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Living With Osama bin Laden: First Wife Tells of Husband's Bid To Train His Sons As Suicide Bombers Daily Mail Reporter 12th October 2009 Osama bin Laden was a tyrant who trained his own children to be suicide bombers and murdered their pets, his first wife has revealed. In a new book about her time living with bin Laden, Najwa Ghanem has told how she gave birth to 11 of his 14 children because bin Laden said that Islam needed many warriors. And millionaire bin Laden would not allow any modern appliances in his home, even refusing his son medicine...

Young Female Islamist Denial By: Joe Kaufman FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, July 10, 2009   Earlier this year, I wrote of a young female leader from the Muslim American Society (MAS), Mashal Azhar, and of the e-mails that she had sent me. She was upset at my group’s slogan, “Fighting Hate with Truth.” She had believed it was dishonest. She was mistaken. In the course of our correspondence, Azhar was unusually candid in describing her and her group’s goal of creating a new America and bringing her brand of Islam to the masses. Recently, I had the opportunity to communicate with...

One of the biggest myths perpetuated by Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine is that during his 10-year rule over Russia, the former president and current prime minister succeeded in "pacifying" the North Caucasus. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we are witnessing today is the start of the third Caucasus war in 15 years, following the two Chechen wars of 1994 and 1999. There was the June 22 attack on Ingushetia's president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the recent murders of Chechen human rights activists Natalia Estemirova and Zarema Sadulaeva, and last week's terrorist attack in Nazran, which killed scores and maimed...

Chechen fighters are claiming they used an anti-tank grenade to cause a deadly disaster at a dam in Siberia, a letter on a Russian rebel website has said. “Glory to Allah,

NAZRAN, Russia – A suicide bomber exploded a truck at a police station in Russia's North Caucasus on Monday, killing at least 20 people and wounding about 60 others, officials said. The bombing was the deadliest in months in the restive southern region, denting Kremlin claims that the area was stabilizing after 15 years of separatist fighting in Chechnya and violence in surrounding provinces. The attacker rammed the gates of the Nazran city police headquarters, in Ingushetia province, and detonated his explosives as police officers were lining up for a morning check, said Svetlana Gorbakova of the regional branch of...

MOSCOW (AFP) – The female head of a Russian NGO and her husband were found dead in Chechnya Tuesday after their abduction a day earlier, in the latest killing of a campaigner, activists and officials said. "This morning their bodies were found in the settlement of Chernorechye in Grozny," the Chechen capital, board member of the Memorial rights group Alexander Cherkasov told AFP.

Prominent Russian human rights activist Natalya Estemirova was abducted outside her home in the Chechen capital, Grozny, last month. Hours later, her body was discovered in a forest in the neighboring region of Ingushetia. Estemirova, who'd investigated abductions, torture and other rights abuses in Chechnya, had been shot in the head. Estemirova's colleagues blame Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. They accuse him of fostering an atmosphere of impunity in which the abductions and killings of his critics take place. But in an exclusive interview with RFE/RL, Kadyrov denies the accusations. He says his only concern is the welfare of Chechnya's residents,...

The abduction and murder of human rights activist Natalia Estemirova in the conflict-ridden Northern Caucasus has been the latest crime to shake Russia's embattled liberal community - and raise the question of whether today's Russia lives not just under an authoritarian regime, but a reign of terror against dissenters. While there are different theories as to the real perpetrators of this vile crime, none are particularly flattering to the Kremlin. On July 15, 50-year-old Estemirova, a teacher, journalist, and single mother of a 15-year-old daughter, was abducted outside her home in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. Later that day, she...

One of the last acts of Natalia Estemirova, the human rights activist who was abducted and found murdered on Wednesday in Ingushetia, was to document the killing of a Chechen villager shot for allegedly giving a sheep to rebels. These two murders add to a fresh surge of violence across RussiaÂ’s north Caucasus, which is setting off a powder keg of Islamic extremism, top-level vested interest, interclan rivalry, traditions of vengeance and ingrained suspicion of the behaviour of human rights activists. The stability of the region is deteriorating, nearly a year after Russia attacked Georgia over the breakaway republics of...

