It is now known that the Islamic insurgency in the Caucasus (according to many experts an Al-Qaeda operation) had been an integral part of a long-term Western plan to wrestle the Caucasus region away from Russian control and place it under what some experts refer to as an Islamic Caliphate. Ankara, Baku and Tbilisi, as well as a steady stream of Islamic militants trained in the Arabian peninsula, Pakistan and Afghanistan were the active participants in this agenda throughout much of the 1990s, and its funding and organization was carried out by a consortium of special interests in Washington, London and Riyadh. It is also now known that Western intelligence agencies also conspired to force Russia out of the Balkans (Yugoslavia in particular) and Central Asia by targeting pro-Russian bastions in those regions. As it has been since the early 1980s, Islamic extremists have been the readily accessible tool that Western powers have exploited to carryout their geopolitical agenda in various theaters of operation. The following are some materials pertaining to this topic -
Why should this seemingly Russian problem concern us Armenians? Because Armenians in general, Diasporan Armenians in particular, seem to be having a very hard time accepting the fact that a weakened Russia in the Caucasus actually poses an existential threat for Armenia. To those among us that do not possess clearness of thought regarding this matter, I would just like to say that the Caucasus without an effective Russian presence would prove disastrous not only for Armenia but for the entire Eurasian continent.
Joining three important geopolitical zones - Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East - the Caucasus region is the gateway to Russia's vulnerable south, also known as its soft underbelly. Militarily, the region provides defensive depth to the Russian heartland. Economically, the region is a major hub for the strategic transfer of Eurasian energy and trade. Strategic planners have long realized that those who control this region could potentially control the political and economic life of Eurasia and beyond.
Moreover, from an Armenian perspective, it must be pointed out that the heavily Turkic and Islamic cultural and ethnic makeup of the region in question would not tolerate a non-Turkic or a non-Islamic power in their midst - without a major outside power acting as a guarantor or as a counterweight. Against this Turkic and Islamic center-of-gravity, the Russian presence has been the only counterweight in the region for the past two hundred-plus years. And it is precisely because of the Russian presence in the Caucasus that we Armenians have been able to maintain a presence and a nation-state in the region.
It is quite frightening that unbeknownst to most Armenians (because our collective attention has naturally been drawn to the region's east-west geopolitical plain), the northern Caucasus was actually on the verge of a radical Islamic/Turkic transformation throughout much of the 1990s. Had the northern Caucasus fallen victim to this Western/Turkic/Islamic agenda, it would have been the southern Caucasus' turn not much long thereafter.
In short, without a Russian presence in the Caucasus, the region in question would eventually transform itself back into a Turkic/Islamic cesspool. Had the West's intentions for the Caucasus succeeded, not only would we Armenians be lamenting the lose of Nagorno Karabakh today, we would most probably be lamenting the lose of our fledgling republic as well. Without a Russian presence in the Caucasus, Armenia would automatically, by default, become subordinate to Ankara, Baku, Tbilisi and Western energy conglomerates. Those who complain about Armenia's current dependence on Moscow need to take the aforementioned geopolitical prospect into serious consideration. In other words, Armenia's independence from Russia would simply mean Armenia's dependence on Turkey.
Although Moscow has succeeded in crushing the Islamic terror onslaught in the northern Caucasus in the early 2000s and went on to thereafter defeat the Western-backed military regime in Georgia in 2008, Russian official know that a Turkic/Islamic threat remains in the region. As a result, as long as ethnic Russians run the show in the Kremlin, official Moscow will do everything in its power to have a strong presence in the Caucasus, both north and south. And needless to say, Armenia, located strategically in the south Caucasus, is pivotal to the Kremlin's aforementioned agenda. Armenians therefore need to wake up from their sleep and realize that US actions in the region has directly and indirectly been very detrimental to the health and well-being of the Armenian state. In my opinion, had the US been successful in its policies against Russia, Armenia would have once again disappeared from the map.
The Caucasus region is like a table where Westerners, Turks, Azeris, Georgians, Iranians, Islamists, Russians and Armenians sit around and discuss political and economic matters. Imagine an Armenia at this table without the presence of Russia. In other words: Imagine Armenia's situation in a heavily Turkic, Islamic and Western dominated political landscape without the presence of the Russian Bear. Yes, it's a very frightening proposition, which is why I say the south Caucasus needs Pax Russica. For that to happen, however, Russia first has to drive-out Western interests from the entire region.
Turkey and Chechnya
I have already addressed the covert yet fundamental role Western powers played in encouraging the Chechen uprising in southern Russia during the 1990s. We now know that the war in Chechnya was an attempt by foreign powers to sever the geostrategically crucial region in question away from Moscow's control. Due to political considerations, however, Western support for terrorists in Chechnya could not be carried out overtly. As a result, Western support for Chechnya was for the most part relegated to covert assistance as well as diplomatic support, humanitarian help and pro-Chechen propaganda in the Western world's news press. And now, some information on the Turkish factor in the bloody conflict in the north Caucasus.
It was well known that for many years Turkish volunteers, more specifically members of the extremist pan-Turkist paramilitary organization known as the Grey Wolves, were sent into Chechnya to help Islamic extremists there fight against Russian security forces. Obviously, detailed information about Turkey's role in Chechnya, as well as that of the West's, remain classified. Nevertheless, it was widely known at the time that Chechen terrorists got their logistical support, financial support, medical support, military training and volunteers primarily from Pakistan, Gulf Arab states, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. It was also reported that the Islamic terror organization known in the West as Al Qaeda was partaking in the anti-Russian activities there as well.
During various stages of the conflict, it was well documented that not only were Turks fighting alongside Chechens, but wounded Chechen militants were being transported to Turkey via Georgia for treatment and recuperation. Naturally, the same was being done in Azerbaijan. Moreover, in Azerbaijan, Turkish operatives were participating in anti-Russian, anti-Iranian and anti-Armenian activities naturally in accordance with their pan-Turkist ideology. During the early 1990s, Turkish military officers, members of the Grey Wolves and personal from Al-Qaeda were even said to have participated in battles against Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh.
Nevertheless, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia had become safe-havens for Chechen terrorists for many years. Needless to say, all this was occurring right under the watchful eyes of top level US officials as well as various other Western powers. Doing research on this topic one cannot help but see the unmistakable Turkish flavor in the Chechen rebellion. And despite the Russian Federation's cordial relations with the Turkish state today, Moscow today continues to remain resentful and suspicious of Ankara. Russian-Turkish rivalry goes back hundreds of years. The two Eurasian powers continue to be natural competitors in the region to this day. Although the Islamic uprising in the Caucasus has been crushed by Moscow and although Ankara's presence in the region has diminished greatly, Turks continue being one of Russia's main regional problems.
Israel and Georgia
There is no doubt in my mind that Israeli intelligence was also involved in the Chechen insurgency, however it has not yet been documented. What has been documented is Israel's role in Georgia prior to the short lived Russo-Georgian war in the summer of 2008. American, European, Turkish and Wahhabi/Islamic interests therefore were not the only things that suffered a serious setback in the Caucasus as a result of the comprehensive beating Georgia suffered at the hands of the Russian Bear during the summer of 2008. It was well known that the Zionist state also had significant strategic interests in Georgia. It was also well known that the Saakashvili dictatorship was infested with Jews. It was therefore quite apparent that the blood-drenched claws of Zionism - in conjunction with Western imperialists, pan-Turkists and Islamic extremists - had reached very deep into the Caucasus, Russia's vulnerable underbelly. What wasn't well known, however, was that Russian forces may have actually targeted Israel's military presence in Georgia during the short but decisive war. Ultimately, the Western-Zionist-Turkic-Islamic experiment in Georgia backfired miserably and the Russian Bear once again regained its traditional title as the alpha and the omega of the Caucasus region. Naturally, Tel Aviv was very concerned at the time and has since been playing very nice with Moscow.
The Russian Bear is truly living up to its expectations of being the world's last front against Western imperialism, Globalism, Zionism, Islamic extremism and pan-Turkism.
Arevordi
2010 (articles amended in 2017)
План «Кавказ» (2008) (Plan Kavkaz Video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGYy-sPJo_8
Chechen leader: US backed states seek to break Russia apart (RT video report): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nTkSafJtq
Oil and the Battle for Chechnya: http://nlpwessex.org/docs/ukraine-caspian.htm
Chechen Jihad (book): http://www.amazon.com/Chechen-Jihad-Qaedas-Training-Ground/dp/0060841702
Joining three important geopolitical zones - Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East - the Caucasus region is the gateway to Russia's vulnerable south, also known as its soft underbelly. Militarily, the region provides defensive depth to the Russian heartland. Economically, the region is a major hub for the strategic transfer of Eurasian energy and trade. Strategic planners have long realized that those who control this region could potentially control the political and economic life of Eurasia and beyond.
Moreover, from an Armenian perspective, it must be pointed out that the heavily Turkic and Islamic cultural and ethnic makeup of the region in question would not tolerate a non-Turkic or a non-Islamic power in their midst - without a major outside power acting as a guarantor or as a counterweight. Against this Turkic and Islamic center-of-gravity, the Russian presence has been the only counterweight in the region for the past two hundred-plus years. And it is precisely because of the Russian presence in the Caucasus that we Armenians have been able to maintain a presence and a nation-state in the region.
It is quite frightening that unbeknownst to most Armenians (because our collective attention has naturally been drawn to the region's east-west geopolitical plain), the northern Caucasus was actually on the verge of a radical Islamic/Turkic transformation throughout much of the 1990s. Had the northern Caucasus fallen victim to this Western/Turkic/Islamic agenda, it would have been the southern Caucasus' turn not much long thereafter.
In short, without a Russian presence in the Caucasus, the region in question would eventually transform itself back into a Turkic/Islamic cesspool. Had the West's intentions for the Caucasus succeeded, not only would we Armenians be lamenting the lose of Nagorno Karabakh today, we would most probably be lamenting the lose of our fledgling republic as well. Without a Russian presence in the Caucasus, Armenia would automatically, by default, become subordinate to Ankara, Baku, Tbilisi and Western energy conglomerates. Those who complain about Armenia's current dependence on Moscow need to take the aforementioned geopolitical prospect into serious consideration. In other words, Armenia's independence from Russia would simply mean Armenia's dependence on Turkey.
Although Moscow has succeeded in crushing the Islamic terror onslaught in the northern Caucasus in the early 2000s and went on to thereafter defeat the Western-backed military regime in Georgia in 2008, Russian official know that a Turkic/Islamic threat remains in the region. As a result, as long as ethnic Russians run the show in the Kremlin, official Moscow will do everything in its power to have a strong presence in the Caucasus, both north and south. And needless to say, Armenia, located strategically in the south Caucasus, is pivotal to the Kremlin's aforementioned agenda. Armenians therefore need to wake up from their sleep and realize that US actions in the region has directly and indirectly been very detrimental to the health and well-being of the Armenian state. In my opinion, had the US been successful in its policies against Russia, Armenia would have once again disappeared from the map.
The Caucasus region is like a table where Westerners, Turks, Azeris, Georgians, Iranians, Islamists, Russians and Armenians sit around and discuss political and economic matters. Imagine an Armenia at this table without the presence of Russia. In other words: Imagine Armenia's situation in a heavily Turkic, Islamic and Western dominated political landscape without the presence of the Russian Bear. Yes, it's a very frightening proposition, which is why I say the south Caucasus needs Pax Russica. For that to happen, however, Russia first has to drive-out Western interests from the entire region.
Turkey and Chechnya
I have already addressed the covert yet fundamental role Western powers played in encouraging the Chechen uprising in southern Russia during the 1990s. We now know that the war in Chechnya was an attempt by foreign powers to sever the geostrategically crucial region in question away from Moscow's control. Due to political considerations, however, Western support for terrorists in Chechnya could not be carried out overtly. As a result, Western support for Chechnya was for the most part relegated to covert assistance as well as diplomatic support, humanitarian help and pro-Chechen propaganda in the Western world's news press. And now, some information on the Turkish factor in the bloody conflict in the north Caucasus.
It was well known that for many years Turkish volunteers, more specifically members of the extremist pan-Turkist paramilitary organization known as the Grey Wolves, were sent into Chechnya to help Islamic extremists there fight against Russian security forces. Obviously, detailed information about Turkey's role in Chechnya, as well as that of the West's, remain classified. Nevertheless, it was widely known at the time that Chechen terrorists got their logistical support, financial support, medical support, military training and volunteers primarily from Pakistan, Gulf Arab states, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. It was also reported that the Islamic terror organization known in the West as Al Qaeda was partaking in the anti-Russian activities there as well.
During various stages of the conflict, it was well documented that not only were Turks fighting alongside Chechens, but wounded Chechen militants were being transported to Turkey via Georgia for treatment and recuperation. Naturally, the same was being done in Azerbaijan. Moreover, in Azerbaijan, Turkish operatives were participating in anti-Russian, anti-Iranian and anti-Armenian activities naturally in accordance with their pan-Turkist ideology. During the early 1990s, Turkish military officers, members of the Grey Wolves and personal from Al-Qaeda were even said to have participated in battles against Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh.
Nevertheless, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia had become safe-havens for Chechen terrorists for many years. Needless to say, all this was occurring right under the watchful eyes of top level US officials as well as various other Western powers. Doing research on this topic one cannot help but see the unmistakable Turkish flavor in the Chechen rebellion. And despite the Russian Federation's cordial relations with the Turkish state today, Moscow today continues to remain resentful and suspicious of Ankara. Russian-Turkish rivalry goes back hundreds of years. The two Eurasian powers continue to be natural competitors in the region to this day. Although the Islamic uprising in the Caucasus has been crushed by Moscow and although Ankara's presence in the region has diminished greatly, Turks continue being one of Russia's main regional problems.
Israel and Georgia
There is no doubt in my mind that Israeli intelligence was also involved in the Chechen insurgency, however it has not yet been documented. What has been documented is Israel's role in Georgia prior to the short lived Russo-Georgian war in the summer of 2008. American, European, Turkish and Wahhabi/Islamic interests therefore were not the only things that suffered a serious setback in the Caucasus as a result of the comprehensive beating Georgia suffered at the hands of the Russian Bear during the summer of 2008. It was well known that the Zionist state also had significant strategic interests in Georgia. It was also well known that the Saakashvili dictatorship was infested with Jews. It was therefore quite apparent that the blood-drenched claws of Zionism - in conjunction with Western imperialists, pan-Turkists and Islamic extremists - had reached very deep into the Caucasus, Russia's vulnerable underbelly. What wasn't well known, however, was that Russian forces may have actually targeted Israel's military presence in Georgia during the short but decisive war. Ultimately, the Western-Zionist-Turkic-Islamic experiment in Georgia backfired miserably and the Russian Bear once again regained its traditional title as the alpha and the omega of the Caucasus region. Naturally, Tel Aviv was very concerned at the time and has since been playing very nice with Moscow.
The Russian Bear is truly living up to its expectations of being the world's last front against Western imperialism, Globalism, Zionism, Islamic extremism and pan-Turkism.
Arevordi
2010 (articles amended in 2017)
***
The West Masterminded Chechen War to Destroy USSR and Russia
Fifteen years ago, on December 11, 1994, Russian troops entered the territory of the Chechen Republic, which marked the beginning of the First Chechen Campaign to root out terrorism and establish law and order in the troubled nation. The events, which triggered the armed conflict, started developing in the autumn of 1991, when the Chechen administration declared sovereignty and announced its decision to pull out from the RSFSR and the USSR. During the next three years the Chechen government was busy with dissolving the previous power agencies, canceling the laws of the Russian Federation and establishing the armed forces of Chechnya with President Gen. Jokhar Dudayev at the head. The armed forces of Chechnya were armed with Soviet-made small arms and military hardware that were left in the republic after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
As a result of such separatist activities, Chechnya became a real threat to Russia and became a source of international terrorism. Military actions in the republic continued for nearly two years. Over 4,000 Russian servicemen were killed in the war, about 2,000 went missing and nearly 20,000 were wounded, RIA Novosti says. Russia and Chechnya signed the Khasavyurt Accord in 1996 - after two years of military actions – the ceasefire agreement, which marked the end of the First Chechen War. The document was signed by the head of Russia’s Security Council Alexander Lebed and the leader of the Chechen separatist movement Aslan Maskhadov. Lebed died in a helicopter crash in 2002. Maskhadov, the leader of Chechen terrorists, was killed by Russian troops in 2005.
Chechnya became Russia’s strongest pain. Thousands of Russian families and people of other nationalities left the republic. The Chechen administration had a goal to build an independent Islamic state from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. The second Chechen war began in the summer of 1999 with the intrusion of Shamil Basayev’s and Khattab’s gunmen in the Republic of Dagestan. Chechnya started living under the conditions of a counter-terrorist operation, which continued for ten years and was officially stopped only on April 16, 2009. All terrorist leaders were killed during the second campaign. Many former separatists took the side of Chechnya’s legitimate administration chaired by pro-Russian politician Akhmad Kadyrov. Russia wired enormous funds to Chechnya to restore the nation’s economy.
The West could do nothing else but follow the policy of double standards and accuse Russia of violation of human rights in Chechnya. Chechen terrorists conducted and claimed responsibility for a series of horrific terrorist acts in Russia throughout those years: apartment buildings were exploded in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk in 1999; hundreds were taken hostage at Moscow’s music theater in 2002. The Chechen gunmen conducted the most terrible terrorist act in September of 2004, when they killed tens of innocent children in Beslan. Chechnya ’s sitting President Ramzan Kadyrov, who was a teenager during the First Chechen War, believes that the war in Chechnya was masterminded by the West. Western countries, Kadyrov thinks, instigated the war to make the USSR and then Russia collapse.
“It is an open secret nowadays that the Soviet Union fell apart contrary to the will of its people. They decided in the West that they should not stop at that. They wanted to fire up a local war which would embrace more regions and eventually weaken or even destroy Russia as a joint nation,” Kadyrov told journalists December 11 in Grozny. “They wanted to trigger a local religious conflict in Chechnya and have the Muslim population involved in it. Afterwards, they wanted to provoke mass disturbances in the country. I am certain that there were no objective reasons to start the war with the use of aviation, artillery and hundreds of thousands of military men,” Interfax quoted Kadyrov as saying.
“The West was pursuing its goal, but Russia’s then-administration unconsciously did its bidding and let the local conflict grow into a national tragedy. No one can say today how many billions of dollars Russia had to spend on that war. It was the West that obtruded the war on Russia,” Kadyrov said. It is worthy of note that the deployment of Russian troops in Chechnya was not a disturbance of the republic’s peaceful life. First blood was shed long before December 11, 1994. Chechnya was involved in a series of internal fratricidal wars before 1994.
Chechen Chief Blames CIA For Violence
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.
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.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/europeCrisis/idUSLO277814
Western Secret Services Plotted Chechnya’s Separation
The western secret services plotted in 1990s Chechnya’s separation from Russia. Ichkeria’s passports were printed in France and the weapons were delivered to Chechnya via Georgia, according to The Caucasus Plan documentary that Russia’s First Channel showed late Tuesday. One of protagonists of the film is Abubakar, Turkey’s resident of Chechnya’s origin, who has been living under the assumed name of Berkan Yashar for 40 years. Yashar said he got that name after inking a contract with the U.S. Department of State.
In the documentary, Yashar narrated how he had been building up a political platform for Chechnya’s separation in early 1990s. The project was funded by different states. The passports for unrecognized Ichkeria were printed in France, the money was minted in Germany, Yashar said. Then Chechnya’s President Johar Dudaev appointed Yashar deputy foreign minister in 1992. Yashar simultaneously held different offices in Turkish government. He was the so-called power behind the throne in 1990s in Chechnya, controlling all more or less significant financial transactions of the North Caucasus militants, the filmmakers said.
He was one of the masterminds of the diamond trafficking operation. Rough diamonds from northern Russia were illegally exported by using the charter flights. Representatives of Turkey and officials of Azerbaijan's government were involved in negotiations aimed at arranging the flights. The profit was spent to buy mines to explode combat vehicles, Abubakar told the camera crew.
Theoretically, the aircraft flights were banned from Grozny, but the airport got the permission somehow. The plane first flew to Baku, Azerbaijan, and then to Turkey as an Azeri airliner. But that channel was closed in a few years and they had to establish a new link, via Georgia, through Pankiss Gorge, Yashar said. Boris Berezovsky took over the diamond business in part and in whole, according to Yashar. I knew practically nothing about that man, who later on has completely grabbed that business and is in it, I’m sure at 100 percent, up to today, Yashar said.
In the documentary, Yashar narrated how he had been building up a political platform for Chechnya’s separation in early 1990s. The project was funded by different states. The passports for unrecognized Ichkeria were printed in France, the money was minted in Germany, Yashar said. Then Chechnya’s President Johar Dudaev appointed Yashar deputy foreign minister in 1992. Yashar simultaneously held different offices in Turkish government. He was the so-called power behind the throne in 1990s in Chechnya, controlling all more or less significant financial transactions of the North Caucasus militants, the filmmakers said.
He was one of the masterminds of the diamond trafficking operation. Rough diamonds from northern Russia were illegally exported by using the charter flights. Representatives of Turkey and officials of Azerbaijan's government were involved in negotiations aimed at arranging the flights. The profit was spent to buy mines to explode combat vehicles, Abubakar told the camera crew.
Theoretically, the aircraft flights were banned from Grozny, but the airport got the permission somehow. The plane first flew to Baku, Azerbaijan, and then to Turkey as an Azeri airliner. But that channel was closed in a few years and they had to establish a new link, via Georgia, through Pankiss Gorge, Yashar said. Boris Berezovsky took over the diamond business in part and in whole, according to Yashar. I knew practically nothing about that man, who later on has completely grabbed that business and is in it, I’m sure at 100 percent, up to today, Yashar said.
Source: http://www.kommersant.com/p-12402/Chechnya_separation/
Spy Chief: West Wants to Split Russia
Russia's security chief said that Western spies were working to weaken and break up the country and singled out British agents as the most intrusive, according to an interview published Wednesday. Nikolai Patrushev, who heads the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency, also claimed that foreign spies were working to foment discontent in Russia in the run-up to December's parliamentary elections and the presidential vote next spring. Patrushev is a longtime ally of President Vladimir Putin, and his comments reflect deeply entrenched suspicions of Western intentions in the Kremlin's inner circle amid a cold spell in Russia's relations with the West. Putin himself is a 16-year KGB veteran and former chief of the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB. "Politicians thinking in the categories of the Cold War still retain their influence in a number of Western nations," Patrushev told the weekly Argumenty i Fakty. "They have claimed credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they are hatching plans aimed at dismembering Russia. They are viewing special services and their organizations as an efficient instrument for their implementation."
