OIL AND THE BATTLE FOR CHECHNYA - British And American Covert Operations

"A British mine clearing organisation, the HALO Trust has begun a five year project in the Jaffna peninsula, Sri Lankan state media reported Thursday. Halo’s activities will begin with a six month survey of northern Sri Lanka, the charity said... 'We have requested the assistance of the Security Forces and discussed the operation plans with the Defence Ministry,' said Boulter. The initial program will cost four million US dollars. The BBC says HALO is partly funded by the UK Government.... The Daily News said HALO has teams in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Eritrea, Somalia and Georgia and has almost completed operations in Kosovo and has conducted assessment missions in Bosnia, Vietnam, Laos, South Sudan, Tajikistan and South Lebanon. Last August Russian intelligence accused the HALO Trust of spying against Russia and aiding rebel fighters in Chechnya, British media reports said. FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence service, also alleged that several HALO Trust employees were undercover British intelligence agents or army officers, The Guardian newspaper said. 'Under cover of mine-clearing operations, [the HALO Trust] ..... carried out full-scale topographic surveillance of Chechnya, fixing Chechen villages to the NATO frame of reference. ... Representatives of HALO collected intelligence of a military-political character, and with these aims maintained close contacts with Chechen leaders and established a many-pronged network of informers from the local population,' the FSB alleged. The British charity's director, Guy Willoughby, a former British Army Coldstream Guards officer, flatly dismissed the Russian charges."
Veteran British mine clearers in Jaffna
TamilNet, 21 June 2002

"The Federal Security Service on Thursday accused a British nonprofit mine-clearing agency of spying on Russian forces in Chechnya and training rebels in the breakaway republic."
FSB: English Mine Clearers Are Spies
Associated Press, 11 August 2000

"Russia's federal security service, the FSB, accused the Halo Trust - the world's biggest mine-clearing charity, which was supported by Diana, Princess of Wales - of spying on Russia since 1998....the FSB claimed that Halo had not only trained its Chechen staff to clear mines, but also to plant them..... The trust opened its office in Chechnya in 1997 with the help of Chechnya's President, Aslan Maskhadov, and without permission of Russian authorities, the FSB said. 'People trained by high-level Halo Trust officials weakened Russian positions, which in turn permitted Chechen rebels to attack federal troops,' Kremlin spokesman Sergei Yastrzembsky said....The Foreign Office said it did not comment on intelligence matters but it has raised its concern with Moscow."
Mine charity rejects spy charges
BBC Online, 11 August 2000

"Andrew Fulton, once MI6's man in Washington, has become the first high-profile former spy to join a listed UK company. Mr Fulton, 62, is to join Armor Group, the security company where the MP Sir Malcolm Rifkind is non-executive chairman. He has been hired as a 'corporate strategy adviser' at its security consulting arm. While at the Foreign Office, Mr Fulton was posted to Vietnam, Rome, East Berlin and Oslo. He was seconded to the United Nations in 1992 before taking the Washington job. Seven years ago, he was forced to quit his diplomatic post when he was exposed on a website by renegade agent Richard Tomlinson. He also had to step down from the Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit, set up to offer independent legal opinion on the Pan Am air crash. Armor, which also offers training in removing mines, has recently opened a secure 'office' in Kabul. Since standing down, Mr Fulton has taken on a portfolio of roles. He is chairman of the corporate private eye GPW, established by former Kroll employees."
'Spy in Washington' takes security role
Daily Telegraph, 21 August 2006

"Russia's FSB domestic security service on Thursday accused a British anti-landmine charity of teaching Chechen rebels explosives techniques and of spying on Moscow's military. The allegations, which came two days after a bomb killed eight people in a Moscow underpass, were denied by the Halo Trust mine clearance agency, which dubbed them a smear campaign. Some officials have blamed the Moscow bomb on Chechen rebels. The FSB, a successor body to the Soviet-era KGB, said in a statement: 'The FSB has reliable information about the training of mine and explosives experts for armed groups of international terrorists fighting in Chechnya. 'One group which is secretly carrying out such operations inside Russia is the international non-governmental organisation, the Halo Trust.' The FSB said the Halo Trust held courses to train 'specialists in mines and explosives' inside rebel Chechnya on Russia's southern rim and harboured British secret agents.... The FSB said it had found 15 Halo Trust workers inside Chechnya last November when searching for rebels as part of its now 11-month-old war against separatist guerrillas in the region. 'We have information that most of them are members of various British military structures and the leader, Matthew Middlemiss, is a staff military spy,' the FSB said, adding that it was holding an unspecified number of the charity's workers.... The Halo Trust started working in Chechnya after the 1994-96 war which ended in a Russian rout and left much of the land scattered with deadly anti-personnel mines. The charity said it was not working in Chechnya now and only did so with proper Russian visas and documentation. It said it had trained 150 Chechens to clear mines. The FSB said 100 had been trained as specialists in mines and explosives."
UK charity teaching Chechens to make bombs, say Russians
Reuters, 1 January 2001