Colleagues of Ms. Estemirova say her murder Wednesday is part of a pattern that shows cost of a Kremlin pact with Chechnyan President Ramzan Kadyrov. Moscow - The murder of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, kidnapped in Chechnya and shot execution-style in neighboring Ingushetia on Wednesday, has shocked the Kremlin and led President Dmitry Medvedev to pledge a full investigation. But leaders of Memorial, the Russian human rights organization that Ms. Estemirova worked with, and other human rights experts here say her death can be added to a fast-growing price tag for a Faustian pact. They say that pro-Moscow strongman...

Four men abducted Estemirova, the leading Russian human rights worker in the troubled Caucasus region, as she left her home in Grozny at about 8.30 a.m. Wednesday, July 15. Members of her organization, Memorial, started a public outcry. In the midst of it, her body was found with two gun shots to the head, execution style. Her lifeless body was dumped in Ingushetia, a neighboring republic. Could this be the tipping point? In previous such murders — and there have been many — the finger-pointing has been somewhat wobbly. The regime of Ramzan Kadyrov, the 32-year-old leader who runs Chechnya...

MOSCOW - Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said he had been ordered by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to fight insurgents in the neighboring region of Ingushetia after its leader was gravely wounded in a bomb attack. Kadyrov's harsh tactics have brought relative stability to Chechnya since he was elected in 2007 after more than a decade of war. But fellow Kremlin appointees have failed to stem spikes in violence in neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia. With Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov fighting for his life in hospital, Kadyrov said he had been ordered by Medvedev to run cross-border operations. "He told me to...

MOSCOW. June 5 (Interfax) - Chechen separatist leader Doku Umarov has been killed in a special operation, a source in Russian law enforcement told Interfax on Monday. The source said the operation to eliminate Umarov was conducted in a republic in the North Caucasus. "A forensic examination is being conducted for the final identification of the killed man," the source said. Interfax has not obtained official confirmation of the report yet.

THE hunt for a nest of female suicide bombers in Chechnya led an elite group of Russian special forces commandos to a small village deep in the countryside. There they surrounded a modest house just before dawn to be sure of catching their quarry unawares. When the order came to storm the single-storey property, dozens of heavily armed men in masks and camouflage uniforms - unmarked to conceal their identity - had no difficulty in overwhelming the three women inside. Their captives were driven to a military base.

The men, decorated veterans of more than 40 tours of duty in Chechnya, said not only suspected rebels but also people close to them were systematically tracked, abducted, tortured and killed. Intelligence was often extracted by breaking their limbs with a hammer, administering electric shocks and forcing men to perform sexual acts on each other. The bodies were either buried in unmarked pits or pulverised.

Kremlin Ends Chechnya Operations 17 April 2009 By Nikolaus von Twickel / The Moscow Times The Kremlin on Thursday declared that the counterterrorist operation in Chechnya was over, effectively ending a security regime imposed in September 1999 when federal troops poured into the North Caucasus republic and squashed separatists. The decision marks the official end of the second Chechen war, even though open hostilities ceased several years ago, and promises to bolster the standing of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, whose heavy-handed rule has drawn sharp criticism from opposition members and human rights groups. Under the security regime, extra federal troops...

MOSCOW, April 16 (RIA Novosti) - The counter-terrorism operation that was launched in Russia's volatile republic of Chechnya in 1999 finished at midnight, the Russian National Anti-terrorism Committee said on Thursday. "The order proclaiming the republic a counter-terrorism operation zone was annulled at 00:00 Moscow time [20:00 GMT Wednesday] on April 16," the committee said in a statement. The end to the counter-terrorism operation envisages the withdrawal of some 20,000 Interior Ministry troops deployed in the republic. It also removes restrictions concerning international flights. "The decision is aimed at ensuring conditions to normalize further the situation in the republic and...

MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) - Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has said that the North Caucasus republic owes its very existence to the efforts of Russian Prime Minster Vladimir Putin. "If it were not for Putin, Chechnya would not exist," the 32-year-old Chechen leader said in an interview published on Tuesday in the Rossiiskaya Gazeta government daily. "He saved our people with his strong-willed decisions," Kadyrov said. "I know this history - I personally participated in it. If it were not for Putin, we would not be here." Both Kadyrov and his late father, the republic's first president, sided with...

The Russian authorities have confirmed a prominent opponent of the pro-Kremlin Chechen President, Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead in Dubai on Saturday. Diplomats said Sulim Yamadayev's body had been identified by his relatives. Mr Yamadayev fell out with Mr Kadyrov last year and was sacked as commander of an elite security forces battalion.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, is facing fresh international scrutiny after a powerful Chechen warlord who fell out with the Kremlin was assassinated in Dubai. The murder of Sulim Yamadayev could trigger renewed violence in Chechnya and will cause alarm outside Russia after a series of similar assassinations in Istanbul and Vienna. Mr Yamadayev, the leading rival of Chechnya's Kremlin-backed president, Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead in the car park of a housing development in Dubai where he had been living under a false name since December. While there were contradictory details about the killing, experts on Chechnya alleged...

MOSCOW (AFP)--Russia is considering ending the decade-long effective state of war in Chechnya, an official said Thursday, in a move that could see the withdrawal of thousands of troops from the once restive republic. The decree on the start of a "counter-terrorist operation" was passed in Chechnya under late president Boris Yeltsin in 1999 just months before he resigned and installed Vladimir Putin at the helm. "Such an issue is being worked out but it's too early to talk about the time frame," a Kremlin official told AFP. The official's remarks came in response to a surprise announcement by Ramzan...

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a tense meeting with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov on Friday, trading thinly veiled barbs about whose responsibility it was to rebuild the impoverished republic. While the government aims to cut the budget for regional subsidies this year, Kadyrov has been pressing for more federal support. President Dmitry Medvedev said in February that regional leaders who were not meeting expectations on handling the crisis would be called to Moscow for meetings. Putin opened the meeting by asking whether Kadyrov's "discussion with the Finance Ministry was finished," without elaborating. "Everything is great with the Finance Ministry now,"...

The neo-martyr Eugene Rondonof was a soldier in the first war of Chechnya under the accursed Yeltsin. He was captured by Chechnyan guerillas, tortured, slaughtered like a lamb and beheaded when he refused to become muslim and fight Russia, as the executioner himself told his mother.

One week ago I posted about how the Russian government has allowed Islamic rule in Chechnya. Since then six Russian officers were killed in a bomb attack and now Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov in an effort to strengthen Islam is offering a cash reward to anyone who has a baby on Mohammad's birthday and names him Mohammad.

Kavkaz TV, the video arm of Kavkaz-Center, the radical Islamist Chechen rebel website, this past week posted a video clip in which a young Chechen man, Ruslan Khalidov, claimed that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov employed him to kill Magomed Ocherhadji, a leader of the large Chechen exile community in Norway. As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported on March 5, Khalidov said in the video that he did not carry out the killing but that he had been tortured and threatened in an attempt to force him to comply. “They even did things that I’m ashamed to talk about,” he...

Islam has a very low opinion of women. Take for example these quotes from the holy Hadith text: Bukhari (48:826) Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri: The Prophet said, "Isn't the witness of a woman equal to half of that of a man?" The women said, "Yes." He said, "This is because of the deficiency of a woman's mind." Tabari I:280 “’I must also make Eve (bad word), although I created her intelligent.’ Because Allah afflicted Eve, all of the women of this world menstruate and are (bad word).”)…happy, content…utterly incapable from intellectual weakness…never to give us trouble… One may think that...