Patrushev said that foreign spies were focusing their efforts on gathering information related to Russia's elections. "They are trying to influence protest feelings and demonstrations in Russia." He singled out Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, saying its agents "aren't only gathering intelligence in all areas, but they are also trying to influence the development of the domestic political situation in our country." Britain's Foreign Office didn't immediately have any comment on the matter. Russian-British relations have been sliding, and they were strained further by last November's poisoning death in London of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko, a fierce Kremlin critic given asylum in Britain, accused Putin on his deathbed of being behind his polonium poisoning — charges the Kremlin has angrily denied. Russia has rejected British demands for the extradition of the sole suspect in Litvinenko's murder, former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, who met with Litvinenko in a London hotel bar the day he fell ill. Putin dismissed the extradition demands as a relic of British "colonial thinking." Patrushev said that his agency had learned how to counter British intelligence. "We know both its strong and weak points," he said. "Since the times of Elizabeth I, (MI6) agents have been guided by the principle of the ways justifying the means. Money, bribery, blackmail, exemption from punishment for crimes committed are their main recruitment methods."
Patrushev claimed that British intelligence has relied on people who fled abroad to avoid criminal charges in Russia — an apparent hint at Kremlin critics living in Britain, such as tycoon Boris Berezovsky and Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev. Russia has vainly sought their extradition. Patrushev also alleged that foreign spies were using non-governmental organizations "both for gathering intelligence information and as an instrument for having a hidden influence over political processes." He pointed at the revolutions that ousted unpopular governments in the former Yugoslavia, Ukraine and Georgia as a product of such activities. The statement reflected Kremlin concerns over outside influence within Russia amid Western accusations of backsliding on democracy — the fears that prompted the government to tighten restrictions on NGOs. "There is a danger of foreign NGOs being used to finance activities to undermine Russia," Patrushev said. He claimed that some NGOs were also being used by international terror groups to support militants in Russia's volatile North Caucasus. Patrushev said the CIA and MI6 were actively relying on the special services of Poland, Georgia and the Baltics to spy on Russia. He said his agency had uncovered 270 foreign intelligence officers and 70 agents they had recruited, including 35 Russian citizens, since 2003. While fuming at the West, Patrushev said that his agency would continue to cooperate with its Western counterparts in combating international terrorism.
Patrushev said that foreign spies were focusing their efforts on gathering information related to Russia's elections. "They are trying to influence protest feelings and demonstrations in Russia." He singled out Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, saying its agents "aren't only gathering intelligence in all areas, but they are also trying to influence the development of the domestic political situation in our country." Britain's Foreign Office didn't immediately have any comment on the matter. Russian-British relations have been sliding, and they were strained further by last November's poisoning death in London of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko, a fierce Kremlin critic given asylum in Britain, accused Putin on his deathbed of being behind his polonium poisoning — charges the Kremlin has angrily denied. Russia has rejected British demands for the extradition of the sole suspect in Litvinenko's murder, former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, who met with Litvinenko in a London hotel bar the day he fell ill. Putin dismissed the extradition demands as a relic of British "colonial thinking." Patrushev said that his agency had learned how to counter British intelligence. "We know both its strong and weak points," he said. "Since the times of Elizabeth I, (MI6) agents have been guided by the principle of the ways justifying the means. Money, bribery, blackmail, exemption from punishment for crimes committed are their main recruitment methods."
Patrushev claimed that British intelligence has relied on people who fled abroad to avoid criminal charges in Russia — an apparent hint at Kremlin critics living in Britain, such as tycoon Boris Berezovsky and Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev. Russia has vainly sought their extradition. Patrushev also alleged that foreign spies were using non-governmental organizations "both for gathering intelligence information and as an instrument for having a hidden influence over political processes." He pointed at the revolutions that ousted unpopular governments in the former Yugoslavia, Ukraine and Georgia as a product of such activities. The statement reflected Kremlin concerns over outside influence within Russia amid Western accusations of backsliding on democracy — the fears that prompted the government to tighten restrictions on NGOs. "There is a danger of foreign NGOs being used to finance activities to undermine Russia," Patrushev said. He claimed that some NGOs were also being used by international terror groups to support militants in Russia's volatile North Caucasus. Patrushev said the CIA and MI6 were actively relying on the special services of Poland, Georgia and the Baltics to spy on Russia. He said his agency had uncovered 270 foreign intelligence officers and 70 agents they had recruited, including 35 Russian citizens, since 2003. While fuming at the West, Patrushev said that his agency would continue to cooperate with its Western counterparts in combating international terrorism.
Source: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g...JmmxAD8S69TKG0
The War in Chechnya
With regard to Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the war in Chechnya had been planned during a secret summit of HizbAllah International held in 1996 in Mogadishu, Somalia. 21 The summit, was attended by Osama bin Laden and high-ranking Iranian and Pakistani intelligence officers. In this regard, the involvement of Pakistan's ISI in Chechnya "goes far beyond supplying the Chechens with weapons and expertise: the ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war". 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:
[In 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 transferred 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 Defense 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.
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 (See Mafia linked to Albania's collapsed pyramids, 25 Alongside the extensive laundering of drug money, the proceeds of various illicit activities have been funneled towards the recruitment of mercenaries and the purchase of weapons.
During his training in Afghanistan, Shamil Basayev linked up with Saudi born veteran Mujahideen Commander "Al Khattab" who had fought as a volunteer in Afghanistan. Barely a few months after Basayev's return to Grozny, Khattab was invited (early 1995) to set up an army base in Chechnya for the training of Mujahideen fighters. According to the BBC, Khattab's posting to Chechnya had been "arranged through the Saudi-Arabian based [International] Islamic Relief Organisation, a militant religious organisation, funded by mosques and rich individuals which channeled funds into Chechnya". Concluding Remarks Since the Cold War era, Washington has consciously supported Osama bin Laden, while at same time placing him on the FBI's "most wanted list" as the World's foremost terrorist. While the Mujahideen are busy fighting America's war in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, the FBI --operating as a US based Police Force- is waging a domestic war against terrorism, operating in some respects independently of the CIA which has --since the Soviet-Afghan war-- supported international terrorism through its covert operations.
In a cruel irony, while the Islamic jihad --featured by the Bush Adminstration as "a threat to America"-- is blamed for the terrorist assaults on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, these same Islamic organisations constitute a key instrument of US military-intelligence operations in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. In the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the truth must prevail to prevent the Bush Adminstration together with its NATO partners from embarking upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.
Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html
British And American Covert Operations In Chechnya
"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.... 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. .....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. ... 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.."
"Why would a group of leading American neo-conservatives, dedicated to fighting Islamic terror, have climbed into bed with Chechen rebels linked to al-Qaeda? The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), which includes Pentagon supremo Richard Perle, says the conflict between Russia and Chechnya is about Chechen nationalism, not terrorism. The ACPC savaged Russia for the atrocities its forces have committed in the Caucuses, said President Vladimir Putin was 'ridiculous', claimed Russia was more 'morally' to blame for the bloodshed than Chechen separatists and played down links between al-Qaeda and the 'Chechen resistance'. The ACPC's support for the Chechen cause seems bizarre, as many of its members are among the most outspoken US policymakers who have made it clear that Islamist terror must be wiped out. But the organisation has tried to broker peace talks between Russia and Chechen separatists. The ACPC includes many leaders of the neo-conservative think-tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which advocates American domination of the world.... ACPC executive director Glen Howard said the continuation of the 'brutalising tactics' of Russian forces would only lead to 'the resistance employing more brutal tactics' like the assault on School Number One in Beslan...... The nurturing of Chechen fighters against Russia recalls America's support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan - an act that went on to spawn al-Qaeda and the Taliban.... Howard said hardliners like Richard Perle were backing Chechnya as they 'understood what it feels like to be under the Russian yolk'. Some critics believe the support for the Chechens may be a cold war hangover or part of a policy to keep Russia weak through bloodletting in the Caucuses.... According to Howard, due to the vast energy resources in the Caucuses, the West, which is heavily dependent on foreign energy, has strategic interests in the area to which it cannot afford to turn a blind eye."
Source: http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX...ne-Caspian.htm
Russia reveals US plans to capture Caucasus
Russian Channel 1 presents a documentary ‘Plan Caucasus’ about the plan of western intelligence service to make Caucasus the battlefield between the Western world and Russia. The reporter states that the first point was the ignition of Nagorny Karabakh conflict and then in other places of Caucasus via the nationalistic moods strengthening. A Chechen man Abu Bakar, a news analyst of the German radio station «Freedom” in the 60s, who worked under the pseudonym Berkan Yashar, reveals the secret plans of the US Foggy Bottom. Baker was enrolled by the USA, and even after he left ‘Freedom’ and headed for Turkey, where he became a powerful authority, Abu remained a “grey eminence”, through whom the West controlled the situation in Caucasus and financed separatists’ tribes.
He said that the plan of Chechnya annexation was backed by Germany, France, Great Britain, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. His words were proved with pictures of money, printed in Germany that might still be in the Munich factory, and fake passports, printed in France. His words are confirmed by some other people. Thus, Shamseddin Yusef, the Foreign Secretary in Dudaev’s government, says: “CIA people even took us to London. Then the war in Iraq started. They planned to take over Chechnya after the victory in Iraq, but that war didn’t finish as soon as they predicted. Neither does Richard Perl, the ex- US Ministry of Defense counselor and one of the key strategists of the war in Iraq, conceal the fact that America tried to give spiritual and financial support to Dudaev.
The reporter also states, that Western powers pursued in Caucasus not only political, but financial interest as well. Since 1992 with Jokhar Dudaev’s help there operated a contraband canal that exported to the West Russian diamonds and gold. For the right to drive it through Chechnya Dubaev got a quarter of the profit received from diamonds’ gem-cutting and selling. After the airport in Groznyy was shut in 1994, Berkan changed the scheme of diamonds transportation and started to put them across Pankiyskoe clove to Turkey. Akhmed, one of Dudaev’s mates, states that the bloody story of Chechen diamonds goes on even now. The money, saved between the First and Second Chechen Wars, was put in the diamond mines of Africa. The input of money into these mines gives enormous profits to Akhmed Zakaev and Whice Akhmadov, the man, whose name was mentioned in relation to Badri Patarkacishvili’s death.
Source: http://english.pravda.ru/world/ameri...ure_caucasus-0
Washington’s «Civil Society» and CIA Financing of Chechen and Other Caucasus Regional Terrorists
Through a myriad of «civil society» organizations, the United States has been financing Chechen groups inside the autonomous republic, in Russia, and abroad. However, large portions of U.S. assistance money has «bled» over to support Chechen and other North Caucasus terrorist groups, which the U.S. State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies insist on referring to as «separatist guerrillas», «nationalists», «insurgents», and «rebels», instead of terrorists.
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has continuously refused to refer to Chechen and Islamic Emirate terrorists operating in Russia as «terrorists». NSA analysis reports of signals intelligence (SIGINT) intercepts of Russian police, Federal Security Bureau (FSB), Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), and Russian military communications, including radio, landline and cellular telephone, fax, text message, and fax, have, since 2003, referred to Chechen and North Caucasus terrorists as «guerrillas». Prior to that year, TOP SECRET Codeword internal NSA directives stated that Chechen terrorists were to be called «rebels».
Imagine the surprise if the United States began referring to «Al Qaeda» as Islamist guerrillas and rebels instead of terrorists. Yet, that is exactly how the NSA and CIA have referred to terrorists in Russia that have launched deadly attacks on airports, trains, subway stations, schools, and movie theaters throughout the Russian Federation.
U.S. «humanitarian» and «civil society» assistance to radical Islamist groups has, for the past three decades, filtered into the coffers of terrorist groups celebrated as «freedom fighters» in Washington. This was the case with U.S. support for the Afghan Mujaheddin through such groups as the Committee for a Free Afghanistan during the Islamist insurgency against the People’s Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s and the Bosnia Defense Fund in the 1990s. In the case of Afghanistan, U.S. and Saudi money ended up in the hands of insurgents who would later form «Al Qaeda» and in Bosnia U.S. funds were used by Al Qaeda elements fighting against Yugoslavia and the Bosnian Serb Republic and, later, Al Qaeda elements supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in its war against Serbia.
After revelations that an entity called the Caucasus Fund was used by the CIA-linked Jamestown Foundation of Washington, DC to sponsor seminars on the North Caucasus in Tbilisi from January to July 2012, Georgian authorities moved to shut down the fund. The reason given by Georgia was that the organization had «fulfilled its stated mission». Caucasus Fund and Jamestown Foundation events were attended by accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a citizen of Kyrgyzstan born to parents from Dagestan. Jamestown had previously held a seminar in Tbilisi on «Hidden Nations» in the Caucasus, which, among other issues, promoted a «Greater Circassia» in the Caucasus.
U.S. «civil society» aid to groups fomenting terrorism, nationalism, separatism, and irredentism in the Caucasus is either direct through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or covert through organizations funded by George Soros’s Open Society Institute. Much can be learned about U.S. backing for terrorist groups operating in the North Caucasus from information gleaned from the tranche of a quarter million leaked classified State Department cables.
A November 12, 2009 Confidential cable from the U.S. embassy in Moscow implies that the Carnegie Center NGO in Moscow be engaged to stymie Russia's political and economic goals in the North Caucasus, particularly by taking advantage of 50 percent unemployment in Ingushetiya and 30 percent in Chechnya. Areas of high unemployment in the Muslim world have served as prime recruiting grounds for Wahhabist and Salafist radical clerics financed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the emirates of Sharjah and Ras al Khaimah. Dagestan is cited in a June 8, 2009 embassy Moscow cable as Russia's «weakest link» in the Caucasus region.
A Confidential September 16, 2009 cable from the U.S. embassy in Moscow indicates that Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon was urged to push the concept that the Ramzan Kadyrov government in Chechnya had «neither control nor stability». The NGO Caucasian Knot told Gordon at a meeting at the U.S. embassy that «foreign fighters» were joining a jihad in the region and that there was a «Hobson's Choice» between «terrorists» and «corrupt local government». Apparently, the Obama administration decided, likely with the strong support of then deputy national security adviser and current CIA director John O. Brennan, a confirmed Saudiphile and a participant in the Hadj pilgrimage to Mecca, opted for the terrorists.
Other leaked Confidential cables provide in-depth details on U.S., British, and Norwegian support for exiled «Chechen-Ichkeria» leader Akhmed Zakayev, a close friend of the late exiled Russo-Israeli tycoon Boris Berezovsky. A July 29, 2009 Confidential cable from the U.S. embassy in Oslo quotes the head of the Russian section at the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, Odd Skagestad, as telling the American embassy there that Zakayev was the «legitimate representative of not just the Chechen exile community, but of Chechens in Chechnya», although he added that «Zakayev is on various INTERPOL lists» for suspected terrorist links. Skagestad stated the Norwegian PST, Norway’s FBI, ignored INTERPOL arrest warrants and permitted Zakayev to visit Norway from his place of exile in London. The Oslo embassy also stated that the Norwegian head of the «Chechnya Peace Forum», Ivar Amundsen, was very «tight lipped» about his activities and that he was a close friend of the late renegade ex-Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko. Zakayev has also received significant support from the governments of Denmark, Finland, and the Czech Republic, where there are active Chechen exile community. The Kavkaz Center, located in Helsinki, Finland, runs a pro-Caucasus Emirate website and provides an important public relations service for Emirate leader Doku Umarov’s terrorist cells in southern Russia…
Ruslan Zaindi Tsarnaev, the Maryland-based uncle of suspected bombers Tamerlan and Dzokhar Dudayev, established the Congress of Chechen International Organizations, Incorporated, in Maryland on August 17, 1995 and in the District of Columbia on September 22, 1995. The Maryland entity’s status was forfeited and is not in good standing, likely because of delinquency in filing required fees and forms. The District of Columbia corporate entity was active for 17 years and seven months. Interestingly, the DC corporate status was revoked at around the time of the Boston Marathon bombings. Ruslan Tsarnaev, also known as Ruslan Tsarni, a graduate of Duke University Law School in North Carolina, worked for USAID in Kazakhstan and other countries in preparing them for vulture capitalist enterprises such as derivative financing and hedge funds.
The Maryland address for the Congress of Chechen International Organizations is listed in Maryland corporate records as 11114 Whisperwood Lane, Rockville, Maryland 20852, which is the address for Graham E. Fuller.
Fuller is a former Russian-speaking CIA official, including station chief in Kabul and vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council during the 1980s Iran-contra scandal, with which Fuller was heavily involved. Fuller has been active in events sponsored by the Jamestown Foundation, including keynoting an October 29, 2008 conference titled «Turkey & the Caucasus after Georgia».
Fuller’s daughter, Samantha Ankara Fuller, is a UK and US dual national who is listed as a director of Insource Energy, Ltd. of the UK, a firm owned by Carbon Trust, a not-for-profit company «with the mission to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy». According to the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority’s Financial Services Register, Samantha Ankara Fuller’s previous name was Mrs. Samantha Ankara Tsarnaev. She was the wife of Ruslan Tsarnaev and ex-aunt of the two accused Boston Marathon bombers. At the time of her marriage to Ruslan Tsarnaev, Fuller was an investment adviser to Dresdner Bank, J P Morgan Ltd. in the UK, J P Morgan Securities, and J P Morgan Chase Bank, according to the UK Financial Services Register.
Ruslan Tsarnaev is the vice president for business development and corporate secretary for Big Sky Energy Corporation, headquartered in Calgary, Canada with the headquarters of its Big Sky Group holding company located in Little Rock, Arkansas. North Carolina court records indicate that the Tsarnaevs were married in North Carolina in 1995, the year Ruslan established the Congress of Chechen International Organizations in Washington, DC and Maryland, and divorced in 1999. The divorce was granted in Orange County, North Carolina.
It is noteworthy that the Washington DC corporate registration agent for the Congress of Chechen International Organizations is Prentice-Hall. Prentice-Hall is owned by Pearson, the publishing and educational firm based in London that owns the Financial Times and fifty percent of The Economist Group. In 1986, the Economist Group bought the New York-based Business International Corporation (BIC), the CIA front company for which Barack Obama, Jr. served as an employee from 1983 to 1984, and folded it into the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The other uncle of the alleged Boston bombers, Alvi S. Tsaranev of Silver Spring, Maryland, not far from his brother Ruslan’s home, is apparently affiliated with another Chechen exile organization, the United States-Chechen Republic Alliance Inc., with an address of 8920 Walden Road, Silver Spring, Maryland 20901-3823. The address is also that of Alvi S. Tsarnaev. The registered officer for the organization is listed U.S. Internal Revenue Service filings as Lyoma Usmanov. The organization is registered as a charitable organization engaged in «International Economic Development».
In the book, Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia after the Cold War, by James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, the latter the present activist and neo-conservative U.S. ambassador to Russia who has directly intervened in Russian politics to seek the ouster of President Vladimir Putin from power and stir up secessionist, religious, and political extremists throughout the Russian Federation. According to this book, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was Usmanov’s sponsor in the United States: «Brzezinski helped to establish and finance Chechen representation in the United States headed by Usmanov».
Another U.S.-based group that has championed the Chechen movement, regardless of the presence of terrorist entities, is the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (ACPC), formerly known as the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. The ACPC was founded in 1999 by Freedom House, a Cold War right-wing group that has been financed by the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID-funded groups. The ACPC has defended the political asylum in the U.S. of former Chechen Foreign Minister Ilyas Akhmadov, accused of past terrorist links. The ACPC and Freedom House work with the Jamestown Foundation, founded in 1984 by CIA director William Casey, along with high-ranking intelligence defectors from the Soviet Union, Romania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.
An October 17, 2008 Sensitive cable from the U.S. embassy in Moscow outlines the priorities for USAID and NGOs in their operations in the North Caucasus. The cable states that the North Caucasus Program was active in North Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkaria and was working with local NGOs. The cable states explicitly that USAID's mission in the North Caucasus was to «advance critical U.S. interests». USAID-specified «hot zones» included Chechnya, Ingushetia, and the Elbruz region of Kabardino-Balkaria. The USAID North Caucasus Program focused on four key regions: Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, and Dagestan, plus Krasnodarsky Krai, Adygea Republic, Karachay-Cherkessia, Stavropolsky Krai, and Kabardino-Balkarskaya Republic.
USAID’s network of NGOs in the region are identified in the cable. They are: International Rescue Committee (IRC), World Vision, Keystone, IREX, Children's Fund of North Ossetia (CFNO), Russian Microfinance Center, UNICEF, ACDI/VOCA, Southern Regional Resource Center (SRAC), Center for Fiscal Policy (CFP), Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), Institute for Urban Economics, «Faith, Hope and Love (FHL), International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), and the Fund for Sustainable Development (FSD). Many of these groups have close links with the CIA and/or Soros, particularly World Vision and IRC.
The interests who are linked to the Boston Marathon and terrorism in Russia run the gamut from Soros-funded NGOs, to CIA front companies and non-official cover (NOC) agents, foreign intelligence services, and Western energy companies.
The Original Chechnya Bombers - The CIA, The Saudis And Bin Laden
On April 26 Russia’s main national TV station, Rossiya 1, featured President Vladimir Putin in a documentary to the Russian people on the events of the recent period including the annexation of Crimea, the US coup d’etat in Ukraine, and the general state of relations with the United States and the EU. His words were frank. And in the middle of his remarks the Russian former KGB chief dropped a political bombshell that was known by Russian intelligence two decades ago.
Putin stated bluntly that in his view the West would only be content in having a Russia weak, suffering and begging from the West, something clearly the Russian character is not disposed to. Then a short way into his remarks, the Russian President stated for the first time publicly something that Russian intelligence has known for almost two decades but kept silent until now, most probably in hopes of an era of better normalized Russia-US relations.
Putin stated that the terror in Chechnya and in the Russian Caucasus in the early 1990’s was actively backed by the CIA and western Intelligence services to deliberately weaken Russia. He noted that the Russian FSB foreign intelligence had documentation of the US covert role without giving details.