"As the intelligence newsletter Stratfor -- which Time magazine ranked as the nation's top intelligence site in 2003, and which Barron's described as 'a private quasi-CIA' -- pointed out a few months ago, with Ukraine now firmly in the West's orbit, America, with NATO and the EU, has managed to succeed exactly where Hitler and Napoleon failed: it has dismantled the Russian empire, leaving the rump state exposed, weakened and essentially at the West's mercy.... The threat of Russia's disintegration is real. It is losing territory and power just as Bolotnikovo lost its lake. In the process, the Kremlin has become increasingly paranoid, reflecting not so much inherent Soviet evil as fear and desperation. This leads to the most important, and dangerous, question: is Russia simply disintegrating, or is America breaking it apart? In the wake of the Beslan massacre in September, 2004, in which hundreds of children were killed during a Chechen separatist seizure of a school in southern Russia, President Putin went on television and blamed certain foreign powers for supporting the terrorists with the aim of defanging Russia for good, breaking it apart, and seizing its valuable resources. He did not name the United States, but it was clear whom he meant. Shortly after Putin's speech, the state-run TV media picked up where he left off, with some of the most famous news personalities specifically accusing the US of being behind the Chechen raid. Mikhail Leontyev, the pseudo-scruffy state Channel One commentator and noted Kremlin waterboy, starkly noted, 'It is time to name that power which is trying to break Russia apart. It has a name, and that name is the United States.' Stratfor, whose politics could be described as something between patriotic-American and realpolitik, agreed. According to its Kremlin sources, Putin specifically named the U.S. and Great Britain during private meetings. And as Stratfor noted in its April report, there is plenty of evidence to support the Kremlin's claim. In the first place, while Muslim separatist militants from other conflict zones are shunned and even violently pursued by the U.S., the Chechen separatist representatives are routinely given haven and official voice in both the U.K. and America. Ilyas Akhmadov, the separatist group's 'ambassador' to the U.S., was granted asylum just last year, while Akhmed Zakayev was given asylum in the U.K. in late 2003. While the U.S. has moved to crack down on militant Islamic charities that are linked to other areas of the world, it has allowed several foundations to operate in the U.S. which are believed to funnel money to Chechen rebels, including the American Committee for Chechnya, Chechen Relief Expenses, International Relief Association and others. This is part of the policy shift ushered in by the Bush Administration, when, in February 2001, a ranking State Department official, John Beyrle, met with Akhmadov, the highest ranking U.S. official to ever receive a Chechen separatist. It was deliberate, and the Russians reacted furiously.... As Stratfor notes, the British connection to the Chechen separatists goes farther back. 'During the first Chechen war -- from 1994 to 1996 -- retired U.K. special forces officers trained British Muslim recruits in British territory to fight in Chechnya,' Stratfor claims, echoing reports out of Russia. 'Some militants who attended that training and were later captured told the Russian government.' After Chechnya gained de facto independence, a scandal apparently erupted in Russia-U.K. relations when de-mining instructors from a private security firm, which included American ex-military personnel, were caught 'training Chechen militants how to launch mine and bombing attacks against Russian troops,' according to Stratfor. It was through humanitarian assistance that Fred Cuny, the famous 'swashbuckling' American aid worker, became a key figure, and later a martyr, in the first Chechen War. Cuny was killed in Chechnya in 1995. When Russian reports labeled him a spy, it was dismissed in the US media as 'conspiracy theory' and 'paranoia.' But as it turned out, Cuny did indeed have both military and intelligence connections. Stratfor, along with many in the Kremlin and the Russian elite, believe that the U.S. and Britain have supported Chechen separatism precisely because it weakens Russia, advances U.S. power in the vital Caspian Sea region, and cripples a potential future rival. As Stratfor notes, since Bush's re-election, the West has increased pressure on Putin to come to a peace agreement. Such an agreement, leading to the withdrawal from Chechnya, would represent 'complete defeat in Chechnya and the Caucasus.' Meanwhile, the U.S. has massively increased its own military presence in both the Caucuses and Central Asia ... but more on that later. Sympathy for the Chechen cause in America has, to say the least, very suspicious motives. The main lobbying group pushing for Chechen independence in the U.S. is a group called The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), which describes itself as 'The only private, nongovernmental organization in North America exclusively dedicated to promoting the peaceful resolution of the Russo-Chechen war.' That might sound fuzzy and warm, until you look at who sits on its board. It is a Who's Who list of right-wing imperialist warmongers, including Richard Perle, architect of the recent Iraq war; Elliot Abrams, who engineered Reagan's bloodbath in Central America and who served in Bush's National Security Council; and former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, a leading American imperialist hawk who needs no introduction in Russia. Normally, these guys hate Islamic militants; but for some strange reason, their maternal instincts suddenly light up for the Chechen cause. This might be excused as a rare case of ogres showing humanity, unless you consider their motives. Many of the ACPC's members also served on the Project for the New American Century, which had also pushed for militant American global hegemony, rolling back Russia and invading Iraq.... What drives Brzezinski, what drives the support of regime change on Russia's borders, and within its borders, isn't just Old School Russophobia. It's oilophilia. The Caspian Sea basin holds the world's biggest untapped fossil fuel resources. Estimates range from 85 to 190 billion barrels of oil, worth up to $5 trillion. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan alone might hold over 130 billion barrels, more than three times the US reserves. As Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech in 1998, when he was CEO of Halliburton, 'I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.' In 2001, Cheney, who sat on the Kazakhstan's Oil Advisory Board, advised President Bush to 'deepen [our] commercial dialogue with Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and other Caspian states.'... While it's true that Russia's state-controlled television is filled with paranoid anti-American conspiracy theories and ranting, the depressing fact is that much of the parnoia is grounded in fact. The current power-mad American elite saw an opportunity as the Soviet Union teetered, and it seized it. They wanted oil, and hegemony, and the only thing standing in the way of it was Russia -- both the current crippled Russia, and the future possibility of a resurgent Russia. The prize is the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian Sea. In order to control the oil, Russia had to be diverted, particularly after the less-friendly Putin came to power. This is why normally bloodthirsty, anti-Islamic hawks like Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams and Zbigniew Brzezinski all found time to squirt a few for the Chechen cause. It has served as the perfect crippling diversion while America gained control over the Caspian Sea oil, and at the same time, having Russia bogged down in Chechnya allowed the West to pry away key states, particularly Ukraine, from Russia's orbit, ensuring that it will likely never challenge America's position -- or its dominance of Caspian oil -- in our lifetime. This is what Stratfor meant when it said that America succeeded where Hitler and Stalin had failed. The only question is, how long will the strategy work, and how will it eventually end up."
Dividing Russia
AlterNet, 29 June 2005

"Russia summoned Washington's envoy on Friday to protest a U.S. television network's airing of an interview with a Chechen rebel leader that threatened to add to strains between the two countries. In the interview, broadcast by ABC on Thursday night, warlord Shamil Basayev accused Russia of killing thousands of civilians and defended his own raids -- the bloodiest of the 10-year Chechen war -- as part of a struggle for independence. 'We invited the deputy chief of mission to express our views over the broadcasting of an interview with a terrorist. ... We expressed our strong indignation,' a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. 'The TV channel has shown outrageous neglect of the standards of responsible journalism and general human values.' The United States condemned Basayev as a terrorist but said it could not dictate what interviews U.S. networks aired. 'This is a constitutional right of an American media outlet to broadcast an interview, and we did not have any role to play in the decision to air the interview,' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. Washington has criticized some Arab media for interviews with militants and, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, asked U.S. networks to consider whether statements by al Qaeda leaders contained hidden messages before broadcasting them..... Basayev organized the attack on a school in Beslan in September, when 330 hostages -- more than half of them children -- died after a three-day siege. The warlord, who has spearheaded Chechen resistance for a decade and has a $10 million price on his head, has also sent hostage-takers and suicide bombers into Moscow and other Russian towns in operations that have killed hundreds. Russia accuses him of links to al Qaeda and says the Chechen war is part of the global struggle against terrorism. It is quick to criticize any Western sympathy for the Chechen cause as proof of 'double standards' in the fight, and has previously slammed the United States and Britain for refusing to extradite rebels. 'These notorious double standards and double approaches continue to exist. ... Undoubtedly, this sours our cooperation (with the United States) and gives a boost to terrorist activists,' Anatoly Safonov, President Vladimir Putin's special representative for the war against terrorism, told Interfax news agency.... Basayev happily admitted he was a terrorist in the ABC interview, but said the Russians were worse. 'If they are the keepers of constitutional order, if they are anti-terrorists then I spit on all these agreements and nice words,' he said."
Russia summons U.S. envoy over Basayev interview
Reuters, 29 July 2005

Drugs, ISI, Oil, And Covert Sponsor Western Sponsorship
Of Islamic Terrorism In Chechnya

"During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the US funded large numbers of jihadists through Pakistan's secret intelligence service, the ISI. Later the US wanted to raise another jihadi corps, again using proxies, to help Bosnian Muslims fight to weaken the Serb government's hold on Yugoslavia. Those they turned to included Pakistanis in Britain. According to a recent report by the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, a contingent was also sent by the Pakistani government, then led by Benazir Bhutto, at the request of the Clinton administration. This contingent was formed from the Harkat-ul- Ansar (HUA) terrorist group and trained by the ISI. The report estimates that about 200 Pakistani Muslims living in the UK went to Pakistan, trained in HUA camps and joined the HUA's contingent in Bosnia. Most significantly, this was 'with the full knowledge and complicity of the British and American intelligence agencies'. As the 2002 Dutch government report on Bosnia makes clear, the US provided a green light to groups on the state department list of terrorist organisations, including the Lebanese-based Hizbullah, to operate in Bosnia - an episode that calls into question the credibility of the subsequent 'war on terror'. For nearly a decade the US helped Islamist insurgents linked to Chechnya, Iran and Saudi Arabia destabilise the former Yugoslavia. The insurgents were also allowed to move further east to Kosovo. By the end of the fighting in Bosnia there were tens of thousands of Islamist insurgents in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo; many then moved west to Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Less well known is evidence of the British government's relationship with a wider Islamist terrorist network. During an interview on Fox TV this summer, the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported that British intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group in London to recruit Islamist militants with British passports for the war against the Serbs in Kosovo. Since July Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested could have been behind the London bombings. According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in Pakistan after leaving Britain, but was released after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained solely for extradition to the US, not for questioning about the London bombings. Loftus claimed that Aswat is a British-backed double agent, pursued by the police but protected by MI6."
Michael Meacher, former UK Environment Minister
Britain now faces its own blowback
Guardian, 10 September 2005

'Chechnya: The Mujahideen Factor'
Joseph Bodansky, Director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the U.S. Congress
Special Strategic Studies Supplement, Freeman Centre For Strategic Studies, Houston, Texas, January 1998

[Extracts]

