Posted on 09/06/2004 4:30:54 PM PDT by gopwinsin04
Terrorists who siezed a school in North Ossetia Belsan, September 1 were recieving orders from abroad throughout the three suspense laden days, says Aslanbek Aslakhanov, President Vladimir Putin's adviser for North Caucasian affairs.
'The men had their conversations not within Russia but from other countries. They were led on a leash. Our self styled 'friends' having been working for several decades, I deem, to dismember Russia. They are doing a huge, really titanic job.' (here in Russia)
'It's as clear as daylight that those people are coming up as puppeteers and are financing terror,' he said to the Rossia television company, National Russian Channel 2 tonight.
Though the bandits named certain people they wanted to see as negotiators, and Mr. Aslakhanov was among them, he is sure that the terrorist gang did not mean to talk to whoever they contacted.
Aslanbek Aslakhanov, a Chechen, was on the site throught the tradegy and contacted the gang on the telephone.
'When I spoke Russian with them, I could not make out a word. Speak Russian!' they told me.
'Well, I did as they wished, though I speak Russian with a Caucasian accent, he said in his TV interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at en.rian.ru ...
The Russians have killed something like 25% of the Chechens including 40 thousand kids.
Putin wants to blame this on either international terrorism or even possibly a state supporting terrorism.
This may or may not be true. The Russians have done a lot to drive the Chechens over the edge.
One of the head Chechens claims that this outrage was perpetrated by Enguish people--a small Muslim group that was driven out of N. Ossetia some years ago.
The Russians have tried to depict all Chechens who want independence as terrorists. Now when the rage comes home to Roose, Putin is blaming international terrorism so his Chechnya policies aren't blamed. His spokesman (stooge?) claimed there were NO Chechens among the terrorists.
Check this out, esp. the article called "Who Condemns Terrorism."
http://www.rferl.org/newsline/1-rus.asp
PUTIN SAYS RUSSIA FACES 'TOTAL WAR' WITH TERRORISM...
Speaking in a televised address following the bloody hostage drama in the North Ossetian town of Beslan, President Vladimir Putin said on 4 September that the series of terrorist acts in recent weeks means that Russia faces "total and full-scale war," kremlin.ru reported. " What we are dealing with are not isolated acts intended to frighten us, not isolated terrorist attacks. What we are facing is direct intervention of international terror directed against Russia," he said. "This is a challenge not to the president, parliament, or government, but to all of Russia, to all our people." Putin admitted that Russia has inadequate defenses and has failed to adapt to new challenges. "We demonstrated our weakness, and the weak are beaten." Putin didn't mention Chechnya, but said that the attacks on Russia have support from abroad. "Some want to tear off a big chunk of our country and others are helping them. They are helping them in the belief that Russia, as one of the greatest nuclear powers of the world, still poses a threat to them and, therefore, this threat has to be eliminated. Terrorism is their only tool," he said. Finally, Putin said that soon he will prepare "a range of measures designed to strengthen the unity of the country." He also called for the creation of "a new system to better coordinate forces and means for maintaining control in the North Caucasus" and for "more effective crisis management." VY
...AND PROMISES TO PUNISH ATTEMPTS AT REVENGE ON ETHNIC GROUNDS...
