Posted on 10/13/2005 4:53:31 AM PDT by fishhound
Edited on 10/13/2005 8:31:53 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Civilians are believed to be among 60 people killed in clashes between police and rebels in Russia's volatile North Caucasus, say Russian media reports. Civilians are feared to be among 60 people killed in clashes between police and gunmen in Russia's volatile North Caucasus, say Russian media reports.
President Vladimir Putin has ordered Nalchik city in Kabardino-Balkaria province to be sealed off and for forces to shoot any armed resisters.
Officials say armoured vehicles and troops have been deployed and the situation is returning to normal.
Militants from nearby Chechnya are believed to be behind the attacks.
A pro-rebel website said it had received information from rebel sources that a unit of Chechen armed forces had entered Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria.
'All-out attack'
A school and the city's airport, as well as government buildings, were caught up in the running gun-battles.
The BBC's Emma Simpson in Moscow says this appears to have been an all-out attack on Nalchik's law enforcement and security services.
Black smoke billowed across the city
Fighting broke out in the Belaya Rechka area early on Thursday and spread to several parts of the city.
A local Interior Ministry source told Itar-Tass that rebels launched a "carefully planned" simultaneous attack on police stations, Russia's federal security forces, military and drugs-control offices as well as the airport.
One unidentified security official has told Russian news agency Ria that the reason for the attack was the arrest on Wednesday of at least one radical extremist.
Correspondents say violence in Kabardino-Balkaria has been steadily increasing.
Political changes and a harsh crackdown on alleged Islamic militants appear to have pushed the region to the verge of instability, the BBC's regional analyst Steven Eke says.
'Eliminated'
Russian Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said Mr Putin ordered the city to be completely sealed off to ensure not a single fighter could escape.
"Those who resist will be eliminated," he said.
He was also quoted as saying he knew of no civilians killed in the fighting.
A witness told the BBC she had seen the bodies of gunmen, soldiers and civilians in the streets. Earlier, regional President Arsen Kanokov said 12 civilians had died.
A third of the 150 rebels who took part in attacks had been killed, he told Itar-Tass news agency.
Five police officers had also died, Mr Putin's special envoy to the area, Dmitry Kozak, told Russian television.
He also said the gunmen had stormed one police station and taken hostages.
But officials quoted by Itar-Tass said they were later freed, although there were no details.
Mr Kozak said that overall the city was under control.
Website claim
The pro-rebel Kavkaz Center website said that a detachment of the Chechen-linked Kabardino-Balkaria jamaat, called Yarmuk, had entered Nalchik.
The use of the word jamaat indicates that it is made up of radical Islamic fighters.
The attacks are the latest in a series of disturbances that have been destabilising Russia's North Caucasus region for more than a year.
Correspondents say Nalchik is about 100 km (60 miles) north-west of Beslan, where Chechen rebels took hundreds of hostages at a school in 2004, in an attack claimed by warlord Shamil Basayev.
Our analyst says that after last year's Beslan massacre the government promised more money and support for the impoverished North Caucasus - but nothing has changed.
Russian Region's Leader: Liquor, Korans Found Where Nalchik Attackers Stayed
ITAR-TASS
Thursday, October 13, 2005
NALCHIK, October 13 (Itar-Tass) - Arsen Kavokov, president of Russia's constituent region of Kabardino-Balkaria, the capital city of which became target of an amassed extremist attack Thursday, has voiced condolences to families of the people slain in the attack.
He described as blasphemy the use of the banners of Islam for covering up an assault at law enforcement agencies that occurred, above all, during the Holy Month of Ramadan
Kavokov also said big quantities of liquors had been found side by side with the Korans in the places where the militants had stayed.
"This shows in bold relief what kind of Moslems they really were," he said.
Kavokov also confirmed earlier statements by Russian interior officials that law enforcers had seized some of the militants who were now being interrogated.
He indicated that the militants had sought to intimidate the authorities and to destabilize the situation in Kabardino-Balkaria.
"But no one will succeed in rocking the social and political situation here," Kavokov said.
He urged the population to exercise vigilance and to give maximum support to law enforcers.
At the time of reporting, an operation to tap and disarm the remaining militants was underway on the outskirts of Nalchik and in areas adjoining the city.
Russian Official Warns 'North Caucasian HAMAS' May Be Formed
Interfax
Friday, October 14, 2005 T09:59:52Z
MOSCOW. Oct 14 (Interfax) - Director of the Institute for Political Studies
Sergei Markov said that the attack on Nalchik is a sign that militants form a
serious political force in the North Caucasus.
"It is difficult to speak about the attack on Nalchik's mission, however,
one may say that it was not well thought off and this was evident. However, in
any case it is a sign that a serious Islamic extremist political force is being
formed in the North Caucasus," Markov told Interfax.
"Moreover, it is not Chechen separatism, but it is more likely to be Islamic
bolshevism. If no actions are taken, this force will become a sort of North
Caucasian HAMAS, whose aim is to seize power in all regions and to establish an
Islamic regime," the political scientist said.
"Little technical actions are of no use here, deep systemic decisions should
be taken," he said.
These are primarily "the fight against unemployment, the implementation of
new social and economic projects and the formation of economic competition, the
fight against corruption, a strong ideology that would fill the ideological
vacuum, the development of traditional Islam and the development of the
educational system," he said.
Russian political scientist, professor Andranik Migranyan, said that the
recent events in Nalchik show that the authorities do not have a global plan
dealing with eradication of "terrorism-Wahhabism".