.... Islamabad became directly involved in the active support for the Chechen Jihad already in the spring of 1994. At that time, the ISI-sponsored Taliban offensive endangered the flow of Heroin from Afghanistan which served to finance the Chechen revolt. Islamabad intervened to ensure the continued flow of drugs, as well as capitalize on the relationship between the Chechens and ISI-sponsored Afghans, then maintained via Gulbaddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami as a front, in order to expand the ISI's direct relations with the Chechen leadership. Consequently, between April and June 1994, a high-level Chechen delegation headed by a lieutenant of Dudayev's named Shamil Basayev visited the ISI-sponsored terrorist training infrastructure in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the Chechens visited the ISI's training facilities in the Khowst area, then run under the banner of Gulbaddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami. In Pakistan, the Chechens had a series of high level meetings with the Pakistani leadership -- particularly with Gen. Babar, Defense Minister Gen. Aftab Shahban Mirani, and General Javid Ashraf of the ISI (who was presented as the head of the ISI branch in charge of support for, and sponsorship of, Islamist causes). These three officials became the patrons of the Chechen Jihad, arranging for the establishment of a comprehensive training and arming program for the Chechens in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Chechens also met with former ISI Chief, General Hamid Gul, and an aid of his named Col. Imam, who would assist the Chechens in arranging for local connections and contacts for their drugs and weapons smuggling operations. Moreover, Gen. Babar intervened with the Taliban leadership already in early 1994 to ensure the uninterrupted flow of Heroin from the Helmand valley. However, the Heroin was now shipped northwards to the airfield near Chitral from where the drugs, as well as a growing number of Chechens and 'Afghan' volunteers, were flown to Chechnya.

The training of the Chechens began immediately. The first hundred or so Chechens were added to the ISI-run training camps near Khowst where between two and three hundred Uzbeks and Tajiks were already being trained in guerrilla warfare and prepared for the export of the Islamist revolution into their homelands. Most important were the advanced sabotage and guerrilla warfare courses provided to a select few Chechens in the Markaz-i-Dawar center in Pakistan. In the Fall of 1994, in order to expedite the flow of expertise to Chechnya, the ISI organized mixed detachments made of recently trained Chechens and veteran Pakistani operatives, most of them with long combat experience in the ranks of the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. These forces brought with them large quantities of weapons and ammunition. In addition, fighters from an ISI battalion of Afghan Mujahedin stationed in Pakistan were also dispatched to Chechnya in late 1994 to bolster the Pakistani-Chechen detachments. These Pakistani-led detachments saw combat already around the first of 1995. Significantly, the ISI retained combat and tactical control over these detachments. The Pakistani commanders maintained radio communications with their HQ in Pakistan, not dissimilar to communications maintained between the Islamist forces in Kashmir and their rear bases in Pakistan. ................

By now, however, Dudayev was most alarmed by the rise of the Islamist factor. In the Spring of 1995, his earlier call for an anti-Russian Jihad was being increasingly answered as Pakistan and Iran began sponsoring the Chechen revolt. Their active support was reinforced with arrival of growing numbers of volunteers, including Arab 'Afghans' and Islamist educators, weapons supplies, and funds. The elite forces of the Chechens were now becoming increasingly Islamist. The Islamist message of all-Caucasian Jihad, as distinct from a Chechen national liberation struggle, was increasingly popular. ................

Thus, by mid 1996, the war in Chechnya was fully integrated into the global struggle strategy, and not only of the Islamic Bloc, but of the Trans-Asian Axis as well. Grozny is the oil pipeline juncture for transporting Caspian Sea oil to European Russia and for export via Novorossiysk. The disconnection of this oil pipeline will expedite the transferring of this oil to the proposed Trans-Caspian pipeline and its export eastwards in the PRC's Pan-Asia Continental Oil Bridge. Militarily, a marked escalation in the fighting in Chechnya will serve more than just a containment of Russia -- a drain on manpower, supplies and resources. Politically, a prolonged unpopular war will make Moscow reluctant to confront, let alone intervene in, other conflicts in the near abroad so that the Islamists' escalation in Central Asia can take place with a lesser risk of Russian intervention.

Meanwhile, the integration of the Chechen revolt into the state-sponsored Islamist struggle continues to evolve and expand. This development is best reflected in the flow of Mujahedin from Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bosnia and the Middle East, in the further increase in the training of Chechens in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey (Northern Cyprus). The allocation of drugs from the Golden Crescent for funding the Chechen war, as well as the laundering and handling of Chechen funds by Islamist front companies and financial institutions in the West, are other expressions of support by the Islamist leadership. Moreover, the international support functions, especially in the US and Western Europe, are being run by the main Islamist organizations controlled by Iran, Pakistan, and their proteges.

The magnitude of the Chechen drug smuggling and other organized crime activities is immense. By the mid 1990s, the network of smuggling routes used by the Islamists to deliver Mujahedin and weapons into Chechnya were also used for the smuggling of drugs out of Chechnya in order to finance the Jihad and enrich its commanders.

For example, the "Abkhaz route" that is operating since late 1993 under the control of the brothers Shamil and Shirvan Basayev. Shamil Basayev was the leader of the Chechen volunteers in Abkhazia and established excellent relations with the Muslim rebels there. Using Mi-6 helicopters, the Basayev brothers are shipping drugs acquired in Pakistan and Afghanistan from the Vedenskiy Rayon of Chechnya to the heliport in New Athens, using bases set up in Dzheyrakh Gorge in Kabardino-Balkariya as their intermediate landing points. Then, from New Athens, Abkhaz smugglers deliver the drugs by truck to Port Sukhumi on the Black Sea. From there, the drugs are carried by Turkish ships to the port of Famagusta in Northern Cyprus where local drug dealers take over. On the return routes, the ships, truck and helicopters carry arms and munitions acquired by Turkish intelligence for Basayev's forces. .........

The marked increase in the Chechen's aerial activities has taken place since early 1995. Back in early December 1994, Usman Imayev -- a close aide of Dudayev, who was the head of the National Bank of Ichkeriya as well as Chechnya's minister of justice and prosecutor general -- reached an agreement with representatives of the Turkish intelligence on the supply of weapons to Dudayev's forces from and via Turkey, the latter mainly from Pakistan. The ISI agreed to provide the Chechens with stockpiles dating back to the days of the Afghan Jihad. The Turks purchased large quantities of Soviet-era weapons and ammunition from Germany, from the ex-DDR arsenals, and transferred some of them to the Chechens. ....

By the Fall of 1997, several hundreds of Chechens were being trained in ISI-sponsored camps near Warsaj (Takhar), Jabal ol-Saraj (Parwan), Khowst (Paktia), and other smaller sites. Some 250 Chechens were undergoing clandestine training in a camp near Peshawar by ISI operatives and expert terrorists from Egypt and Sudan. Some 100 Chechens were being trained by the ISI in the Lahore area in sophisticated terrorism and urban warfare. A VEVAK-run terrorism training base in Ziarat Jah (Herat) was transferred to Gorgan (Mazandaran, Iran) in the Fall of 1995 because of the fighting. Chechens now attend other Islamist higher terrorism schools in Iran under the control of al-Quds forces. Several hundreds Mujahedin, mainly Afghans and Chechens, were being trained by Iranian intelligence and the HizbAllah in Sudan. Moreover, in the spring of 1996, in anticipation for a marked escalation, about 400 Chechens were sent to HizbAllah training camps in the Biqaa, Lebanon, to undergo the six-month advance courses run by Iranian Pasdaran instructors. These training programs still continue in early 1998, with new classes made of young Chechens replacing the graduates that returned Chechnya. Ultimately, the mere presence of Chechens in these terrorism schools is indicative of Tehran's and Islamabad's trust.

Meanwhile, the intelligence services of Iran, Pakistan and Turkey also continue to prepare, train and ship foreign volunteers to Chechnya. In Afghanistan, Shaykh Muhammad Ali Akhund organized a Taliban force for deployment to Chechnya. Most important are the Islamist commanders and instructors from Afghanistan, Pakistan and numerous Arab states -- all of them veteran 'Afghans' and 'Balkans', as well as Middle East terrorists -- who build a new generation of Chechen Mujahedin. They also constitute the core of the elite terrorist and special operations units of the Chechens. As well, they train cadres from other Caucasian states and nationalities. If the current build-up continues, Chechnya will become a center for Islamist regional and international terrorism comparable to Afghanistan or Lebanon.