What Putin, an intelligence professional of the highest order, only hinted at in his remarks, I have documented in detail from non-Russian sources. The report has enormous implications to reveal to the world the long-standing hidden agenda of influential circles in Washington to destroy Russia as a functioning sovereign state, an agenda which includes the neo-nazi coup d’etat in Ukraine and severe financial sanction warfare against Moscow. The following is drawn on my book, “The Lost Hegemon” to be published soon…
CIA’s Chechen Wars
Not long after the CIA and Saudi Intelligence-financed Mujahideen had devastated Afghanistan at the end of the 1980’s, forcing the exit of the Soviet Army in 1989, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself some months later, the CIA began to look at possible places in the collapsing Soviet Union where their trained “Afghan Arabs” could be redeployed to further destabilize Russian influence over the post-Soviet Eurasian space.
They were called Afghan Arabs because they had been recruited from ultraconservative Wahhabite Sunni Muslims from Saudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and elsewhere in the Arab world where the ultra-strict Wahhabite Islam was practiced. They were brought to Afghanistan in the early 1980’s by a Saudi CIA recruit who had been sent to Afghanistan named Osama bin Laden.
With the former Soviet Union in total chaos and disarray, George H.W. Bush’s Administration decided to “kick ‘em when they’re down,” a sad error. Washington redeployed their Afghan veteran terrorists to bring chaos and destabilize all of Central Asia, even into the Russian Federation itself, then in a deep and traumatic crisis during the economic collapse of the Yeltsin era.
In the early 1990s, Dick Cheney’s company, Halliburton, had surveyed the offshore oil potentials of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and the entire Caspian Sea Basin. They estimated the region to be “another Saudi Arabia” worth several trillion dollars on today’s market. The US and UK were determined to keep that oil bonanza from Russian control by all means. The first target of Washington was to stage a coup in Azerbaijan against elected president Abulfaz Elchibey to install a President more friendly to a US-controlled Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, “the world’s most political pipeline,” bringing Baku oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey and the Mediterranean.
At that time, the only existing oil pipeline from Baku was a Soviet era Russian pipeline that ran through the Chechen capital, Grozny, taking Baku oil north via Russia’s Dagestan province, and across Chechenya to the Black Sea Russian port of Novorossiysk. The pipeline was the only competition and major obstacle to the very costly alternative route of Washington and the British and US oil majors.
President Bush Sr. gave his old friends at CIA the mandate to destroy that Russian Chechen pipeline and create such chaos in the Caucasus that no Western or Russian company would consider using the Grozny Russian oil pipeline.
Graham E. Fuller, an old colleague of Bush and former Deputy Director of the CIA National Council on Intelligence had been a key architect of the CIA Mujahideen strategy. Fuller described the CIA strategy in the Caucasus in the early 1990s: “The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power.”6
The CIA used a dirty tricks veteran, General Richard Secord, for the operation. Secord created a CIA front company, MEGA Oil. Secord had been convicted in the 1980s for his central role in the CIA’s Iran-Contra illegal arms and drugs operations.
In 1991 Secord, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, landed in Baku and set up the CIA front company, MEGA Oil. He was a veteran of the CIA covert opium operations in Laos during the Vietnam War. In Azerbaijan, he setup an airline to secretly fly hundreds of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda Mujahideen from Afghanistan into Azerbaijan. By 1993, MEGA Oil had recruited and armed 2,000 Mujahideen, converting Baku into a base for Caucasus-wide Mujahideen terrorist operations.
General Secord’s covert Mujahideen operation in the Caucasus initiated the military coup that toppled elected president Abulfaz Elchibey that year and installed Heydar Aliyev, a more pliable US puppet. A secret Turkish intelligence report leaked to the Sunday Times of London confirmed that “two petrol giants, BP and Amoco, British and American respectively, which together form the AIOC (Azerbaijan International Oil Consortium), are behind the coup d’état.”
Saudi Intelligence head, Turki al-Faisal, arranged that his agent, Osama bin Laden, whom he had sent to Afghanistan at the start of the Afghan war in the early 1980s, would use his Afghan organization Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) to recruit “Afghan Arabs” for what was rapidly becoming a global Jihad. Bin Laden’s mercenaries were used as shock troops by the Pentagon and CIA to coordinate and support Muslim offensives not only Azerbaijan but also in Chechnya and, later, Bosnia.
Bin Laden brought in another Saudi, Ibn al-Khattab, to become Commander, or Emir of Jihadist Mujahideen in Chechnya (sic!) together with Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev. No matter that Ibn al-Khattab was a Saudi Arab who spoke barely a word of Chechen, let alone, Russian. He knew what Russian soldiers looked like and how to kill them.
Chechnya then was traditionally a predominantly Sufi society, a mild apolitical branch of Islam. Yet the increasing infiltration of the well-financed and well-trained US-sponsored Mujahideen terrorists preaching Jihad or Holy War against Russians transformed the initially reformist Chechen resistance movement. They spread al-Qaeda’s hardline Islamist ideology across the Caucasus. Under Secord’s guidance, Mujahideen terrorist operations had also quickly extended into neighboring Dagestan and Chechnya, turning Baku into a shipping point for Afghan heroin to the Chechen mafia.
From the mid-1990s, bin Laden paid Chechen guerrilla leaders Shamil Basayev and Omar ibn al-Khattab the handsome sum of several million dollars per month, a King’s fortune in economically desolate Chechnya in the 1990s, enabling them to sideline the moderate Chechen majority.21 US intelligence remained deeply involved in the Chechen conflict until the end of the 1990s. According to Yossef Bodansky, then Director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Washington was actively involved in “yet another anti-Russian jihad, seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces.” Bodansky revealed the entire CIA Caucasus strategy in detail in his report, stating that US Government officials participated in,
“a formal meeting in Azerbaijan in December 1999 in which specific programs for the training and equipping of Mujahideen from the Caucasus, Central/South Asia and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon, culminating in Washington’s tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) and US ‘private security companies’. . . to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in the spring of 2000 and sustain the ensuing Jihad for a long time…Islamist Jihad in the Caucasus as a way to deprive Russia of a viable pipeline route through spiraling violence and terrorism.”The most intense phase of the Chechen wars wound down in 2000 only after heavy Russian military action defeated the Islamists. It was a pyrrhic victory, costing a massive toll in human life and destruction of entire cities. The exact death toll from the CIA-instigated Chechen conflict is unknown. Unofficial estimates ranged from 25,000 to 50,000 dead or missing, mostly civilians. Russian casualties were near 11,000 according to the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers. The Anglo-American oil majors and the CIA’s operatives were happy. They had what they wanted: their Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan oil pipeline, bypassing Russia’s Grozny pipeline. The Chechen Jihadists, under the Islamic command of Shamil Basayev, continued guerrilla attacks in and outside Chechnya. The CIA had refocused into the Caucasus.
Basayev’s Saudi Connection
Basayev was a key part of the CIA’s Global Jihad. In 1992, he met Saudi terrorist Ibn al-Khattag in Azerbaijan. From Azerbaijan, Ibn al-Khattab brought Basayev to Afghanistan to meet al-Khattab’s ally, fellow-Saudi Osama bin Laden. Ibn al-Khattab’s role was to recruit Chechen Muslims willing to wage Jihad against Russian forces in Chechnya on behalf of the covert CIA strategy of destabilizing post-Soviet Russia and securing British-US control over Caspian energy.
Once back in Chechnya, Basayev and al-Khattab created the International Islamic Brigade (IIB) with Saudi Intelligence money, approved by the CIA and coordinated through the liaison of Saudi Washington Ambassador and Bush family intimate Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Bandar, Saudi Washington Ambassador for more than two decades, was so intimate with the Bush family that George W. Bush referred to the playboy Saudi Ambassador as “Bandar Bush,” a kind of honorary family member.
Basayev and al-Khattab imported fighters from the Saudi fanatical Wahhabite strain of Sunni Islam into Chechnya. Ibn al-Khattab commanded what were called the “Arab Mujahideen in Chechnya,” his own private army of Arabs, Turks, and other foreign fighters. He was also commissioned to set up paramilitary training camps in the Caucasus Mountains of Chechnya that trained Chechens and Muslims from the North Caucasian Russian republics and from Central Asia.
The Saudi and CIA-financed Islamic International Brigade was responsible not only for terror in Chechnya. They carried out the October 2002 Moscow Dubrovka Theatre hostage seizure and the gruesome September 2004 Beslan school massacre. In 2010, the UN Security Council published the following report on al-Khattab and Basayev’s International Islamic Brigade:
Islamic International Brigade (IIB) was listed on 4 March 2003. . . as being associated with Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden or the Taliban for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf or in support of” Al-Qaida. . . The Islamic International Brigade (IIB) was founded and led by Shamil Salmanovich Basayev (deceased) and is linked to the Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs (RSRSBCM). . . and the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment (SPIR). . .On the evening of 23 October 2002, members of IIB, RSRSBCM and SPIR operated jointly to seize over 800 hostages at Moscow’s Podshipnikov Zavod (Dubrovka) Theater. In October 1999, emissaries of Basayev and Al-Khattab traveled to Usama bin Laden’s home base in the Afghan province of Kandahar, where Bin Laden agreed to provide substantial military assistance and financial aid, including by making arrangements to send to Chechnya several hundred fighters to fight against Russian troops and perpetrate acts of terrorism. Later that year, Bin Laden sent substantial amounts of money to Basayev, Movsar Barayev (leader of SPIR) and Al-Khattab, which was to be used exclusively for training gunmen, recruiting mercenaries and buying ammunition.
The Afghan-Caucasus Al Qaeda “terrorist railway,” financed by Saudi intelligence, had two goals. One was a Saudi goal to spread fanatical Wahhabite Jihad into the Central Asian region of the former Soviet Union. The second was the CIA’s agenda of destabilizing a then-collapsing post-Soviet Russian Federation.
Beslan
On September 1, 2004, armed terrorists from Basayev and al-Khattab’s IIB took more than 1,100 people as hostages in a siege that included 777 children, and forced them into School Number One (SNO) in Beslan in North Ossetia, the autonomous republic in the North Caucasus of the Russian Federation near to the Georgia border.
On the third day of the hostage crisis, as explosions were heard inside the school, FSB and other elite Russian troops stormed the building. In the end, at least 334 hostages were killed, including 186 children, with a significant number of people injured and reported missing. It became clear afterward that the Russian forces had handled the intervention poorly.
The Washington propaganda machine, from Radio Free Europe to The New York Times and CNN, wasted no time demonizing Putin and Russia for their bad handling of the Beslan crisis rather than focus on the links of Basayev to Al Qaeda and Saudi intelligence. That would have brought the world’s attention to the intimate relations between the family of then US President George W. Bush and the Saudi billionaire bin Laden family.
On September 1, 2001, just ten days before the day of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Saudi Intelligence head US-educated Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, who had directed Saudi Intelligence since 1977, including through the entire Osama bin Laden Mujahideen operation in Afghanistan and into the Caucasus, abruptly and inexplicably resigned, just days after having accepted a new term as intelligence head from his King. He gave no explanation. He was quickly reposted to London, away from Washington.
The record of the bin Laden-Bush family intimate ties was buried, in fact entirely deleted on “national security” (sic!) grounds in the official US Commission Report on 911. The Saudi background of fourteen of the nineteen alleged 911 terrorists in New York and Washington was also deleted from the US Government’s final 911 Commission report, released only in July 2004 by the Bush Administration, almost three years after the events.
Basayev claimed credit for having sent the terrorists to Beslan. His demands had included the complete independence of Chechnya from Russia, something that would have given Washington and the Pentagon an enormous strategic dagger in the southern underbelly of the Russian Federation.
By late 2004, in the aftermath of the tragic Beslan drama, President Vladimir Putin reportedly ordered a secret search and destroy mission by Russian intelligence to hunt and kill key leaders of the Caucasus Mujahideen of Basayev. Al-Khattab had been killed in 2002. The Russian security forces soon discovered that most of the Chechen Afghan Arab terrorists had fled. They had gotten safe haven in Turkey, a NATO member; in Azerbaijan, by then almost a NATO Member; or in Germany, a NATO Member; or in Dubai–one of the closest US Allies in the Arab States, and Qatar-another very close US ally. In other words, the Chechen terrorists were given NATO safe haven.
Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-23/original-chechnya-bombers-cia-saudis-and-bin-laden
USA: The Creator & Sustainer of Chechen Terrorism
Here we go again- Déjà vu. Out of the blue we have a ‘terror event,’ a couple of pop-terrorists, and a new buzz-word nation-Chechnya. There they go again: USA Media tales made-in-government: Muslims, terrorists, fanatics, freedom-haters … this time from another exotic-sounding land-Chechnya. They are going to tell you about the new frontiers in the so-called Islamic Terror Cells: The Caucasus and Central Asia. They’ve been planning this for a long time. In fact, the plans were in motion as early as the mid-1990s. Since 2002, despite the gag orders and attacks, I have been talking about: Central Asia & the Caucasus. I have been talking about our operations-grooming our very own terrorists in that region. I have been talking about Chechnya. In fact, just recently, I talked and talked and talked about it on record:
Sibel Edmonds on Operation Gladio Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V.
The government and its media will give you the tales. They will give you the roller-coaster-like spins. They will not give you what you need to know. Two years ago, we, at Boiling Frogs Post, provided you with the following article-analysis. Please read it: with the recent home-made terror incident and the new media buzz-word ‘Chechnya’, you need to arm yourself with facts. Here are a few excerpts from my article on US-Chechen Joint Terror Operation published in November 2011:
BFP Exclusive: US-NATO-Chechen Militia Joint Operations Base
The US media may be many awful things, but no one could ever accuse them of not being consistent- at least when it comes to certain subject areas; US-NATO-Chechen joint terrorism operations being one. The censorship of this topic goes to such extremes - where even modified-sanitized-pasteurized versions of related events and facts are nowhere to be found in the US media. Let me list a few globally known and reported facts, then add a few twos and twos and twos together, and see whether you can find any traces of that in the US mainstream media:
Assassinations of Chechen Terrorist Leaders in Turkey
The following was reported by British paper Telegraph in September this year: Kremlin hit squad ‘assassinate Chechen Islamist in Istanbul’
The triple murder was carried out by a lone gunman in less than thirty seconds using a 9mm pistol fitted with a silencer. It brought the number of Chechens assassinated in the Turkish city in the last four years to at least six. The gunman pumped eleven bullets into the three men in a busy Istanbul street before speeding off in a black getaway car. One of the murdered men, 33-year-old Berg-Haj Musayev, was said to be close to Doku Umarov, an Islamist terrorist leader who is Russia’s most wanted man. The other two were said to be his bodyguards. It was Umarov who claimed responsibility for the January suicide bombing of Moscow’s busy Domodedovo airport, an atrocity that left 37 people dead. Musayev’s widow Sehida said she was sure the Russian secret service was behind her husband’s murder, a view echoed by Murat Ozer, head of a Chechen Diaspora group in Istanbul.
…
I am going to provide you with several cases like this, and go back several years, but for now keep this article in mind, and ask yourself: How did these notorious Chechen terrorist masterminds and leaders end up in Turkey? Why did all these high-level terrorists choose Turkey? How could they be allowed by the Turkish government to operate and carry out their terror operations from Turkey as their HQ-base? Keep those questions in mind as you proceed to the next case and facts. Now, a bit more on these assassinations from Spiegel:
Russia Hunts Down Chechen Terrorists Abroad
Russian intelligence agents appear to be systematically working off a hit list. When he came into power, Putin, who was president at the time, apparently decided to expand the death zone. “We will pursue the terrorists wherever they go. If we find them in the toilet, we’ll kill them in the outhouse,” the president vowed, and set his agents loose on Chechen rebels and terrorists abroad. In February 2004, Russian agents with diplomatic passports blew up an SUV carrying Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a Chechen rebel commander, in Qatar, where he had been a guest of that country’s emir…
…
The attacks were carried out in Arab countries, Azerbaidjan in the southern Caucasus and, in particular, Turkey. In September 2008, the Chechen militant Gaji Edilsultanov was murdered in Istanbul in broad daylight. Three months later, his fellow militant Islam Zhanibekov was killed in an execution-style shooting in front of his wife and children. Russian special-forces units had targeted the Chechen because of his involvement in several terrorist attacks.
…
What I want you to specifically take with you from this second article is that: 1- The largest concentrations of these active Chechen terrorists are in (in order): Turkey- A NATO member, Azerbaijan (Almost a NATO Member), Germany (a NATO Member), followed by Dubai- one of the closest US Allies in the Arab States, and Qatar-another very close US ally and partner in the Arab states. 2- Amazingly these notorious ‘Islamist’ terrorists are not present in ‘Islamist’ nations designated as terrorist nations by the United States: Iran, Syria. Of course there are no Chechens terrorist groups in North Korea Please keep this ‘2’ together with the previous one, and we’ll move to the next area.
Chechen Terrorists Linked Closely with Turkey
Do you remember the Moscow Theater hostage Crisis in 2002? If not, you can quickly check it out here. The following report came out after the investigations and follow up:
Chechen terrorists linked with Turkey: Russia
There were earlier reports that Chechen terrorists had made telephone calls to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates during the hostage drama. According to reports carried by the Itar-Tass on Tuesday, Russian security intelligence said that they had had indisputable proof that the Chechens had received support and encouragement from these three countries.
…
The head of Russia’s International Military Co-operation Department, General Anatoli Mazurkeviç, is to meet with a European Parliamentarian Council delegation later on Tuesday and complain of what Russia sees as a double standard in west on combating terrorism.
…
I am sure you have picked up on the commonality shared by the mentioned nations. The time frame: 2002, and the terrorist and terrorist supporting nations happen to be those outside our nation’s designated axis of evil. No Iraq, Iran or Syria. No Gaddafi-led Libya.
…
Let’s pause for a second and check out the Chechens’ American friends and advocates, and after that we’ll come back here. The following article appeared in the Guardian UK in 2004 [All emphasis mine]:
The Chechens American Friends
In the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled “distinguished Americans” who are its members is a roll call of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusiastically support the “war on terror”. They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be “a cakewalk”; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on NATO; Michael Ladeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush’s plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.
…
… In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration.
…
Okay. You should have several twos by now to add together later: Main Chechen terror base and HQ in NATO Member and one of the closest US allies in the Middle East Turkey + Network Extension in Germany (NATO), Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (Two closest US Arab Allies and Pawns) + All the major PNAC –Neoconservative & the New World Order players and operators + the CIA. Now, let’s head back where we left off with the Russia-Turkey angle, and take a look at a more specific player. Here is an article from 2008 … To read the entire piece Click Here. I also encourage you to watch our Gladio Video Report Series. That is, if you want the facts and the truth. That is, if you don’t want tales and spins.
# # # #
Sibel Edmonds is the Publisher & Editor of Boiling Frogs Post and the author of the Memoir Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story. She is the recipient of the 2006 PEN Newman's Own First Amendment Award for her “commitment to preserving the free flow of information in the United States in a time of growing international isolation and increasing government secrecy” Ms. Edmonds has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University.
Sibel Edmonds is the Publisher & Editor of Boiling Frogs Post and the author of the Memoir Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story. She is the recipient of the 2006 PEN Newman's Own First Amendment Award for her “commitment to preserving the free flow of information in the United States in a time of growing international isolation and increasing government secrecy” Ms. Edmonds has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University.
The Chechens' American friends
The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own
An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as the terrorists. There have been numerous editorials encouraging us to understand - to quote the Sunday Times - the "underlying causes" of Chechen terrorism (usually Russian authoritarianism), while the widespread use of the word "rebels" to describe people who shoot children shows a surprising indulgence in the face of extreme brutality.
On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called "mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American supporters. The leading Russian critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov - men associated with the extreme neoliberal market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head office, this influential thinktank - which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the US restructure the "Greater Middle East" - has been quoted repeatedly in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.
These people peddle essentially the same line as that expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed Zakaev, the London exile who wrote in these pages yesterday. Other prominent figures who use the Chechen rebellion as a stick with which to beat Putin include Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like Zakaev, was granted political asylum in this country, although the Russian authorities want him on numerous charges. Moscow has often accused Berezovsky of funding Chechen rebels in the past.
By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are putting it about that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only western channels reported live, the implication being that Putin's Russia remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while watching both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels had far better information and images from Beslan than their western competitors. This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".
They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.
The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo - implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilise the situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration.
Although the White House issued a condemnation of the Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that the Chechen conflict must be solved politically. According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks of Johns Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution - in other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects elsewhere.
Allegations are even being made in Russia that the west itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the purpose of such support is to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighbouring Georgia - a country which aspires to join Nato, has an extremely pro-American government, and where the US already has a significant military presence - only encourages such speculation. Putin himself even seemed to lend credence to the idea in his interview with foreign journalists on Monday.
Proof of any such western involvement would be difficult to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are asking themselves such questions when the same people in Washington who demand the deployment of overwhelming military force against the US's so-called terrorist enemies also insist that Russia capitulate to hers?
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/08/usa.russia
Head of Russian Secret Service Accuses MI6 of Plotting Against Putin
Putin is expected to engineer the choice of a crony as new President and retain most of the power in Russia
MI6 is stirring up dissent in Russia to influence upcoming elections and stop President Putin holding on to power, the Kremlin's security chief claimed yesterday. The head of Russia's Federal Security Service - the successor of the KGB - said British spies were intent on weakening Russia and breaking up the country. British secret agents had been doing the same since the reign of Elizabeth I, claimed Nikolai Patrushev, a close ally of Mr Putin. In an interview with the weekly Argumenty I Fakti, Patrushev alleged that MI6 agents were "not only gathering intelligence in all areas but also trying to influence the development of the domestic political situation in our country." "Right at the moment foreign intelligence services are making considerable efforts to get information about the forthcoming elections to the State Duma (lower house of parliament) and presidency," he said. Last week, Mr. Putin announced he would lead the dominant United Russia party, which would give him a strong chance of becoming Prime Minister next year when the constitution requires that he step down as President after two consecutive terms.
Analysts expect him to engineer the choice of a crony as new President and retain most of the power in Russia himself. Foreign Office sources said this week that election observers are not being given normal access to Russia ahead of the parliamentary vote in December and the presidential election in March. Britain's ambassador to Russia, Tony Brenton, suffered months of harassment from the pro-Kremlin youth organisation, Nashi, after attending an opposition conference in 2006. The Foreign Office sources said British-Russia relations remained at a low and were not likely to improve in the near future because of Russia's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the businessman wanted in connection with the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London last November. Perhaps speaking for internal consumption, Patrushev painted a paranoid picture of Russia beset on all sides by foreign spies, eager to dig up the country's secrets and destabilise it ahead of the elections. British agents were the worst offenders, he said, although he offered no new evidence. "Since the time of Elizabeth 1 the British principle has been 'the end justifies the means," he said. "Money, corruption, blackmail, offering immunity from prosecution, these are their main methods of recruitment."
