abundant evidence that in 1999 the IMU merged with al Qaeda's Afghan-based 055 International Brigade (the 3,000 man Arab, Uzbek, and Pakistani-dominated fighting wing of al Qaeda that was increasingly used by the Taliban in its spring offensives against the Northern Alliance), there is no evidence that Chechens served in this fanatical jihadi shock brigade.

Commonsensical arguments would of course have refuted the notion of the involvement of fighters from the 2,000-3,000 man Chechen Army of Ichkeria in Afghanistan in 1999 or 2000. As the Russian Federal army of 100,000 swept across the sub-Terek flatlands of Chechnya in the fall of 1999 and crushed the outnumbered Chechen resistance in Grozny (in the winter of 1999-2000), the hard-pressed Chechen leadership would have had zero logistical capacity to dispatch desperately needed fighters across Eurasia to join the Pashtun-Taliban or 055 Brigade in their war against the Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Hazaras of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

Additionally, the regrouping Chechen defenders had no reason to abandon the defense of their homes and families to fight for the Taliban. Similarly, by the time of the Second Russo-Chechen War, the Chechen fighters--who had successfully stormed such Russian-occupied urban areas as Grozny and Gudermes in the First Russo-Chechen War--would have had little to learn militarily from the unskilled Afghan-Talibs (the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen failed to take Jalalabad in their only effort to storm an urban area and the Taliban resorted to bribery to achieve most of their victories).

As events demonstrate, the increasingly isolated Taliban regime could offer the encircled and diplomatically isolated Chechen Republic of Ichkeria token assistance. Notably, in January of 2000 a radical Islamist opponent of Maskhadov, named Zelimkhan Yanderbiev (interim Chechen President in 1996 who had severed all ties with Maskhadov), and five aides made an unofficial visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan seeking support for the increasingly desperate Chechen secessionist cause. In Pakistan, Yanderbiev collected US$200,000 from the radical Jamaat Islami and Jamaat Ulema e Islam organizations, which were also known to have funded Harkat ul Mujahideen military activities in Kashmir. Most fortuitously for the Kremlin spin-masters, on January 16, 2000, the rogue emissary Yanderbiev also visited Mullah Omar in Afghanistan. There, Yanderbiev, who was not operating in any official capacity as a Chechen representative, went though the almost comical process of receiving official "recognition" of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from the equally isolated Taliban regime. [4]

The Kremlin perceived this symbolic gesture as "proof" of links between its Chechen opponents and the pariah Taliban regime. One account maintains that Russian President Vladimir Putin "began to see Chechens everywhere" at this stage. By the summer of 2000 the Kremlin was even threatening to bomb the Taliban regime with TU-22M Backfire Bombers and SCUD missiles in retaliation for its supposed support for the Chechen resistance. [5] Kremlin spokespersons also spoke of a counterintuitive "exchange program" that saw "hundreds" of Afghans make their way to Chechnya to assist the Chechen rebels while "hundreds" of ex-Soviet Chechens traveled in the other direction, to Afghanistan, to hatch plans with Mullah Omar's Pashtun-speaking tribal fanatics.

In response to the increasingly shrill rhetoric about Chechens in Afghanistan coming from the Kremlin, Taliban spokesmen adamantly refuted the claims that there were any Chechens in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. A top ranking Taliban official declared: "There are no training camps for Chechens or any one else. We challenge them to identify even one." [6] If this statement were not emphatic enough, the Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, declared that there were not only no Chechen "bases" in Afghanistan, but no Chechens whatsoever, not even diplomats, in his country. [7]

When informed of Yanderbiev's provocative unofficial visit, an equally disgusted Chechen President Maskhadov declared from his hideout in the mountains of southern Chechnya: "We didn't ask for any military help from anyone, including Afghanistan, because there isn't such a necessity. We have enough forces and means to sustain a full partisan war with the Russian army. There are no Chechen bases in Afghanistan, nor in Yemen. We don't need any bases, because during the previous war Russian generals taught our people how to fight." [8]

Prior to 9-11 the Clinton and Bush administrations, as well as other NATO governments, dismissed the Kremlin's rhetoric concerning the existence of Chechens in Afghanistan and Afghans in Chechnya as so much Soviet-style "agitprop" (agitation-propaganda, the specialty of Putin's former employers, the KGB).