Ultimately, given the Islamists' headway in Tajikistan, and Central Asia as a whole, one can foresee the emergence of an Islamist radical belt stretching from Afghanistan to Chechnya. Such a belt will be controlled and sponsored by Iran and Pakistan. Both will use it for furthering their global and regional aspirations. The availability of weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union makes this prospect all the more harrowing. ....

Meanwhile, the specifics of the impending escalation in Chechnya were decided upon back in late August in the summit of the senior commanders of the HizbAllah International, held in Mogadishu, Somalia. Among the participants were Usamah bin-Ladin and the Iranian Commander of the al-Quds Forces based in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen. The summit decided to deploy between 500 and 700 'Afghan' Mujahedin (Arabs, Pakistanis, Afghans, etc.) to Chechnya during the fall. These Mujahedin would come mainly from camps in Afghanistan (particularly ISI-run camps under the nominal supervision of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf), as well as Sudan (mainly Arab 'Afghans') and Lebanon (a combination of the recently-trained Chechen-HizbAllah, and HizbAllah veterans from Persian Gulf states and Bosnia). The ISI was also directly responsible for the transportation, logistics and the transfer of "special means" (or "special weapons") to Chechnya. General Ashraf of the ISI -- who was presented to Shamil Basayev in the Spring of 1994 as the head of the ISI branch in charge of support for, and sponsorship of, Islamist causes, and who has been involved in supporting the Chechens since then -- is personally in charge of the Pakistani part of this operation. Additional funds were moved to Chechnya from Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf states via Western Europe. Follow up decisions on the accelerated implementation of these designs were reached in late September in the follow-up summit of the senior commanders of the HizbAllah International that was also held in Magadishu, Somalia.

The implementation of these resolutions began immediately. In mid October 1966, at least 200 of the Mujahedin were already deployed to Chechnya from camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Pakistani Minister of Interior, Maj.Gen. (ret.) Naserullah Khan Babar, personally arranged for safe-conduct for these Mujahedin through both the Taliban and Ahmad Shah Massud lines, as part of the Pakistani mediation effort in Afghanistan. From north-eastern Afghanistan, these Mujahedin were transported eastward on the supply route established for the sustaining of the Afghan Mujahedin during the 1980s. The Chechnya bound Mujahedin were taken to camps near Chitral. They were flown to Chechnya from a nearby airport already used by the ISI for traffic in and out of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Meanwhile, the organization a force of over 100 Arab 'Afghans' from bases in Sudan and Yemen was near completion. These Mujahedin reached Chechnya via Iran or Afghanistan in the first half of November. Further more, the first class of Chechen-HizbAllah completed its six-month advance training in the Pasdaran-run HizbAllah camps in the Biqaa in mid November 1996, and its members returned to Chechnya in the early days of 1997. Altogether, some 400 Chechen graduates were dispatched from the Biqaa by the early Spring of 1997. Significantly, by early 1998, the flow of foreign Mujahedin and Chechen graduates of terrorist schools along these routes still continues.

By the Fall of 1996, the leadership of Chechnya was openly advocating the themes raised by the Islamist leadership, particularly the possibility of resumption of fighting. Thus, Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev declares that he "cannot affirm that the war has really ended." Chechen Commander Shamil Basayev concurs that the war "is suspended." Because "Russia has proved that it does not keep its promises," Basayev believes that "the possibility of the war being resumed remains on the cards." ......

By now, Moscow and Grozny were negotiating the fixing of the major oil pipeline crossing Chechnya and the resumption of shipping oil from the Caspian Sea to Russia. In early June, as the pace of the oil negotiations was growing, Maskhadov sought to stress the Islamic identity of Chechnya in order to gain political support from the oil producing states of the Middle East. Hence, Maskhadov dissolved Chechnya's secular courts and left only Islamic tribunals, based on the Sharia, as the legitimate elements of the country's legal system.....

Since late August, 1997, two trends have dominated events in Chechnya: (1) Moscow is increasingly apprehensive about a growing penetration of the US into the Caucasus, in quest for oil and challenging Russia's vital interests. Moreover, the US is using conservative Arab regimes as conduits. (2) Official Grozny is demonstrating unprecedented self-confidence and affluence, including Maskhadov's early September declaration about the building of a new Capital city -- Dzhokar -- rather than attempting to rebuild the devastated Grozny without explaining the source of the funds. Moscow estimates that the money came from the Muslim World under US influence. These trends cast a long shadow over the negotiations on a permanent settlement scheduled to begin in Moscow in late September. Maskhadov was very optimistic about his ability to convince Yeltsin to sign a treaty acceptable to Grozny -- that is, an inter-state treaty recognizing Chechnya's independence......

Again, unfolding activities suggest confidence in the Muslim World in the near term realization of this scenario. Even before the formal political decision on the future of the region, several states have jointly embarked on active economic maneuvering with outright political ramifications. Most important is the effort, blessed by the US and the UK, to create a so-called Caucasian common market that will concentrate on energy development while excluding Russia from its activities. This effort is developing since the Fall of 1997, and is supported by all the states of the Transcaucasus region except Armenia, by major Western oil corporations, and by organizations lobbying their interests, both in the United States and Britain. Moscow is most alarmed by the establishment of a Caucasian-American chamber of commerce because it is led by Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev -- a leader of a Chechen criminal grouping in Moscow in the early 1990s and subsequently First Deputy Prime Minister in Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev's Government in Chechnya.

Moscow also learned that back in October 1997, a group of prominent businessmen and politicians from Britain, Pakistan, and Hong Kong, signed a protocol of intent regarding the establishment of a Transcaucasian energy company with Aslan Maskhadov as if he was the President of a sovereign state. According to the agreement Chechnya would participate in the project by providing the emerging consortium with a right to rent part of the Baku-Grozny-Novorosiisk oil pipeline with attached enterprises and infrastructure.

Concurrently, aspirant regional powers are making moves in the security and oil realm suggesting confidence in the imminent implementations of their designs. Pakistan is reinforcing the ISI-controlled Afghan security detachments in Azerbaijan. Already in late 1993 and early 1994, the ISI deployed several hundreds strong Hizb-i-Islami forces to Azerbaijan to help fight the Armenians and guard the oil pipelines. Meanwhile, Turkey is planning on taking over parts of the US Air Base at Incirlik that is being evacuated. The new Turkish forces will provide the security of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline through both stationary and mobile forces.

Thus, Moscow believes, and not without reason, that all of these activities and preparations make sense only in case Russian influence and presence in the Caucasus is drastically reduced. A flare-up of Islamist terrorism and subversion is a prime instrument to achieve this end.

And Moscow has very good reasons to be apprehensive. On January 6, 1998, Pyotr Marchenko, a plenipotentiary representative of the Russian President in Adygei, Dagestan, Kabardin-Balkaria and Karachai-Circassia and also in Stavropol Territory, noted that the Russian security services have accumulated evidence that "the Northern Caucasus is a region of special and enhanced interest for foreign secret services" as well as the terrorist organizations they sponsor. He disclosed that the security services " had detained and were investigating cases of a number of citizens from the West and the Middle East, who took part in reconnaissance and sabotage operations. These operations are aimed at destabilising the situation and, in particular in Dagestan, at kindling internecine strife." The intelligence operatives exposed did not limit themselves to collection of data about Russia or other regional activities. "Overseas secret services," Marchenko stressed, "all but openly organize, train and equip militants at semi-clandestine centers, which is not always actively resisted in the localities." According to Marchenko, the late December 1997 terrorist strike in Buinaksk "had been provoked by precisely such militants." .....

Meanwhile, Moscow is determined to resolutely fight the escalation and intensification of Islamist terrorism in the Caucasus. Hence, resolving the Chechen crisis thus becomes a major challenge and urgent necessity. Given the growing economic and strategic importance of the Caucasus, the future of Chechnya is more than a bilateral issue. Thus, a new struggle for the control of the Caucasus and their rich oil reserves is escalating. And as the Moscow-Grozny negotiations over oil and political issues become even more crucial, given their ramifications for Russia's own vital interests, the expediency of using Islamist terrorism, violence and subversion in order to exert additional pressure on Moscow will only increase. Determined to consolidate their control over the strategically and economically crucial Caucasus, the Islamists and their sponsoring states have already resolved to escalate their terroristic Jihad to achieve what no negotiations can deliver. And herein lies the quintessence of the grim prospects for the Caucasus.".....