Earlier on 4 September, President Putin said during a brief visit to the site of the hostage taking in Beslan that North Ossetia was not chosen randomly as a target for terrorist attack, but as the "southern outpost of Russia" in the region, RTR and ORT reported. Addressing North Ossetian officials, Putin said that "one of the tasks pursued by the terrorists was to stoke ethnic hatred, to blow up the whole of our North Caucasus." He added, "Anyone who feels sympathetic toward such provocations will be viewed as accomplices of terrorists and terrorism. Please, keep this in mind." The predominately Christian North Ossetia is surrounded by Russian provinces populated mainly by Muslims. Putin also announced that he ordered the closure of North Ossetia's borders with neighboring republics and with Georgia. VY
...AS ADVISER SAYS THAT HOSTAGE TAKERS 'RECEIVED ORDERS FROM ABROAD'
Aslanbek Aslakhanov, President Putin's adviser on the North Caucasus who for three days was in Beslan maintaining telephone contact with the hostage takers, said on 6 September that during the siege the militants had satellite-telephone communications with people abroad and received their instructions from there, RTR reported. Aslakhanov, a Chechen whose presence for the talks was demanded by the hostage takers, said: "They weren't Chechens. When I spoke Chechen, they said: 'We don't understand. Talk Russian.' So I did. But they did have a Caucasian accent." Aslakhanov added that the hostage takers were very well trained and had learned lessons from the hostage taking at the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in October 2002: They came to Beslan with gas masks and two dogs, and the first thing they did was break windows to prevent the use of sleeping gas, he said. VY
BESLAN DEATH TOLL TOPS 350
As of 6 September, the number of people killed during the initial stages of the Beslan hostage taking and during the shoot-out on 3 September had risen to 335 hostages and troops, plus 30 hostage takers; 411 people remain hospitalized, Russian media reported. More than 100 people are still missing. The death toll in the 2002 Moscow theater hostage taking was 129. Confusion still surrounds the events on 3 September that impelled Russian elite troops to storm the school building. Some eyewitnesses claim that the troops attacked the school after two explosions were heard inside, others say the hostage takers opened fire at Emergency Situations Ministry personnel whom the hostage takers had given permission to remove the bodies of dead hostages from the school yard, while former Ingushetian President Ruslan Aushev told "Novaya gazeta" on 6 September that parents of hostages opened fire on the hostage takers. LF
SURVIVING HOSTAGE TAKER IMPLICATES CHECHEN PRESIDENT...
Russian Deputy Prosecutor-General Sergei Fridinskii said on 3 September that two of the hostage takers, whom he claimed included Arabs as well as Chechens, Ingush, and Ossetians, were captured alive. On 6 September, RTR broadcast footage of a man it identified as the sole surviving hostage taker, Nur-Pasha Kulaev. Kulaev claimed a man known as "Colonel" ordered him and his fellow hostage takers to attack the school in Beslan, and that "they told us this task had been set" by Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and radical field commander Shamil Basaev. Kulaev apparently did not explain whom he meant by "they." The "Colonel" reportedly said the aim of the hostage taking was to unleash a war across the entire Caucasus. In an interview with RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service on 7 September, Maskhadov's representative Akhmed Zakaev said the confession of the man shown on Russian television was clearly obtained under torture. He said claims of Maskhadov's involvement in the hostage taking, and the allegations that the hostage takers also included Arabs and African mercenaries, are "part of a well-planned disinformation campaign." Zakaev said the hostage taking was carried out by "local radical groups" that are supported by people overwhelmed by the need for personal revenge for the brutalities committed by the Russian Army. LF
...WHO CONDEMNS TERRORISM
The Chechen leadership resolutely condemns the school hostage taking in Beslan, the downing of two Russian passenger aircraft, and the suicide bombing in Moscow, Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov said in a statement posted on 5 September on the chechenpress.info website. He reiterated his earlier condemnation of terrorist acts aimed at civilians, stressing that such actions hinder international recognition of Chechnya as an independent state. Maskhadov laid the blame for the Beslan hostage taking on President Putin's Chechnya policy, a policy that, Maskhadov noted, has cost the lives over the past decade of one-quarter of the Chechen population, including some 40,000 children. But Russian brutality, Maskhadov continued, does not justify waging war on women and children, and any Chechens who do so are no better than the Russian troops. In the name of preserving the moral purity of the Chechen people, Maskhadov appealed to Chechens to disassociate themselves from the few who, crazed by the desire for revenge, stoop to acts of terrorism. LF
RUSSIAN ELITE ANTITERROR UNITS SUFFER WORST CASUALTIES IN ITS HISTORY
In the same 6 September interview with RTR, presidential adviser Aslakhanov said that the Federal Security Service's (FSB) elite Vympel and Alfa antiterrorism units suffered their worst losses in a single operation in their 30 years of existence. Twenty officers of the units were killed and more than 20 others were wounded. Aslakhanov, who was a member of the operation staff in Beslan, added that the reason for the high losses was the fact that the storming of the building was not planned and there was no order to storm it. Everything happened spontaneously as two charges planted by the militants inside the building exploded and some of the hostages used the opportunity to escape, and the hostage takers opened fire. Federal forces returned fire to cover the escapees, Aslakhanov said. An unnamed wounded colonel of the Alfa unit told RTR, ORT, and "Komsomolskaya pravda" on 6 September that the first to open fire were Ossetian irregulars, among whom were many fathers of child hostages. At the time of the incident, Alfa officers were not wearing body armor in order to show the militants that they didn't intend to rush the school. During the fighting, Alfa officers were very reserved in using firepower as the hostage takers were using hostages as human shields at all times, the colonel said. VY
Re Ukraine.