And thus things may well have remained but for the fact that the al Qaeda parasite "organization" launched a stunning suicide attack on the United States of America from the Taliban host state on September 11, 2001. As a reeling Bush administration focused the full might of Centcom on the task of destroying the Taliban regime, Russia's permission was required for basing rights in the "Blizhnee Zarubezhe" of Central Asia (the so-called "Near Abroad," i.e., the former Soviet republics of Central Asia that are considered to be well within Moscow's sphere of military/political influence).

In the aftermath of 9-11, Putin wholeheartedly sided with the U.S.-led Coalition and the Russian military gave its permission for the basing of U.S. forces on its doorstep (most notably in Karimov's Uzbekistan, which was used as a springboard for inserting U.S. special forces and airborne troops into northern Afghanistan). It was at this time that the White House began referring to the Chechens as "al Qaeda terrorists" and declared the anti-Karimov IMU (which had no record of anti-Americanism) a "Foreign Terrorist Organization." Stunned Chechens (and IMU extremist fighters from Uzbekistan, who were soon to find themselves in the U.S. cross-hairs in northern Afghanistan) assumed that a quid pro quo had been granted to the Kremlin (and to Uzbek President Karimov) by the Bush administration, which had once looked on their separatist cause with sympathy (see part one of this series).

In response to this green light from the Bush administration for stepped up attacks on "Islamic extremists" in Chechnya, Russian Federation troops accelerated their zachistki ("cleansing" round-up operations) in "terrorist" villages throughout Chechnya. In other words, in the immediate months after 9-11 the Chechen resistance found itself pressed as never before due to the fact that the West had given the Kremlin carte blanche to ratchet up its ongoing war against Chechen separatism under the guise of playing its role in the war against global al Qaeda terrorism.

At this time of elevated Russian offensives in Chechnya that Western media (which had previously depicted the Chechens as victims of Russian war crimes) began accusing the Chechens of being in league with the Taliban. In a short time the Western media surpassed the Kremlin in its casual linkage of the Chechen highlanders to the doomed Taliban regime. It soon became an article of faith even among the U.S. military in Afghanistan that (along with the Uzbeks of the IMU, Pakistanis, and Arabs) the Chechens were a vital component of al Qaeda's tough 055 Brigade. The U.S. military began uncritically to produce reports such as the one below:

They have been the stuff of nightmares for Russian troops and now U.S. forces face the prospect of trying to combat Chechen fighters in Afghanistan who have thrown their lot in with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. "There are a hell of a lot of them and they sure know how to fight," one senior American officer said after the conclusion of the recent offensive Operation Anaconda against diehard fighters in eastern Paktia province. The man who led the offensive said that a large proportion of the fighters who chose to fight to the death were non-Afghans.

But Chechen separatists, who have been involved in a fierce war for independence from Russia for the past twenty-nine months, appear to make up the largest contingent of al Qaeda's foreign legion...Following the downfall of his Taliban protectors in Afghanistan, there has been speculation that Osama may now try to seek refuge in Chechnya. "We know the history of the Chechens. They are good fighters and they are very brutal," Hagenbeck said. The general said he has heard of reports out of the Pentagon that a unit of 100-150 Chechens had moved into southern Afghanistan. [9]

Chechens were accused of leading the Taliban's defense of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan (sixty Chechens were said to have thrown themselves into the Amu Darya River when this city fell to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance) and "hundreds" of Chechen "die-hard Taliban fanatics" were said to be fighting in scores of battlefronts throughout Afghanistan. This author has carefully collated these unsubstantiated reports of Chechens fighting on behalf of the Taliban regime against American forces and has come to a stunning numeric conclusion. If the Western media sources, which specifically speak of "dozens," "hundreds," and "thousands" of Chechens fighting against Coalition forces in Tora Bora, Shah-i Kot, Kunduz, Mazar-i Sharif, and even Kandahar, Afghanistan, are to be believed, then there were considerably more Chechens protecting the Pashtun-Taliban thugocracy in distant Afghanistan than defending their own villages, homes, and people in Chechnya.