"When you land on Khodinka military airfield in Moscow, you see a glass office tower, surrounded by a windowless three-storey fort, overlooking the runway. This glass tower houses the eyes, ears and once feared long arms of the Russian army - the Chief Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian army, known by the abbreviation GRU. During the Cold War these eyes and ears were focused on another glass and concrete fortress - the Pentagon. But now the Russian army is facing a very different threat and the GRU has found a new enemy. The GRU's new nemesis dwells in a grayish concrete office block on the outskirts of Rawalpindi, a bustling Pakistani city near Islamabad. It is the headquarters of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's main security service and the grand puppet master behind a host of Islamic insurgent movements all over the world: from Harakat ul-Ansar in Kashmir, Tajikistan, Bosnia, the Taliban in Afghanistan, to Shamil Basayev's forces in Chechnya. GRU's first battle with the ISI was 20 years ago. An elite team of 'spetznaz' (special purpose) commandos boarded a military transport plane on Khodinka airfield and lit an inferno 3,369 kilometres southeast of Moscow by storming the presidential palace in Kabul and assassinating Afghani President Hafezullah Amin. For all nine years and 50 days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the ISI, teamed up with the CIA, armed, trained and sheltered different factions of Afghan mujaheddin - most of them radical Islamic groups. When the Soviets finally departed, Pakistan was left with an explosive motley of thousands of armed and zealous men with a lot of time on their hands and who knew nothing but how to fight. Sending these restless young men to die for Islamic causes in faraway lands became at once a practical necessity and a means of achieving the geopolitical objectives of Pakistani leadership: creation of a trans-Asian axis stretching from its eastern border with China through Afghanistan, the former Soviet republics of central Asia to the oil- and gas-rich shores of the Caspian Sea. To do that, Pakistan would have to control all of Afghanistan and drive out of central Asia the last remnants of Russian influence. Russia, however, has designs of its own for central Asia and has done everything in its power to create a buffer between pro-Pakistani Taliban forces and former Soviet republics of central Asia, bordering Afghanistan from the north. By some strange twist of fate, the role of this buffer fell on a man the GRU hunted unsuccessfully for nine years - Uzbek warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud, whose forces now control a narrow strip of land along Afghanistan's northern frontier with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. If it weren't for the military help Shah Massoud is getting from Russian forces stationed in Tajikistan, he would have never survived the Taliban onslaught. To stop the flow of arms to Ahmed Shah Massoud, Pakistanis needed a diversion that would have forced Russians to switch their attention and resources away from central Asia. That diversion soon presented itself in the form of a brewing conflict between Moscow and its rebel Autonomous Republic of Chechnya, which wanted full independence from Russia. It was a perfect opportunity for the Pakistani intelligence. In 1994, Shamil Basayev, a young Chechen field commander, who a year earlier had distinguished himself in Abkhazia - a breakaway republic of the former Soviet Georgia - caught the attention of Pakistani intelligence stationed in the neighbouring oil-rich Azerbaijan, where about 1,500 Afghan mujaheddin under the command of Pakistani officers were fighting Armenians to reclaim for Azeris the rebel Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh. In April 1994, the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence arranged for Basayev and his trusted lieutenants to undergo intensive Islamic indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in the Khost province of Afghanistan at Amir Muawia camp, set up in the early 1980s by the CIA and ISI and run by famous Afghani warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In July 1994, upon graduating from Amir Muawia, Basayev was transfered to Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan to undergo training in advanced guerrilla tactics. In Pakistan, Basayev met the highest ranking Pakistani military and intelligence officers: Minister of Defence General Aftab Shahban Mirani, Minister of Interior General Naserullah Babar, and the head of the ISI branch in charge of supporting Islamic causes, General Javed Ashraf, (all now retired). High-level connections soon proved very useful to Basayev. That same summer, the Pakistan-backed Taliban offensive against the government of the Iranian- backed president of Afghanistan, Burhanuddin Rabbani (later expelled), threatened to cut the Chechen drug trade. The Taliban had taken Amir Muawia and other Khost-area camps, disrupting plans to train hundreds of Chechen fighters there. After personal intervention of General Babar, Taliban and government forces allowed shipments of Chechen drugs through their lines while they were slitting each other's throats. The training of Chechen fighters also went as scheduled in Khost-area camps now controlled by one of the largest Kashmiri terrorist groups, the Harkat ul-Ansar. Pakistani intelligence also sent experienced and battle-hardened officers to train Chechen fighters on site. One of the most prominent Pakistani nationals is Abu Abdulla Jafa, who along with Basayev and Jordanian-born Afghan veteran Khattab (he goes by the one name) has organized a 'terrorist academy' in Chechnya, according to U.S. and Russian sources. Russians also suspect that Abu Abdulla Jafa is a career officer of Pakistan's elite Northern Light Infantry Brigade, and the tactical mastermind behind Basayev's August invasions into Dagestan. Russian security services also suspect that Pakistan supplies Chechens with deadly shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missiles - leftovers of the Afghan war. Meeting in Mogadishu The Russian air force has already lost at least three SU-25 ground attack planes and a half dozen helicopters to Stingers. But Pakistan's involvement in the Chechen conflict goes far beyond supplying Chechens with weapons and expertise: the ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war. According to a renowned terrorism expert, Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the master plan for the latest flare-up in Kashmir and in the Caucuses was prepared in August and September 1996, during a secret summit of HizbAllah International in Mogadishu, Somalia. The summit, according to U.S. anti- terrorism experts, was attended by now infamous Osama bin Ladin and high- ranking Iranian and Pakistani intelligence officers. Pakistani ISI General Javed Ashraf was charged with organizing the logistics of transporting Afghan mudjahedeen and Chechen fighters and their weapons from training camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan and Lebanon. Saudi terrorist-billionaire bin Ladin undertook the financing of the whole operation. Russian intelligence analysts estimate that the current campaign in Chechnya and Dagestan has cost bin Ladin $25 million. That is one of the reasons that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has so far refused to negotiate with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov: he knows that the decision to stop fighting is not in the hands of Maskhadov, who one day vows to hand in Basayev and Khattab, but the next day appoints him commander of the eastern front. Russian officials are certain that for the war to stop in Chechnya, the decision must be taken in the gray building in Rawalpindi, by the new military government of General Pervaiz Musharraf."
Who's calling the shots?: Chechen conflict finds Islamic roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan
The Gazette (Montreal), 26 October 1999
(Above article by Levon Sevunts. Since 1990, Levon Sevunts has covered wars and ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus as a freelance war correspondent and reporter with the Armenian TV news program Haylur. In 1992, he moved to Montreal where he is a freelance journalist, writing in English, Russian and Armenian. Sevunts replaces David Manicom in the rotation of Gazette foreign-issues columnists. Manicom, a Canadian foreign-service worker, is on assignment in Beijing.)

