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Argos Media

Russia ends anti-terrorism operations in Chechnya | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...russia-chechnya-anti-terrorism

Russia Chechnya Akhmad Kadyrov Anna Politovskaya Umar Israilov Adam Delimkhanov

shared by Argos Media on 16 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Russia today agreed to end its counterterrorist operations in Chechnya, in a move that signals the formal end of the Kremlin's war in the republic and enhances the power of Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov.
  • Russia's national anti-terrorist committee said military restrictions in force in Chechnya would be abolished from today. Moscow has maintained a strict security regime for a decade in Chechnya, the scene of two wars against separatist rebels.
  • This morning Kadyrov, a close ally of Putin, welcomed the decision to end anti-terrorist operations. "We are extremely satisfied. The modern Chechen republic is a peaceful and budding territory. The end of the counterterrorist operation will spur on economic growth in the republic," he told the Russian news agency Interfax.
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  • Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, sent troops into Chechnya in 1999. His aim was to win back the region, which had enjoyed de-facto independence since the first Chechen war in 1994-1996. The security regime included arbitrary arrests, roadblocks, curfews and restrictions on journalists.
  • In return for abandoning their struggle for independence, Akhmad Kadyrov and other ex-separatists were granted sweeping powers and autonomy denied to other Russian republics. Moscow also agreed to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses. The policy appeared to work. Chechnya's shell-ridden capital, Grozny, was transformed.
  • some inside the Kremlin have questioned whether Putin's policy of entrusting power to Chechens - known as "Chechenisation" - has gone too far. Kadyrov has been repeatedly accused of murdering his enemies, including the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a critic who described him as a "coward armed to the teeth". He denies involvement in her death.In January, a Chechen exile, Umar Israilov, who had accused Kadryov of torturing him was shot dead in a street in Vienna. And last month, Sulim Yamadayev, a former Chechen rebel commander who fell out with Kadyrov, was shot dead in Dubai. Police in the United Arab Emirates accused Kadyrov's cousin and heir apparent, Adam Delimkhanov, of ordering the assassination.
  • Russian newspapers today suggested that some inside the Russian government now believe Kadyrov has grown far too powerful, but have little idea how to keep control of him. One analyst said Chechnya now enjoys the kind of autonomy that its separatist leaders in the 1990s had failed to achieve, while remaining a part of the Russian Federation.
  • "It would be difficult to describe Chechnya as peaceful. But Kadyrov has achieved 'stability' in the Russian and Chechen definition of the word," Sergei Markedonov, of Moscow's Institute for Political and Military Studies, wrote in theMoscow Times.
  • "Nonetheless this stability has come at a very high price. The flip side is that Chechnya's internal political issues are largely resolved without Russia and with minimal adherence to federal laws," he added. "In this sense, a new type of separatism has won out in Chechnya."
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Europe | Russia 'ends Chechnya operation' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8001495.stm

Chechnya Russia

shared by Argos Media on 16 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Russia has ended its decade-long "counter-terrorism operation" against separatist rebels in the southern republic of Chechnya, officials say.
  • Russian forces have fought two wars in the mainly Muslim republic since 1994.
  • Moscow says Chechnya has stabilised under its pro-Kremlin President, Ramzan Kadyrov, but human rights groups accuse his militias of widespread abuses.
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  • "We received the news about cancelling the counter-terrorism operation with great satisfaction," Mr Kadyrov told Russia's Interfax news agency on Thursday.
  • Sporadic clashes persist in Chechnya, however, and violence continues in the neighbouring regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia.
  • The BBC's Richard Galpin in Moscow says the announcement is a moment of great symbolism, but that in fact relative stability was established some time ago. The Chechen rebels who have been fighting for independence for their republic for 15 years have not been able to carry out any serious attacks since 2004, our correspondent says.
  • while the rebels have been confined to the mountains, the capital Grozny, which once lay in ruins after two brutal wars, is now being rapidly rebuilt, he adds.
  • Our correspondent says now the question is how many Russian troops will remain in Chechnya. A source in the Russian interior ministry has said 5,000 of its troops would gradually pull out, but it is not yet clear how many regular soldiers will do the same, he adds.
Pedro Gonçalves

Massacre in woods that brought war to Moscow's metro | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...assacre-woods-war-moscow-metro

Russia Ingushetia Dagestan Chechnya Caucasus

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Apr 10 - Cached
  • The misfortune of the four garlic pickers was to have unwittingly strayed into a "counter-insurgency operation" conducted by Russian forces in the densely wooded border between Chechnya and Ingushetia. The soldiers, apparently looking for militant rebels who are waging their own violent campaign against the Russian state, came across the unarmed group, brutally killing them amid the picturesque massif of low hills.Normally this atrocity on a cold day in February would have raised barely a ripple of attention had it not been for the terrible events in Moscow this week. In a video address on Thursday, Chechnya's chief insurgent leader, Doku Umarov, said Monday's suicide attacks on the Russian capital's metro were in revenge for the killings of the garlic pickers near the Ingush village of Arshaty. He claimed federal security service (FSB) commandos had used knives to mutilate their bodies of the dead boys.
  • Forty people died and more than 70 were injured when two suicide attackers from the North Caucasus set off their devices at stations outside the headquarters of the FSB and Park Kultury.
  • human rights groups say it is undeniable that the brutal actions of Russia's security forces have fuelled the insurgency raging across the North Caucasus region of Russia and the ethnic republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Kabardino-Balkaria. This largely invisible war has now reached the Kremlin's doorstep.
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  • The nature of the armed conflict in the North Caucasus has also mutated. From 1994 to 1996 Boris Yeltsin fought a war against mainly secular Chechen separatists who wanted – like the newly independent Georgians over the mountains – their own constitution and state. In 1999-2004 president Vladimir Putin fought a second Chechen war. The aim was to crush Chechen separatism.Now, however, the Kremlin is battling another kind of enemy. The new generation of insurgents have an explicitly Islamist goal: to create a radical pan-Caucasian emirate with sharia law, a bit like Afghanistan under the Taliban. In February Umarov vowed to "liberate" not only the North Caucasus and Krasnodar Krai but Astrakhan – on the Caspian Sea -and the Volga region as well.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Europe | Prominent Chechen killed in Dubai - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7972421.stm

Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov Russia

shared by Argos Media on 30 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The Russian authorities have confirmed a prominent opponent of the pro-Kremlin Chechen President, Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead in Dubai on Saturday. Diplomats said Sulim Yamadayev's body had been identified by his relatives. Mr Yamadayev fell out with Mr Kadyrov last year and was sacked as commander of an elite security forces battalion. Saturday's killing is the fourth of a prominent Chechen since September, when Mr Yamadayev's brother Ruslan was shot dead while driving in central Moscow. The Chechen leader has denied any involvement in the killings.
  • Russia is poised to declare a formal end to its 10-year war in Chechnya this week, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Moscow.
  • Mr Yamadayev became commander of the elite Vostok security forces battalion, a unit of former rebels who have helped quell separatist resistance. In 2005, he was named a Hero of Russia, the top national honour. But last year, he was dismissed after falling out with Mr Kadyrov and later fled to the United Arab Emirates.
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  • In January, Umar Israilov, a former bodyguard for Mr Kadyrov who had accused him of torture and kidnapping, was shot dead on a street in Vienna. Then last month, a former deputy mayor of Grozny was shot dead in Moscow. In 2004, two Russian intelligence agents were convicted of killing a former Chechen president, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, in the nearby state of Qatar.
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