Despite a veritable barrage of such accounts, a barrage that continues to this day, not one Chechen has been apprehended by U.S. and Coalition forces in Afghanistan or Pakistan. In my August 2003 discussions with General Dostum, the Northern Alliance general responsible for the destruction of the 055 al Qaeda Brigade in Mazar-i Sharif and Kunduz, he admitted that his anti-Taliban forces had not uncovered a single Chechen among the foreign fighters subsequently shipped to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following the November 2001 defeat of the Taliban (although his forces discovered one American, Johnny Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban").

Why then have the Chechens been misconstrued as die-hard anti-Coalition fighters in Afghanistan by both the U.S. military and media? It can be postulated that Sovietized Uzbek foreigners from Juma Namangani's IMU (i.e., Russified Uzbeks from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan), who fought in the 055 al Qaeda Brigade, were erroneously defined as "Chechens" by simple Northern Alliance fighters. The U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and Western media sources with no background in the complex ethnicity of this region, uncritically swallowed these local accounts of foreign IMU fighters speaking Russian (a language many Sovietized-Uzbek foreigners from Uzbekistan spoke better than Uzbek) and came to define them as "Chechens."

The following is a typical example of a Western media account of "Chechen Al Qaeda fighters" fleeing Afghanistan that demonstrates this tendency:

In a skirmish at a remote checkpoint, security forces killed four heavily armed al Qaeda fighters Wednesday as the men drove out of a lawless border area near Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said. Three Pakistani security men also were reported killed, the Washington Post reported from Islamabad. Police and military officers said the four al Qaeda fighters, whom they described as Chechens, threw grenades at security personnel who ordered them to stop at a bridge near Kohat in the northwest of the country. [10]

In-depth background of this same reportedly "Chechen" attack by the Pakistani agents actually involved in the incident (an ambush that led to the capture and interrogation of an Uzbek, not a Chechen) reveals a completely different story. A reporter for Time magazine who visited the scene of the above mentioned attack did a follow up and left the following report (which did not get the same international coverage):

Niazi (a Pakistani undercover agent) had spent weeks befriending Uzbek al Qaeda fighters, posing as a smuggler who could take them safely into the frontier city of Peshawar. Now he had lured the Uzbeks into the trap. He would drive them into an ambush in which Pakistani police would capture al Qaeda fighters alive. From there they would be flown away from the nearby Kohat army base to be interrogated by American spooks...When a Pakistani officer approached the van and ordered the driver to get out, the Qaeda man in the front seat stuck a gun in his ribs. As the driver tried to leap out of the van, the Qaeda fighter shot him. In response, all 70 cops opened fire. Two of the Uzbeks hurled grenades and tried to make a run for the boulders, but were cut down by police bullets. Pinned in the crossfire, Niazi never made it out of the backseat. [11]

Erroneous accounts of this sort were disseminated throughout the world--and a small highlander people that had more in common with Russian neighbors than Arab Wahhabi extremists in the Middle East--became forever linked to the geographically and ideologically distant Taliban. The linkage has taken on a momentum of its own and even now one encounters accounts of "Chechens" fighting in Afghanistan. In addition, the Chechens, who appear to have acquired the power of ubiquity, have now begun to appear in Western media sources as extremists fighting in Iraq on the behalf of the toppled Baathist regime of Sadaam Hussein.

But for all of the damage this unsubstantiated (and illogical) linkage between the Chechen guerillas and the shattered Taliban regime has done to the Chechen struggle for national self-determination, it is their purported ties to the al Qaeda terrorist movement that have made the Chechens' name synonymous with the dreaded name of Osama bin Laden in the Western media. It is to the analysis of the ties between the Chechen resistance and the global al Qaeda movement that my next article will be devoted.