In Cold War language, Patrushev attacked not only MI6 but also spies from Poland, the Baltic States, Georgia, Turkey and Pakistan as stooges of the CIA. Spies were poking their noses into everything from the state of Russia's armed forces to conditions in the Caucasus, Siberia and the Far East, he said.
"Regarding the collapse of the Soviet Union as their achievement, they are now nurturing plans to carve up Russia," he said. But he reserved special scorn for London, now the base of Russian exiles such as Boris Berezovsky. "Lately, to achieve their political goals, the British have been relying on individuals accused of crimes and hiding abroad from Russian justice," Patrushev said. He reiterated accusations that Berezovksy and Litvinenko had tried to recruit Russian citizens to work for MI6. He also dredged up old allegations, dating back to 2005, that British agents had placed fake rocks in Moscow parks to hide their transmitters. And he claimed that the use of non-governmental organisations was "in the arsenal" of foreign intelligence services trying to provoke a revolution in Russia similar to the 2004 Orange Revolution in the Ukraine.
Analysts expect him to engineer the choice of a crony as new President and retain most of the power in Russia himself. Foreign Office sources said this week that election observers are not being given normal access to Russia ahead of the parliamentary vote in December and the presidential election in March. Britain's ambassador to Russia, Tony Brenton, suffered months of harassment from the pro-Kremlin youth organisation, Nashi, after attending an opposition conference in 2006. The Foreign Office sources said British-Russia relations remained at a low and were not likely to improve in the near future because of Russia's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the businessman wanted in connection with the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London last November. Perhaps speaking for internal consumption, Patrushev painted a paranoid picture of Russia beset on all sides by foreign spies, eager to dig up the country's secrets and destabilise it ahead of the elections. British agents were the worst offenders, he said, although he offered no new evidence. "Since the time of Elizabeth 1 the British principle has been 'the end justifies the means," he said. "Money, corruption, blackmail, offering immunity from prosecution, these are their main methods of recruitment."
In Cold War language, Patrushev attacked not only MI6 but also spies from Poland, the Baltic States, Georgia, Turkey and Pakistan as stooges of the CIA. Spies were poking their noses into everything from the state of Russia's armed forces to conditions in the Caucasus, Siberia and the Far East, he said.
"Regarding the collapse of the Soviet Union as their achievement, they are now nurturing plans to carve up Russia," he said. But he reserved special scorn for London, now the base of Russian exiles such as Boris Berezovsky. "Lately, to achieve their political goals, the British have been relying on individuals accused of crimes and hiding abroad from Russian justice," Patrushev said. He reiterated accusations that Berezovksy and Litvinenko had tried to recruit Russian citizens to work for MI6. He also dredged up old allegations, dating back to 2005, that British agents had placed fake rocks in Moscow parks to hide their transmitters. And he claimed that the use of non-governmental organisations was "in the arsenal" of foreign intelligence services trying to provoke a revolution in Russia similar to the 2004 Orange Revolution in the Ukraine.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1811
Moscow Says Georgia And Azerbaijan Support Islamic Rebels
September 21, 1999
With
increasing frequency, Russian officials are charging that Islamic
fighters, weapons and funds are being funneled via Georgia and
Azerbaijan to terrorist groups in the North Caucasus. Such charges have
been aired in recent days by Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov,
Federation Council Chairman Yegor Stroev, Duma Chairman Gennady
Seleznev, Duma Defense Committee Chairman Roman Popkovich, and
Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov (head of the Defense Ministry's Main
Department for International Military Cooperation). None of these has
cited any supportive evidence.
The timing and venue of some of these statements adds to their significance. Ivanov spoke out on the subject as he emerged from a meeting with President Boris Yeltsin; Stroev, following a closed-door session of the Federation Council on the events in the North Caucasus; and Seleznev as the Duma included those accusations in a special resolution on the situation in the Caucasus. This seems to reflect a growing political backing in Moscow for the use of pressure on Azerbaijan and Georgia, as was the case during the 1995-96 Russian-Chechen war, when Moscow made similar allegations which it was never able to substantiate.
In
Baku, senior presidential adviser Vafa Guluzade and National Security
Minister Namig Abbasov dismissed the latest charges directed at
Azerbaijan as baseless. But the wording of their statements has been
remarkably restrained, and other Azerbaijani officials have said
nothing. Baku seems intent on preserving the recent, slight warm-up in
its bilateral relations with Russia (see the Monitor, September 10)
against collateral damage from the war in the North Caucasus.
Georgian
officials, for their part, have been more forthright in discussing
the potential implications of Moscow's assertions. State Minister
[equivalent to prime minister] Vazha Lortkipanidze, who is known for
his conciliatory attitude toward Russia, expressed concern that the
allegations might presage "an attempt to involve Georgia in the North
Caucasus conflict and destabilize the situation in Georgia itself."
President Eduard Shevardnadze's adviser on international law, Levan
Aleksidze, urged Russia to "stop painting Georgia in the enemy's image"
and described the situation in the North Caucasus as evidence of
Moscow's "policy error" of supporting separatism in the South even as
it combats "separatism" in the North. Georgia's border troops
commander, Lieutenant-General Valery Chkheidze, termed the accusations
against Georgia "demagogic," designed for internal political
consumption.
These Georgian officials, and an official statement of Georgia's Foreign Ministry, all underscored Georgia's interest in upholding the principle of territorial integrity and preservation of existing borders. Azerbaijani President Haidar Aliev--during talks with a Council of Europe delegation in Baku--emphasized Azerbaijan's interest in upholding the same principles and in thwarting Islamic fundamentalism. Specifically, Aliev mentioned Azerbaijan's interest in the restoration of stability in neighboring Dagestan (Itar-Tass, Turan, Azad-Inform, Radio Tbilisi, Prime-News, September 14-19; Nezavisimaya gazeta, September 15).
Source: http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=11895&tx_ttnews[backPid]=213
TURKISH MILITANTS IN CHECHNYA
For
several years Kremlin spokespersons have identified Turkey as the
primary source of foreign jihadi volunteers (always referred to as
naemniky, "mercenaries" in official proclamations) fighting alongside
their Chechen adversaries. One spokesman claimed "We keep killing armed
Turkish citizens on Chechen territory" and another described Turkey as
"a record breaker for producing foreign mercenaries killed in
Chechnya." [1] While skeptics might be tempted to dismiss such claims
as mere bluster in light of Turkey's well known secular tendencies, the
evidence is mounting that Turkish volunteer fighters make up a
sizeable component of the foreign element fighting alongside the
indigenous Chechen insurgents in Russia. While it is widely recognized
that the 100-200 foreign jihadis fighting alongside the approximately
1,200 Chechen insurgents are led by Arab emirs (commanders) such as the
slain Amir Khattab (a Saudi whose mother was Turkish according to
jihadist websites), Abu Walid (Saudi killed April 2004), and Abu Hafs
al Urdani (aka "Amjet" a Jordanian), the Russian government has
consistently maintained that Turks play a prominent role among the
foreign "terrorists" in Chechnya. [2] To support their claims, Russian
security services have produced Turkish passports found on the bodies
of several slain fighters and have given the names and personal details
of Turkish jihadis killed in Chechnya. Among others, Russian
spokespersons referenced one Ziya Pece, a Turk who was found dead with a
grenade launcher following a fire fight with Federal forces. Russian
officials have also provided detailed information on 24 Turkish
fighters killed between 1999 and 2004, and Russian soldiers in Chechnya
have spoken of engaging a unit of 40 skilled Turkish fighters. [3] If
this were not compelling enough evidence, Russian security forces have
also produced a living Turkish jihadi named Ali Yaman who was captured
in the Chechen village of Gekhi-Chu.
A Turkish Platoon in Chechnya
Surprisingly, this evidence is not refuted by Chechen or Turkish jihadi sources and on the contrary has been corroborated on such forums as the kavkaz.org website produced by Arab and Chechen extremists linked to the field commander Shamil Basayev. The following excerpt from a kavkaz interview with a Turkish jihadi commander in Chechnya is illuminating and suggests the existence of a Turkish jamaat known as the "Ottoman platoon" in the Arab-dominated International Islamic Brigade (it also corroborates the above Russian claim that Federal forces have killed 24 Turks in Chechnya): "Interview with the Chief of the Turkish Jamaat ‘Osmanly' (Ottoman) fighting in Chechnya against the troops of Russian invaders, Amir (Commander) Muhtar, by the Kavkaz Center news agency: (Interviewer) Are there many Turks in Chechnya today? Some mass media were reporting that there are about 20 of you guys.
(Amir Muhtar) Out of the first Jamaat that was fighting in 1995-1996 seven mujahideen have remained. Back then there were 13 of us. They are actually the core of the Turkish jamaat in Chechnya today. Twenty-four Turks have already died in this war. Among them was Zachariah, Muhammed-Fatih, Halil…Three mujahideen became shaheeds (martyrs) during the battle with commandos from Pskov in the vicinity of Ulus-Kert. Some died before that in the battles in Jokhar (Grozny). Five were wounded." [4] In February 2004 a Turkish jihadi website devoted to Chechnya also announced the martyrdom (shehid olmak) of three Turkish mujahideen in just two weeks. [5] Another site that has been removed left the following account of the combat that led to the martyrdom of three Turkish jihadi fighters: "Last night we had news from verifiable sources that a group of Turkish mujahideen came across Russian soldiers north of Vedeno in a small village. After stumbling on them a fire fight ensued and one Algerian and three Turkish brothers died. The Algerian's name is Hassam and the Turkish brothers' names are Ebu Derda, Huzeyfe and Zennun. These brothers fought in Commander Ramazan's unit in the Dagestan conflict." [6]
For several years now Turkish jihadi websites have actually been posting the martyrdom epitaphs of Turkish fighters who died in the Chechen cihad. Much of the jihadist rhetoric found on these Islamist sites will be familiar to those who follow the martyrdom obituaries of foreign jihadis who have died fighting in Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones. The following account, for example, describes the fate of a Turkish fighter who followed the well worn path of roaming Turkish jihadis in the Balkans before being killed: "Shaheed Bilal Al-Qaiseri (Uthman Karkush). 23 years old from Qaiseri, Turkey. Martyred during the Withdrawal from Grozny, February 2000: Bilal fought for six months in Bosnia during 1995 from where he unsuccessfully attempted to travel to Chechnya. He went to fight for the Jihad in Kosova but returned after a month when the fighting ceased. He came to Chechnya in August 1999 where he participated in the Dagestan Operations in Botlikh. After the Mujahideen withdrew, he was planning to return to Turkey when Russia invaded Chechnya. He participated in the fighting in Argun and, subsequently, Grozny. Before and throughout Ramadan he cooked for the Mujahideen in his group. During the fighting he was distinguished for his bravery. After seeing a dream in which he was married, he decided to marry a Chechen, but Shahaadah (martyrdom) was destined for him instead. He was severely injured during the withdrawal from Grozny in the village of Katyr Yurt where his room received a direct hit from Russian Grad Artillery. He was later martyred from his injuries in the village of Shami Yurt."
Ethnicity and Turkish jihad in Chechnya
The following epitah, which describes a Turkish martyr "with some Chechen ancestry" speaks of a deeper and less obvious current in the Turkish jihadi movement that delineates Turkish volunteer fighters from the majority of trans-national Arab jihadis fighting in Chechnya: "Shamil (Afooq Qainar). 25 years old from Istanbul, Turkey.
Martyred in Grozny, November 1999:
With some Chechen ancestory, he deeply loved Chechnya and was more often alongside Chechens than Turks. He had also participated in the Chechen Jihad of 1996-99. With his good manners, polite demeanor and modesty, he got along well with everyone. He also took part in the Dagestan Jihad in the Novalak Region where, notably, his group fought their way out of a Russian siege at a cost of 25 Shaheed (martyrs). He was martyred in the second month of this War (November 1999) in Grozny." [7]
While it might be overlooked, the fact that the slain Shamil is, like many of his compatriots, of Chechen extraction, is of tremendous importance. It would seem that many Turks who volunteer to fight on the behalf of the Chechens do so because they have ethnic origins in the Caucasus region or identify with the Chechens as irkdashlar (kin).
In the 19th century, Tsarist Russia instigated a brutal policy of ethnic cleansing that saw tens of thousands of indigenous Caucasian highlanders expelled to Anatolia. While public expressions of Laz, Circassian, Kosovar, Bosniak, Tatar and Chechen ethnic identity were subsequently discouraged in officially homogenous Republican Turkey, folk traditions such as the famous Caucasian highlander sword dances, Albanian borek (pastry), Crimean Tatar destans (legends), and ritualized commemoration of past victimization at the hands of Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians and others continued.
It was only with the liberalization of Turkey under President Turgut Ozal in the early 1990s that these historical sub-ethnic grievances could be expressed in the public sphere. As this unprecedented celebration of ethnicity and commemoration of past repression took place in a liberalizing Turkey, Turks were confronted with horrifying images from the Balkans and Caucasus. Stories of rape camps in Bosnia, mass graves in Kosovo, and televised images of columns of pitiful Chechen refugees in Russia struck many Turks as a replay of the apocalyptic destruction of millions of Balkan-Caucasian-Ukrainian Muslims by Orthodox Christians in the 19th century.
As a result, informants interviewed by the author in Turkey in the summer of 2004 claimed that many young men from villages in Eastern Turkey inhabited by people of Caucasian origin were told by their family patriarchs to go and fight for their honor, faith, and ancestral homeland in Chechnya. Moreover, with the advent of the internet in Turkey, gruesome images of horribly mutilated Chechen women and children, mass burials and vandalized mosques appeared on Islamist and secular-nationalist websites alike and enraged many traditionalists in the country. In this climate, both nationalists and religious extremists exploited many Turks' sense of ethnic or religious solidarity with their Chechen "brothers and sisters" and invoked strong feelings of namus (a traditional sense of machismo, pride and honor among Turks that comes from the defense of faith, family, motherland, and honor of one's women).
Like the Turks who continue to fight and die in Chechnya, the websites that glorify the defense of the Chechens run the gamut from the anti-American/Zionist rhetoric of the Islamists to the nationalist irredentism of the Pan-Turkists. But the latter predominate. [8] The pro-Chechen websites with an ethnic dimension tend to feature images of Turks wearing traditional Caucasian folk costumes and 19th century anti-Russian heroes. Others with a slightly more nationalist bent (such as www.kafka.4t.com/photos.html) blend images of Ataturk and Alparslan Turkes (the founder of the Turkish Boz Kurt-Grey Wolves extreme nationalist party) with images from Chechnya. As these sites make clear, many Turks who fight in Chechnya are engaging in the same sort of volunteerism that led Albanian Americans to go fight in Kosovo in 1999 under the auspices of Homeland Calling and other widely recognized diasporic organizations.
This ethnic diaspora narrative might also explain some of the Arab jihadi participation in Chechnya. Many Chechen refugees settled in Ottoman Jordan following their expulsion from Russia in the 19th century. Jordanian Arabs of Chechen extraction, such as the influential Sheikh Muhammad Fatih, have played an important role in the Chechen jihad as warriors, preachers, and fund raisers.
Notwithstanding the involvement of Turks in the Chechen conflict, it would be erroneous to interpret this as proof that secular Turkey faces a serious Islamist problem. Turkish jihadis who have fought in Chechnya have found the Wahhabi Puritanism of their Arab jihadi comrades-in-arms unsettling, and many secular Turks partake in "jihad tours" simply to gain prestige at home in their tight knit families or neighborhoods. In addition, the vast majority of Turks interviewed tended to view Chechens as "terrorists" who reminded them of the hated Kurdish PKK/Kadek militants.
Finally, the involvement of two Turkish extremists (Azad Ekinci and Habib Akdas) who had a history of jihadi activity in Chechnya in the bloody al-Qaeda bombings in Istanbul in November 2003 further undermined the Chechen cause in the country. [9] Indeed for all the romantic notions, some Turks have of volunteering to fight on behalf of the Chechens, the carnage wreaked on innocent Turks by El Kaide Turka (Turkish al-Qaeda) clearly demonstrates that jihadism has a potentially unpredictable effect on those who are attracted to it.
A Turkish Platoon in Chechnya
Surprisingly, this evidence is not refuted by Chechen or Turkish jihadi sources and on the contrary has been corroborated on such forums as the kavkaz.org website produced by Arab and Chechen extremists linked to the field commander Shamil Basayev. The following excerpt from a kavkaz interview with a Turkish jihadi commander in Chechnya is illuminating and suggests the existence of a Turkish jamaat known as the "Ottoman platoon" in the Arab-dominated International Islamic Brigade (it also corroborates the above Russian claim that Federal forces have killed 24 Turks in Chechnya): "Interview with the Chief of the Turkish Jamaat ‘Osmanly' (Ottoman) fighting in Chechnya against the troops of Russian invaders, Amir (Commander) Muhtar, by the Kavkaz Center news agency: (Interviewer) Are there many Turks in Chechnya today? Some mass media were reporting that there are about 20 of you guys.
(Amir Muhtar) Out of the first Jamaat that was fighting in 1995-1996 seven mujahideen have remained. Back then there were 13 of us. They are actually the core of the Turkish jamaat in Chechnya today. Twenty-four Turks have already died in this war. Among them was Zachariah, Muhammed-Fatih, Halil…Three mujahideen became shaheeds (martyrs) during the battle with commandos from Pskov in the vicinity of Ulus-Kert. Some died before that in the battles in Jokhar (Grozny). Five were wounded." [4] In February 2004 a Turkish jihadi website devoted to Chechnya also announced the martyrdom (shehid olmak) of three Turkish mujahideen in just two weeks. [5] Another site that has been removed left the following account of the combat that led to the martyrdom of three Turkish jihadi fighters: "Last night we had news from verifiable sources that a group of Turkish mujahideen came across Russian soldiers north of Vedeno in a small village. After stumbling on them a fire fight ensued and one Algerian and three Turkish brothers died. The Algerian's name is Hassam and the Turkish brothers' names are Ebu Derda, Huzeyfe and Zennun. These brothers fought in Commander Ramazan's unit in the Dagestan conflict." [6]
For several years now Turkish jihadi websites have actually been posting the martyrdom epitaphs of Turkish fighters who died in the Chechen cihad. Much of the jihadist rhetoric found on these Islamist sites will be familiar to those who follow the martyrdom obituaries of foreign jihadis who have died fighting in Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones. The following account, for example, describes the fate of a Turkish fighter who followed the well worn path of roaming Turkish jihadis in the Balkans before being killed: "Shaheed Bilal Al-Qaiseri (Uthman Karkush). 23 years old from Qaiseri, Turkey. Martyred during the Withdrawal from Grozny, February 2000: Bilal fought for six months in Bosnia during 1995 from where he unsuccessfully attempted to travel to Chechnya. He went to fight for the Jihad in Kosova but returned after a month when the fighting ceased. He came to Chechnya in August 1999 where he participated in the Dagestan Operations in Botlikh. After the Mujahideen withdrew, he was planning to return to Turkey when Russia invaded Chechnya. He participated in the fighting in Argun and, subsequently, Grozny. Before and throughout Ramadan he cooked for the Mujahideen in his group. During the fighting he was distinguished for his bravery. After seeing a dream in which he was married, he decided to marry a Chechen, but Shahaadah (martyrdom) was destined for him instead. He was severely injured during the withdrawal from Grozny in the village of Katyr Yurt where his room received a direct hit from Russian Grad Artillery. He was later martyred from his injuries in the village of Shami Yurt."
Ethnicity and Turkish jihad in Chechnya
The following epitah, which describes a Turkish martyr "with some Chechen ancestry" speaks of a deeper and less obvious current in the Turkish jihadi movement that delineates Turkish volunteer fighters from the majority of trans-national Arab jihadis fighting in Chechnya: "Shamil (Afooq Qainar). 25 years old from Istanbul, Turkey.
Martyred in Grozny, November 1999:
With some Chechen ancestory, he deeply loved Chechnya and was more often alongside Chechens than Turks. He had also participated in the Chechen Jihad of 1996-99. With his good manners, polite demeanor and modesty, he got along well with everyone. He also took part in the Dagestan Jihad in the Novalak Region where, notably, his group fought their way out of a Russian siege at a cost of 25 Shaheed (martyrs). He was martyred in the second month of this War (November 1999) in Grozny." [7]
While it might be overlooked, the fact that the slain Shamil is, like many of his compatriots, of Chechen extraction, is of tremendous importance. It would seem that many Turks who volunteer to fight on the behalf of the Chechens do so because they have ethnic origins in the Caucasus region or identify with the Chechens as irkdashlar (kin).
In the 19th century, Tsarist Russia instigated a brutal policy of ethnic cleansing that saw tens of thousands of indigenous Caucasian highlanders expelled to Anatolia. While public expressions of Laz, Circassian, Kosovar, Bosniak, Tatar and Chechen ethnic identity were subsequently discouraged in officially homogenous Republican Turkey, folk traditions such as the famous Caucasian highlander sword dances, Albanian borek (pastry), Crimean Tatar destans (legends), and ritualized commemoration of past victimization at the hands of Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians and others continued.
It was only with the liberalization of Turkey under President Turgut Ozal in the early 1990s that these historical sub-ethnic grievances could be expressed in the public sphere. As this unprecedented celebration of ethnicity and commemoration of past repression took place in a liberalizing Turkey, Turks were confronted with horrifying images from the Balkans and Caucasus. Stories of rape camps in Bosnia, mass graves in Kosovo, and televised images of columns of pitiful Chechen refugees in Russia struck many Turks as a replay of the apocalyptic destruction of millions of Balkan-Caucasian-Ukrainian Muslims by Orthodox Christians in the 19th century.
As a result, informants interviewed by the author in Turkey in the summer of 2004 claimed that many young men from villages in Eastern Turkey inhabited by people of Caucasian origin were told by their family patriarchs to go and fight for their honor, faith, and ancestral homeland in Chechnya. Moreover, with the advent of the internet in Turkey, gruesome images of horribly mutilated Chechen women and children, mass burials and vandalized mosques appeared on Islamist and secular-nationalist websites alike and enraged many traditionalists in the country. In this climate, both nationalists and religious extremists exploited many Turks' sense of ethnic or religious solidarity with their Chechen "brothers and sisters" and invoked strong feelings of namus (a traditional sense of machismo, pride and honor among Turks that comes from the defense of faith, family, motherland, and honor of one's women).
