Chechen leaders’ relatives say stop terrorism, punish massacre perpetrators

AsiaNews.it ^ | September 7, 2004 | Staff

[Luis Gonzalez]

Moscow (AsiaNews) – Events in Beslan have had an unusual and unexpected impact in Chechnya. The local population, which had largely backed the actions by Chechen terrorists, seems to have turned against them. Separatists’ families, including those of anti-Russian resistance leaders such as Maskhadov, Basayev, Umarov –who are thought to have orchestrated the Beslan attack– have publicly condemned the actions of their relatives.

Pamzan and Ruslan Maskhadov, cousins of former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov called on him to end terrorism. “Today, life is back to normal in the Chechen Republic. It is possible to work and receive a salary,” the two brothers said. “Consequently, the reasons for terror are neither present nor justified.” They urged Mashkadov to put an end to his actions once and for all and stop the gangs “who have killed hundreds of innocent children.” They also asked Ossetians for forgiveness.

Zholzan Abdulkadyrova, Aslan Maskhadov’s sister, appealed to her brother telling him to stop the crimes against helpless people. In the early phase of the Beslan crisis, Ms Abdulkadyrova had offered herself as a hostage in place of the children held. “Chechens,” she said, “do not want to be the enemies either of Ossetians, Ingushs or Russians.”

Junus Kurazov, deputy mufti in Chechnya’s Vedensky district and husband to Shamil Basayev’s cousin, expressed his solidarity with the people of North Ossetia. “These child-killing gangsters are terrorists and should be punished. These people will never receive forgiveness for their sins; only Almighty Allah might do it.” He added that “terrorism has no national or ethnic colour. Whoever they are, no matter their nationality, ethnicity or religion, they should be punished.”

In his Vedensky mosque, mufti Kurazov led Friday prayers for the murdered children and the people of Ossetia. “Ossetians have always helped Chechens, and in these heavy days, Chechens must pray and support them,” Kurazov said.

Umar Gudaev, Basayev’s father-in-law, and Nasir Sideev, husband to Basayev’s aunt, joined Kurazov in expressing their outrage. “The terrorists have crossed the point of no return into the world of cruelty and brutality. They have used weapons against defenceless children and women,” they said.

Relatives of Doku Umarov, another Chechen leader suspected of involvement in the Beslan attack, have also condemned the terrorist actions.

Despite the genuine revulsion on the part of terrorists’ relatives anger and resentment have boiled over and led some Chechens to prepare reprisal attacks against rebel leaders’ relatives. “Their lives were in danger,” said Ilya Shabalkin, official representative of the Russian federal counterterrorist services (FSB), “and we had evidence that ‘spontaneous groups’ were being formed in various areas of Chechnya to kill Chechen leaders” relatives. However, because of our preventive actions we were able to take them into protective custody and save them from retaliation,” the FSB general said.

The death of the innocent has provoked sorrow and angst throughout Chechnya. Many Chechens have joined the chorus of voices condemning the Beslan attack. Several demonstrations have taken place in the republic to denounce the terrorists and condemn the massacre. One demonstrator was quoted as saying: “As Chechens we can relate to what happened in Beslan. And we are ready to help the people hurt by the terrorists.” (AF)

[Valin]

But if they acually READ the accursed Qu'ran

You mean like these parts.


[2:256] There is no compulsion in religion; truly the right way has become clearly distinct from error; therefore, whoever rejects Satan (and what he calls to) and believes in Allah, he indeed has laid hold on the firmest handhold, which shall not break off, and Allah is Hearing, Knowing.

[2:190] And fight in the way of Allah those who fight you. But do not transgress the limits. Truly Allah loves not the transgressors"

[5:32] If anyone killed a person not in retaliation for murder or to spread mischief in the land, it would be as if he killed the whole of mankind. And (likewise) if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the whole of mankind"

[Valin]

Bookmark

[TheCrusader]

"The other totally wrong part of your statement, is your assumption that every single Muslim approves of terrorism..."

The greatest damnation against the Muslims of the world has been their silence on Islamic terrorism. (and let's not forget about the NYC Muslims and the Palestinians dancing in the streets after 9/11).

[m87339]

Oh ye of little brain

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1117749/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1144701/posts


So are you a 5th columnist or do you just play one on TV?

[silversky]

Only when they turn in their terrorist comrades, they will be believed. Until them it's all posturing. Whoever thinks that the attacks are wrong but "unavoidable" is guilty of supporting the terrorists.

The Chechens' American friends

The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own

John Laughland
Wednesday September 8, 2004
The Guardian


An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as the terrorists. There have been numerous editorials encouraging us to understand - to quote the Sunday Times - the "underlying causes" of Chechen terrorism (usually Russian authoritarianism), while the widespread use of the word "rebels" to describe people who shoot children shows a surprising indulgence in the face of extreme brutality.

On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called "mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American supporters. The leading Russian critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov - men associated with the extreme neoliberal market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head office, this influential thinktank - which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the US restructure the "Greater Middle East" - has been quoted repeatedly in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.

These people peddle essentially the same line as that expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed Zakaev, the London exile who wrote in these pages yesterday. Other prominent figures who use the Chechen rebellion as a stick with which to beat Putin include Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like Zakaev, was granted political asylum in this country, although the Russian authorities want him on numerous charges. Moscow has often accused Berezovsky of funding Chechen rebels in the past.