FOOTNOTES: 1. "Afghan' Chechens in Afghanistan," The News, December, 17, 1994. See also "The Taliban Formally Recognizes Chechnya," Jamestown Foundation Monitor, January 18, 2000. "Two years ago, in a conversation with the Monitor's correspondent, Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev admitted that he and his fighters had been in Taliban military training camps three times." 2. For a discussion of the details of Basaev's visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan see Sanobar Shermatova, "Tak Nazyvaemye Vakkabity" (The So-Called Wahhabis), in Chechnya i Rossiya: Obshchestvo i Gosudarstvo (Chechnya and Russia: Culture and State), ed. Dmitri Furman, vol. 3, Moscow; 1999, p. 412. 3. The Uzbeks who fought in Juman Namangani's IMU were ex-Soviet Uzbeks from Uzbekistan, not Afghan Uzbeks from General Dostum's Uzbek territories in northern Afghanistan. 4. "Taliban Regime Recognizes Chechen Independence," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Newsline, January, 17, 2000, p. 2. 5. Elena Obcharenko, "Poletiat li Nashi Rebiata Bombit Afgan?" (Will Our Boys Fly to Bomb Afghanistan?) Komsomolskaya pravda, May 30, 2000, p. 5. 6. "Taliban Rulers Deny Russian Charges," Associated Press, October 3, 2000. This statement overlooks the fact that there were of course training camps for militant Uzbeks of the IMU in Afghanistan, but these bases were proudly acknowledged by the Taliban as were the camps of the Pakistani Harkut ul Mujahideen. 7. "Taliban. No Chechen Bases," BBC, May 28, 2000, http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south 8. "Maskhadov Denies Chechens Training in Afghanistan," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 26, 2000. 9. Chris Otton, "Americans hunt for Chechens in Afghanistan," AFP, March 22, 2002 (reprinted in Dawn, http://dawn.com/2002/03/22/int12.htm). 10. "Pakistanis Kill 4 on Border," International Herald Tribune, July 4, 2002, p. 4. 11. Tim McGirk, "Al-Qaeda's New Hideouts," Time, July 29, 2002.

Execute the bastards... cowards hiding behind kids

but not just any regular old execution, a la injection or firing squad or electrocution. i say cut off their junk and feed it to them. make them choke to death on their own tiny gonads.

I wonder if they will Screw it up like in the theater hostage where they poised everybody.

This was a good thing. I think everyone should have more poise. :D

http://www.imagemakers.mb.ca/posters/stars/silent/chaplin/chaplin2.jpg

I love this picture :D

But why would you have portrayed an image of charlie chaplin?

Because everyone would start dancing, dropping their guns, and letting the hostages go. Duh.

Because everyone would start dancing, dropping their guns, and letting the hostages go. Duh.
*Penny drops*

but not just any regular old execution, a la injection or firing squad or electrocution. i say cut off their junk and feed it to them. make them choke to death on their own tiny gonads.

Torture wont solve anything. If you absolutely must get rid of the persons, just get rid of them. Don't drag it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/0/00/Charlie_Chaplin.jpg

oh god! now that is scary...

Give me 10 (Oklahoma city), and the Snipers come to mind, and these are separatists, not extremists...

25 December 2001

Greece
A bomb placed at a Citibank ATM in Athens exploded, causing major damage to the exterior ATM and to the bank interior, according to press reports. The Anarchists Attack Team claimed responsibility for the attack to show support for the dead prisoners in Turkey.

I would not call the destruction of an ATM a "terrorist" act. How many people were intimidated to act differently because of this action except those who cannot get cash at that location for awhile?

I meant most of the hostages that died, died from the effects of the gas that was used.
How I would have handled it? I dunno. I'm not a cop or soldier. But I sure as hell wouldn't have used an experimental gas.

OK, I see your point on the "most" thingy.

However, hostage casualties from another method could have easily exceeded the actual count. The only other method I can think of would be a conventional storming of the theater by police and military specialists. In that case, the terrorists could have detonated their explosive charges - a tactic that was denied them by use of the gas - and certainly many more hostages would have died than actually did.

Or, Putin could have just given in to their demands, I guess.

Muslim extremeists are everywhere.

Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist violence that has not been caused by Muslim extremeists in the past 3 years or more?


Oklahoma City.

Washingon DC snipers.

