-Caveat Lector- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25760-2001Sep25.html Moscow Eager to Tie Rebels In Chechnya to Bin Laden By Sharon LaFraniere Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, September 26, 2001; Page A17 MOSCOW -- Two years ago, in the green hills of Chechnya near an old Soviet children's camp, 24-year-old Zamir Ozrokov studied what was described to him as pure Islam. The Koran readings came with an unusual military twist. An Arab instructor taught him and about 100 other youths how to assemble and take apart AK-47 assault rifles, how to shoot and how to lay mines. After three weeks, he returned to the neighboring Russian republic of Karbardino-Balkaria, where he was later arrested and told his story to the police. The camp in Serzhen-Yurt no longer exists, but Ozrokov's account of his May 1999 stay there, published in his republic's newspaper, is one small sign of the role of radical Islamic groups in the bloodshed that has reduced much of the southern Russian republic of Chechnya to abandoned ruins. The camp was run by a man known as Khattab, a mysterious Arab in his mid-thirties who emerged several years ago as one of Chechnya's most powerful rebel commanders. Russian intelligence and military officials identify him as the main link between the Chechen rebels and Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan-based terrorist organization. The strength of that link is in dispute. Sergei Yastrzhembsky, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said in an interview last week that bin Laden is by no means the only foreign backer of Chechen rebels, and maybe not even the main one. "But he is a real sponsor," he said. "That is a fact." At least it is a fact to Russian officials, who are eager to tie Chechnya's stubborn revolt to an international terrorist conspiracy, and so win sympathy among critics of Moscow's merciless prosecution of the war there. In an address to the German parliament in Berlin yesterday, Putin said Russia was committed to the "complete ideological and political isolation" of terrorists and he called the war in Chechnya a harbinger of what the West now faces. He warned that "international terrorists [have] made clear their wish to set up a fundamentalist Muslim state between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea." "We don't recognize the real dangers," said Putin, the first Russian president to address the Bundestag. "This shows that we are well-advised to work with Russia as a partner in combating worldwide threats," said Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. "That wasn't so clear everywhere. Now it is." But proof of bin Laden's involvement is hard to come by, and some more dispassionate experts are far less certain of it. "I think it's a kind of misinformation sent to the mass media by Russian secret services to make it seem they are not fighting a small separatist movement, but against the world's radical Islamic community," said Alexei Malashenko, an expert on Chechnya at the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Center. The guerrillas deny any ties. "When I hear that the Taliban fights in Chechnya . . . this sounds stupid," said Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya's former president and now the leader of a key rebel faction, referring to Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia in an interview transmitted through an intermediary. "Why do we need weapons from abroad? There are plenty of weapons here, and much cheaper too. We don't need military or other training from abroad either." What is apparent, however, is that Islamic extremists have taken partial command of the Chechen revolt since 1996, and many have come from Arab countries, flush with money, weapons and four-wheel drive vehicles that the impoverished region's indigenous guerrillas could only dream of. Estimates of bin Laden's influence over Chechen rebels range from simple moral exhortation to providing squadrons of guerrilla fighters and millions of dollars. Russian intelligence officials, citing intercepted radio conversations, insist bin Laden plays a key role in the ongoing military conflict. Russian Interpol chief Vladimir Gordiyenko asserts that bin Laden maintains "direct contacts" with Khattab and another key commander in Chechnya, Shamil Basayev. Intelligence officials in Moscow contend that bin Laden trains Chechen fighters in a half-dozen military camps in Afghanistan and provided Chechen fighters with 36 anti-aircraft missiles in 1999. Thirteen months ago, they have said, he sent $34 million to Khattab. Col. Gen. Valery Manilov, former first deputy chief of the Russian general staff, later offered a revised figure of $5.5 million, and said bin Laden promised to train as many as 5,000 fighters. Many experts on Chechnya believe these are exaggerations -- maybe vast ones. One recent arrest of a Saudi man identified as a courier for Khattab suggests much lower sums. The man, nabbed crossing the Azerbaijan border into the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan, said he had $10,000 for the rebels. One former high-ranking Chechen official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that in 1996 he saw two checks totaling $300,000, drawn on a Malaysian bank, that were funneled to the rebels from a Philippine terrorist group called Abu Sayyaf -- "Father of the Sword." Abu Sayyaf was founded by a man who fought with bin Laden against the Soviets in Afghanistan and supposedly was financed by bin Laden's brother-in-law. For Russian officials, such information about Chechen rebel connections is rare. "It's most difficult to determine connections between Chechens and the Islamic world," said Nikolai Kovalyov, former head of the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor agency to the KGB, in a recent interview. "Even if you capture a person, to extract anything from him is almost impossible. They prefer death with the head raised high." Yastrzhembsky said estimates of the number of Arab mercenaries among the Chechen rebels range from dozens to thousands. The highest government estimate, he said, puts Arabs as 70 percent of the rebel force. But Chechen administrators and journalists estimate that Arabs make up no more than 5 percent to 15 percent of Chechen fighters, who are believed to number at least several thousand. The Arab fighters, they said, come from many countries, including Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Who dispatched them remains in question. During an interview a year ago in an Afghan village, a man named Abu Daud, identified as a bin Laden associate, told the Associated Press that 400 fighters who were trained at bin Laden's camps had been sent to help the Chechen separatists. Islamic extremists figured hardly at all in Chechnya's first war for independence from Russia, from 1994 to 1996. That was clearly a nationalist movement. But when that war ended with no clear winner, Chechnya lay in ruins, presenting fertile ground for Islamic militants. Urus-Martan, Chechnya's third biggest city with about 100,000 people, became their base, and Khattab their military leader. Shervanik Yasuyev, the pro-Russian Chechen administrator of the city, said in an interview that Arab "strangers, all strangers," began arriving one by one in 1997, until they numbered 500 or more. They were bearded, wore green or black shirts and longrobes over their pants, and were armed with expensive pistols, according to Yasuyev and other residents. They were known as Wahhabists, a fundamentalist branch of Islam that is dominant in Saudi Arabia, although they came from all over the Middle East. "They went to the market and they paid with dollars," said Yasuyev. "There was no power here; there was disorder everywhere, and their influence was very strong." Their professed goal was to turn Chechnya into an Islamic state. Freeing Chechnya's Muslims from the Russian yoke was deemed a worthy first step. The Arabs appealed especially to the young men of Urus-Martan. "The poor Chechen people were already suffering so much and our young guys simply couldn't think," Yasuyev said. "They were ready to accept any ideas." The Arabs augmented their influence by forming an alliance with Basayev, a powerful rival rebel commander. The Wahhabists recruited young men from Urus-Martan to undergo three months of military and religious training at the Serzhen-Yurt camp, about 24 miles outside the city. Khattab visited them there. Khattab, fluent in Russian, is often described as coming from Jordan, where he studied to be a physicist. But Yastrzhembsky said he came from Saudi Arabia, trained in bin Laden's Afghan camps and fought against the Soviets during their disastrous war there. He is now believed to be hiding in Chechnya's southern mountains with the other rebels. © 2001 The Washington Post Company ================================================================ Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ================================================================ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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