Like the Turks who continue to fight and die in Chechnya, the websites that glorify the defense of the Chechens run the gamut from the anti-American/Zionist rhetoric of the Islamists to the nationalist irredentism of the Pan-Turkists. But the latter predominate. [8] The pro-Chechen websites with an ethnic dimension tend to feature images of Turks wearing traditional Caucasian folk costumes and 19th century anti-Russian heroes. Others with a slightly more nationalist bent (such as www.kafka.4t.com/photos.html) blend images of Ataturk and Alparslan Turkes (the founder of the Turkish Boz Kurt-Grey Wolves extreme nationalist party) with images from Chechnya. As these sites make clear, many Turks who fight in Chechnya are engaging in the same sort of volunteerism that led Albanian Americans to go fight in Kosovo in 1999 under the auspices of Homeland Calling and other widely recognized diasporic organizations.
This ethnic diaspora narrative might also explain some of the Arab jihadi participation in Chechnya. Many Chechen refugees settled in Ottoman Jordan following their expulsion from Russia in the 19th century. Jordanian Arabs of Chechen extraction, such as the influential Sheikh Muhammad Fatih, have played an important role in the Chechen jihad as warriors, preachers, and fund raisers.
Notwithstanding the involvement of Turks in the Chechen conflict, it would be erroneous to interpret this as proof that secular Turkey faces a serious Islamist problem. Turkish jihadis who have fought in Chechnya have found the Wahhabi Puritanism of their Arab jihadi comrades-in-arms unsettling, and many secular Turks partake in "jihad tours" simply to gain prestige at home in their tight knit families or neighborhoods. In addition, the vast majority of Turks interviewed tended to view Chechens as "terrorists" who reminded them of the hated Kurdish PKK/Kadek militants.
Finally, the involvement of two Turkish extremists (Azad Ekinci and Habib Akdas) who had a history of jihadi activity in Chechnya in the bloody al-Qaeda bombings in Istanbul in November 2003 further undermined the Chechen cause in the country. [9] Indeed for all the romantic notions, some Turks have of volunteering to fight on behalf of the Chechens, the carnage wreaked on innocent Turks by El Kaide Turka (Turkish al-Qaeda) clearly demonstrates that jihadism has a potentially unpredictable effect on those who are attracted to it.
Source: http://www.jamestown.org/publication...cle_id=2369571
Turkey Succours Wounded Chechens
Dozens
of Chechens here have been treated with the help of Turkish Islamist
aid groups. Indeed, 150 new patients are expected to arrive at this
hospital soon. In the wards, the patients - all young men - were nervous
about being interviewed as they were concerned about the possibility
of Russian reprisals against their relatives back home. Mohamed, a
former student, lost his arm during a Russian air raid in Grozny. He
would not say exactly how he had come to Istanbul. Real anger is
palpable at a big pro-Chechen demonstration in Istanbul where
protesters are expressing their frustration at what is happening to
fellow Muslims in Chechnya. The Russians allege that financial and
material aid to Chechnya is flowing through Turkey, although this is
hard to prove. Pro-Islamist groups say their focus is on humanitarian
assistance, but they say the government could and should do more. "No
official policy can stand against the will of the people for long",
says Bulent Yildirim of the National Youth Foundation. "Turkish public
opinion is very sympathetic to the Chechens. So the current government
will have to change its policy - or the people will change the
government." Turks of Chechen origin are busy helping the few refugees
who have made it to Turkey. Bouka Aidamirova escaped across the Chechen
mountains and crossed into Georgia with her son, just before the
Russians shut the route down. Bouka says she wants to go back - but
only when the Russians have gone for good. For the moment however, she
is stranded.
Turkey must be cautious
Politicians
in Ankara may be sympathetic, but Russia is a huge neighbour, and
Turkey's second largest trading partner. There are good reasons for
treading carefully, according to Fehmi Koru, a political commentator,
in a country with its own large minority group, the Kurds. "Turkey is
very much dependent on Russian natural gas for example. And also there
are people who feel that if Turkey tries to make a fuss about the
Chechens, people will bring up the Kurds," Mr Koru says. At the moment,
the Turkish government will not pour oil onto troubled waters. But if
the war in Chechnya drags on, there may be pressure for a change of
heart
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/628272.stm
Turkey And The Chechens
There
is a substantial Chechen exile community in Turkey, which is
particularly strong in Istanbul, and millions of Turks also trace their
ancestry to the Caucasus. During the Russian military campaigns against
Chechen rebels in the last few years, there have been persistent
allegations from Russia that Turkish organisations have offered
financial and material support to the independence movement. The Turkish
and Russian governments recently signed an agreement for closer
co-operation against militant groups, and the authorities in Ankara have
always insisted that there is no official support for the rebel
campaign. But Chechen fighters have been treated in Turkish hospitals,
and the ruthlessness of the Russian military has generated considerable
sympathy among ordinary Turks for their Chechen brethren. Turkey has
also been dragged unwillingly into several previous hijackings involving
the Chechen issue. The most famous occurred in 1996, when a group of
pro-Chechen gunmen seized control of a passenger ferry off Turkey's
northern Black Sea coast. More than 200 people were held hostage for
several days by a gang, which included both Chechens and Turks. The
hijackers were eventually imprisoned but all of them later escaped amid
strong suspicions that they were allowed to go free.
THE CHECHEN DIASPORA IN TURKEY
The
Chechen Diaspora is still taking shape. The devastating war in
Chechnya that has lasted for ten years has already produced a large
number of refugees. Most of them, of course, moved to Russia, while
others chose to escape the old Empire and preferred to settle in
Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, trying to reach Western Europe from
those countries. The second war in Chechnya has been going on for six
years, leaving refugees without much hope of returning home anytime
soon. They have started organizing themselves, trying to build the basis
for a Diaspora, whose main task, like many other Diasporas around the
world, is to support the resistance against the enemy. Turkey may be
the best place for those seeking to continue the fight in Chechnya from
abroad. During the first Chechen war (1994-1996), Turkish authorities
played host to exiled Chechen warlords and allowed several Turkish
mayors who were members of the Prosperity Party, an Islamic party, to
provide medical aid and general support for the Chechen guerrillas.
Within Turkish political society there even emerged a coalition between
hardcore Islamists and nationalists who favored Turkish military
intervention in Chechnya.
Thus,
since the beginning of the second Chechen war in 1999, Turkey has
represented a perfect safe haven for Chechen refugees, among them
fighters who think that the war should be also supported from abroad and
who look for international backing. Some 3,000 to 4,000 Chechens
arrived in Turkey between 1999 and 2001. Since then, however, the number
has declined. There are now probably only 1,500 Chechens left in the
country. While some returned to Chechnya, the vast majority fled to
Europe through Bulgaria or Ukraine. The situation for Chechen refugees
in Turkey has changed. Political forces have largely given up the
Chechen issue. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were a factor in
this, but not the only one. Today, religious associations, groups and
individuals continue to support the Chechen cause as an act of giving
Zakat (charity), one of the five pillars of Islam.
Turkish
authorities, however, could not politically and openly take the "safe
haven" position. Turkey had to increase its commercial and economic
relations with Russia; Ankara is seeking to establish a privileged
relationship with Moscow, particularly involving natural gas, and
cannot allow the Chechen issue to weaken those efforts. Moreover, after
September 11 and the start of the global war against terror, Turkish
solidarity for Chechnya became difficult to sustain: the hosting of
wounded Chechen fighters and arms transits (as was the case between
1994 and 1996, according to many observers and journalists) became hard
to justify. Russia's information blockade of Chechnya also made it more
difficult to aid the Chechens. It did not mean that the Turkish
authorities did not know what was going on there, but it made it more
difficult for them to make a convincing case that support from
non-governmental associations or groups in Turkey would not be used for
"terrorist" purposes.
However,
it would be false to say that the moderate Islamist government of
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has totally renounced his
country's historical and geopolitical alliance with local Caucasian
forces against Russia. Turkey is simply playing a two-level game. On the
one hand, Turkey proves to Russia its good intentions by putting
pressure on the Chechen Diaspora. On the other, it keeps open
opportunities for Chechen resistance groups to act from its territory –
for example, by collecting and transferring funds to the Chechen
guerrillas. Using this strategy, Turkey retains a powerful tool in its
ongoing negotiations with Russia on commercial and economic matters.
Through the Chechen Diaspora, Ankara is able to obtain concessions from
Moscow. Thus the Turkish government is willing to sacrifice one part of
the Chechen Diaspora and allow another part to prosper and act in the
interests of the Chechen guerrillas. Erdogan's government needs the
Chechens: it needs to keep them active, but not too active.
Two
examples illustrate this approach. In February 2004, Turkish Foreign
Minister Abdulla Gül brought back from his visit to Moscow a list of 20
Chechens living in Turkey. Within months, several prominent Chechen
rebels had either moved or relocated from their homes in Turkey. One of
them, Zeindi Umarov, a former bodyguard of Aslan Maskhadov and a close
collaborator of Umar Khanbiev, Maskhadov's general representative in
Europe (including Turkey and South Caucasus), was resettled in Baku. At
the same time, Alla Dudaeva, wife of the first Chechen president,
Djokhar Dudaev, is still leaving peacefully in Istanbul; it seems that
she is even protected by the Turkish authorities. More generally, some
Chechen activists still find a welcoming shelter in Turkey. Zeindi
Umarov was sacrificed so that others could stay.
Several
days before the NATO summit in Turkey and the visit of President
Vladimir Putin to Turkey in June 2004 and in December 2004,
respectively, a dozen Chechen refugees from the refugee camps located on
the outskirts of Istanbul were arrested by the Turkish special forces
and charged with maintaining ties to Islamist groups, al-Qaeda in
particular. (The arrests were confirmed by Chechen contacts in Istanbul
and by Amnesty International, which provided the author of this article
with a list of 12 names, all Chechens, arrested in June 2004.). All
were released after the events and none of them had any effective links
with international terrorist or Islamist networks. These arrests were
only demonstrations of force by Turkish authorities, and probably also a
kind of intimidation aimed at Chechens who might be tempted to go
beyond the boundaries set by official structures in Turkey.
Playing
the Chechen card as a negotiating tool assumes that all Chechen
activities are under Turkish governmental control. Both of the above
examples illustrate this two-level game. It could be dangerous if some
Chechen groups were acting autonomously, outside the Turkish
government's political strategy. Turkey lets some Chechens continue the
war, but only under conditions imposed by the government in Ankara.
That is why the Chechen Diaspora in Turkey is so tightly supervised.
There is no political freedom for Chechen refugees, no chances for any
Chechen political tendency to organize itself if the Turkish control
structures do not allow it. The only political tendency that is
unofficially accepted is the Maskhadov-related group. This has created a
rift between the "Maskhadovites" and the "Dudaevists", who believe
that Aslan Maskhadov, because of his moderation, has led Dudaev's
legacy astray. This latter group cannot act freely. Rifts aside, the
active part of the Chechen Diaspora in Turkey – including both fighters
and emissaries collecting funds for them – continue to take advantage
of their host's two-level game. And this, of course, does not go
unnoticed by the Russians (see, for example "Turkish public
organizations help Chechen separatists?", RIA Novosti, 5 November
2004).
Source: http://www.jamestown.org/publication...cle_id=2369276
Turkish building company denies funding Chechen militants
Turkish
building company ENKA Wednesday rejected claims, made in a
documentary program broadcast Tuesday on Russia's Channel One TV, that
it had provided financing in the 1990s to Chechen militants. "We state
that all information regarding our company broadcast April 22 in the
Plan Caucasus TV program on Channel One is totally groundless and
untrue," ENKA said. "We deny all such accusations." ENKA is one of
Turkey's largest construction companies working in Russia. The claims
were made against ENKA in the TV program by Sultan Kekhursayev, now
living in Istanbul. He said he had been "[now dead Chechen separatist
leader Dzhokhar] Dudayev's army brigadier general." Kekhursayev said
large Turkish companies working in Russia, including ENKA, funded the
seizure of Chechnya's capital Grozny in the summer 1996, adding that
they "had done much" to assist militants. Sporadic terrorist attacks
and militant clashes are common in Chechnya, although the active phase
of the Kremlin campaign to fight separatists and terrorists is over.
Violence often spills over into neighboring North Caucasus republics,
including Ingushetia and Daghestan.
Source: http://en.rian.ru/world/20080423/105751390.html
Russian Official: 'Chechen' IS Warlords Are U.S.-Trained Georgians
Ilya Rogachev, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department
for New Challenges and Threats, has said that Chechen militants fighting
with the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria are not Russian citizens but
Kists from Georgia's Pankisi Gorge.
In an interview with the Ekho Moskvy radio station on January 16,
parts of which were transcribed by other Russian media outlets, Rogachev
blamed Georgia for the phenomenon of Chechen militants in Syria. The
Russian Foreign Ministry official said that Georgian Kists --
ethnic Chechens from the Pankisi Gorge -- were "among the most prominent
warlords who have already proved themselves in IS." Rogachev did not
name these warlords but said they were "trained in
Georgia, probably by Georgian specialists, who in turn were taught by
the Americans."
These comments -- perhaps surprisingly -- echo reports in Western news outlets,
which have placed Georgia's Pankisi Gorge under an intense media
spotlight, mostly because of the sudden rise to notice of IS's military
emir in Syria, Umar al-Shishani, who is from the Pankisi Gorge. While
Umar al-Shishani was a conscript in the Georgian Army, some news reports
have emphasized that he was possibly trained by officers who may have
been trained by Americans. The Foreign Ministry official echoed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov
when he said that there were "not as many North Caucasians with Russian
passports in IS as it is acceptable to imagine." Rogachev said that there were "Chechens from other countries,
including those who received asylum abroad" fighting with IS in Syria
and Iraq. In November, Chechnya's Kadyrov lashed out at the West over what he
said was a deliberate attempt to portray Chechens as terrorists in
Syria. Kadyrov said that the "overwhelming majority" of Chechens in Syria were "residents of Western countries who were born there or who left 20 years ago."
According
to Interfax Religion, Rogachev claimed that there were 800 Russian
nationals fighting alongside the IS group. However, Rogachev said that
this figure was based on "unofficial,
expert assessments" and did not offer any information about what the
Russian security services believe the numbers of Russian citizens
fighting in Syria and Iraq to be.
Blowback Threat
Rogachev also warned that Islamic State (IS) militants were
"spreading out throughout the world and pose a serious threat." The
Foreign Ministry official said that the rapid influx of militants to
Syria and Iraq had not been curbed. In an odd twist, Rogachev hinted that the U.S.-led air strikes
against IS had had an effect. While he did not mention the air strikes
conducted by the U.S.-led coalition against IS in Syria and Iraq --
which, after all, Moscow opposes -- Rogachev did say that IS was taking
losses in Syria and Iraq. "Now we can say there is some sort of balance. The rapid expansion of
IS has stopped: IS militants are incurring significant losses and many
of them have returned to their home countries, having lost faith in an
ultimate victory," Rogachev said. Rogachev also warned that IS militants who returned to their home
countries from Syria and Iraq "represent a very serious threat."
"Experience
has shown that individuals who have spent some time in
conflict zones rarely return to a normal life. Going forward, they
continue to engage in illegal activities, not necessarily terrorist
[activities]. This could be ideological indoctrination," Rogachev said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry official also repeated Moscow's claim
that the rise of IS in Syria was a result of "foreign military aid to
Syrian rebels in the fight against the legitimate government of Bashar
al-Assad." Russia and Iran, Assad's two most powerful allies, have both
asserted
that the IS group was created as a result of assistance provided by the
United States and its Western allies to moderate Syrian rebels.
International Terrorism Does Not Exist
General Leonid Ivashov (left) with journalist Christopher Bollyn from American Free Press
General Leonid Ivashov was the Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces when the September 11, 2001, attacks took place. This military man, who lived the events from the inside, offers an analysis which is very different to that of his American colleagues. As he did during the Axis for Peace 2005 conference, he now explains that international terrorism does not exist and that the September 11 attacks were the result of a set-up. What we are seeing is a manipulation by the big powers; this terrorism would not exist without them. He affirms that, instead of faking a "world war on terror", the best way to reduce that kind of attacks is through respect for international law and peaceful cooperation among countries and their citizens.
As the current international situation shows, terrorism emerges where contradiction aggravate, where there is a change of social relations or a change of regime, where there is political, economic or social instability, where there is moral decadence, where cynicism and nihilism triumph, where vice is legalized and where crime spreads. It is globalization what creates the conditions for the emergence of these extremely dangerous phenomena. It is in this context that the new world geo-strategic map is being designed, that the resources of the planet are being re-distributed, that borders are disappearing, that international law is being torn into pieces, that cultural identities are being erased, that spiritual life becomes impoverished...
The analysis of the essence of the globalization process, the military and political doctrines of the United States and other countries, shows that terrorism contributes to a world dominance and the submissiveness of states to a global oligarchy. This means that terrorism is not something independent of world politics but simply an instrument, a means to install a unipolar world with a sole world headquarters, a pretext to erase national borders and to establish the rule of a new world elite. It is precisely this elite that constitutes the key element of world terrorism, its ideologist and its "godfather". The main target of the world elite is the historical, cultural, traditional and natural reality; the existing system of relations among states; the world national and state order of human civilization and national identity.
Today's international terrorism is a phenomenon that combines the use of terror by state and non-state political structures as a means to attain their political objectives through people's intimidation, psychological and social destabilization, the elimination of resistance from power organizations and the creation of appropriate conditions for the manipulation of the countries' policies and the behavior of people. Terrorism is the weapon used in a new type of war. At the same time, international terrorism, in complicity with the media, becomes the manager of global processes. It is precisely the symbiosis between media and terror, which allows modifying international politics and the exiting reality. In this context, if we analyze what happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States, we can arrive at the following conclusions:
1. The organizers of those attacks were the political and business circles interested in destabilizing the world order and who had the means necessary to finance the operation. The political conception of this action matured there where tensions emerged in the administration of financial and other types of resources. We have to look for the reasons of the attacks in the coincidence of interests of the big capital at global and transnational levels, in the circles that were not satisfied with the rhythm of the globalization process or its direction. Unlike traditional wars, whose conception is determined by generals and politicians, the oligarchs and politicians submitted to the former were the ones who did it this time.
2. Only secret services and their current chiefs x or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations x have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude. Generally, secret services create, finance and control extremist organizations. Without the support of secret services, these organizations cannot exist x let alone carry out operations of such magnitude inside countries so well protected. Planning and carrying out an operation on this scale is extremely complex.
3. Osama bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" cannot be the organizers nor the performers of the September 11 attacks. They do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders. Thus, a team of professionals had to be created and the Arab kamikazes are just extras to mask the operation. The September 11 operation modified the course of events in the world in the direction chosen by transnational mafias and international oligarchs; that is, those who hope to control the planet's natural resources, the world information network and the financial flows. This operation also favored the US economic and political elite that also seeks world dominance.
The use of the term "international terrorism" has the following goals:
Hiding the real objectives of the forces deployed all over the world in the struggle for dominance and control; Turning the people's demands to a struggle of undefined goals against an invisible enemy; Destroying basic international norms and changing concepts such as: aggression, state terror, dictatorship or movement of national liberation; Depriving peoples of their legitimate right to fight against aggressions and to reject the work of foreign intelligence services; Establishing the principle of renunciation to national interests, transforming objectives in the military field by giving priority to the war on terror, violating the logic of military alliances to the detriment of a joint defense and to favor the anti-terrorist coalition; Solving economic problems through a tough military rule using the war on terror as a pretext. In order to fight in an efficient way against international terrorism it is necessary to take the following steps:
To confirm before the UN General Assembly the principles of the UN Charter and international law as principles that all states are obliged to respect; To create a geo-strategic organization (perhaps inspired in the Cooperation Organization of Shanghai comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) with a set of values different to that of the Atlantists; to design a strategy of development of states, a system of international security, another financial and economic model (which would mean that the world would again rest on two pillars); To associate (under the United Nations) the scientific elites in the design and promotion of the philosophical concepts of the Human Being of the 21st Century. To organize the interaction of all religious denominations in the world, on behalf of the stability of humanity's development, security and mutual support.
General Leonid Ivashov is the vice-president of the Academy on geopolitical affairs. He was the chief of the department for General affairs in the Soviet Union's ministry of Defense, secretary of the Council of defense ministers of the Community of independant states (CIS), chief of the Military cooperation department at the Russian federation's Ministry of defense and Joint chief of staff of the Russian armies.
Today's international terrorism is a phenomenon that combines the use of terror by state and non-state political structures as a means to attain their political objectives through people's intimidation, psychological and social destabilization, the elimination of resistance from power organizations and the creation of appropriate conditions for the manipulation of the countries' policies and the behavior of people. Terrorism is the weapon used in a new type of war. At the same time, international terrorism, in complicity with the media, becomes the manager of global processes. It is precisely the symbiosis between media and terror, which allows modifying international politics and the exiting reality. In this context, if we analyze what happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States, we can arrive at the following conclusions:
1. The organizers of those attacks were the political and business circles interested in destabilizing the world order and who had the means necessary to finance the operation. The political conception of this action matured there where tensions emerged in the administration of financial and other types of resources. We have to look for the reasons of the attacks in the coincidence of interests of the big capital at global and transnational levels, in the circles that were not satisfied with the rhythm of the globalization process or its direction. Unlike traditional wars, whose conception is determined by generals and politicians, the oligarchs and politicians submitted to the former were the ones who did it this time.
2. Only secret services and their current chiefs x or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations x have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude. Generally, secret services create, finance and control extremist organizations. Without the support of secret services, these organizations cannot exist x let alone carry out operations of such magnitude inside countries so well protected. Planning and carrying out an operation on this scale is extremely complex.
3. Osama bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" cannot be the organizers nor the performers of the September 11 attacks. They do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders. Thus, a team of professionals had to be created and the Arab kamikazes are just extras to mask the operation. The September 11 operation modified the course of events in the world in the direction chosen by transnational mafias and international oligarchs; that is, those who hope to control the planet's natural resources, the world information network and the financial flows. This operation also favored the US economic and political elite that also seeks world dominance.
