Russia sees global jihad on southern flank

MOSCOW A powerful explosion ripped through a half-empty carriage of a commuter train near the Dagestani town of Khasavyurt Sunday, killing a young woman and wounding several people.

Police announced the apparent terror bombing as an almost routine event, the latest of nearly 80 deadly attacks by Islamic extremists that have rocked the multiethnic mountain republic of Dagestan so far this year. The Kremlin insists the wave of attacks that threaten to unhinge Russia's mainly-Muslim Caucasus region is being orchestrated by the same global jihad groups that have struck in London and Sharm-el-Sheikh in recent days.

Many experts, however, dispute this interpretation, arguing that Moscow's handling of the still-smoldering war in next-door Chechnya, as well as local poverty and corruption, have more to do with the roots of violence here. But most agree that there has been an alarming influx of foreign jihadis into Russia's vulnerable southern underbelly over the past year.

"Our forces have captured or killed citizens of 52 countries operating with the terrorists in the north Caucasus," says Sergei Markov, a Kremlin adviser. "The enemy brings an ideology of radical Islam that seeks political power through terrorist methods."

Recent incidents, including a bath-house bombing that killed 10 Russian soldiers in the Dagestani capital of Makhachkala two weeks ago, suggest the attackers have absorbed sophisticated tactics used by jihadis in Iraq and elsewhere. A report issued last week by Igor Dobayev, an expert with the official Academy of Sciences, found that as many as 2,000 Islamist insurgents, many belonging to the Al Qaeda-linked Sharia Jamaat, are behind the wave of roadside explosions, car bombings, and assassinations.

Dagestan, with just over 2 million inhabitants belonging to 37 fractious ethnic groups, is the largest and potentially most volatile piece of the Russian Caucasus. The main pipeline for Russia's share of Caspian oil runs through the coastal city of Makhachkala. The republic governed since 1991 by Magomedali Magomedov, has an estimated 60 percent unemployment rate and salaries half the Russian average.

President Vladimir Putin made an emergency visit to Dagestan last week - kept secret until after his return to Moscow - where he ordered security to be beefed up on the southern border with Azerbaijan, but offered no public criticism of Mr. Magomedov.

"The authorities are unable to deal with the situation in Dagestan, and the state is close to panic over it," says Timur Muzayev, a regional expert with the Center of National Politics, a Moscow-based think tank. "The inner conflicts in Dagestan have now attained crisis proportions."

A secret report by the Kremlin's special envoy to the north Caucasus, Dmitry Kozak, leaked to a Moscow newspaper earlier this month, warned of the emergence of "Islamic Sharia enclaves" amid the high Caucasus peaks."Further ignoring the [social, economic, and political] problems and attempts to drive them deep down by force could lead to an uncontrolled chain of events whose logical result will be open social, interethnic, and religious conflict in Dagestan," Mr. Kozak wrote.

Many experts say the Chechnya war, which began almost 11 years ago in a bungled military effort by Moscow to put down a separatist rebellion, remains the key destabilizer of the region. Violence in Chechnya has been rising. In the past week alone a military helicopter crash killed eight soldiers, and an ambush on security forces in a previously "peaceful" town, claimed by Islamic rebels, killed 14. In recent days four Russian police have died in apparent terrorist attacks in the nearby mainly Muslim republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. "The Chechnya war is a bomb that we [the Russians] set off, and now it is exploding in all of our faces," says Anna Politkovskaya, a top Russian journalist. "Nowadays we live from one terrorist attack to the next, and in between we pretend that everything is OK."

The first Chechnya war, 1994-96, was effectively won by the nationalist, independence-seeking rebels. But experts say that since rebel president Aslan Maskhadov was killed by Russian security forces earlier this year, the Chechen insurgency is led by Islamic radicals such as Shamil Basayev, architect of a mass hostage-taking in a Moscow theater two years ago and last September's bloody school siege in Beslan. "We are no longer talking about Chechen secessionists challenging Moscow," says Mr. Markov. "Now it's radical religious ideologues who aim to destroy the unbelievers and establish an Islamic caliphate."

Mr. Basayev, along with a small army of jihadis, invaded Dagestan in 1999, but was driven back after local militias mobilized in large numbers to support Russian forces. Experts are not sure Moscow could hope for that kind of popular backing in any future emergency.

"In the [north Caucasus crisis] we can see the complete failure of Putin's policies," says Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the independent Center for Strategic Studies in Moscow. "It is a fairy tale to explain it as the work of outside factors, Islamic terrorists from the Middle East, or whatever. The truth is that internal problems are generating social unrest, which leads people to turn to Islamic ideas."

We are careful just like they are careful!

This is kind of like WWII. Throughout all of WWII we neither trusted nor liked them and they neither trusted nor liked us. However, we were both allied in fighting Nazi Germany.

You must understand, they still have a lot of leaders in charge who are hardliners. Their media is state controlled and the government plays games as they did with the magic firm that popped up from no where and bought out a oil producer. Russia is not clear. It’s not an open society by a long shot and corruption is rampant.

