by J. R. Nyquist
Last week, in the Russian town of Beslan, nameless terrorists killed hundreds of children and adults. On Saturday Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a declaration of war, calling for his country’s mobilization. Grim before the television cameras, Putin blamed the breakup of that “vast great state,” the Soviet Union, for Russia’s sorry condition. “Despite all the difficulties,” said Putin, “we have managed to preserve the core of the colossus that was the Soviet Union.” And that core has come under attack. “Someone” wants to destroy what remains of the USSR. “We showed weakness,” Putin explained, “and the weak are trampled upon.”
There are many curious aspects to the Beslan massacre. In Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov noted the Muslim world’s “lack of interest” in the North Caucasus. So what was the Beslan terror spree about? According to Kasparov, Putin’s speech was “uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has lived under Soviet rule.”
As it stands today, the Russian security services control the Russian government. They control the “former” Soviet republics (even where there is a pretense of independence). They oversee the army districts of the “former” Soviet Union. They direct and coordinate organized crime. They continue to work with overseas communist parties, including the Chinese Communist Party. But there is more, much more, to this emerging picture. According to former FSB Lt. Col. Alexander Litvinenko, Russian state security regularly uses terrorism against the Russian people. This claim may sound outrageous to the uninformed, but Moscow built the infrastructure of global terrorism. Moscow trained and inspired a generation of terrorists.
Last week Litvinenko asked a question and provided an answer: “Who is the chief of the Islambuli Brigades who took credit for recent terrorist attacks in Russia? This chief is a high-ranking KGB officer named Mohammed al-Islambuli. He and his brother Khaled assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. And now that organization is named in honor of Khaled. To tell the truth, they are mafia – they trade drugs and weapons in Russia.”
In 2002 Litvinenko wrote a book on the FSB/KGB’s involvement with organized crime and terrorism. The book’s English title is Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within. The book documents “acts of terror, abductions and contract killings organized by the Federal Security Services of the Russian Federation.” Former KGB structures have used crime and terrorism to establish control over Russia’s economy and government. Litvinenko wrote, “To this must be added the corresponding line in foreign policy: a move towards Russia’s political isolation through confrontation with the West; militarization of the Russian economy; the beginning of a new arms race; an increase in the smuggling and sale of Russian weapons and military technologies to governments hostile to the developed nations of the world; the use of FSB channels for the smuggling of narcotics under the control and protection of the FSB….”
The Kremlin has played the Beslan massacre like classic provocation. “Some want to cut a juicy morsel from us,” explained Putin, referring to the oil-rich Caucasus region. “Others are helping them. They are helping because they believe that, as one of the world’s major nuclear powers, Russia still poses a threat to them, and therefore this threat must be removed. And terrorism, of course, is only a tool for achieving these goals.” In other words, “someone” wants to smash the Russian federation. They want to get hold of Russia’s oil. They want to break the back of the Russian state. They want to deprive Russia of its nuclear arsenal because it “still” threatens them. “This is a challenge to the whole of Russia,” Putin warned, “to the whole of our people. This is an attack on our country.” The plan is to “intimidate” Russia with “inhuman cruelty,” to “paralyze our will and demoralize our society.” The Russian president added: “It would appear that we have a choice of resisting them or agreeing to their claims, surrendering or allowing them to destroy and split Russia….”
The choice is clear. Destroy or be destroyed, kill or be killed. “One cannot fail to see the obvious,” said Putin. “We are not just dealing with separate actions aimed at frightening us, or separate terrorist sorties. We are dealing with direct intervention by way of terrorism against Russia, with total, cruel and full-scale war in which our compatriots die again and again.” The best course of action, explained Putin, is the “mobilization of the country in the face of a common danger.” The Russian people must unite. “Fellow countrymen,” he warned, “the aim of those who sent the bandits to carry out this horrific crime was to divide our people, to frighten Russia’s citizenry, to unleash a fratricidal bloodbath in the North Caucasus.” In response to this conspiracy the Russian president promised “measures to strengthen the unity of the country.” He promised to “create a new system for … controlling the situation in the North Caucasus.” According to Putin, “This is the only way for us to defeat the enemy.”
And who is this mysterious enemy that seeks to frighten and split Russia? Here is a hint: It is the same old enemy as before – the enemy of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. And was the Beslan massacre a provocation? Here is another hint: the FSB was previously known as the KGB. Provocation was the KGB’s specialty. There is a great deal of evidence and testimony that President Putin came to power through FSB-sponsored terrorism. Russian state security provoked the Second Chechen War. Putin’s agents planted the bombs that leveled Russian apartment buildings in 1999. Furthermore, Chechen terrorists who take hostages have been publicly identified as Kremlin agents.
On Wednesday the Washington Times ran a story titled “Putin rips Washington’s calls for diplomacy with Chechens,” by Nicholas Kralev. According to this article, Putin has accused the United States of “undermining” Russia’s war on terrorism. Putin also accuses American officials of meeting with Chechen leaders. Even more blameworthy (from Putin’s standpoint), the United States granted political asylum to Ilyas Akhmadov, a Chechen rebel leader and foreign minister. The Kremlin uses this and other facts to show that Washington supports Chechen terrorism; that Washington seeks to demoralize and split Russia through “a fratricidal bloodbath in the North Caucasus.”
Do not mistake this for “Russian paranoia.” What we are hearing and reading is calculated propaganda. Characteristically, the mass murderer accuses his intended victim of harboring identical intentions to his own. It effectively appeals to the willing dupes, useful idiots and fellow travelers of the anti-American left. At the same time it covers President Putin with a halo of innocence.
Russian policy has entered a new phase. President Putin’s declaration of war against an unnamed country, his mobilization of Russia, his call for unity, his nostalgia for the Soviet Union already characterizes this new phase. Russia’s policy is clearly anti-American and anti-capitalist. As former FSB Lt. Col. Litvinenko stated in his book, “The philistine argument that ‘it’s just not possible’ is merely an expression of the potential victim’s psychological inability to accept the worst.”
Welcome to the New Cold War.
Oh good, JR Nyquist. He's a great Russian hater. He was writing books about Russia years ago. It's like using what Michael Moore says about Bush to make your point. In other words, worthless.