The bullnecked president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at the mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die. Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had "loose morals" and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings. "If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed," Kadyrov told journalists in the capital of this Russian republic...

ANKARA, February 27 (RIA Novosti) - A former Chechen militant has been shot dead in Turkey's largest city of Istanbul, national media reported on Friday. Ali Osayev, who fled to Istanbul six years ago after the second Chechen war, was shot three times in the head near his home in the city. The gunmen are still at large. According to the Turkish Cihan newspaper, police investigators have not ruled out that the murder of Osayev, 48, was connected to a dispute over financial assistance for Chechen militants that was being collected in Turkey. Investigators in Istanbul have declined to comment...

"I think Chechnya," Asne Seierstad laments, "is very much forgotten." Eight years ago this month, the Second Chechen War had reached a bitter crescendo. But today, as Ms. Seierstad shows in The Angel of Grozny, the Chechen dystopia festers far out of the headlines. The Angel of Grozny recounts Seierstad's experiences as a journalist during the wartime Chechnya of 1994 and the peacetime Chechnya of 2006. It's a peace that would seem all too familiar to Abkhazians or Ossetians. Although Chechnya has largely rebuilt itself since the wars, Seierstad reveals a generation of children still growing up in a world...

Perhaps hoping to emulate the devil's imputed success in convincing much of humanity that he does not exist, Russian propagandists have taken great pains over the past several years to persuade the world that the war in Chechnya is over, and the region is on the fast track to stability and prosperity. No effort has been spared in ensuring that the Russian spin on the situation is heard loud and clear and remains unchallenged. Even with official accreditation, no foreign journalist is allowed to travel within Chechnya unchaperoned. Vast swathes of the republic still remain off-limits to outside observers. Human...

More than 10 people have been kidnapped in Ingushetia province in southern Russia, a local official said Friday, as guerrilla attacks by rebels in the region intensify. "Ten to 15 people were kidnapped last night in a gambling arcade by armed men in masks. They were driven away in their own cars," a local government spokesman told reporters, without giving further details about the incident. RIA Novosti news agency quoted a local Interior Ministry official as saying the kidnapping happened in the town of Ordzhonikidzevskaya and that four police officers were among those taken. So far this year 52 police...

What a Beautiful Provocation Marcin Wojciechowski The Russian daily Izvestia describes a sequence as a result of which Polish portable surface-to-air missiles known as Grom - a copy of the Russian Igla, which itself was a copy of the US FIM-92 Stinger - found their way from the Mesko defence plant in Skarżysko Kamienna, allegedly through Ukraine and Georgia, to Chechnya. Light to carry and relatively easy to operate, Stinger-class missiles are able to shoot down a helicopter or a low-flying aircraft and are a deadly weapon in the hands of everyone, but especially guerrillas fighting a regular army. But...

GROZNY, Russia (Reuters) - Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov opened one of Europe's biggest mosques in the rebuilt capital of the southern Russian region Friday, saying it was proof Russian rule and Islam can go together. The mosque, named "The Heart of Chechnya" and constructed by Turkish builders, can host up to 10,000 worshippers. Its minarets rise as high as 62 m (200 ft) and the complex extends over 14 hectares (35 acres), including a vast garden. "With the start of the Chechen war, the enemies of Islam and foes of Russia alleged that Russia wages war against Islam and the...

At Least 13 Killed In Earthquake In Chechnya (RTTNews) - At least 13 people were reported killed Saturday in an earthquake that shook the Caucasus mountain regions in Chechnya. More than 100 people were reported injured in the quake that measured 5.3 on the Richter scale. Tremors were felt as far as Georgia and Armenia. The quake centered about 25 miles east of the Chechen capital Grozny, hit the region around noon local time and lasted about 40 seconds. Though termed as moderate, the quake disrupted power supplies and communications, and inflicted heavy damages to roads and buildings. More than...