"U.S. post-Cold War era foreign policy has designated Central Asia and the Caucasus as a 'strategic area.' Yet this policy no longer consists of containing the 'spread of communism', but rather in preventing Russia and China from becoming competing capitalist powers . In this regard, the U.S. has increased its military presence along the entire 40th parallel, extending from Bosnia and Kosovo to the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, all of which have entered into bilateral military agreements with Washington. The 1999 war in Yugoslavia and the subsequent outbreak of war in Chechnya in September 1999 was a crucial turning point in Russian-American relations. It also marked a rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing, and the signing of several military cooperation agreements between Russia and China. U.S. covert support to the two main Chechen rebel groups (through Pakistan’s ISI) was known to the Russian government and military. (For further details, see Chapter II.) However, it had previously never been made public or raised at the diplomatic level. In November 1999, the Russian Defence Minister, Igor Sergueyev, formally accused Washington of supporting the Chechen rebels. Following a meeting held behind closed doors with Russia’s military high command, Sergueyev declared that: 'The national interests of the United States require that the military conflict in the Caucasus [Chechnya] be a fire, provoked as a result of outside forces', while adding that 'the West’s policy constitutes a challenge launched to Russia with the ultimate aim of weakening her international position and of excluding her from geo-strategic areas'. In the wake of the 1999 Chechen war, a new 'National Security Doctrine' was formulated and signed into law by Acting President Vladimir Putin, in early 2000. Barely acknowledged by the international media, a critical shift in East-West relations had occurred. The document reasserted the building of a strong Russian State, the concurrent growth of the Military, as well as the reintroduction of State controls over foreign capital. The document carefully spelled out what it described as ' fundamental threats' to Russia’s national security and sovereignty. More specifically, it referred to 'the strengthening of military-political blocs and alliances' [namely GUUAM], as well as to 'NATO’s eastward expansion' while underscoring 'the possible emergence of foreign military bases and major military presences in the immediate proximity of Russian borders.' The document confirms that 'international terrorism is waging an open campaign to destabilize Russia.' While not referring explicitly to CIA covert activities in support of armed terrorist groups, such as the Chechen rebels, it nonetheless calls for appropriate 'actions to avert and intercept intelligence and subversive activities by foreign states against the Russian Federation.' The cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy has been to encourage — under the disguise of 'peace-keeping' and so-called 'conflict resolution' — the formation of small pro-U.S. States which lie strategically at the hub of the Caspian Sea basin, which contains vast oil and gas reserves...."
The Anglo-American Military Axis
Centre For Research On Globalisation, 10 March 2003

"Russia's main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington's perfunctory condemnation of Islamic terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen war are the Anglo-American oil conglomerates which are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin. The two main Chechen rebel armies (respectively led by Commander Shamil Basayev and Emir Khattab) estimated at 35,000 strong were supported by Pakistan's ISI, which also played a key role in organizing and training the Chechen rebel army......Following his training and indoctrination stint, Basayev was assigned to lead the assault against Russian federal troops in the first Chechen war in 1995. His organization had also developed extensive links to criminal syndicates in Moscow as well as ties to Albanian organized crime and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1997-98, according to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) 'Chechen warlords started buying up real estate in Kosovo... through several real estate firms registered as a cover in Yugoslavia'.Basayev's organisation has also been involved in a number of rackets including narcotics, illegal tapping and sabotage of Russia's oil pipelines, kidnapping, prostitution, trade in counterfeit dollars and the smuggling of nuclear materials..."
Who Is Osama Bin Laden?
Centre for Research on Globalisation, 12 September 2001

"Hundreds of Arab nationals of Chechen ancestry had joined the 6,000 plus jihadi mercenary force raised by the CIA through the ISI in the 1980s for fighting against Soviet troops and had fought in Afghanistan under Osama bin Laden. They maintained their links with bin Laden after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1988. Some of them were taken by bin Laden into his Al Qaeda and IIF and they used to work as instructors in the training camps in Afghan territory. They were also used by the ISI for training the Taliban army after 1994 and for assisting the Taliban in its fight against the Northern Alliance. Many others were sent to Chechnya by bin Laden after 1994 to assist the indigenous Chechen groups in their fight for an Islamic Caliphate."
Chechnya Continues To Bleed
South Asia Analysis Group, 30 December 2002

Find Out How Dirty Games Are Being Played In The Caucacus
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"Another option to ease congestion in Turkish waters would be to extend Ukraine’s Odessa-Brody pipeline to Poland’s Baltic port of Gdansk.
Last week, Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko said his country was ready to proceed with the extension and had set up joint structures with Poland and Kazakhstan to work out a plan to complete construction, launching the project in 2006. Kazakhstan has expressed interest in the $600 million plan and the European Union has invested in a feasibility study, which should be ready by the end of the year."
Black Sea Pipelines Look to Bypass Straits
Reuters, 28 November 2005

"Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov and his Polish counterpart Kazimerz Marcinkiwicz signed in Warsaw on Thursday a declaration on finishing the construction of the oil pipeline 'Odessa-Brody' to Plock (Poland), the press service of the Ukrainian prime minister reported on Friday. 'We want to implement this project to the end,' Marcinkiwicz told journalists after the signing of the declaration, the economic news agency PRIME-TASS reports. According to the Polish premier, during the coming three months, profile ministries will prepare specific proposals, including data on the project self-repayment. As he added, the issue of providing lands for the construction of the section Brody-Plock is a technical one and won’t complicate the implementation of the project. Yekhanurov, in his turn, assured that within 90 days, the Ukrainian side could begin using the oil pipeline Odessa-Brody, which is now used for pumping Russian oil, according to the direct destination."
Uraine, Poland PMs sign declaration on oil pipeline
Itar-Tass, 17 February 2006

"Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said Thursday that work on the extension of the Odessa-Brody Ukrainian oil pipeline to Plock in central Poland would be speeded up... The new pipeline would transport crude from the Caspian Sea oilfields to Ukraine, Poland and possibly western Europe, thus allowing greater diversification of supply sources and making Poland less dependent on Russian supplies."
Work on Odessa-Brody-Plock oil pipeline to pick up speed
EuroPap, 16 February 2006

"Hizb-ut-Tahrir was established in the United Kingdom by Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, who joined the party as a teenager in Lebanon during the early 1970s. He also created another organization that aims to create a global Islamic Caliphate, Al Muhajiroun ('The Emigrants,' a name he has said 'refers to the early followers of the Prophet Muhammad.'), which he has led from an office in London. Al Muhajiroun, the Sheikh has said, was established in Mecca but launched publicly in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with 40 founding members on March 3, 1983, a date chosen because it was 'the 59th anniversary of the destruction of the Ottoman Caliphate.' Expelled from Saudi Arabia for radical political activity, the Sheikh arrived in Great Britain on January 14, 1986. He soon began to establish both Al Muhajiroun and Hizb ut-Tahrir on fertile British soil.... The Sheikh in 1999 became chief sponsor in Great Britain for the International Islamic Front (IIF), a group persuading and assisting young British Muslims to undergo 'guns and live ammunition' combat training and then go overseas to fight Jihad ('Holy War) in Chechnya and the Balkans."
Islamists Down Under
FrontPage Magazine, 24 April 2006

"Media freedom in Russia came under scrutiny yesterday when it emerged that the Government had forced scores of radio stations to stop broadcasting news from the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.... Radio Liberty is thought to have angered the Kremlin last year after it interviewed Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord who claimed responsibility for the Beslan school siege."
Voice of America bulletins are forced off the air
London Times, 8 July 2006

"There is now growing acknowledgement in the international intelligence community that Britain has operated within the framework of a 'Covenant of Security' with these networks.... But even this doesn’t fully explain the phenomenon at stake.... The failure of the authorities to act can only be explained in light of the fact these extremist networks were not only tolerated, but were actively protected due to their utility to British foreign policy objectives in the Balkans and elsewhere. "
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
7/7: The British Terror Paradigm
Media Monitors Network, 14 July 2006

"Aswat, who used to be Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard, was believed by both British and US investigators to have been the key senior al-Qaeda operative who masterminded the London bombings..... Khan and his colleagues were reportedly members of al-Muhajiroun.... Why is the [British] government downplaying these issues? ...... American and French intelligence officials confirm that Aswat and his colleagues, Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri, were all used in an MI6 operation to recruit British Muslims to fight in Kosovo in the 1990s... The failure of the authorities to act can only be explained in light of the fact these extremist networks were not only tolerated, but were actively protected due to their utility to British foreign policy objectives in the Balkans and elsewhere. The danger is that the government’s overwhelming imperative to conceal these policies from the public are compromising the integrity of the [7/7] criminal investigation. Many of these networks in the UK remain intact. People associated with Bakri and other UK-based operatives linked to terrorism whom I identify in my writing, and who by their own admission have undergone terrorist training and are willing to carry out attacks inside the UK, have not been pursued.... These networks are closely associated with the UK-based operatives linked to the London bombings. For example, in the summer of 2000, Yousef Bodanksy, former Director of the [US] Congressional Task Force on Terrorism, reported that US and British intelligence had held a formal meeting hosted by Azerbaijan to discuss the supply of arms and funds to al-Qaeda mercenaries in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East. "
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
7/7: The British Terror Paradigm
Media Monitors Network, 14 July 2006
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, London, United Kingdom. He teaches courses in political theory, international relations and contemporary history at the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom. He is the author of 'The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry'