I don't believe I've ever agreed with you ever, but on this one, I do. I just wish more effort was being put into finding Al Qaeda and less into Iraq.. Al Qadea is the real enemy and this is a perfect example!
I'm forced to disagree with this statement. Saddam Hussein was a far greater threat than these terrorists. The man was a head of state, and responsible the death and suffering of thousands of people. 200 taken hostage and 9 or 10 killed so far? That's nothing compared to the threat of a dictator who couldn't be trusted not to start another war, when he's bored with killing his own people. Terrorism.. that's a criminal matter, and far more people die (especially in the united states) due to OTHER crimes, including straight out murder, drugs, and driving while intoxicated. Shouldn't these be a priority over something like terrorism, that kills far fewer people? But "War on Terror" just SOUNDS so good, doesn't it?
Also, the Russians wouldn't have this problem if they dealt with Chechnya differently... but it IS their problem, so they can deal with it.

I would not call the destruction of an ATM a "terrorist" act. How many people were intimidated to act differently because of this action except those who cannot get cash at that location for awhile?
And the Oklahoma City bombings weren't terrorist acts or are you just ignoring the rest of my comment?

http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/0/00/Charlie_Chaplin.jpg

oh god! now that is scary...
I think he looks lovely

Muslim extremeists are everywhere.

Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist violence that has not been caused by Muslim extremeists in the past 3 years or more?
http://www.grandorange.org.uk/press/PressReleases-2004/040408-orangemen_condemn_attack.html

I'm forced to disagree with this statement. Saddam Hussein was a far greater threat than these terrorists.

You don't know the history very well of Iraq do you? If you did you'd know this statement is not true. But that is what they count on, people not knowing.

Oklahoma City.

Washingon DC snipers.

DC Sniper was a Muslim convert....

Oklahoma City falls outside the timeline I set, but thats ok. It was a terrorist attack that was not caused by Muslim extremists.

http://www.grandorange.org.uk/press/PressReleases-2004/040408-orangemen_condemn_attack.html

Arson against empty buildings is a criminal act....not terrorism.

I've merged the two threads on this together. No point having two threads on the same subject.

And the Oklahoma City bombings weren't terrorist acts or are you just ignoring the rest of my comment?


No, it falls outside the timeline I set, but it was a terrorist act.

Weren't there some car bombings in Spain the last couple of years? By ETA?

Maybe they're muslim tho...Shit, I don't know.

Arson against empty buildings is a criminal act....not terrorism.
So what is terrorism?

Also, the Russians wouldn't have this problem if they dealt with Chechnya differently... but it IS their problem, so they can deal with it.


Do you realize that your kind of thinking is why so many countries refused to aid the United States in the Iraq War?

Conservatives screamed bloody murder when France said what you just did, but you dont feel the same applies to us?

Isnt that kind of hippocritical?

Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist violence that has not been caused by Muslim extremeists in the past 3 years or more?

mhm

Keep moving those goal posts.

So what is terrorism?

Well...it is defined in many ways, but i doubt that the burning of two empty buildings would qualify. Now if said buildings were full of people and the doors were locked....THAT would be.

Weren't there some car bombings in Spain the last couple of years? By ETA?

Maybe they're muslim tho...Shit, I don't know.
Or the train bombings by the Basques...

mhm


Yep...my bad. What WAS I thinking?

:D He, the thread about Bush's spawn goes faster then the one about terrorists.

anialation?
The news said they have put children in front of the windows using them for protection against snipers.


I should invest in a spell check. I am a terrible typist.

Annihilation as in the fight back home.

:D He, the thread about Bush's spawn goes faster then the one about terrorists.
Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist hot-babe-ishness that has been caused by Muslim hotties in the past 3 years or more?

Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist hot-babe-ishness that has been caused by Muslim hotties in the past 3 years or more?
:D Maybe the one in the Russian theatre. But I can't be sure. Since the black widows wore masks all the time.

I love those children dearly, though I speak not their language or know their names. But governments cannot give in to terrorists. Russia hasn't exactly delt well with it's issues, but I don't exactly see something wrong with viciously assasinating terrorists like Israel tried a few years back. I would be proud of any nation that did.

As is for that school, I want it publicised in Middle Eastern nations, and around the world. I want 10,000 devout Muslims to all beg the Chechnians to leave in the name of Allah. Their Lord is the same Lord as mine, and He would never accept the deaths of innocents as right.

Knock some sense into them.

Lord, forgive those who do these things, and may you guide the hands of the Russians that they may deal with this according to your will and your plan. In your Son Christ's name I pray.