GUDERMES, Russia (Reuters) - A Chechen warlord on Thursday accused the Russian region's pro-Kremlin leader of killing his brother and vowed to take revenge, pitching the two most powerful men in Chechnya against each other. Chechnya's pro-Kremlin leader Ramzan Kadyrov denied any role in the shooting. About 70 to 80 men -- mainly family members and loyal fighters -- attended the funeral of Ruslan Yamadayev in the town of Gudermes east of the Chechen capital Grozny. Gunmen killed the former parliamentary deputy as he drove through the center of Moscow Wednesday evening. "I accuse Ramzan Kadyrov of the murder of...

Grozny, which I last saw as an immense heap of rubble, is now a truly impressive sight, with fine modern apartment blocks and a beautiful Turkish-built mosque, modeled on the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, towering over the main square. Grozny as it now stands is a vast improvement on the city as it stood before the war of 1994, when it was a dirty, run-down Soviet industrial city with grim, shabby architecture, very few amenities—and no visible mosques at all. ... It may, however, have been a help in the reconstruction that the current population of 228,000 is less than...

MOSCOW, September 18 (RIA Novosti) - A soldier was killed and two others injured when gunmen opened fire with automatic weapons on their vehicle near the capital of the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya, a health official said on Thursday. According to the source, the soldiers, members of the Defense Ministry's Zapad (West) battalion, were traveling in a Mitsubishi vehicle when the shots were fired at around 10:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday. As a result of the shooting, one soldier died, while the unit commander and another serviceman were injured. In a separate incident in neighboring Daghestan's capital, five...

MOSCOW, September 14 (RIA Novosti) - The president of Russia's North Caucasus republic of Chechnya has said that a street in the capital Grozny will be named after an ex-commander killed in Sunday's plane crash in the Urals. Gennady Troshev, 61, a former commander of the North Caucasus Military District, was one of the 88 people killed in the Boeing-737-500 crash outside Perm. He had received a Hero of Russia award for his service. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov's announcement was quoted by TV channel Vesti. Troshev commanded federal forces during the 1994-1996 First Chechen War, and became the top commander...

Gudermes, September 11, Interfax - The Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov criticized the USA foreign policy and stated that Washington provoked aggression against South Ossetia and insulted all Muslim world with its attacks against Iraq. "They (the USA - IF) provoked Mikhail Saakashvili to unleash war against South Ossetia. I don't think the United States of America have any future with such leaders. I'm ill disposed to the USA leaders, while I sincerely respect people of the USA," Kadyrov said in Gudermes at his meeting with the Valdai discussion club. The Chechen head believes the USA contributes to enhancing terrorist threat....

GROZNY -- Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has accused the United States of fomenting unrest in the Caucasus and emboldening Georgia to launch an attack on South Ossetia. Speaking to members of the Valdai Discussion Club at his residence near Grozny, he said Russia's crushing defeat of Georgian troops in their brief war was the appropriate response. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili "was dancing to someone else's tune," Kadyrov said during the one-hour briefing. "He started a war, an inhuman war. ... The United States was testing Russia through Georgia, and Russia reacted decisively." He backed Moscow's recognition of South Ossetia and...

Grozny, September 10, Interfax - Chechnya has set a date of opening the Ahmad Kadyrov's mosque, which is to be the biggest in Europe. "Ceremony of opening is planned for October 17. The 2nd international peacemaking forum Islam: a Religion of Peace and Creativity is to open the same day in Grozny," the republic's president Ramzan Kadyrov told Interfax. According to him, "people of the Chechen Republic first time in sixty years will have a possibility to have a grand mosque in Grozny and conduct Islamic religious rites there." "All the mosques were closed, destroyed and robbed in the Chechen...