The Ukraine has offered to host the kids from Beslan at a really lice children's camp in the Crimea called Artek. This is reported as a gracious offer by the Russian media.
I think it is very possible that Putin is blaming foreigners to deflect attention from his own failed policies in the area.
Do a search at www.rferl.org for "Maskhadov"
He is the head of the Chechens and he say it wasn't them. He condemed the atrocity and said it was done by a few people taking revenge for all that was done to the Chechens by the Russians--kill 25% of the population and 40,000 children.
He told Chechens not to take that low road, but to remain morally pure. It does seem that fighting broke out in the school between terrorists because some were duped into this project and didn't want to murder women and children.
If Putin blames the Chechens/Inguish, people will question his policies because they antagonized the Chechens.
Putin may confabulate Chechens who want independance with real hard-core terrorists who would istablish an Islamic tyrany. Or perhaps the terrorists pretend to be moderates and innocent victims. Some terrorist do that.
Think of what a coupe for world socialism if Kerry, and the old Communists, could pin this (or at least Russian public perception) on the CIA.
Snip
http://www.rferl.org/features/features_Article.aspx?m=09&y=2004&id=616BE8CE-C3B2-4232-B50B-B5E9C172C9DA
Moscow-based political scientist Andrei Piontkovskii believes the way in which these recent attacks have been conducted does point to a possible new alliance between some of the Chechen separatists and Al-Qaeda. Piontkovskii places much of the blame for this development with Putin himself.
Piontkovskii said that after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, the Russian president claimed Chechen separatist leaders were linked to Al-Qaeda, and used the explanation as a pretext for not opening negotiations. Piontkovskii calls this policy short-sighted and says it may have forced the Chechen resistance to follow precisely that path, after seeing all other avenues to compromise closed.
"We must all understand who our adversary is. What is characteristic about all these latest terror attacks is that no one has presented any demands. And if someone has taken responsibility for these blasts, it is some murky organization belonging to the worldwide network of Islamic terrorism. What is happening before our eyes is that a large part of the Chechen resistance is joining the ranks of this worldwide network of Islamic terrorism and becoming its reservists. And this is the result of our clumsy policies over the past several years in Chechnya," Piontkovskii said.
Piontkovskii's recipe for salvaging the situation and ending the latest wave of terrorism in Russia is to reverse course and open talks with key figures in the Chechen separatist leadership -- to offer them a way out of their corner and to stop playing into the hand of Al-Qaeda.
"On the one hand, [we need] a merciless war against global terrorism and on the other hand, [we need] maximum flexibility and an attempt to forge maximum compromise with that part of the Chechen resistance which distances itself from these acts, which presents demands which may appear unacceptable but which one can discuss. Concretely, I am speaking about holding talks with [Aslan] Maskhadov, [Akhmed] Zakaev, [Ilyas] Akhmadov, and others. This would not be bowing to terrorism, it would be an attempt to isolate this dangerous global Islamic terrorism," Piontkovskii said.
One of the last acts before the curatin fells was written with the blood of these children. Like all victims of evil, they didn't die in vain
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1209281/posts?page=82#82
this is the thread, but since the Lithuanians took down kavkaz, the links to the pics from there are not working. I should have known.
I meant to thank you for this post awhile back. Thanks for this post.
ping
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