-R. S. of UC

"I don't exactly see something wrong with viciously assasinating terrorists like Israel tried a few years back. I would be proud of any nation that did."

How would you be so sure they were terrorists? Would you feel the same if some or only even one were innocent or were killed whilst trying to assasinate said terrorists?

Do you realize that your kind of thinking is why so many countries refused to aid the United States in the Iraq War?

Conservatives screamed bloody murder when France said what you just did, but you dont feel the same applies to us?

Isnt that kind of hippocritical?

How is that critical of horses?

(Hippo is Greek for horse.) :D

terrorism

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=terrorism

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The bolded part of the definition is what sets terrorism off from other forms of violence or destruction of property. If there happened to be 0 people in the WTC, but they were destroyed to send a message to the United States government, it would qualify as terrorism.

"I don't exactly see something wrong with viciously assasinating terrorists like Israel tried a few years back. I would be proud of any nation that did."

How would you be so sure they were terrorists? Would you feel the same if some or only even one were innocent or were killed whilst trying to assasinate said terrorists?

Well that involves the big question, "Is it better to let a guilty man go free or lock up ten innocent men?"

It's never acceptable to imprison the innocent.

Do you realize that your kind of thinking is why so many countries refused to aid the United States in the Iraq War?

Conservatives screamed bloody murder when France said what you just did, but you dont feel the same applies to us?

Isnt that kind of hippocritical?
And the Chechen problem is not so much like Iraq since Chechnya has a large Russian population living in it. It would be more like what would happen if the Mexicans in the southern New Mexico, Arizona, Texas etc. decided to form their own nation. The Chechen rebels do not represent the mutual opinion of the Chechen region...

Wasn't the family of Jonny "Mad Dog" Adair fire bombed recently?

However, it really depends on what you consider a terrorist
Colombia, need I say more?

This school siege follows a bomb blast in Moscow and the bombing of two airliners last week.

This is not going to look good for Putin considering he has been claiming the conflict in Chechnya is over now. There would be a massive public outcry if children were killed.

This school siege follows a bomb blast in Moscow and the bombing of two airliners last week.

This is not going to look good for Putin considering he has been claiming the conflict in Chechnya is over now. There would be a massive public outcry if children were killed.

When has he said that?

We have a Russian worker and he thinks this stuff is playing into Putins hand.

He says if they kill a bunch of kids, it will give Putin support.

Muslim extremeists are everywhere.

Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist violence that has not been caused by Muslim extremeists in the past 3 years or more?

Oklahoma City Bombing.

The "Unabomber".

There's a lot of others.It seriously pisses me off when people act as if they think that it's just the Muslim extremists. It's not. It's people from all walks of faith. If you weren't thinkin' it was just them, then I apologize...it's simply that there ARE a number of people who think it's just Muslim extremists.

He says if they kill a bunch of kids, it will give Putin support.
Thats what the news also said. Unless of course the hostages are killed by the police again.

Russia hasn't exactly delt well with it's issues, but I don't exactly see something wrong with viciously assasinating terrorists like Israel tried a few years back. I would be proud of any nation that did. err.....are you aware that the Russian military bombed Grozny to the ground?

If you thought Israel was tough, then Russia wins the award for going overboard in retaliation.

Or the train bombings by the Basques... That was Al Qaida, not Basque separatists.

When has he said that? Putin has made many remarks claiming the situation in Chechnya is under control.

Muslim extremeists are everywhere.

Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist violence that has not been caused by Muslim extremeists in the past 3 years or more?

Shock and Awe...

Muslim extremeists are everywhere.

Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist violence that has not been caused by Muslim extremeists in the past 3 years or more?
Get a fucking clue. The world is not only on Fox news.
I live in France. We have terrorism everyday. AZF, Corsican independantist, ETA, the britons, green activists, zionist extremists, several mafias, anarchists....
Open your fucking eyes you don't know what you are talking about. Look at your anti-abortionist extremists and everything. Read some real news.

Well...
What we see here is the usual American way of seeing things.
I wouldn't be surprised that Al Qaeda is linked with the CIA in a very dark network. America allways had a big interest in destablizing the territory of the former Soviet Union.
The war in Chetznia is probably a planned attempt to keep the Ruskies busy.
Also the taking of French hostages!
A nice way also to draw France into the Iraqi conflict.

