Raid Illustrates Chechen Desperation (Barf but good info too)

MOSCOW (AP) - As the war in Chechnya drags on, acts of desperation committed by Chechen rebels furious at the destruction of their homeland have grown even more brutal, pushing them closer to extremist Islam and creating a new generation ready to kill innocent civilians for their cause.

Gone are the days when future rebel field commander Shamil Basayev pranced in a leather coat and brimmed hat around the Chechen capital, Grozny, just after Chechnya had declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, boasting of his success in hijacking a plane to Turkey.

A number of the Chechens who led efforts to create an independent country and have fought two brutal wars against Russia have adopted the language, methods and sometimes even the dress of extremist Islamic movements and taken to terrorism to draw attention to their cause.

``They are cold professionals, and they are very tough,'' said Irina Khakamada, a liberal lawmaker who held talks Thursday with the Chechen rebels holding hundreds of hostages in a Moscow theater to press their demands for Russia to withdraw its troops from their homeland, a mountainous mainly Muslim region in the northern Caucasus.

``They have no problem between life and death,'' Khakamada said, speaking on Russian television.

The Chechens are among the fiercely independence-minded ethnic groups in Russia, and battled the czars in the 19th century before being defeated. They suffered mass deportation during World War II and declared independence as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Russian forces invaded in 1994 to suppress their independence drive. The rebels carried out bloody hostage-takings in 1995-1996, which helped force Russia first to negotiate, then to withdraw it troops.

War broke out again in 1999 after rebels raided nearby Dagestan and Russian authorities blamed rebels for a series of bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people.

In the fighting, much of Chechnya has been destroyed, and tens of thousands of Chechens have been killed. Human rights organizations say the Russian forces' brutality has contributed to driving young men into rebel groups, some of which have been funded by outside Arab sources.

A pro-rebel Web site, www.kavkaz.org, described the hostage takers as ``smertniki,'' a word that in Russian refers to fighters who die for a cause - and echoes the terminology used by suicide bombers in the Middle East, who call themselves ``martyrs.''

The Web site said the group was led by Movsar Barayev, the 25-year-old nephew of warlord Arbi Barayev, who reportedly was killed last year. It said some of the women hostage-takers were the widows of Chechen rebels and that they attacked the theater to avenge their losses.

However, Dzhafar Zufarov, an influential mufti in southern Russia, said Barayev was paid to take over the theater, and the money could possibly have come from sources in Saudi Arabia.

Increasingly, Chechen rebels have found a bulwark in Islam and a source of funding and political support in Arab nations, which helps explain the growing influence of outside Islamic groups in Chechnya.

The Russians, meanwhile, have insisted on a military solution for Chechnya, saying they will never negotiate with the rebels, whom they say have links to international terrorism.

``Now the positions have hardened. With whom should Russia negotiate?'' asked Alexander Rahr, one of Germany's leading specialists on Russia in an interview on Germany's n-tv channel.

Non-native Islamic influence was evident Thursday when the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television network broadcast the demands of the hostage-takers. The tape apparently was made before the hostage-taking began Wednesday night and delivered to the network Thursday morning.

In the footage, one of the rebels who carried out the attack had a laptop in front of him and a copy of the Quran at his right hand.

``We came to the Russian capital to stop the war or gain martyrdom ... Each one of us is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of God and the independence of Chechnya,'' one of the hostage-takers said.

Khakamada, the lawmaker, said she didn't think the hostage-takers were acting of their own accord. ``Someone is standing behind them. They are not free in their actions,'' she said.

This liberal journalist has herself boxed into a corner, trying to excuse the poor chechens, needing to report the news.

Are terrorists getting desperate? Here's another recent article on the topic:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/769251/posts

The Eastern Front: The Bali attack is a sign of the terrorists' desperation Opinion Journal ^ | 10/15/2002 | RALPH PETERS Posted on 10/14/2002 9:45 PM Pacific by Pokey78 The bomb attacks in Bali that killed almost 200 people last weekend resembled the attacks on the World Trade Center towers in two critical respects. The first similarity is that Islamic ultraterrorists struck carefully selected, symbolic targets full of innocent civilians. Second, these attacks will prove woefully counterproductive for the terrorists. After suffering devastating losses around the world, Islamic terror networks are attempting to return to the offensive, to prove they are still viable. But the half-dozen targets they recently struck in Asia illuminate their weakness and rage, not an intelligent global strategy. Far from striking major governmental or military targets, the terrorists have been reduced to sloven assassinations and, now, the calculated mass murder of young people. Once again, the terrorists have chosen targets that strengthen the hands of their enemies.

The discos destroyed in Kuta, Bali's center for mass-market tourism and cheap-beer backpackers, provided multiple advantages as targets, from the Islamic extremist's point of view.

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