Ingushetia Attacks

West blamed for Chechen rampage

TOM PARFITT IN MOSCOW


CHECHEN rebels have blamed Britain and other European countries for the spread of violence to the former safe haven of Ingushetia because the West will not make a stand against Russian suppression.

Almost 100 people were killed after militants went on the rampage in the tiny Russian region last week, in attacks apparently launched from neighbouring Chechnya that left streets littered with bodies and wrecked vehicles.

Usman Ferzauli, deputy foreign minister of the Grozny government ousted when Russian forces invaded breakaway Chechnya in 1999, said Chechen fighters had become disillusioned with European leaders ignoring "genocide" in their homeland, where Russian federal forces are frequently accused of abducting, torturing and killing civilians.

"Our boys have had enough," said Ferzauli, who lives in exile in Denmark. "They cannot sit by and watch relatives disappear and their homes destroyed."

He said his boss, separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, who is holed up with his fighters in the Chechen highlands, was forced to acquiesce to the attacks on Ingushetia because he could offer his supporters no alternative to end Russian suppression.

Rebel envoys such as Ferzauli and actress Vanessa Redgrave's friend Akhmed Zakayev in London have tried in vain to persuade European governments to sanction Russia for documented human rights abuses in Chechnya.

Critics say western leaders are slow to criticise president Vladimir Putin over Chechnya after his pledge to join the global war on terror following September 11.
Ferzauli said: "The fighters see that people like me and Zakayev in Europe can have no effect on leaders such as Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi. They had no choice but to strike, and strike hard."

He stressed the new wave of violence was a direct result of the failure of European governments to confront Putin over rights abuses.

Russia has controlled Grozny since it ended Chechnya's three years of de-facto independence in 1999, and its troops carry out frequent ?'zachistki' or cleansing operations in rural areas to flush out rebel fighters.

But well-equipped militants, said to be bolstered by financial support from the Middle East, continue to launch attacks from mountain hideouts, killing dozens of soldiers every week.

Ferzauli hinted the rebels would launch more strikes outside Chechnya in coming months, saying: "People should know that they are strong and ready for action."

The offensive in Ingushetia last week came just days after rebel chief Maskhadov told reporters in a secretly recorded interview that he planned a change of tactics from acts of sabotage to large attacks.


Last Monday, up to 200 fighters swept through the enclave to the west of Chechnya - a former safe haven for refugees from the decade of war that has embroiled the region.


For four hours they raked police and border guard facilities with automatic gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in Nazran, Ingushetia's main city. Besides the 98 dead, 120 people were injured, including women and children.

The incursion piled fresh scorn on the Kremlin's claim to have ?'normalised' the region - a boast that was already in tatters after the assassination of pro-Moscow Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov last month.

Some observers believe that fighters who espouse the fundamentalist Wahabi strain of Islam are gaining ascendancy in the rebel movement, led by powerful field commanders such as Shamil Basayev.

Maskhadov, a more moderate figure, is thought to maintain an uneasy alliance with these extremists, whom some analysts link to al-Qaeda.

Basayev, a bearded veteran of the conflict whose leg was torn off by a Russian mine, split from the separatist leadership in 2002 after claiming responsibility for the Moscow theatre hostage siege, which ended with 130 civilians dead.

He now heads the Riyadus-Salikhin reconnaissance and sabotage battalion of shahids [martyrs] and has organised several bombings on Russian territory.

Alexei Malashenko, an expert on the Chechen conflict from the Moscow Carnegie Centre, said he believed Basayev was responsible for the strikes.

"There is a growing radicalisation of Islam across the region and many fighters see themselves as part of a global jihad, rather than the national and ethnic conflict of the 1990s," he said. "It is becoming a Caucasus-wide war that the Kremlin cannot contain."

Several eye witnesses to last week's violence in Ingushetia reported the attackers shouting Arabic phrases such as "Allahu akhbar" (God is great), a rallying call of the Chechen insurgency's Wahabi element.

Malashenko said the raiding party included many ethnic Ingush, who hated their leaders and were bent on revenge.

Ingushetia, a tiny republic that, until recently, was largely unaffected by the turmoil in nearby Chechnya, has been dragged into the conflict in recent months.

Human rights groups believe that Russian security forces are responsible for a wave of abductions that has led to tens of young men disappearing. A local prosecutor who tried to investigate went missing himself in March.

"The climate of abuse in Chechnya is spilling over into Ingushetia and threatening stability there too," said Anna Neistat, Moscow director of Human Rights Watch.

Despite the Council of Europe's strongly worded denouncements of Moscow's role in rights abuses, few western leaders have raised the issue with president Putin.

Ignoring Chechnya is seen as a quid pro quo for the Kremlin providing intelligence for the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and giving other help in the struggle with global terrorism.

With a free hand, Russia's attention now turns to finding a replacement as Chechen leader for the assassinated Kadyrov.

As security is beefed up following the Ingush attacks, preparations are being made for presidential elections in the republic on August 29.

Putin has already indicated that Alu Alkhanov, the region's current interior minister, is his preferred candidate.

Few believe that the vote will be fair. "It will all be fixed by the Kremlin," said one former election monitor who helped oversee a controversial ballot in the region last year.

Malashenko added: "President Putin thinks that violence is the answer, but the only thing that can bring peace to Chechnya is sustained economic development, and that will take many years."