George W Bush is the Prince of Darkness, the Devil on Earth.
The Emperor of Wickedness, The High Priest of the planned Armageddon.
The Black Beast, that will come to set fire to the world.

A product of idiotic Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalism.

This is an interesting subject. If I knew how to open a poll, I'd open one about the french reporters. What should France do about that?

Here's a link for Biff Pileon : http://membres.lycos.fr/corruptn/06-55.htm
This is about a green activist who killed 8 politicians in France.
You will not find it on Fox news because it doesn't sell as much as some armed bearded men.

This in another barbaric act of chechen terrorism. Though the policy of Russia regarding its province deserves some criticism it needs to be said that nobody can be interested that islamic extremists take controll over the province. Russia has withdrawn from the province in 1996-1999. It didn´t stopp attacks from islamic extremists from within the break-away-republic on the neigbouring republics and on their civilian population.
Therefore I understand that the Russian federation has to take tough measures against the terrorists. But it also needs to find a political solution for Chechenya. A truly free election would certainly be better than preselected candidates.
But this issue should not stand in the way of good relations between Russia and the west.
Especially in the fight against terrorism and the stabilisation of the world energy markets Russia is needed to play a constructive role for the stability and the security of the world.

Well, it is obvious, that Russia and Europe have common interests.
America and Brittain always have tried to thwart this.
The terrorist attacks and taking of hostages fits much too well into a Anglo American scheme to -devide and rule-.

Don't forget the American role in Afghanistan.
The Yankees even supplied Bin Laden and his CIA gang with Stinger missiles!
Missiles that even Nato partners could not buy!

Great allies, those Yankees!

<Spit in the sand>

Originally Posted by Biff Pileon
Muslim extremeists are everywhere.

Can anyone name ONE....just ONE act of terrorist violence that has not been caused by Muslim extremeists in the past 3 years or more?


Shock and Awe...


I think you missed this, racist Biff...

Let me repeat it for you..

SHOCK AND AWE...


Your ignorance is disgusting

I think you missed this, racist Biff...

Let me repeat it for you..

SHOCK AND AWE...


Your ignorance is disgusting
Funny how the time frame is three years. 15 Aughust 1998 Omagh, men women and children murdered as they shop by the 'real' IRA. I am pretty sure ETA have murdered a few with bombs in the last three years.
Yes at this time there are alot of 'muslim' groups out there murdering people and claiming to do it for one cause or another, but in the not too distant past our Christian friends (the IRA) were busy trading arms, information and helping to train more murderers all with help from donation from a large miss informed Newyork Irish population. What goes around comes around!

Y'know, the Chechens are bloody lucky. Were it up to me, I'd have been employing chemical munitions against Chechnya for the last 10 years.

Get a fucking clue. The world is not only on Fox news.
I live in France. We have terrorism everyday. AZF, Corsican independantist, ETA, the britons, green activists, zionist extremists, several mafias, anarchists....
Open your fucking eyes you don't know what you are talking about. Look at your anti-abortionist extremists and everything. Read some real news. Exactly.

The conservative right that rules the US at the moment is extremely ignorant and tends to look at the world in terms of black and white. All terrorists must be muslim extremists by their definition, who simply hate the West because of its 'freedom' (yes, Bush really said that). As soon as these ignorant fuckwits stop chanting at Republican conventions and instead open their eyes to the real world, the sooner the world can work towards preventing terrorism.

Y'know, the Chechens are bloody lucky. Were it up to me, I'd have been employing chemical munitions against Chechnya for the last 10 years. Look at some pics of Gronzy.....I swear it looks like they used nukes on the city.

CSW, you know usually we are both in agreement on many issues. However there have been direct ties to Al Qadea with Chechen terrorists. (Unlike Iraq)
I agree with you on that. The ties between Al Qaeda and Chechnya are more clear cut than they are between AQ and Iraq.

"This message is hidden because Klopstokia is on your ignore list."

Really? Why?

-Reads his post-

Oh yea! :rolleyes:

News said they cut 32 loose.

Still too many held but it's a start.