The use of the term "international terrorism" has the following goals:
Hiding the real objectives of the forces deployed all over the world in the struggle for dominance and control; Turning the people's demands to a struggle of undefined goals against an invisible enemy; Destroying basic international norms and changing concepts such as: aggression, state terror, dictatorship or movement of national liberation; Depriving peoples of their legitimate right to fight against aggressions and to reject the work of foreign intelligence services; Establishing the principle of renunciation to national interests, transforming objectives in the military field by giving priority to the war on terror, violating the logic of military alliances to the detriment of a joint defense and to favor the anti-terrorist coalition; Solving economic problems through a tough military rule using the war on terror as a pretext. In order to fight in an efficient way against international terrorism it is necessary to take the following steps:
To confirm before the UN General Assembly the principles of the UN Charter and international law as principles that all states are obliged to respect; To create a geo-strategic organization (perhaps inspired in the Cooperation Organization of Shanghai comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) with a set of values different to that of the Atlantists; to design a strategy of development of states, a system of international security, another financial and economic model (which would mean that the world would again rest on two pillars); To associate (under the United Nations) the scientific elites in the design and promotion of the philosophical concepts of the Human Being of the 21st Century. To organize the interaction of all religious denominations in the world, on behalf of the stability of humanity's development, security and mutual support.
General Leonid Ivashov is the vice-president of the Academy on geopolitical affairs. He was the chief of the department for General affairs in the Soviet Union's ministry of Defense, secretary of the Council of defense ministers of the Community of independant states (CIS), chief of the Military cooperation department at the Russian federation's Ministry of defense and Joint chief of staff of the Russian armies.
Source: http://www.rense.com/general69/ism.htm
Russian units raid Georgian airfields for use in Israeli strike against Iran
The
raids were disclosed by UPI chief editor Arnaud de Borchgrave, who is
also on the Washington Times staff, and picked up by the Iranian Fars
news agency. The Russian raids of two Georgian airfields, which Tbilisi
had allowed Israel to use for a potential strike against Iran’s nuclear
facilities, followed the Georgian offensive against South Ossetia on
Aug. 7. Under the secret agreement with Georgia, the airfields had been
earmarked for use by Israeli fighter-bombers taking off to strike Iran
in return for training and arms supplies. DEBKAfile’s intelligence
sources report that flying from S. Georgia over the Caspian Sea to Iran
would sharply trim the distance to be spanned by Israeli
fighter-bombers, reducing flying time to 3.5 hours. Northern Iran and
the Tehran region, where most of the nuclear facilities are
concentrated, would be within range, with no need to request US
permission to pass through Iraq air space. Russian Special Forces also
raided other Israeli facilities in southern Georgia and captured Israeli
spy drones, says the report. Israel was said to have used the two
airfields to “conduct recon flights over southern Russia as well as into
nearby Iran.” The US intelligence sources quoted by UPI reported that
the Russian force also carried home other Israeli military equipment
captured at the air bases. Our sources say that if the Russians got hold
of an Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle complete with sophisticated
electronic reconnaissance equipment, they will have secured some of the
IDF’s most secret devices for spying on Iran and Syria. When this
happened before, Russian military engineers quickly dismantled the
equipment, studied it and passed the technology on to Tehran and
Damascus.
Source: http://www.debka.com/index1.php
USA ISRAEL September Surprise for Attack on Iran
While
the rest of the pundits opine about the meaning and implications of
Sarah Palin's ascension from small town mayor to prospective vice
president – and whether or not her daughter's private life is fair game
for any media outlet other than the National Enquirer those of us whose
job it is to stand watch on the ramparts and report the real news are
wondering when – not if – the War Party will pull a rabbit out of the
proverbial hat. For months, I've been warning in this space that an
American attack on Iran is imminent, and now I see that the Dutch have
reason to agree with my assessment. Their intelligence service
reportedly has pulled out of a covert operation inside Iran on the
grounds that a U.S. strike is right around the corner – in "a matter of
weeks," according to De Telegraaf, a Dutch newspaper. As the story goes,
the Dutch had infiltrated the purported Iranian weapons project and
were firmly ensconced when they got word that the Americans are about to
launch a missile attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. They wisely
decided to close down the operation and pull out. Remember, the Israelis
have been threatening to strike on their own for months: what's changed
is that now, apparently, the U.S. has caved in to what is a blatant
case of blackmail and has agreed to do the job for them. We haven't
heard much about Iran lately, at least compared to the scare headlines
of a few months ago, when rumors of war were swirling fast and furious.
The Russian "threat" seems to have replaced the Iranian "threat" as the
War Party's bogeyman of choice. What we didn't know, however, is that
the two focal points are intimately related.
According to this report by veteran Washington Times correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave, the close cooperation of the Israelis with the Georgian military in the run-up to President Saakashvili's blitz of South Ossetia was predicated on a Georgian promise to let the Israelis use Georgia's airfields to mount a strike against Iran. The main problem for Tel Aviv, in making its threats against Iran at all credible, has been the distance to be covered by Israeli fighter jets, which would have a hard time reaching and returning from their targets without refueling. With access to the airfields of "the Israel of the Caucasus," as de Borchgrave – citing Saakashvili – puts it, the likelihood of an Israeli attack entered the world of real possibilities. De Borchgrave avers: "In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of Israeli fighter-bombers in the event of pre-emptive attacks against Iranian nuclear installations. This would sharply reduce the distance Israeli fighter-bombers would have to fly to hit targets in Iran. And to reach Georgian airstrips, the Israeli air force would fly over Turkey.
"The attack ordered by Saakashvili against South Ossetia the night of Aug. 7 provided the Russians the pretext for Moscow to order Special Forces to raid these Israeli facilities where some Israeli drones were reported captured." Reports of anywhere from 100 to 1,000 Israeli "advisers" in Georgia do not bode well for the situation on the ground. With the Israelis already installed in that country, the logistics of carrying out such a sneak attack are greatly simplified. Israeli pilots would only have to fly over Azerbaijan, and they'd be in Iranian airspace – and within striking distance of Tehran.
Faced with this fait accompli – if the Dutch are to be believed – the Americans seem to have capitulated. In which case, we don't have much time. Although de Borchgrave writes "whether the IAF can still count on those air bases to launch bombing missions against Iran's nuke facilities is now in doubt," I don't see why the defeat of the Georgians in Saakashvili's war on the Ossetians has to mean the plan to strike Iran via Georgia has been canceled. Indeed, reading de Borchgrave's riveting account of the extent of the Tel Aviv-Tbilisi collaboration, one finds additional reasons for all concerned to go ahead with it: "Saakashvili was convinced that by sending 2,000 of his soldiers to serve in Iraq (who were immediately flown home by the United States when Russia launched a massive counterattack into Georgia), he would be rewarded for his loyalty. He could not believe President Bush, a personal friend, would leave him in the lurch. Georgia, as Saakashvili saw his country's role, was the 'Israel of the Caucasus.'" Saakashvili, a vain and reckless man, now has even more reason to go behind Uncle Sam's back and give the Israelis a clear shot at Tehran. With this sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the Americans, the rationale for a more limited, shot-across-the-bow strike by the U.S. becomes all too clear.
After all, if the Israelis attacked, the entire Muslim world would unite behind the Iranians. If, on the other had, the U.S. did Israel's dirty work, with Tel Aviv lurking in the background, it would conceivably be far less provocative, and might even generate sub rosa support among the Sunni rulers of America's Arab allies. It's going to happen anyway, goes the rationale, and so we might as well do it the right way, rather than leave it to the Israelis, who have threatened – via "independent" commentators like Israeli historian and super hawk Benny Morris – to use nuclear weapons on Iran's population centers. In terms of American domestic politics, the road to war with Tehran was paved long ago: both major parties and their presidential candidates have given the War Party a green light to strike Tehran, McCain explicitly and Obama tacitly, albeit no less firmly. The stage is set, rehearsals are over, and the actors know their lines: as the curtain goes up on the first act of "World War III," take a deep breath and pray to the gods that this deadly drama is aborted.
According to this report by veteran Washington Times correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave, the close cooperation of the Israelis with the Georgian military in the run-up to President Saakashvili's blitz of South Ossetia was predicated on a Georgian promise to let the Israelis use Georgia's airfields to mount a strike against Iran. The main problem for Tel Aviv, in making its threats against Iran at all credible, has been the distance to be covered by Israeli fighter jets, which would have a hard time reaching and returning from their targets without refueling. With access to the airfields of "the Israel of the Caucasus," as de Borchgrave – citing Saakashvili – puts it, the likelihood of an Israeli attack entered the world of real possibilities. De Borchgrave avers: "In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of Israeli fighter-bombers in the event of pre-emptive attacks against Iranian nuclear installations. This would sharply reduce the distance Israeli fighter-bombers would have to fly to hit targets in Iran. And to reach Georgian airstrips, the Israeli air force would fly over Turkey.
"The attack ordered by Saakashvili against South Ossetia the night of Aug. 7 provided the Russians the pretext for Moscow to order Special Forces to raid these Israeli facilities where some Israeli drones were reported captured." Reports of anywhere from 100 to 1,000 Israeli "advisers" in Georgia do not bode well for the situation on the ground. With the Israelis already installed in that country, the logistics of carrying out such a sneak attack are greatly simplified. Israeli pilots would only have to fly over Azerbaijan, and they'd be in Iranian airspace – and within striking distance of Tehran.
Faced with this fait accompli – if the Dutch are to be believed – the Americans seem to have capitulated. In which case, we don't have much time. Although de Borchgrave writes "whether the IAF can still count on those air bases to launch bombing missions against Iran's nuke facilities is now in doubt," I don't see why the defeat of the Georgians in Saakashvili's war on the Ossetians has to mean the plan to strike Iran via Georgia has been canceled. Indeed, reading de Borchgrave's riveting account of the extent of the Tel Aviv-Tbilisi collaboration, one finds additional reasons for all concerned to go ahead with it: "Saakashvili was convinced that by sending 2,000 of his soldiers to serve in Iraq (who were immediately flown home by the United States when Russia launched a massive counterattack into Georgia), he would be rewarded for his loyalty. He could not believe President Bush, a personal friend, would leave him in the lurch. Georgia, as Saakashvili saw his country's role, was the 'Israel of the Caucasus.'" Saakashvili, a vain and reckless man, now has even more reason to go behind Uncle Sam's back and give the Israelis a clear shot at Tehran. With this sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the Americans, the rationale for a more limited, shot-across-the-bow strike by the U.S. becomes all too clear.
After all, if the Israelis attacked, the entire Muslim world would unite behind the Iranians. If, on the other had, the U.S. did Israel's dirty work, with Tel Aviv lurking in the background, it would conceivably be far less provocative, and might even generate sub rosa support among the Sunni rulers of America's Arab allies. It's going to happen anyway, goes the rationale, and so we might as well do it the right way, rather than leave it to the Israelis, who have threatened – via "independent" commentators like Israeli historian and super hawk Benny Morris – to use nuclear weapons on Iran's population centers. In terms of American domestic politics, the road to war with Tehran was paved long ago: both major parties and their presidential candidates have given the War Party a green light to strike Tehran, McCain explicitly and Obama tacitly, albeit no less firmly. The stage is set, rehearsals are over, and the actors know their lines: as the curtain goes up on the first act of "World War III," take a deep breath and pray to the gods that this deadly drama is aborted.
Source: http://www.daily.pk/world/worldnews/7112.html?task=view
What Israel Lost in the Georgia War
"It
is important that the entire world understands that what is happening
in Georgia now will affect the entire world order," Georgian Cabinet
Minister Temur Yakobashvili said last weekend. "It's not just Georgia's
business, but the entire world's business." Such sentiments would have
been unremarkable but for the fact that Yakobashvili was expressing
himself in fluent Hebrew, telling Israeli Army Radio that "Israel should
be proud of its military, which trained Georgian soldiers." However,
the impression that Israel had helped bolster the Georgian military was
one the Israeli Foreign Ministry was anxious to avoid. Last Saturday it
reportedly recommended a freeze on the further supply of equipment and
expertise to Georgia by Israeli defense contractors. (Israel doesn't
supply foreign militaries directly, but its private contractors must get
Defense Ministry approval for such deals.)
The Israelis decided to refrain from authorizing new defense contracts, although those currently in effect will be fulfilled. Israel stressed that the contracts are to provide equipment for defensive purposes. But if the Israelis were looking to downplay the significance of military ties, they weren't helped by comments like Yakobashvili's — or by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's enthusing at a press conference earlier this week that "the Israeli weapons have been very effective."
The Israelis decided to refrain from authorizing new defense contracts, although those currently in effect will be fulfilled. Israel stressed that the contracts are to provide equipment for defensive purposes. But if the Israelis were looking to downplay the significance of military ties, they weren't helped by comments like Yakobashvili's — or by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's enthusing at a press conference earlier this week that "the Israeli weapons have been very effective."
Nor did the Russians fail to notice. "Israel armed the Georgian army,"
grumbled General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of staff of the
Russian military, at a press conference in Moscow earlier this week. An
Israeli paper had, last weekend, quoted an unnamed official warning that
Israel needed "to be very careful and sensitive these days. The
Russians are selling many arms to Iran and Syria, and there is no need
to offer them an excuse to sell even more advanced weapons." As if on
cue, on Wednesday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Moscow
hoping to persuade Russia to sell him sophisticated air-defense systems —
and reportedly offering the Russian navy the use of one of its
Mediterranean ports. Late on Wednesday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry
announced that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Russian President Dmitri
Medvedev had spoken on the phone to clear the air over the Georgia
conflict and Russian arms sales to Syria.
The extent of involvement in Georgia by Israeli defense contractors may be overstated, and most of the equipment used by the Georgian military comes from the U.S. and other suppliers. Still, Israeli companies had been sufficiently involved in supplying specialized equipment and advanced tactical training to the Georgian military that the connection — and Russia's perception of it — created a ripple of anxiety in Israeli government circles. Israeli officials say that, in anticipation of a showdown between Georgia and Russia, Israel began to scale back the involvement of Israeli companies in Georgia as early as the end of 2007. Georgia's Yakobashvili charged this week that Israel, "at Russia's behest," had downgraded military ties with Georgia, a decision he branded a "disgrace." Israel's weapons sales, just like Russia's, are driven by the commercial interests of domestic arms industries. Israeli military exports to Georgia are driven more by the logic of business than by a strategic choice to back Tbilisi against Moscow — indeed, the Israeli response since the outbreak of hostilities is a reminder that, on balance, even a relatively cool friendship with Russia may be more important to Israel than a close alliance with tiny Georgia. Despite Israel's pecuniary imperative, Georgia has used these commercial military ties to press closer ties on Israel.
President Saakashvili has noted that both his minister responsible for negotiations over South Ossetia (Yakobashvili) and his Defense Minister, Davit Kezerashvili, had lived in Israel before moving to post-Soviet Georgia. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the Georgian leader this week enthused that in Tbilisi, "both war and peace are in the hands of Israeli Jews." Working through the Georgian Defense Ministry (and with the approval of its Israeli counterpart), Israeli companies are reported to have supplied the Georgians with pilotless drones, night-vision equipment, anti-aircraft equipment, shells, rockets and various electronic systems. Even more important than equipment may have been the advanced tactical training and consultancy provided, as private contractors, by retired top Israeli generals such as Yisrael Ziv and Gal Hirsch, the man who commanded Israeli ground forces during their disastrous foray into Lebanon in 2006. (Never one to resist an opportunity to mock his enemies, Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah quipped in a speech this week, "Gal Hirsch, who was defeated in Lebanon, went to Georgia, and they too lost because of him.") Not necessarily: Russia applied overwhelming force against the tiny Georgian military, which, according to Israeli assessments, still managed to punch above its weight.
The Russians were piqued by Israel's military trade with Georgia even before the latest outbreak of hostilities — Moscow expressed its annoyance over the pilotless drones supplied by an Israeli company to the Georgians, three of which were downed by Russian aircraft over South Ossetia in recent months. Obviously mindful of the need to avoid provoking Russia, Israel declared off-limits certain weapons systems the Georgians had asked for, such as Merkava tanks and advanced anti-aircraft systems. "We have turned down many requests involving arms sales to Georgia, and the ones that have been approved have been duly scrutinized," a Defense Ministry official told the Israeli daily Yediot Ahoronot amid concerns raised over a possible fallout from the Israeli ties to the Georgian military. The extent of damage to the Israeli-Russia relationship — if indeed there is any — remains to be seen. Despite General Nogovitsyn's comments, Israeli officials say they have received no formal complaints from Russia over ties with Georgia.
Israel's strategic priority now is countering the threat it sees in Iran's nuclear program, and on that front, Russian cooperation is essential. If the Israelis are to achieve their objective of forcing Iran to end uranium enrichment through diplomatic coercion, they will need Russian support for escalating U.N. sanctions — a course of action for which Russia has thus far shown little enthusiasm. And if Israel were to opt for trying to destroy Tehran's nuclear facilities through a series of air strikes, then the presence of the sophisticated Russian S-300 missile system in Iran would considerably raise the risk to Israeli pilots. Unfortunately for Israel, however, there may be little it can do to shape Moscow's Iran policy for the simple reason that Israel is not a major factor in Russia's strategic outlook. Moscow's actions on Iran are less likely to be determined by Israel supplying a few drones to Georgia than they are to be shaped, for example, by the deployment over extreme Russian objections of U.S. interceptor missiles on Polish soil.
The extent of involvement in Georgia by Israeli defense contractors may be overstated, and most of the equipment used by the Georgian military comes from the U.S. and other suppliers. Still, Israeli companies had been sufficiently involved in supplying specialized equipment and advanced tactical training to the Georgian military that the connection — and Russia's perception of it — created a ripple of anxiety in Israeli government circles. Israeli officials say that, in anticipation of a showdown between Georgia and Russia, Israel began to scale back the involvement of Israeli companies in Georgia as early as the end of 2007. Georgia's Yakobashvili charged this week that Israel, "at Russia's behest," had downgraded military ties with Georgia, a decision he branded a "disgrace." Israel's weapons sales, just like Russia's, are driven by the commercial interests of domestic arms industries. Israeli military exports to Georgia are driven more by the logic of business than by a strategic choice to back Tbilisi against Moscow — indeed, the Israeli response since the outbreak of hostilities is a reminder that, on balance, even a relatively cool friendship with Russia may be more important to Israel than a close alliance with tiny Georgia. Despite Israel's pecuniary imperative, Georgia has used these commercial military ties to press closer ties on Israel.
President Saakashvili has noted that both his minister responsible for negotiations over South Ossetia (Yakobashvili) and his Defense Minister, Davit Kezerashvili, had lived in Israel before moving to post-Soviet Georgia. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the Georgian leader this week enthused that in Tbilisi, "both war and peace are in the hands of Israeli Jews." Working through the Georgian Defense Ministry (and with the approval of its Israeli counterpart), Israeli companies are reported to have supplied the Georgians with pilotless drones, night-vision equipment, anti-aircraft equipment, shells, rockets and various electronic systems. Even more important than equipment may have been the advanced tactical training and consultancy provided, as private contractors, by retired top Israeli generals such as Yisrael Ziv and Gal Hirsch, the man who commanded Israeli ground forces during their disastrous foray into Lebanon in 2006. (Never one to resist an opportunity to mock his enemies, Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah quipped in a speech this week, "Gal Hirsch, who was defeated in Lebanon, went to Georgia, and they too lost because of him.") Not necessarily: Russia applied overwhelming force against the tiny Georgian military, which, according to Israeli assessments, still managed to punch above its weight.
The Russians were piqued by Israel's military trade with Georgia even before the latest outbreak of hostilities — Moscow expressed its annoyance over the pilotless drones supplied by an Israeli company to the Georgians, three of which were downed by Russian aircraft over South Ossetia in recent months. Obviously mindful of the need to avoid provoking Russia, Israel declared off-limits certain weapons systems the Georgians had asked for, such as Merkava tanks and advanced anti-aircraft systems. "We have turned down many requests involving arms sales to Georgia, and the ones that have been approved have been duly scrutinized," a Defense Ministry official told the Israeli daily Yediot Ahoronot amid concerns raised over a possible fallout from the Israeli ties to the Georgian military. The extent of damage to the Israeli-Russia relationship — if indeed there is any — remains to be seen. Despite General Nogovitsyn's comments, Israeli officials say they have received no formal complaints from Russia over ties with Georgia.
Israel's strategic priority now is countering the threat it sees in Iran's nuclear program, and on that front, Russian cooperation is essential. If the Israelis are to achieve their objective of forcing Iran to end uranium enrichment through diplomatic coercion, they will need Russian support for escalating U.N. sanctions — a course of action for which Russia has thus far shown little enthusiasm. And if Israel were to opt for trying to destroy Tehran's nuclear facilities through a series of air strikes, then the presence of the sophisticated Russian S-300 missile system in Iran would considerably raise the risk to Israeli pilots. Unfortunately for Israel, however, there may be little it can do to shape Moscow's Iran policy for the simple reason that Israel is not a major factor in Russia's strategic outlook. Moscow's actions on Iran are less likely to be determined by Israel supplying a few drones to Georgia than they are to be shaped, for example, by the deployment over extreme Russian objections of U.S. interceptor missiles on Polish soil.
Source: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1834785,00.html
Israel’s role in the Russia-Georgia war
From the moment Georgia launched a surprise attack on the tiny breakaway region of South Ossetia, prompting a fierce Russian counterattack, Israel has been trying to distance itself from the conflict. This is understandable: with Georgian forces on the retreat, large numbers of civilians killed and injured, and Russia’s fury unabated, Israel’s deep involvement is severely embarrassing. The collapse of the Georgian offensive represents not only a disaster for that country and its U.S.-backed leaders, but another blow to the myth of Israel’s military prestige and prowess. Worse, Israel fears that Russia could retaliate by stepping up its military assistance to Israel’s adversaries.
“Israel is following with great concern the developments in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and hopes the violence will end,” its foreign ministry said, adding with uncharacteristic dovishness, “Israel recognizes the territorial integrity of Georgia and calls for a peaceful solution.” Tbilisi’s top diplomat in Tel Aviv complained about the lackluster Israeli response to his country’s predicament and perhaps overestimating Israeli influence, called for Israeli “diplomatic pressure on Moscow.” Just like Israel, the diplomat said, Georgia is fighting a war on “terrorism.” Israeli officials politely told the Georgians that “the address for that type of pressure was Washington”.
