Fancy a holiday with a difference? Ramzan Kadyrov, the Moscow-backed warlord who became prime minister of Chechnya last year, has declared the lawless province open for tourism. Twelve years of intermittent but brutal war may have all but devastated it, flattening its capital, Grozny, and destroying what little tourist infrastructure there was. But that failed to deter Mr Kadyrov yesterday from revealing his dream of welcoming Western tourists to a region synonymous with kidnapping.
Until the hotels were rebuilt, his government said, tourists wanting to holiday in Chechnya could always camp. Mr Kadyrov's drive to "create interest for tourist visits", drew a lukewarm response from the British travel industry, with leading tour operators saying it was unlikely that Chechnya would be included in their 2007 or even 2008 brochures. Although the Russian government, which has twice invaded the province to quell uprisings, insists the war is over, a small band of rebels in the southern mountains begs to differ.
Gun battles are common and kidnappings, though less frequent of late, still occur with alarming regularity. The Foreign Office warns against all travel to Chechnya, saying that Westerners are particularly vulnerable to abduction. Three Britons were seized and executed in Dec 1998. More recently, Mr Kadyrov's army of irregulars have taken to sticking the severed heads of enemies on stakes in at least one village.
Chechnya is also not famed for its natural attractions but Salman Dalakov, the deputy tourism minister, insisted that Chechnya had many sights: "It is like Switzerland, only without the roads."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/20/wchech20.xml
LAHORE: At a time when the Taliban movement is making its strongest push in years to regain influence and territory in Afghanistan, Quetta has become an increasingly brazen hub of activity by the Islamist militia, the LA Times reported on Thursday.
Quetta serves as a place of rest and refuge for Taliban fighters between battles, a funneling point for cash and armaments, a fertile recruiting ground and a sometime meeting point for the group’s fugitive leaders, the report quoted aid workers, local officials, diplomats and others as saying.
“Everybody is here,” MNA Mahmood Khan Achakzai said while describing the routine comings and goings of senior Taliban commanders in Quetta. Quetta is a microcosm for these tensions. Local Pakistani authorities insist that they keep a tight lid on Taliban activity — a claim derided by many residents of this city of about 1.5 million people, and one backed by little demonstrable evidence.
Residents described nerve-racking random encounters with Taliban convoys bristling with weaponry and hearing volleys of automatic-weapons fire echoing from within some walled-off madrassas. Taliban recruitment videos sell briskly in stalls tucked between the gun emporiums and carpet shops of Quetta’s raucous main market, the report said.
“For the Taliban, this is considered to be a safe haven,” Syed Ali Shah, a journalist who writes for the Balochistan Times, told the LA Times. “They come here, they regroup and retrain.” At a local madrassa, black-turbaned young men gathered around a makeshift fountain on a recent day, performing their ablutions before noon prayers. One, then two, then half a dozen of them aimed steely glares at outsiders lingering near the rusty green gate of the mud-brick compound. The report said that the Taliban presence in Quetta is helped by the insular and secretive nature of Pashtun tribal society, the virtually unsecured border with Afghanistan and the city’s large population of Afghan refugees, with whom the militia’s members can readily blend.
The city also has close historic, ethnic and cultural ties to the Taliban’s birthplace, the Afghan city of Kandahar, a bone-jarring five hours away by road. Many Pashtun clans have roots on both sides of the border. Afghan provinces close to Balochistan have been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting this year between Taliban and Western and allied forces.
Today in Quetta, it’s almost as if the Taliban never went away, said the report. Some Taliban-affiliated madrassas operate almost in the shadow of police and military installations. On the main road that runs from the border town of Chaman to Quetta, there is only one police checkpoint. On a recent day, two police officers sat in a lean-to, drinking tea and barely glancing up at passing cars.
The Quetta police say they have rounded up hundreds of suspected Taliban militants in the last year, and report frequent raids on madrassas suspected of militant ties. “All the time we are harassing them,” said Quetta DIG Salman Syed Mohammed. But one Western aid official, speaking on condition of anonymity with the LA Times, described such roundups as a “catch-and-release” programme, with most of the detainees seen on the streets again within a matter of days.
The LA Times report said that militants deported to Afghanistan can make their way back to Pakistan at will, either travelling by motorbike on unmarked border trails or joining the crush of up to 6,000 people, mainly Afghans, who cross the border daily at Chaman. By mingling with refugees, wounded fighters are able to seek treatment in several Quetta hospitals. The International Committee of the Red Cross helps arrange medical care in Quetta for injured civilians, and says that inevitably some fighters slip in among them. “According to international law, once a wounded combatant has put down his weapon, it becomes a humanitarian case,” said Paul Fruh, who heads the Red Cross office in Quetta.
Although most local people are afraid to talk about sightings of senior Taliban figures, commanders are said to have unimpeded access to the city, even highly recognisable ones. “Dadullah roams these streets, and they know it,” said MNA Achakzai, referring to Mullah Dadullah, a one-legged Taliban commander with a reputation for egregious brutality. The report said that Pakistan’s security branches demonstrate far more efficiency in keeping track of Western outsiders, including foreign journalists, whose movements in and around Quetta are closely monitored. New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall was questioned this week by Pakistani security agents who forced their way into her Quetta hotel room and at one point struck her in the face, she said. Gall’s notes and laptop were seized but later returned. The US Embassy in Islamabad said it was looking into the incident.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006/12/22/story_22-12-2006_pg7_10