We are moving forward together though. US firms have invested money, there have even been technological exchanges in defense. But we are cautious as they are too. Do you really think we could have US troops in Kyrgyzstan (Where there are still Russian bases as well!), Uzbekistan or the Rep. of Georgia without the Russian approval? It would be as if they set up shop in Grenada (Remember that?). We are already working together and even when it comes to arms inspections there is a lot of progress. Something that no one cares about since it’s no scandal is the fact that Russia holds itself to the agreements very well, as we do. There have been numerous military exchanges in the last years and the understanding between us is growing.

http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=7079

We are visiting them as well. These events are important.

My point is that we are working together much more than the layperson thinks. The perceptions are changing on both sides. There is still distrust on both sides and speaking as an American (With my perception) we are justified to be very careful since there are indicators that all is not well in Russia internally.

Red6

(Just my opinions)

“I think we missed a great opportunity to work closely with the Russians last year when that school was taken over.” You say.

Well, we offered help when the Kursk sank. Fact is, they don’t trust us and there is national pride at play here too. Besides, this is a national internal issue where we could have provided little help. Given a group of determined terrorist who are willing to blow themselves up you are hard pressed to stop once their plan is rolling like at Beslan. Could we really have done anything different? Probably not.

“With Russian troops working on things in their territory, we could network together.” You say

As in WWII we are allies in that we are trying to slay the same pig here, Islamic radicals. However, as in WWII our end state and methods of operating are very different. Chechnya is a good example. They are not interested in a sovereign Chechnya. They will still be in Chechnya when we have long left Georgia. Why? While we are both fighting Islamists, there end state is to stop Chechnya from breaking away. Russia still thinks in terms of “Spheres of influence” and is by definition a hegemon.

“It's my perception that Russia sometimes sees us flitting around the globe and gets antzy.” You say

The Warsaw pact is gone. NATO is expanding in Eastern Europe. Lithuania, Rep. of Georgia and many other former parts of the USSR want nothing to do with Russia. Russia failed in Afghanistan, we are winning and it took us weeks to roll over that place. Our success in Iraq is UNPRECIDENTED. Our success in the Rep. of Georgia is a sore in the eye for the Russians when you look at neighboring Chechnya where the Russians are still having a hard time. US troops are all along the boarder of Russia and are in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Rep. of Georgia, and other places. They lost the Cold War. They are economically smaller and militarily weaker. What’s the point? They don’t trust us and they would like to see us fall off our horse. Russia thinks like an empire. But it can’t be one since it economically can’t afford it. We are number one, and that simple fact bothers most others, even our close allies, since everyone wants to be the number one. It’s kindergarten psychology that is at work here at a national level. Furthermore, there is some fear. They know what our capabilities are, and it scares them.

“I realize that there are still misgivings on both sides, but it should be our goal to alleviate them.” You say

Not necessarily. Not if it means that we have to derail our efforts in desired “end states” and “methods” of operating. Think of it this way, would Russia EVER have wanted us to go into Iraq? No. Why? They were profiting from the Oil For Food program and were doing oil business there. They were exporting like mad to Iraq and Saddam for them was not such a bad deal. It was the US that was paying for the Northern and Southern Watch. It was our troops stationed in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for 11 years, getting blown up in attacks, separated from families and it was the US tax payer flipping the bill for it all. It was US SF teams that died in Northern Iraq supporting the Kurds. It was primarily US ships enforcing the embargo imposed on Iraq. Could the US and Russia have ever seen eye to eye on Iraq? No. For them our invasion into Iraq is an expansion of our power. It’s a loss of major business for them. We were simply never going to agree on this issue. Our goals and methods of operating are different. Sometimes our interests collide and we simply can not always be a happy team that works together. Could we get away with leveling whole cities as was done with Groznyy or others in Chechnya? No. How we do things is a bit different. They impose a media blockade in Chechnya to this day. Could we do that in Iraq? No. When they were in Afghanistan they used gas and dropped explosive laden toys (Toe poppers- a cripple is no threat). Could we do that? No. Again, we are different, with different goals, ways of thinking, social structures, methods of operating etc and while we are slaughtering the same pig today, we are not friends and how well we work together is also limited somewhat by “how” we operate.

“I don't think we should have troops in those areas unless we were asked to sind a small task force to help train or learn with/from our Russian counterparts. “ You say

The Global War On Terror is in reality a global war against Islamist radicals. Bush can’t state it in those terms since this would reenergize those who say we are in a war against Muslims. Our center of gravity in the Cold War was in Europe and a few other places. Our center of gravity today is in North Africa, Middle East, the Caucasus and Pakistan. Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan- all deal or have dealt with terror. AQ, Hammas, Hezbollah and and and have there shop set up there. Even the bombers in London, Madrid came from there or were trained there. This is the new center of gravity. It is where we are fighting the GWOT, our new Cold War. Ignoring it, won’t make it go away. It would be like not going for a mammogram because you’re afraid they may find something. The problem will not go away through ignoring it like Clinton did (WTC 1993, Kohbar towers, USS Cole, US embassies…….) As with the Communist threat years ago, we have a real threat out there that must be dealt with. We need to be in those places.

Red6

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