While Israel was keen to downplay its role, Georgia perhaps hoped that flattery might draw Israel further in. Georgian minister Temur Yakobashvili -- whom the Israeli daily Haaretz stressed was Jewish -- told Israeli army radio that “Israel should be proud of its military which trained Georgian soldiers.” Yakobashvili claimed rather implausibly, according to Haaretz, that “a small group of Georgian soldiers were able to wipe out an entire Russian military division, thanks to the Israeli training” Since 2000, Israel has sold hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and combat training to Georgia. Weapons included guns, ammunition, shells, tactical missile systems, antiaircraft systems, automatic turrets for armored vehicles, electronic equipment and remotely piloted aircraft. These sales were authorized by the Israeli defense ministry. The Israeli connection,” Ynet, 10 August 2008). Training also involved officers from Israel’s Shin Bet secret service -- which has for decades carried out extrajudicial executions and torture of Palestinians in the occupied territories -- the Israeli police, and the country’s major arms companies Elbit and Rafael.
The Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis appears to have been cemented at the highest levels, and according to YNet, “The fact that Georgia’s defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli who is fluent in Hebrew contributed to this cooperation.”
Others involved in the brisk
arms trade included former Israeli minister and Tel Aviv mayor Roni Milo
as well as several senior Israeli military officers. The key liaison
was Reserve Brigadier General Gal Hirsch who commanded Israeli forces on
the border with Lebanon during the July 2006 Second Lebanon War. (Yossi
Melman, “Georgia Violence -- A frozen alliance,” Haaretz, 10 August
2008). He resigned from the army after the Winograd commission severely
criticized Israel’s conduct of its war against Lebanon and an internal
Israeli army investigation blamed Hirsch for the seizure of two soldiers
by Hezbollah. According to one of the Israeli combat trainers, an
officer in an “elite” Israel army unit, Hirsch and colleagues would
sometimes personally supervise the training of Georgian forces which
included “house-to-house fighting.” The training was carried out through
several “private” companies with close links to the Israeli military.
As the violence raged in Georgia, the trainer was desperately trying to contact his former Georgian students on the battlefront via mobile phone: the Israelis wanted to know whether the Georgians had “internalized Israeli military technique and if the special reconnaissance forces have chalked up any successes” (Jonathan Lis and Moti Katz, “IDF vets who trained Georgia troops say war with Russia is no surprise,” Haaretz, 11 August 2008). Yet on the ground, the Israeli-trained Georgian forces, perhaps unsurprisingly overwhelmed by the Russians, have done little to redeem the image of Israel’s military following its defeat by Hezbollah in July-August 2006. The question remains as to why Israel was involved in the first place. There are several reasons. The first is simply economic opportunism: for years, especially since the 11 September 2001 attacks, arms exports and “security expertise” have been one of Israel’s growth industries. But the close Israeli involvement in a region Russia considers to be of vital interest suggests that Israel might have been acting as part of the broader U.S. scheme to encircle Russia and contain its reemerging power.
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been steadily encroaching on Russia’s borders and expanding NATO in a manner the Kremlin considers highly provocative. Shortly after coming into office, the Bush Administration tore up the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and, like the Clinton administration, adopted former Soviet satellite states as its own, using them to base an anti-missile system Russia views as a threat. In addition to their “global war on terror,” hawks in Washington have recently been talking up a new Cold War with Russia. Georgia was an eager volunteer in this effort and has learned quickly the correct rhetoric: one Georgian minister claimed that “every bomb that falls on our heads is an attack on democracy, on the European Union and on America.” Georgia has been trying to join NATO, and sent 2,000 soldiers to help the U.S. occupy Iraq. It may have hoped that once war started this loyalty would be rewarded with the kind of round-the-clock airlift of weapons that Israel receives from the U.S. during its wars. Instead so far the U.S. only helped airlift the Georgian troops from Iraq back to the beleaguered home front.
By helping Georgia, Israel may have been doing its part to duplicate its own experience in assisting the eastward expansion of the “Euro-Atlantic” empire. While supporting Georgia was certainly risky for Israel, given the possible Russian reaction, it has a compelling reason to intervene in a region that is heavily contested by global powers. Israel must constantly reinvent itself as an “asset” to American power if it is to maintain the U.S. support that ensures its survival as a settler-colonial enclave in the Middle East. It is a familiar role; in the 1970s and 1980s, at the behest of Washington, Israel helped South Africa’s apartheid regime fight Soviet-supported insurgencies in South African-occupied Namibia and Angola, and it trained right-wing U.S.-allied death squads fighting left-wing governments and movements in Central America. After 2001, Israel marketed itself as an expert on combating so-called ”Islamic terrorism”.
Georgia’s government, to the detriment of its people, may have tried to play the role of a loyal servant of U.S. ambitions in that region -- and lost the gamble. Playing with empires is dangerous for a small country. As for Israel itself, with the Bush Doctrine having failed to give birth to the “new Middle East” that the U.S. needs to maintain its power in the region against growing resistance, an ever more desperate and rogue Israel must look for opportunities to prove its worth elsewhere. That is a dangerous and scary thing.
Source: http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=175564As the violence raged in Georgia, the trainer was desperately trying to contact his former Georgian students on the battlefront via mobile phone: the Israelis wanted to know whether the Georgians had “internalized Israeli military technique and if the special reconnaissance forces have chalked up any successes” (Jonathan Lis and Moti Katz, “IDF vets who trained Georgia troops say war with Russia is no surprise,” Haaretz, 11 August 2008). Yet on the ground, the Israeli-trained Georgian forces, perhaps unsurprisingly overwhelmed by the Russians, have done little to redeem the image of Israel’s military following its defeat by Hezbollah in July-August 2006. The question remains as to why Israel was involved in the first place. There are several reasons. The first is simply economic opportunism: for years, especially since the 11 September 2001 attacks, arms exports and “security expertise” have been one of Israel’s growth industries. But the close Israeli involvement in a region Russia considers to be of vital interest suggests that Israel might have been acting as part of the broader U.S. scheme to encircle Russia and contain its reemerging power.
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been steadily encroaching on Russia’s borders and expanding NATO in a manner the Kremlin considers highly provocative. Shortly after coming into office, the Bush Administration tore up the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and, like the Clinton administration, adopted former Soviet satellite states as its own, using them to base an anti-missile system Russia views as a threat. In addition to their “global war on terror,” hawks in Washington have recently been talking up a new Cold War with Russia. Georgia was an eager volunteer in this effort and has learned quickly the correct rhetoric: one Georgian minister claimed that “every bomb that falls on our heads is an attack on democracy, on the European Union and on America.” Georgia has been trying to join NATO, and sent 2,000 soldiers to help the U.S. occupy Iraq. It may have hoped that once war started this loyalty would be rewarded with the kind of round-the-clock airlift of weapons that Israel receives from the U.S. during its wars. Instead so far the U.S. only helped airlift the Georgian troops from Iraq back to the beleaguered home front.
By helping Georgia, Israel may have been doing its part to duplicate its own experience in assisting the eastward expansion of the “Euro-Atlantic” empire. While supporting Georgia was certainly risky for Israel, given the possible Russian reaction, it has a compelling reason to intervene in a region that is heavily contested by global powers. Israel must constantly reinvent itself as an “asset” to American power if it is to maintain the U.S. support that ensures its survival as a settler-colonial enclave in the Middle East. It is a familiar role; in the 1970s and 1980s, at the behest of Washington, Israel helped South Africa’s apartheid regime fight Soviet-supported insurgencies in South African-occupied Namibia and Angola, and it trained right-wing U.S.-allied death squads fighting left-wing governments and movements in Central America. After 2001, Israel marketed itself as an expert on combating so-called ”Islamic terrorism”.
Georgia’s government, to the detriment of its people, may have tried to play the role of a loyal servant of U.S. ambitions in that region -- and lost the gamble. Playing with empires is dangerous for a small country. As for Israel itself, with the Bush Doctrine having failed to give birth to the “new Middle East” that the U.S. needs to maintain its power in the region against growing resistance, an ever more desperate and rogue Israel must look for opportunities to prove its worth elsewhere. That is a dangerous and scary thing.
Russian official reveals Israeli military assistance to Georgia
General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of staff of the Russian Military revealed Tuesday the extent of the military assistance Moscow claimed Jerusalem had given Georgia. "Israel armed the Georgian army," he told reported at a press conference held in the Russian capital. According to Nogovitsyn, Israel provided Georgia with "eight types of military vehicles, explosives, landmines and special explosives for the clearing minefields." Since 2007, he continued, Israeli experts have been training Georgian commando troops; and Israel had planned to supply Georgia with heavy firearms, electronic weapons and tanks, but that plan was eventually scrapped. Nogovitsyn stressed that despite reports to the contrary, Russia began pulling its troops form Georgia on Monday, claiming further that the withdrawal will be accelerated on Wednesday. Georgia, he added, was in breach of the ceasefire agreement, since is had not pulled its troops to the positions they held prior to the conflict.
Source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...584829,00.html
Israeli Arms Sales Raise New Concerns
With the eruption of fighting between Russia and Georgia, Israel has found itself in an awkward position as a result of its arms sales to Georgia, caught between its friendly relations with Georgia and its fear that the continued sale of weaponry will spark Russian retribution in the form of increased arms sales to Iran and Syria.
After fighting broke out late last week between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Israel's foreign ministry over the weekend recommended suspending the sale of all weapons and defence-related equipment to Georgia, the daily Haaretz newspaper reported. The paper quoted an unnamed senior official saying that Israel needed "to be very careful and sensitive these days. The Russians are selling many arms to Iran and Syria and there is no need to offer them an excuse to sell even more advanced weapons."
Israel's immediate concern is that Russia will proceed with the sale of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran, which would help it defend its nuclear installations from aerial attack. Israel, like the U.S., believes that Iran's nuclear programme is aimed at developing a bomb, and Israeli leaders have refused to rule out the possibility of a pre-emptive strike aimed at derailing Iran's nuclear aspirations. Israel recently conducted a major aerial exercise over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece that was widely viewed as a rehearsal for a possible strike against Iran's nuclear installations. But with the U.S. and Europe resorting to diplomatic pressure in the form of sanctions to deter Iran, Israel is loathe to anger Russia, which until now has opposed harsher sanctions on Tehran. Israel's relations with Georgia have been close, partly because there is a large Georgian Jewish community in Israel.
In recent years, ties have also taken on a military dimension, with military industries in Israel supplying Georgia with some 200 million dollars worth of equipment since 2000. This has included remotely piloted planes, rockets, night-vision equipment, other electronic systems and training by former senior Israeli officers. "Israel should be proud of its military, which trained Georgian soldiers," Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili, who is Jewish, told Israel's Army Radio in Hebrew shortly after the fighting erupted. Israel is not a major supplier of arms to Georgia, with the U.S. and France supplying Tbilisi with most of its weaponry. But the arms transfers have attracted media attention partly because of the role played by some high-profile Israeli figures, including former Tel Aviv mayor Roni Milo, who conducted business in Georgia on behalf of Israel Military Industries.
According to media reports, Brig. Gen Gal Hirsch, a senior commander in the 2006 Lebanon war who resigned after the release of a highly critical report on the way the war was conducted, served as an adviser to Georgian security forces. Further attention was drawn to the Israel-Georgia arms trade earlier this year when a Russian jet shot down an Israeli-made drone being operated by the Georgians. Even though weapons transfers were modest in scope, Russian diplomats began increasingly relaying to Israel their annoyance over its military aid to Georgia, including the special forces training provided by security experts. Israel decided about a year ago to limit military exports to defensive equipment and training.
New contracts weren't approved as the arms sales were scaled back. Georgia's request for 200 advanced Israeli-made Merkava tanks, for example, was turned down. There were reports in Israel that the sale of the tanks didn't go through because of a disagreement over the commission that was to be paid as part of the deal. But Amos Yaron, the former director-general of the defence ministry, insisted it had to do with "security-diplomatic considerations" - a clear reference to the sensitivity of the arms sales to Georgia. Israel, Yaron added, didn't want "to harm Russian interests too much." Asked about the motivation to initially engage in the sale of weaponry to Georgia despite concerns it might anger Russia, Yaron replied: "We did see that there was potential for a conflagration in the region but Georgia is a friendly state, it's supported by the U.S., and so it was difficult to refuse."
Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43524
War in Georgia: The Israeli connection
For past seven years, Israeli companies have been helping Georgian army to prepare for war against Russia through arms deals, training of infantry units and security advice
The
fighting which broke out over the weekend between Russia and Georgia
has brought Israel's intensive involvement in the region into the
limelight. This involvement includes the sale of advanced weapons to
Georgia and the training of the Georgian army's infantry forces. The
Defense Ministry held a special meeting Sunday to discuss the various
arms deals held by Israelis in Georgia, but no change in policy has been
announced as of yet. "The subject is closely monitored," said sources
in the Defense Ministry. "We are not operating in any way which may
counter Israeli interests. We have turned down many requests involving
arms sales to Georgia; and the ones which have been approves have been
duly scrutinized. So far, we have placed no limitations on the sale of
protective measures." Israel began selling arms to Georgia about seven
years ago following an initiative by Georgian citizens who immigrated
to Israel and became businesspeople. "They contacted defense industry
officials and arms dealers and told them that Georgia had relatively
large budgets and could be interested in purchasing Israeli weapons,"
says a source involved in arms exports.
The military cooperation between the countries developed swiftly. The fact that Georgia's defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli who is fluent in Hebrew contributed to this cooperation. "His door was always open to the Israelis who came and offered his country arms systems made in Israel," the source said. "Compared to countries in Eastern Europe, the deals in this country were conducted fast, mainly due to the defense minister's personal involvement." Among the Israelis who took advantage of the opportunity and began doing business in Georgia were former Minister Roni Milo and his brother Shlomo, former director-general of the Military Industries, Brigadier-General (Res.) Gal Hirsch and Major-General (Res.) Yisrael Ziv. Roni Milo conducted business in Georgia for Elbit Systems and the Military Industries, and with his help Israel's defense industries managed to sell to Georgia remote-piloted vehicles (RPVs), automatic turrets for armored vehicles, antiaircraft systems, communication systems, shells and rockets. According to Israeli sources, Gal Hirsch gave the Georgian army advice on the establishment of elite units such as Sayeret Matkal and on rearmament, and gave various courses in the fields of combat intelligence and fighting in built-up areas.
'Don't anger the Russians'
The Israelis operating in Georgia attempted to convince the Israeli Aerospace Industries to sell various systems to the Georgian air force, but were turned down. The reason for the refusal was "special" relations created between the Aerospace Industries and Russia in terms of improving fighter jets produced in the former USSR and the fear that selling weapons to Georgia would anger the Russians and prompt them to cancel the deals. Israelis' activity in Georgia and the deals they struck there were all authorized by the Defense Ministry. Israel viewed Georgia as a friendly state to which there is no reason not to sell arms systems similar to those Israel exports to other countries in the world. As the tension between Russia and Georgia grew, however, increasing voices were heard in Israel – particularly in the Foreign Ministry – calling on the Defense Ministry to be more selective in the approval of the deals with Georgia for fear that they would anger Russia. "It was clear that too many unmistakable Israeli systems in the possesion of the Georgian army would be like a red cloth in the face of a raging bull as far as Russia is concerned," explained a source in the defense establishment.
For in[stance, the Russians viewed the operation of the Elbit System's RPVs as a real provocation."It was clear that the Russians were angry," says a defense establishment source, "and that the interception of three of these RPVs in the past three months was an expression of this anger. Not everyone in Israel understood the sensitive nerve Israel touched when it supplied such an advanced arms system to a country whose relations with Russia are highly tense." In May it was eventually decide to approve future deals with Georgia only for the sale of non-offensive weapon systems, such as intelligence, communications and computer systems, and not to approve deals for the sale of rifles, aircraft, sells, etc. A senior source in the Military Industry said Saturday that despite some reporters, the activity of Georgia's military industry was extremely limited. "We conducted a small job for them several years ago," he said. "The rest of the deals remained on paper." Dov Pikulin, one of the owners of the Authentico company specializing in trips and journeys to the area, says however that "the Israeli is the main investor in the Georgian economy. Everyone is there, directly or indirectly."
Georgian minister: Israel should be proud
"The Israelis should be proud of themselves for the Israeli training and education received by the Georgian soldiers," Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili said Saturday. Yakobashvili is a Jew and is fluent in Hebrew. "We are now in a fight against the great Russia," he said, "and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House, because Georgia cannot survive on its own. "It's important that the entire world understands that what is happening in Georgia now will affect the entire world order. It's not just Georgia's business, but the entire world's business." One of the Georgian parliament members did not settle Saturday for the call for American aid, urging Israel to help stop the Russian offensive as well: "We need help from the UN and from our friends, headed by the United States and Israel. Today Georgia is in danger – tomorrow all the democratic countries in the region and in the entire world will be in danger too."
The military cooperation between the countries developed swiftly. The fact that Georgia's defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli who is fluent in Hebrew contributed to this cooperation. "His door was always open to the Israelis who came and offered his country arms systems made in Israel," the source said. "Compared to countries in Eastern Europe, the deals in this country were conducted fast, mainly due to the defense minister's personal involvement." Among the Israelis who took advantage of the opportunity and began doing business in Georgia were former Minister Roni Milo and his brother Shlomo, former director-general of the Military Industries, Brigadier-General (Res.) Gal Hirsch and Major-General (Res.) Yisrael Ziv. Roni Milo conducted business in Georgia for Elbit Systems and the Military Industries, and with his help Israel's defense industries managed to sell to Georgia remote-piloted vehicles (RPVs), automatic turrets for armored vehicles, antiaircraft systems, communication systems, shells and rockets. According to Israeli sources, Gal Hirsch gave the Georgian army advice on the establishment of elite units such as Sayeret Matkal and on rearmament, and gave various courses in the fields of combat intelligence and fighting in built-up areas.
'Don't anger the Russians'
The Israelis operating in Georgia attempted to convince the Israeli Aerospace Industries to sell various systems to the Georgian air force, but were turned down. The reason for the refusal was "special" relations created between the Aerospace Industries and Russia in terms of improving fighter jets produced in the former USSR and the fear that selling weapons to Georgia would anger the Russians and prompt them to cancel the deals. Israelis' activity in Georgia and the deals they struck there were all authorized by the Defense Ministry. Israel viewed Georgia as a friendly state to which there is no reason not to sell arms systems similar to those Israel exports to other countries in the world. As the tension between Russia and Georgia grew, however, increasing voices were heard in Israel – particularly in the Foreign Ministry – calling on the Defense Ministry to be more selective in the approval of the deals with Georgia for fear that they would anger Russia. "It was clear that too many unmistakable Israeli systems in the possesion of the Georgian army would be like a red cloth in the face of a raging bull as far as Russia is concerned," explained a source in the defense establishment.
For in[stance, the Russians viewed the operation of the Elbit System's RPVs as a real provocation."It was clear that the Russians were angry," says a defense establishment source, "and that the interception of three of these RPVs in the past three months was an expression of this anger. Not everyone in Israel understood the sensitive nerve Israel touched when it supplied such an advanced arms system to a country whose relations with Russia are highly tense." In May it was eventually decide to approve future deals with Georgia only for the sale of non-offensive weapon systems, such as intelligence, communications and computer systems, and not to approve deals for the sale of rifles, aircraft, sells, etc. A senior source in the Military Industry said Saturday that despite some reporters, the activity of Georgia's military industry was extremely limited. "We conducted a small job for them several years ago," he said. "The rest of the deals remained on paper." Dov Pikulin, one of the owners of the Authentico company specializing in trips and journeys to the area, says however that "the Israeli is the main investor in the Georgian economy. Everyone is there, directly or indirectly."
Georgian minister: Israel should be proud
"The Israelis should be proud of themselves for the Israeli training and education received by the Georgian soldiers," Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili said Saturday. Yakobashvili is a Jew and is fluent in Hebrew. "We are now in a fight against the great Russia," he said, "and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House, because Georgia cannot survive on its own. "It's important that the entire world understands that what is happening in Georgia now will affect the entire world order. It's not just Georgia's business, but the entire world's business." One of the Georgian parliament members did not settle Saturday for the call for American aid, urging Israel to help stop the Russian offensive as well: "We need help from the UN and from our friends, headed by the United States and Israel. Today Georgia is in danger – tomorrow all the democratic countries in the region and in the entire world will be in danger too."
Source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3580136,00.html
Israel’s Military on Display in Georgia
When an Israeli-made drone was shot down over the Black Sea this past spring in the run-up to the war between Russia and Georgia, it brought to the forefront a recurrent Israeli dilemma: By exporting its military know-how, is Israel endangering its diplomatic standing? Israel’s military assistance to Georgia, including the doomed drone, thrust into the spotlight two competing interests — nurturing a major source of income, and cultivating ties with major powers, such as Russia, that have long-standing military ties with archenemies such as Syria and Iran. The issue is especially sensitive in Israel, because the tight government oversight of foreign weapons sales exposes the country to the potential for diplomatic setbacks, such as the one in Georgia. “Israel is always playing a careful balancing act between pursuing its own interest and making sure it does not harm its friends,” said Ephraim Sneh, a former deputy defense minister who has been involved in recent legislative efforts to tighten arms export rules.
Israeli officials are adamant that those private sales are being carefully vetted before they are authorized by the government. But there are indications that some changes are afoot. The Israeli press has inferred that Foreign Ministry officials were becoming more influential in an oversight committee that vets all arms sales abroad. In addition, the arms export mechanism was tightened in a 2007 law that followed complaints from Washington about arms sales to “sensitive” countries, especially China. While most of Israel’s weapons deals are done by private companies, “not a single bullet leaves Israel without government approval,” according to Sneh. Georgia has stepped up its weapons requests in recent years, as its relations with Russia have soured. Despite Israel’s refusal to allow the sale of most offensive weaponry to Georgia, Jerusalem has been drawn into the conflict.
Israel and Georgia have enjoyed a friendly relationship since the former Soviet Republic gained its independence in 1991. The ties improved noticeably after the election in 2003 of the staunchly pro-Western president Mikhail Saakashvili. As he sought to reassert control over the two Russian-backed semi-autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Saakashvili began to buy weapons to bolster Georgia’s weak military. Willing partners included the United States and other Western countries, as well as Israel, which since 2000 has sold an estimated $300 million worth of weapons to Georgia. The business relationship was facilitated by two Georgian ministers who are Jewish and fluent in Hebrew: Reintegration Minister Temur Yakobashvili and, more important, Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili, 30. While Israel did not agree to sell tanks, planes or missiles, it did authorize the sale of infantry weapons, rockets and night-vision communications, as well as the upgrade of Georgia’s Su-25 ground-attack fighters. It also allowed the sale of intelligence surveillance equipment, including Skylark and Hermes 450 unmanned planes. Those drones would soon become a major issue as tensions from Georgia’s breakaway regions simmered.