One soldier was killed and 11 were wounded when two suicide bombers rammed a jeep packed with explosives through the fence of the Interior Ministry camp in Vedeno, south of the region's capital Grozny, a battalion spokesman was quoted as saying by RIA news agency. A Vedeno resident who saw the aftermath of the blast said both attackers were killed in the blast. The woman, who saw the severed head of one of them, said he appeared to be in his teens. The camp, where Interior Ministry troops had been quartered in tents, burned to the ground, she said. Another...

The Russian-backed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov will inaugurate the "largest mosque in Europe" on October 17, the Russian official news agency Novosty reported. Over 10,000 worshipers will be able to pray inside the mosque, which will be named after the president's father, Ahmad Kadyrov, who was killed in 2004. "The largest mosque in Europe… will by inaugurated on the first day of the International Peacemakers' Conference, titled 'Islam – Religion of Peace and Progress,'" the grand mufti of Chechnya, Sultan Mirzayev, told the press. Mirzayev underlined that approximately 50 countries have already approved their participation in the three-day conference. The...

I've searched around FR a bit looking for anyone asking this question, but haven't found one. Admin, feel free to lock this if I've missed an obvious one. With Russia back to the saber-rattling ways of old, I'm hearing rumbles that some people are re-thinking their presidential vote because they don't think Obama will stand up to the Cold-War type intimidation that the Russians seem to be going back to. I'm hearing some are saying they'll vote McCain because they would rather have him at the helm if a new Cold War with Russia is possibly coming. Any thoughts?

Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has dismissed former Vostok battalion leader Sulim Yamadayev, a powerful former Chechen rebel at odds with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, after he fought Georgian troops in South Ossetia, a source in the Chechen administration said Friday. Serdyukov signed an order discharging Yamadayev, who had a federal warrant out for his arrest on murder charges but, in murky circumstances, ended up fighting with Russian troops in their defeat of Georgian forces over control of Tskhinvali, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the media. The order...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Terrorists from al-Qaeda have been making chemical and biological weapons in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said on Tuesday. Speaking at a world conference on bio-terrorism in Lyons that was organized by Interpol, he said that “several al-Qaeda cells have been trained in Afghanistan where they have learned to use biological agents including anthrax, ricin and botulism toxins. Later, after the fall of the Taliban regime, those groups continued their experiments in the Pankisi Gorge, on the territory of Georgia, bordering Chechnya,” Interfax news agency reported. The minister added that al-Qaeda terrorists “were able to use...

Kadyrov decided to make a suitable contribution to the anti-Georgian campaign which in Russia has acquired the character of a mass psychosis. The head of Chechnya would not be worthy of the name if he did not outdo in extravagance and hooliganism the Georgian leadership’s most savage critic, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Back in his native village of Khosi-Yurt, Kadyrov assembled journalists and made several statements. He proposed that Mikheil Saakashvili be sent to the Beijing Olympics as a sprinter, with the explanation that when hiding from a Russian jet fighter the Georgian president had managed to do so with unbelievable swiftness....

Military Learning Between the Chechen Wars By: Michael Coffey The downward spiral of the Russian military that began with Afghanistan is often compared to the U.S. army’s experience in Vietnam. However, unlike the American experience, the conflict did not serve as an impetus for drastic military reform. In fact, the decline of the Soviet army continued through the 1980s, leading to the defeat of the Red Army’s “ghost” in Chechnya in 1996 at the hands of a few rebels. Three years later, President Vladimir Putin ordered the army back into Chechnya. The military did not undergo dramatic transformation in the...

  NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL   MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA       THESIS   Approved for public release; distribution unlimited. THUMPING THE HIVE: RUSSIAN NEOCORTICAL WARFARE IN CHECHNYA   by   Scott E. McIntosh   September 2004         Thesis Advisor:                          M. Tsypkin   Second Reader:                              T. Thomas   ABSTRACT     Since the 1994 Chechen war, analysts have written volumes about the evolution of—and lessons learned from—this ongoing conflict.  Why has success eluded this Cold War superpower in subduing the small Caucasian republic?  Russia has since hiccupped back and forth across the spectrum of conflict in the region and...