"The modus operandi, as illustrated in the lives of the London bombers, is simple. Young Muslims fall out of mainstream society and become alienated from their parents and 'stuffy' Islamic culture. Often they turn to petty crime, as did Hussain and Tanweer. Though neither served prison sentences, it is often there, or by associating with low-level criminals, that they get in touch with extremists. Indeed, it was in prison that Richard Reid, the British shoe bomber, met Islamic terrorists, converting to their faith as he did his time. Websites and satellite television channels supply images and incendiary rhetoric from any location on Earth where Muslims are fighting non-Muslims. Once Chechnya was the battlefield of choice for armchair viewing; now Iraq is the focus. Some of these radicals come into contact with veterans of wars or of the Afghan camps, and it is under their influence that fanaticism becomes terrorism.... It was in the maze of red-brick back-to-backs of Beeston, a short drive from Leeds city centre, that Hussain, Tanweer and Khan all became connected. The two younger men were childhood friends who later fell heavily under Khan's influence. But it was in a backstreet bookshop that the trio 'turned religious' about four years ago, says one friend. Their conversion, he claims, coincided with the opening of Iqra, an Islamic bookshop, in Beeston. 'I think the shop is innocent,' the friend says, 'but I think it sold under-the-counter stuff, videos of what was happening in Bosnia, Iraq and Chechnya. Stuff the television could not show. Rapes, murders, mutilation, all saying: 'Look what is happening to your Muslim brothers and sisters.' You see that and you start to get angry. That was the beginning.' The 29-year-old, who refused to give his name, added: 'From that, you feel you want to learn more about religion, about your Muslim brothers and sisters around the world getting murdered.'"
The path to mass murder
Daily Telegraph, 17 July 2006

"The only man convicted in connection with the 9/11 terrorist attacks began plotting the downfall of western society from the austere surroundings of the British Library. Newly released court papers reveal the most detailed account yet of the life of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was once dubbed the '20th hijacker', during his nine years in London.... The evidence, some of which has been declassified for the first time, also confirms that Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the planners of the 9/11 atrocity, flew to London from Germany in December 2000 to meet Moussaoui....Another document, written by an FBI agent before the attacks on New York and Washington, accuses Omar Bakri Mohammed, the radical preacher now barred from Britain, of sending his Al-Muhajiroun supporters to flight training schools in America..... The library confirmed this weekend that Moussaoui was issued with a five-year pass in 1994 after he had enrolled on a master’s degree course in international business at South Bank University. Although Special Branch officers are believed to have made inquiries about his dealings with the library, the books he read there remain a mystery. What is certain, however, is that by the time Moussaoui’s pass expired in July 1999 he was a hardened extremist who had already travelled to Afghanistan and Chechnya to fight with the mujaheddin..... ”
British Library quest of 9/11 plotter
Sunday Times, 6 August 2006

"The Ukrainian and Polish premiers said Wednesday that Ukraine's Odessa-Brody pipeline should be extended to the Polish city of Plock and carry Caspian Sea oil to Poland and Europe, a move that could help lessen the continent's reliance on Russian oil. 'One of the most important projects is to construct the Odessa-Brody-Plock pipeline. We see how to do it and we have the intention to work together in this direction,' Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said at a joint news conference with his Polish counterpart Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Ukraine has been debating how to use the pipeline for years, with Russia lobbying for it to pump Russian oil in the opposite direction — to the Black Sea port of Odessa for further transport to western markets through Turkey's Bosporus. Western-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and the United States have favored using it to pump Caspian oil from other ex-Soviet republics. Kaczynski, who arrived in Kiev for a two-day visit, echoed Yanukovych and said there is sufficient financial support to complete the project... During Kaczynski's meeting with Yushchenko later Wednesday, they called for a quick extension of Odessa-Brody pipeline to Plock, saying it should be a priority in bilateral relations.Yanukovych, who lost to Yushchenko in a 2004 presidential vote following the Orange Revolution but returned to the country's No. 2 job in August, has made improving frayed ties with Moscow a priority."
Ukrainian, Polish premiers urge extension of Odessa-Brody pipeline to Poland
Associated Press, 15 November 2006

"The presidents of Poland and Ukraine have announced plans to build a pipeline which would reduce their dependency on Russian oil. Speaking after talks with Viktor Yushchenko, Poland's Lech Kaczynski said both nations were committed to the extension of the Odessa-Brody pipeline. The pair said they hoped to hold an energy summit in May, with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Georgia joining in. Both Poland and Ukraine are heavily dependent on Russian oil imports. Mr Yushchenko expressed hopes that the European Union would co-finance the project, but said he counted mostly on the backing of international oil companies. He also voiced his support for the creation of a pipeline energy corridor connecting Asia and Europe. If the plans go ahead, the Odessa-Brody pipeline, currently 670km (410 miles) long, would be extended to Plock, which is home to Poland's main refinery, PKN Orlen. Orlen currently relies entirely on Russian oil supplies. The extension of the Odessa-Brody pipeline could help bring Caspian oil to Poland, thus bypassing the Russian supplier."
Poland and Ukraine make oil plans
BBC Online, 7 March 2007

"The conflict that has erupted in the Caucasus has set alarm bells ringing because of Georgia's pivotal role in the global energy market. Georgia has no significant oil or gas reserves of its own but it is a key transit point for oil from the Caspian and central Asia destined for Europe and the US. Crucially, it is the only practical route from this increasingly important producer region that avoids both Russia and Iran. The 1,770km (1,100 miles) Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which entered service only last year, pumps up to 1 million barrels of oil per day from Baku in Azerbaijan to Yumurtalik, Turkey, where it is loaded on to supertankers for delivery to Europe and the US. Around 249km of the route passes through Georgia, with parts running only 55km from South Ossetia. The security of the BTC pipeline, depicted in the James Bond film The World is Not Enough, has been a primary concern since before its construction. The first major attack on the pipeline took place only last week - not in Georgia but in Turkey where part of it was destroyed by PKK separatist rebels. Output from the pipeline, which is 30 per cent owned by BP and carries more than 1 per cent of the world's supply, is likely to be on hold for several weeks while the fire is extinguished and the damage repaired. But the threat of another attack by separatists in Georgia itself is very real. Only a few days before the Turkish explosion, Georgian separatists threatened to sabotage the pipeline if hostilities continued. The latest eruption of violence could easily spur fresh attacks. The BTC pipeline, which is buried throughout most of its length to make sabotage more difficult, was a politically highly charged project. It was firmly opposed by Russia, which views the Caucasus as its own sphere of influence and wants central Asian oil to be exported via its own territory. Russia also backs the South Ossetian and Abkhazian separatists in Georgia and relations between Moscow and Tbilisi have curdled into outright hostility in recent months. The BTC pipeline, which cost $3 billion to build, is a key plank of US foreign policy because it reduces Western reliance on oil from both the Middle East and Russia."
Energy pipeline that supplies West threatened by war Georgia conflict
London Times, 8 August 2008