By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are putting it about that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only western channels reported live, the implication being that Putin's Russia remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while watching both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels had far better information and images from Beslan than their western competitors. This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".

They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.

The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo - implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilise the situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration.

Although the White House issued a condemnation of the Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that the Chechen conflict must be solved politically. According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks of Johns Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution - in other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects elsewhere.

Allegations are even being made in Russia that the west itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the purpose of such support is to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighbouring Georgia - a country which aspires to join Nato, has an extremely pro-American government, and where the US already has a significant military presence - only encourages such speculation. Putin himself even seemed to lend credence to the idea in his interview with foreign journalists on Monday.

Proof of any such western involvement would be difficult to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are asking themselves such questions when the same people in Washington who demand the deployment of overwhelming military force against the US's so-called terrorist enemies also insist that Russia capitulate to hers?

[Barlowmaker]

It's pathetic and alarming to watch the usual suspects adopt Vladdy Putin as their new hero to bolster their "Kill Them All" crap.

[Indie]

Chechnya. The local population, which had largely backed the actions by Chechen terrorists, seems to have turned against them...in a cowardly and desperate move to save their own skins.

There that's better.

[silversky]

If anyone killed a person not in retaliation for murder

Sounds like a license to kill to me. Just define "retaliation for murder"? Direct, indirect, or the way we elect? "Yeah, we killed children but it was UNAVOIDABLE. I swear in aluh". What a load of BS.

[Barlowmaker]

I'll stick my neck way out in here and say that most Muslims are not the monsters that Muslim terrorists would like us to believe they are

We have 3 million entrenched Muslim Americans. Think of the carnage they could wield if they wanted to kill infidels. They don't want to kill us. They are human beings who see the bigger, better deal of political and economic freedom and enlightenment.

Thanks for your stalwart defense against reactionaries here.

[Luis Gonzalez]

The problem with your analogy, is that in this instance, the Kamikaze pilots are hitting Japan.

You forget that Russia claims Chechnya as part of itself.

[m87339]

I see you dissapear when real ammo is sent your way.

Let me see if I can help you:

Islam wants the end of everyting non-Islamic.

Moderate Islamics can and should be held as suspicious until they repudiate the teachings of muhhamed (mhbihf).

After that, no problem.

[Luis Gonzalez]

I know...you've "read" The Qu'ran.

However, there are millions here in the U.S. who have never perpetrated an act of terrorism on America.

And tens of millions living in Muslim countries that are not ruled by Sharia law, and who do not condone or tolerate terrorists.

And hundreds of millions who have never participated in a terrorist act in any way, shape, or form anywhere in the world.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Sounds like a license to kill to me. Just define "retaliation for murder"?"

Actually, you are going to define that with your approval of whatever action Putin takes in Chechnya.

[musicman]

So is Basayev going to kill his relatives that disagree with him, like he did to one of the terrorists who disagreed
with his attacking the school and the children, right before the attack????

[Barlowmaker]

Islam wants the end of everyting non-Islamic.

Wrong. If Islamic worshippers ... 2.7 million resident in the 2000 census ... wanted to follow up 9/11 with a concerted, terror campaign we'd have American casualties in the MILLIONS.

Look at what 2 a-hole snipers did around DC in 2002. Look at the fear and control they held over Virginia and Maryland for that time.

That was never repeated. Because the idiot Muslims involved were sociopaths. Never repeated I repeat.

Think of 3 million Muslims, if they wished, working that same strategy in every American city.

We'd have damn different lives. Our Mulsim Americans would never think of that kind of thing. They're Americans. I don't REQUIRE them to stand up and walk in their own parade. Nobody should. They have deep fears of persecution and retribution scaring the **** out of them. THEY REMEMBER 9/11, and being a 11% minority with the same religious affiliation living in our attacked state.

You want to wage a war? Wage a war against the individual and state sponsored agents of International Islamist Terror. Oh ... that's what we're doing.

We've shown how a civilized, democratic life can reform Islam. We're exporting this blessing. Because it means our survival.

[KangarooJacqui]

I think an act such as this sort of makes everyone take a side, and most people would not side with the kind of inhuman beasts who would carry out such atrocities.

Bears repeating. Oh, if we ALL felt that way...

[stumpy]

I wonder if they are making these pleas while in the custody of some spetznaz troops. Works for me.

[Valin]

Islam wants the end of everyting non-Islamic.

Nonsense. And if you really believe that you won't be voting for George Bush this Nov., because George and I don't believe that..not to mention Dick, Condi, Don, Colin,...

"It is easy to fly into a passion--anybody can do that--but to be angry with the right person and at the right time and with the right object and in the right way--that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it."
-- Aristotle

[Luis Gonzalez]

That tells me that this relative has some serious stones to speak up against him publicly.

[m87339]

Nonsense.

I have provided refrences. You have provided nothing except aid and comfort to the enemy.

Refute my references or prepare to bow your heads to your Taliban masters (or a blade).

Read Malkin on the "Interrment." What we need today is another Interrment for those who will not forswear their Islamic Ideology (Islam is not a theology)

When the next 9/11 happens I will blme it on you and the rest of your PC crowd who are too afraid to do what is necessary to protect us.

Islam is the same as Naziism or Satan Worship (in fact, the founder of islam (mhbihf) ) is/was satan. We need to deal with it the same way. Keep a close eye on the practitioners.

No modern person who can read and reason would follow that awful "religion" except those who want to kill us. "Moderate Muslim" = "5th Columnist."