In the past six months, the pro-Moscow government of Abkhazia claims to have downed seven Georgian drones. Georgia has denied the reports, except in one instance. On April 20, one of its Israeli-made Hermes 450s was shot down off the coast from Abkhazia. Georgia accused Russia of downing it, a charge supported by a United Nations probe, but Moscow has denied this. Russia then sent Israel’s foreign minister a letter of protest, asking that it stop supplying military hardware to Georgia. The letter pointed out that Russia had sometimes heeded Israel’s requests to refrain from supplying weapons systems to states seen as threatening to Israel, according to a lengthy exposé in the weekend magazine of the Israeli daily Ma’ariv. The Foreign Ministry then asked the Defense Ministry to cancel the authorizations to sell offensive weapons to Georgia and to allow only the sale of defensive weapons, as well as military training, to proceed, Ma’ariv reported.
Israeli officials are quick to point out that they wisely rejected repeat requests for arms from Georgia in the months leading up to the outbreak of hostilities with Russia in early August. The most ambitious one involved the purchase of 200 Merkava tanks, which was vetoed by the Defense Ministry. Georgian officials, however, publicly denied that Israel had cut back on weapons sales. Moreover, they showered praise on Israel’s military help after the beginning of the hostilities last month, with Saakashvili stating at a press conference that “Israeli weapons have been very effective.” Minister Yakobashvili told Israel Army Radio that “Israel should be proud of its military, which trained Georgian soldiers.” In the end, Georgia’s army proved to be no match for the Russian military, which has repeatedly accused Western powers and Israel of arming Georgia.
Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Russia’s deputy army chief, said during a press conference in mid-August that Israel was providing the Georgian military with mines, explosive charges, special explosives for clearing minefields and eight kinds of unmanned aerial vehicles. But he also indicated that some sales had been canceled. “In 2007, Israeli experts trained Georgian commandos in Georgia and there were plans to supply heavy weaponry, electronic weapons, tanks and other arms at a later date, but the deal didn’t work out,” Nogovitsyn told reporters. The Hermes drones were sold to Georgia by Elbit Systems, an Israeli manufacturer whose representatives in Georgia were former minister and Tel Aviv mayor Ronnie Milo and his brother Shlomo, a former director-general of Israel Military Industries. The Milo brothers were also reportedly involved in the sale of a rocket system called Links, which is manufactured by IMI, as well as in the aborted Merka tank deal. They have declined to comment on their Georgia dealings.
In addition, several former senior Israeli army officers have been involved in training Georgian army infantry battalions. One such officer, Gal Hirsch, resigned from the army two years ago, after being heavily criticized by an official inquiry into the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah that precipitated what is now known as the Second Lebanon War. Hirsch then set up a security company called Defense Shields and received approval from the Defense Ministry to train elite anti-terrorist units in the Georgian army. The effort was undertaken in tandem with Global C S T, a company owned by retired major general Israel Ziv, and Nirtal, a company headed by reserve officer Nir Shaul. Although the companies announced that they had completed their projects in Georgia before August 7, the date the fighting began, the presence of Israeli trainers and weaponry has been noted in Russia, among anti-Israel circles and even by Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, who described the Russian military victory over Georgia as a defeat for Israel. “Gal Hirsch, who was defeated in Lebanon, went to Georgia, and they, too, lost because of him.” He made the remarks last month in a speech marking the two-year anniversary of the Lebanon War.
In recent weeks, Israeli officials have gone out of their way to smooth the tensions with Russia over the war with Georgia. In addition to Russia’s diplomatic and economic clout, its weapons sales have been a major headache for Israel. The most immediate concern is Russia’s sale to Iran of S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems, which would help Iran defend its nuclear installations from aerial attacks. Likewise, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Russia in the wake of the Georgian war has fueled concerns in Jerusalem that Russia was retaliating against Israel by stepping up military support to Damascus. Despite the diplomatic backlash with Russia, Sneh believes that Israel “handled the Georgia situation properly” and that it had carefully vetted the arms sales “to ensure that they would not have strategic consequences. It just so happens that a war broke out.”
Source: http://www.forward.com/articles/14193/#ixzz18U0Awaxg
Russia threatens sale of offensive weapons to Israel's enemies
Russian
security officials threatened retaliation against Israel for its
weapons exports to Georgia including eight different aerial drones.
Russian Deputy Chief of Staff Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn said Israel
supplied at least eight different models of unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs) to Georgia. Nogovitsyn said Israel has also sold a range of
weapons and sought to export main battle tanks to Georgia.Russian
diplomatic sources said the government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
was furious over Israel's refusal to impose a military embargo on
Georgia. The sources said Putin's aides had urged Israel several times
to halt weapons exports. "We asked Israel not to sell offensive weapons
to a hostile neighboring state, but they said they're a sovereign
state," a diplomatic source said. "Well, Israel shouldn't be surprised
if we sell offensive weapons to Israel's neighbors." Already, Russia, in
wake of its military victory over Georgia, has scheduled a summit with
Syria to discuss offensive weapons sales, the sources said. Syrian
President Bashar Assad was scheduled to meet Putin in Moscow on Aug. 20.
Source: http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC
Source: http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC
Major Neo-Con Role in Russo-Georgian War
George W. Bush and his neo-con cohorts are behind the Russo-Georgia war, inside sources on the ground in South Ossetia and in Washington have revealed. Israel is also involved on behalf of Georgia because of oil. The sources remain anonymous. Russia’s attack was in response to U.S. plans to install missile sites near its borders and to bring Georgia into NATO. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for Russia to regain its influential position in former Cold War ally Cuba, giving his country a military presence reminiscent of the 1963 Cuban missile crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. This threat emerged earlier (AFP, Aug. 4, 2008) but was blacked out by the mainstream media.
“We should restore our position in Cuba and other countries,” Putin said, while hearing a report on a recent Russian delegation’s trip to Cuba. “It is not a secret that the West is creating a ‘buffer zone’ around Russia, involving countries in Central Europe, the Caucasus, the Baltic states and Ukraine,” said Leonid Ivashov, head of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems. “In response, we may have to expand our military presence abroad, including Cuba.” Earlier, Russia threatened a “military technical” response to U.S. plans to put missiles in Eastern Europe near its borders. Russia strongly opposes plans of Western oil companies, including Israeli firms, to route oil and gas that transit Georgia through Turkey instead of linking them to Russian pipelines. Tel Aviv owns a heavy interest in Caspian oil and gas pipelines.
The Swiss-based Israeli investigative journalist and author Shraga Elam reports that Israel, with U.S. connivance, was behind the attack against South Ossetia by the tiny former Soviet state of Georgia. “There is an obvious Israeli involvement in the present conflict between Georgia and Russia,” he says. “There are hundreds of Israeli military advisers in Georgia. . . .” He quotes sources like military expert Yossi Melman in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz: “Melman wrote that Georgia became a real El Dorado for Israeli arms dealers and numerous representatives of the army and intelligence services. Some former generals like Israel Ziv and Gal Hersh (with his company Defensive Shield) are very active there. “Hersh and Ziv are mainly training and consulting Georgian army units. They are using the ‘chain’ method common among Israeli arms dealers: a main contractor wins a tender and employs sub-contractors—in this case Israeli officers and former Shin Bet employees,” wrote Melman.
According to him there was a project to sell Merkava tanks to Georgia, The Ma’ariv newspaper points out that the Georgian defense minister, David Kezerashvili, lived for a while in Israel and speaks Hebrew. In a lengthy article the military exports to Georgia are described. Ma’ariv estimates them to be of a value of at least $300 million. An Israeli marketing expert told Ma’ariv: “To every Israeli agent representing an Israeli defense company is attached a cousin of the defense minister, who opens the doors for him.” Also, Israeli news web site (News First Class) confirms the massive presence of Israeli advisers in Georgia and writes: “The Israeli military industries upgraded the Georgian air force, sold unmanned aerial vehicles, advanced artillery systems and trained infantry units.” U.S. “consultants” are helping the Georgian army. According to Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, there are 127 U.S. military trainers there, of whom about 35 are civilian contractors.
In addition to the trainers, 1,000 soldiers from the Vicenza, Italy-based Southern European Task Force (Airborne) and the Kaiserslautern-based 21st Theater Sustainment Command, along with Marine reservists with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines out of Ohio, and the U.S. state of Georgia’s Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry participated in “Immediate Response 2008.” Operation Immediate Response 2008 was held from July 15-July 30, with U.S. personnel training about 600 troops at a former Soviet base near Tbilisi, the largest city and capital of Georgia. The goal of this operation was allegedly teaching combat skills for missions in Iraq. The Marines left, but not the airmen. Georgia had sent 2,000 soldiers to Iraq, who were recalled to face the Russian invasion. Washington has provided Georgia with materiel and advisers, and so did Israel—at least until Russia pressed it to stop, reportedly in return for promises to withhold advanced weapons from Syria.
The South Ossetia separatists claim U.S. intervention, saying there are black people among the Georgian casualties. But even if some American personnel went discreetly into action, that would not suffice to deter Russia from bringing Georgia to heel, if not physically occupying the country. And then the Western loss will not be limited to the independence of a small, remote, struggling democracy. Among items Israel has been selling to Tbilisi are pilotless drone aircraft. Russian fighters shot one down in May, according to UN observers. Russia sent Israel a letter of protest after the shooting incident asking it to stop supplying military hardware to Georgia “as Russia from time to time complies with Israel’s requests not to supply weapons systems” to states seen as threatening Israel, according to the Israeli daily Ma’ariv. Israel is one of the world’s leading arms exporters but does not detail the contents or value of its trade with individual countries.
In addition to the spy drones, Israel has also been supplying Georgia with infantry weapons and electronics for artillery systems, and has helped upgrade Soviet-designed Su-25 ground attack jets assembled in Georgia, according to Koba Liklikadze, an independent military expert based in Tbilisi. Former Israeli generals also serve as advisers to the Georgian military.
Source: http://www.americanfreepress.net/htm..._role_146.html
Caspian Sea oil pipeline, sovereignty at heart of Russia’s blowup with U.S. ally
George W. Bush and his neo-con cohorts are behind the Russo-Georgia war, inside sources on the ground in South Ossetia and in Washington have revealed. Israel is also involved on behalf of Georgia because of oil. The sources remain anonymous. Russia’s attack was in response to U.S. plans to install missile sites near its borders and to bring Georgia into NATO. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for Russia to regain its influential position in former Cold War ally Cuba, giving his country a military presence reminiscent of the 1963 Cuban missile crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. This threat emerged earlier (AFP, Aug. 4, 2008) but was blacked out by the mainstream media.
“We should restore our position in Cuba and other countries,” Putin said, while hearing a report on a recent Russian delegation’s trip to Cuba. “It is not a secret that the West is creating a ‘buffer zone’ around Russia, involving countries in Central Europe, the Caucasus, the Baltic states and Ukraine,” said Leonid Ivashov, head of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems. “In response, we may have to expand our military presence abroad, including Cuba.” Earlier, Russia threatened a “military technical” response to U.S. plans to put missiles in Eastern Europe near its borders. Russia strongly opposes plans of Western oil companies, including Israeli firms, to route oil and gas that transit Georgia through Turkey instead of linking them to Russian pipelines. Tel Aviv owns a heavy interest in Caspian oil and gas pipelines.
The Swiss-based Israeli investigative journalist and author Shraga Elam reports that Israel, with U.S. connivance, was behind the attack against South Ossetia by the tiny former Soviet state of Georgia. “There is an obvious Israeli involvement in the present conflict between Georgia and Russia,” he says. “There are hundreds of Israeli military advisers in Georgia. . . .” He quotes sources like military expert Yossi Melman in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz: “Melman wrote that Georgia became a real El Dorado for Israeli arms dealers and numerous representatives of the army and intelligence services. Some former generals like Israel Ziv and Gal Hersh (with his company Defensive Shield) are very active there. “Hersh and Ziv are mainly training and consulting Georgian army units. They are using the ‘chain’ method common among Israeli arms dealers: a main contractor wins a tender and employs sub-contractors—in this case Israeli officers and former Shin Bet employees,” wrote Melman.
According to him there was a project to sell Merkava tanks to Georgia, The Ma’ariv newspaper points out that the Georgian defense minister, David Kezerashvili, lived for a while in Israel and speaks Hebrew. In a lengthy article the military exports to Georgia are described. Ma’ariv estimates them to be of a value of at least $300 million. An Israeli marketing expert told Ma’ariv: “To every Israeli agent representing an Israeli defense company is attached a cousin of the defense minister, who opens the doors for him.” Also, Israeli news web site (News First Class) confirms the massive presence of Israeli advisers in Georgia and writes: “The Israeli military industries upgraded the Georgian air force, sold unmanned aerial vehicles, advanced artillery systems and trained infantry units.” U.S. “consultants” are helping the Georgian army. According to Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, there are 127 U.S. military trainers there, of whom about 35 are civilian contractors.
In addition to the trainers, 1,000 soldiers from the Vicenza, Italy-based Southern European Task Force (Airborne) and the Kaiserslautern-based 21st Theater Sustainment Command, along with Marine reservists with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines out of Ohio, and the U.S. state of Georgia’s Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry participated in “Immediate Response 2008.” Operation Immediate Response 2008 was held from July 15-July 30, with U.S. personnel training about 600 troops at a former Soviet base near Tbilisi, the largest city and capital of Georgia. The goal of this operation was allegedly teaching combat skills for missions in Iraq. The Marines left, but not the airmen. Georgia had sent 2,000 soldiers to Iraq, who were recalled to face the Russian invasion. Washington has provided Georgia with materiel and advisers, and so did Israel—at least until Russia pressed it to stop, reportedly in return for promises to withhold advanced weapons from Syria.
The South Ossetia separatists claim U.S. intervention, saying there are black people among the Georgian casualties. But even if some American personnel went discreetly into action, that would not suffice to deter Russia from bringing Georgia to heel, if not physically occupying the country. And then the Western loss will not be limited to the independence of a small, remote, struggling democracy. Among items Israel has been selling to Tbilisi are pilotless drone aircraft. Russian fighters shot one down in May, according to UN observers. Russia sent Israel a letter of protest after the shooting incident asking it to stop supplying military hardware to Georgia “as Russia from time to time complies with Israel’s requests not to supply weapons systems” to states seen as threatening Israel, according to the Israeli daily Ma’ariv. Israel is one of the world’s leading arms exporters but does not detail the contents or value of its trade with individual countries.
In addition to the spy drones, Israel has also been supplying Georgia with infantry weapons and electronics for artillery systems, and has helped upgrade Soviet-designed Su-25 ground attack jets assembled in Georgia, according to Koba Liklikadze, an independent military expert based in Tbilisi. Former Israeli generals also serve as advisers to the Georgian military.
Source: http://www.americanfreepress.net/htm..._role_146.html
What Does Israel Seek in the Caucasus?
Jewish
political tradition is based primarily on a realistic school of
thought. Israeli regime has derived its three underlying principles of
foreign policy from this school which are: to focus on survival among
hostile neighbors, to seek power, and to form alliances. Israeli
regime's foreign policy has also close ties with its longstanding
historical traditions.
The Alliance of the periphery or the Periphery Doctrine is one of these traditions which was established in the 1950s. It is a foreign policy strategy that called for Israeli regime to develop close strategic alliances with non-Arab Muslim states in the West Asia to counteract the united opposition of Arab states to the existence of Israeli regime. It was employed chiefly towards Turkey, and pre-revolutionary Iran. But, the conditions have changed. In Tel Aviv's perspective, Ankara at best is an unfriendly government and Tehran constitutes an inauspicious threat. In addition, rise of ISIS and Islamist sentiments have challenged the regime's position in the region. The Periphery Doctrine which seemed to have been abandoned, is once again on the agenda of the Israeli regime. But this time, it has targeted an area which feels the dynamism of the West Asia, and yet it is able to make use of the geopolitical lever in its northern part: the Caucasus.
Tel Aviv's intervention increased in the Caucasus in the late 2000s, when the ministry of foreign affairs established the special departments of Caucasus and Central Asia. Regime's policy during the relatively short period of "focusing more resources on the region" has gone through two major stages. The first stage took place before 2008 and focused on Georgia. Israeli regime attempted to train the Georgian army and allowed Israeli private sector companies to equip the military of Georgian with drones and advanced equipment. After the South Ossetia war in 2008, Zionist regime reduced its visible presence in Georgia in order to avoid provoking the hostility of Moscow. In order to compensate for its reduced presence in Georgia, Tel Aviv expanded its in presence in Azerbaijan.
In the second stage of Israeli regime's intervention in the Caucasus, the trade between the two countries amounted to four billion dollars. In addition to buying oil from Azerbaijan, Zionist regime has made plans to import twelve billion cubic meters of gas over the next decade, from this Caspian Sea littoral state.
Most importantly, according to the former President of Israeli regime, Shimon Peres, "Azerbaijan is the key to counter the influence of Iran in the Greater Middle East." The well-known list of the complaints Baku and Tehran have raised against each other includes four major differences: the legal regime of the Caspian Sea, the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Iran's pro-Armenian position (according to Azeris), the purported issue of the Iranian Azerbaijan, and the presence of twenty million Azerbaijani citizens in Iran, and the last one is of religious nature: Baku claims that Iran provokes radical sentiments in Azerbaijan, a secular country with a Shiite majority. Given such circumstances, the Israeli regime, gives a central role to the Republic of Azerbaijan in its strategy of besieging the Islamic republic of Iran.
Despite a number of constraints such as Turkey, anti-Semitism and relations of Azerbaijan with the Palestinians, it is fully embedded in the strategic plans of Tel Aviv to form alliances against Iran (this time with Azerbaijan).
On the other hand, Israeli regime will continue to follow the tradition of supporting the Jewish people of the world. This part of Israeli regime's foreign policy has seriously been pursued in the Caucasus. According to official statistics in 2012, 3540 Jews lived in Georgia; however, unofficial figures suggest there are eight to twelve thousand Jews in Azerbaijan. The number of Jews in the Republic of Azerbaijan is not clear and varies from nine thousand to sixteen thousand. In many cases, particularly in Georgia, Jewish citizens have taken up key positions in the government and commercial sectors. This condition can provide a better opportunity for intense political and economic involvement of Israeli regime in the region.
In brief, Zionist regime's interests in the Caucasus have three main dimensions: the Caucasus is strategically serving as a tool to besiege Iran as a regional power. Besides, in the medium term the Caucasus is seen as a region to supply energy needs of Zionist regime, and in the short term as a market for the sale of advanced arms and ammunition. These three dimensions, challenge the three traditional actors of the region, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, which have no desire to see any foreign country to maintain its presence in the region.
The Alliance of the periphery or the Periphery Doctrine is one of these traditions which was established in the 1950s. It is a foreign policy strategy that called for Israeli regime to develop close strategic alliances with non-Arab Muslim states in the West Asia to counteract the united opposition of Arab states to the existence of Israeli regime. It was employed chiefly towards Turkey, and pre-revolutionary Iran. But, the conditions have changed. In Tel Aviv's perspective, Ankara at best is an unfriendly government and Tehran constitutes an inauspicious threat. In addition, rise of ISIS and Islamist sentiments have challenged the regime's position in the region. The Periphery Doctrine which seemed to have been abandoned, is once again on the agenda of the Israeli regime. But this time, it has targeted an area which feels the dynamism of the West Asia, and yet it is able to make use of the geopolitical lever in its northern part: the Caucasus.
Tel Aviv's intervention increased in the Caucasus in the late 2000s, when the ministry of foreign affairs established the special departments of Caucasus and Central Asia. Regime's policy during the relatively short period of "focusing more resources on the region" has gone through two major stages. The first stage took place before 2008 and focused on Georgia. Israeli regime attempted to train the Georgian army and allowed Israeli private sector companies to equip the military of Georgian with drones and advanced equipment. After the South Ossetia war in 2008, Zionist regime reduced its visible presence in Georgia in order to avoid provoking the hostility of Moscow. In order to compensate for its reduced presence in Georgia, Tel Aviv expanded its in presence in Azerbaijan.
In the second stage of Israeli regime's intervention in the Caucasus, the trade between the two countries amounted to four billion dollars. In addition to buying oil from Azerbaijan, Zionist regime has made plans to import twelve billion cubic meters of gas over the next decade, from this Caspian Sea littoral state.
Most importantly, according to the former President of Israeli regime, Shimon Peres, "Azerbaijan is the key to counter the influence of Iran in the Greater Middle East." The well-known list of the complaints Baku and Tehran have raised against each other includes four major differences: the legal regime of the Caspian Sea, the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Iran's pro-Armenian position (according to Azeris), the purported issue of the Iranian Azerbaijan, and the presence of twenty million Azerbaijani citizens in Iran, and the last one is of religious nature: Baku claims that Iran provokes radical sentiments in Azerbaijan, a secular country with a Shiite majority. Given such circumstances, the Israeli regime, gives a central role to the Republic of Azerbaijan in its strategy of besieging the Islamic republic of Iran.
Despite a number of constraints such as Turkey, anti-Semitism and relations of Azerbaijan with the Palestinians, it is fully embedded in the strategic plans of Tel Aviv to form alliances against Iran (this time with Azerbaijan).
On the other hand, Israeli regime will continue to follow the tradition of supporting the Jewish people of the world. This part of Israeli regime's foreign policy has seriously been pursued in the Caucasus. According to official statistics in 2012, 3540 Jews lived in Georgia; however, unofficial figures suggest there are eight to twelve thousand Jews in Azerbaijan. The number of Jews in the Republic of Azerbaijan is not clear and varies from nine thousand to sixteen thousand. In many cases, particularly in Georgia, Jewish citizens have taken up key positions in the government and commercial sectors. This condition can provide a better opportunity for intense political and economic involvement of Israeli regime in the region.
In brief, Zionist regime's interests in the Caucasus have three main dimensions: the Caucasus is strategically serving as a tool to besiege Iran as a regional power. Besides, in the medium term the Caucasus is seen as a region to supply energy needs of Zionist regime, and in the short term as a market for the sale of advanced arms and ammunition. These three dimensions, challenge the three traditional actors of the region, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, which have no desire to see any foreign country to maintain its presence in the region.
Source: http://awdnews.com/political/what-does-israel-seek-in-the-caucasus