I agree with you on that. The ties between Al Qaeda and Chechnya are more clear cut than they are between AQ and Iraq. There were no links between the former Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda.

Putin and the Chechen threat

Ben Wetherall YaleGlobal
Thursday, September 02, 2004

A spiral of terrorism

LONDON Less than a week after two Russian airliners were brought down in what is now deemed an act of terror, and only two days after the widely criticized presidential elections in Chechnya, Russia has become the victim of two more terrorist attacks. A suicide bombing outside a Moscow subway station during the late evening rush hour Tuesday killed 10 people and wounded more than 50, and on Wednesday a group of heavily armed militants stormed a school in the southern republic of North Ossetia.

It seems clear from the evidence that the prevention of further terrorist attacks is fundamentally tied to Moscow's deftness in handling grievances in Chechnya. Ultimately, a long-term solution can only be found by negotiating with the Muslim-majority republic's secular nationalist rebels.

Chechen separatists have a long history of high-profile terror "spectaculars." In the chaos after the fall of the Soviet Union, Chechnya declared independence from Russia in 1991 and fought against federal forces in two wars. The first conflict, from 1994 to 1996, was conventional in nature and largely successful for the Chechen rebels. After 1999, however, they became increasingly reliant on terror attacks.

More than 300 have died in a series of Russian apartment bombings. The siege of the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in October 2002 left 120 dead. In February this year a woman carrying a bomb destroyed a Moscow subway car, killing at least 41. Traces of RDX, an explosive used in several of these attacks, were found at both of the recent airplane crash sites, reinforcing the belief that Chechen rebels were responsible for this atrocity.

Of those rebels, a likely suspect may be the radical Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, a leading separatist figure with a long history of implementing large-scale terror attacks outside Chechnya. He was implicated in the Dubrovka siege, the subway bombings and a string of other attacks. He claims to have trained a brigade of female suicide bombers, known as the Black Widows, willing to carry out attacks against Russian institutions.

Officials investigating the crashes last week are focusing on two female passengers, Amanta Nagaeva and Satsia Jebirkhanova. Close relatives of suspected Chechen rebels who were abducted or killed in the fighting, both women fit the “Black Widow” profile.

Basayev is also believed to maintain links to Al Qaeda. In 1995, he formed an alliance with the Saudi-born former Afghan jihadi Amir Khattab while founding training camps for disillusioned Chechen youth. The group's exploits resulted in further funding from Arab sources for the radical Islamic cause in Chechnya.

It is easy to overstate the extent of Al Qaeda involvement; while many foreign jihadis have come to Chechnya to fight Russian forces, the numbers are low compared to similar foreign involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, Chechen terrorists do not appear to desire indiscriminate holy war; their demands relate solely to the independence of Chechnya. Divisions do exist, however, between the secular nationalist Chechen rebel groups, led by Aslan Maskhadov, and the Islamist Chechen groups led by Basayev and his allies. A combination of Russian military attacks against Maskhadov and the sheer volume of foreign funding to Basayev have helped his forces gain the upper hand.

After the Chechen presidential elections on Sunday, the Putin government is desperate to ensure that nothing prevents the consolidation of the new Moscow-friendly leadership. A so-called “normalization” policy allows Chechens to assume responsibility for their own affairs while maintaining ties to Russia. Thus, Putin may withdraw troops from the region and announce the fulfillment of his inauguration pledge to bring Chechnya to heel. The policy also involves sidelining Chechens who favor independence, including Maskhadov and Basayev.

Russia's failure to negotiate with the rebels is the reason for the assassination of the previous pro-Moscow Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov. The newly elected pro-Moscow Chechen president, Alu Alkhanov, now has the most dangerous job in Russia. He must placate the Russian government, handle the hawks eager for war in Chechnya, and convince the majority of the Chechen population that he is not merely a Russian stooge.

The Russian policy in Chechnya of attack and isolation has succeeded only in increasing the credibility of radical Islamic groups. The recent escalation of Chechen attacks suggests that unless Putin starts negotiating with the secular nationalist rebels, then another large terror attack may occur against international interests in Russia.

Im not much of a moralistic person, but I really am saddened by this, and I only hope that russia can salvage this situation with as few deaths as needed, even if some are.