"The giant Russian energy company, Gazprom, which controls the world's largest reserves of natural gas, has issued a stark warning to the European Union saying it must decide if it wants to continue receiving supplies of Russian gas. Speaking in an interview for the BBC's Newsnight programme, Gazprom deputy chairman Alexander Medvedev warned that Europe was now at a crossroads. 'Only three countries can be suppliers of pipeline gas in the long-term - Russia, Iran and Qatar. So there is no other choice than to deal with these suppliers,' he said. 'Europe should decide how to handle this situation… and if Europe doesn't need our gas, then we will find a way of selling it differently.' The threat comes as the EU scrambles to find alternative energy suppliers following the crisis in January, when Russia shut down the main pipeline into Europe for two weeks in a price dispute with the key transit country, Ukraine. The EU currently relies on Russia for a quarter of its total gas supplies. Of the bloc's 27 member states, seven are almost totally dependent on Russian gas....But is it already too late for Bulgaria and Europe as a whole to escape the addiction to Russian gas? It is now a vital issue for the EU and it is leading to increasing friction with Moscow in what being described as a new 'Great Game' between Russia and the West over energy supplies. Gazprom is already manoeuvring cleverly in this game, pushing ahead with highly ambitious plans which would strengthen its hold over Europe. Despite the sharp fall in oil and gas prices which have hit Gazprom hard, the company is determined to build two new pipelines to Europe at a total cost of at least $20bn (�12.5bn)....The first pipeline, called Nord Stream, would go from western Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany, while the second, called South Stream, would go from Russia's south coast under the Black Sea to Bulgaria, eventually ending up in Italy. Gazprom wants to pump gas under the sea directly to Europe so it can avoid transit countries such as Ukraine which lie along the existing land routes. It argues this will improve Europe's energy security. But it will also give Russia the ability to pump much more gas to Europe. Mr Medvedev of Gazprom believes that by 2020, Russia's share of the European gas market will increase from 26% to 33% 'because local production is going down and demand is increasing'...While the Commission seems unconcerned by the long-term implications of Nord Stream, there is real worry about Gazprom's other big pipeline project, South Stream. No construction work has begun on it yet, but Gazprom insists feasibility studies will be completed this year and the pipeline will be built across the Black Sea to Bulgaria and into the heart of Europe by 2015. For Europe this could spell disaster. It could kill off one of its most important schemes for breaking away from its dependency on Russia. For five years, the EU has been pushing for a pipeline to be built from the Caspian region to Austria which would carry gas from Central Asia, the Caucasus and Middle East. Crucially, the pipeline called Nabucco would not go across any Russian territory. But like South Stream it would enter Europe via Bulgaria and possibly use several of the same European transit countries. There are serious doubts that both Nabucco and South Stream are viable. One European Commission official told the BBC that there was now a 'war of gas pipelines' going on with Russia, with 'harsh competition as each side tries to gather support for its plans'....And Moscow itself is now openly saying that competition for energy supplies in areas including Central Asia and the Caspian Sea could lead to military conflicts along its borders over the next decade. A security strategy document, published in May, was signed by the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev."
Energy fuels new 'Great Game' in Europe
BBC Online, 9 June 2009

"On one side are Muslim extremists who want to break away from Moscow’s rule and set up an Islamic state. On the other are the Kremlin-backed forces hell-bent on stopping them. Caught in the middle are countless civilians. It is unreported in Russia and virtually unnoticed by the rest of the world. Yet just five months after the long war in Chechnya was officially declared to be at an end, the northern Caucasus has seen a big upsurge in violence. Five hundred people have been killed so far this year, double last year’s toll. It has become the Kremlin’s most pressing problem after the economic crisis....In Dagestan, home to more than 50 ethnic groups, clan warfare and bitter political rivalries have compounded internal conflict. The interior minister responsible for security, Adilgerei Magomedtagirov, was killed by a sniper as he attended a wedding in June. Two dozen policemen have been murdered in the past year. Russian special forces carry out almost daily raids against those they suspect of being Islamic terrorists."
Dirty war rages on Russia's doorstep
Sunday Times, 20 September 2009

"The controversial Kremlin-backed president of Chechnya claims that militants in the violence-plagued Russian province are backed by U.S. and British intelligence agencies. Ramzan Kadyrov's remark was probably the bluntest claim by a Russian official that insurgents in the restive North Caucasus have Western support. Western officials have dismissed such assertions as nonsense. A statement from Kadyrov's office Wednesday quoted him as suggesting that Western-backed mercenaries are fighting the government in Chechnya. It quotes him as saying, 'We are fighting in the mountains with the American and English special services.' Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin suggested during his presidency that the West was encouraging unrest in the North Caucasus."
Chechen Leader Claims US, Britain Back Rebels
Associated Press, 23 September 2009

"The Kremlin-backed chief of Russia's turbulent Chechnya region said his forces were fighting U.S. and British intelligence services who want to split the country apart, according to an interview published on Thursday. Former rebel-turned-Moscow-ally Ramzan Kadyrov said in comments to Zavtra newspaper reprinted on his official website that he had seen the U.S. driving licence of a CIA operative who was killed in a security operation he led. Chechen authorities have previously said insurgents following the radical Wahabist form of Islam receive support from international Islamist groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but have not accused the West of instigating violence. 'We're fighting in the mountains with the American and English intelligence agencies. They are fighting not against Kadyrov, not against traditional Islam, they are fighting against the sovereign Russian state,' he said. The West sought to attack both Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the country as a whole by targeting the country's weakest regions, Kadyrov said in the comments republished prominently on www.chechnya.gov.ru. Kadyrov was appointed by Moscow as a bulwark against separatist rebels in the mainly Muslim province, but rights activists say he flouts federal laws and is himself responsible for much of the violence that has grown in recent months. 'The West is interested to cut off the Caucasus from Russia. The Caucasus - a strategic frontier of Russia. If they take away the Caucasus from Russia, it's like taking away half of Russia.' Many Chechens have emigrated to Europe, Turkey, and Georgia and some have been recruited as insurgents, said Kadyrov. 'Now they strike a blow against Putin and Russia. Chechnya, Dagestan are weak, vulnerable parts of the Russian state,' Kadyrov said, referring to the neighbouring region, which has also been rocked by violence. Asked if he was saying there were signs of CIA and MI6 participation in the violence, he said 'Of course', he had seen evidence of their direct involvement in an operation he led. 'There was a terrorist Chitigov, he worked for the CIA. He had U.S. citizenship...When we killed him, I was in charge of the operation and we found a U.S. driving licence and all the other documents were also American,' he said."
Russia's Chechen chief blames CIA for violence
Reuters, 24 September 2009

"Asked by the interviewer, Zavtra editor in chief Alexander Prokhanov, why the security situation in the North Caucasus has worsened lately, Kadyrov said that the security bodies in Ingushetia and Dagestan have not been operating effectively. He also said that rebels in the region are 'given narcotics tablets,' turned into zombies, after which they go 'to blow themselves up,' and that 'the hand of the West' is behind all of this. Kadyrov insisted that the rebels in the North Caucasus receive little aid from the 'Muslim world' and that all of their weapons come from Soviet stockpiles in Georgia and Azerbaijan. 'The West is interested in severing the Caucasus from Russia,' Kadyrov told Prokhanov. 'The Caucasus is Russia's strategic frontier. If they take away the Caucasus from Russia it's like taking away half of Russia. In their time, the Americans created Bin Laden, taught him the art of terrorism. Now they are blanketing us with groups of foreigners. These are not ‘freedom fighters' - these are brilliantly trained terrorists. We are fighting in the mountains with the American and English special services. They are fighting not against Kadyrov, not against traditional Islam; they are fighting against the sovereign Russian state. Putin united Russia, pulled it out of chaos, sent off [the Russia tycoons] Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Khodorkovsky. He took away everything from them. Do you think they forgave him? Now a new blow is being struck against Putin, against Russia. Chechnya, Dagestan -they are weak, vulnerable links in the Russian state.' Kadyrov noted that many Chechens emigrated to Europe, Turkey and Georgia. 'It is precisely from these [people] that terrorists are being recruited [and] being sent to us,' he said, adding that they will not succeed and that only a month or a month and a half more is needed to 'smash' the rebels. 'We will not give our territory to the Americans,' Kadyrov said. Asked by Prokhanov if he meant that he had found 'traces' of the CIA and MI6, Kadyrov answered: 'Of course.' The Chechen president added: 'There was a terrorist Chitigov, he worked for the CIA. He had U.S. citizenship. He was a brigadier general under Khattab [the late Arab commander of Chechen rebel forces-EDM]. When we killed him -I was in charge of the operation then- we found a U.S. driving license on him and all the other documents were also American' (www.zavtra.ru, September 23)."
Kadyrov: the West is Behind the North Caucasus Insurgency
Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 176