"The current fight against terrorism-Wahhabism is not bringing the desired
results. The authorities have not yet answered how should these spots of evil
be eradicated and where the roots of the evil lie," Migranyan told Interfax.
An increasing number of North Caucasian countries are "being sucked into the
whirlpool of religious and national struggles," he said.
"An alarming situation is being created. Fears that a Pan-Caucasian war, to
which liberals attracted Boris Yeltsin's attention in the 1990s, were
previously considered to be exaggeration and far removed from reality, yet now
we witness this," the professor said.
Head of the Center of Political Research Ivan Bunin told Interfax that the
Nalchik events became "a manifestation of three systemic problems inherent to
the North Caucasus: the serious social and economic situation, the crisis of
official Islam and the spread of a clan system."
"Poverty is the norm for the majority of Kabardino-Balkaria citizens, where
incomes are 2.5 times lower than the Russian average and the unemployment level
runs at double the average," he said.
"Gaps between rich and poor in Kabardino-Balkaria are many times higher than
on average in Russia, poverty lies adjacent to the luxurious villas of the clan
chiefs," Bunin said.
"This gives the perfect grounds for the invasion of Wahhabism into official
Islam," he said.
Wasnt there some terrorist from Chechnya that lived in the USA and we would not deport him
__________________________________________________________
You have probably already received your answer but here is mine. You may be referring to Ilyas Akhmadov who was initially denied asylum but the some immigration judge in Boston reversed the decision (he had help from some congress critters as well) and Homeland Security caved. He stil lives here.
http://newsfromrussia.com/world/2004/08/06/55344.html
Forty years ago, a bigthink historian named C.J. Cutliffe Hyne wrote a book titled East vs. West, in which he pointed out that Asia and the West had always been at war, and that long, seesaw oscillations carried the momentum first one way, and then the other. He argued that European momentum, which had been carried forward since Lepanto, had been broken by the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, and that we probably had several centuries of retreat before us before the momentum changed again.
He also said that during its periods of recession, the West had had the advantage of sheltering behind "shield" empires: in the last oscillation before Lepanto, the "shield" was the Greek Empire of the Byzantines. In the next recessional, he predicted that Russia would supply the shield against Chinese expansionism.
To help the Russians keep Siberia, which would appear to be an overarching strategic goal right now, I personally favor a high-speed land-communication corridor from the eastern U.S., say upstate New York, across Canada and Alaska, generally following a great circle, across the Bering Strait to Yakutsk, then dividing: one segment bifurcating off down toward Irkutsk, and another toward Magadan and Khabarovsk (which is the hub city of the Russian Far East and the major garrison city of the RFE); and a second segment, following a new great circle far to the north, tying Yakutsk to the oilfield towns of Western Siberia (Surgut, etc.) and then Gorky and Moscow -- and then going on, perhaps, to Smolensk, Warsaw, and either Berlin or Prague and Munich, near the old American bases in Bavaria. One last leg of the web would be yet another great-circle route connecting Irkutsk to Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) and Moscow, with a branch off to the north to reach the western Siberian oil fields, so that Irkutsk, a major arsenal city (Su-27's are manufactured there, and the Bratsk Dam hydroelectric complex is nearby) would be thoroughly backed up from both northeast and northwest.
Then the RFE would be tied both to Russian and European trade entrepots and military establishments in the West, and to Alaska and CONUS in the east, along lines of communication too deep for the Chinese to interdict.
That way, Siberia and Sakhalin don't end up becoming a Chinese resource area.
People in the West don't understand that many of the world's woefully underexplored, potentially petroliferous sedimentary basins are located in Siberia and the RFE and their ocean-shelf areas, which include a broad continental shelf all around the Sea of Okhotsk and the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The Chinese need to quit screwing with the Japanese over economic rights in the eastern Yellow Sea and get on the stick exploring and developing the Tarim Basin, which has the potential to put them on Easy Street for a couple of generations.
Yeah, dial 1-9-1-1 and suddenly the other guy has an emergency. ;^}
</smirk>
Regarding the "bargaining chip" theory of why Putin helps Tehran...I think it is more of a "leverage" issue. By "helping" Tehran...Russia has been actually preventing the development of nukes there. Hopefully. I assume that, with only two major cities itself, Russia would not help a Muslim country get nukes. Politics change so quickly and Russia was the great enemy of Islam throughout the Cold War. For Russia to give nukes to its eternal enemies would be suicide. Therefore, I assume Russian help to Tehran is a form of keeping your enemy really really close. I assume that Putin is giving the Mullahs a great big bear hug right now. And the Mullahs have to play along.
Yep....... A fire extinguisher in my possession no more means I wish my house would catch fire so I can use it, or I suffer a horrific injury so I can use my nifty new first aid kit. And having that heavy spare tire in the truck just makes me wish for a flat along the side of a dark lonely road on a rainy night so I can use that.
Yep thats why liberal folks think we have the means to protect ourselves...... just so we can go out and kill someone.
Last resort but an option I will never be without......Stay Safe !
Yes it does, and now that you mention it, I recall hearing talk about how the muslims won't mess with Russia because the Russians don't play games, the Russians will go in wipe them out. Well, is that a myth? These attacks keep happening, where is the retaliation?
Could it be the disagreement over the direction of the oil/gas pipeline? The U.S. didn't want it going the way the Russians did and it went the way the Russians wanted.
Agreed.
If we let the liberals control everything, we will be going through this!
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