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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 | 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.
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