JULY 2006

From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 7/11/2006 1:47 AM
From the Los Angeles Times
The twisted saga of Chechnya's Che
Shamil Basayev started out as a rebel but turned into a monster in his desperate struggle against Moscow.
By Sonni Efron
SONNI EFRON is an editor on the Times' Op-Ed page.

July 11, 2006

THE AFTERNOON I spent drinking tea with the man who became Russia's most-wanted terrorist was, considering the circumstances, quite civilized.

Was Shamil Basayev already a monster? I don't know. At the time I met him in 1995, he was known as a guerrilla leader, a fighter in the Chechen resistance. He was not considered a terrorist in the West. But in the months and years that followed, as the Chechen conflict grew darker and more desperate, his tactics changed.

For the next 11 years, he wreaked previously unimaginable horrors upon Russia. He masterminded assaults on a school, a hospital and a Moscow theater that killed an estimated 600 people, including 300 children.

So when I read Monday that the Russian security ...
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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 7/11/2006 3:10 AM
Monday, July 10, 2006

Chechnya: Decentralized Resistance Presents New Dangers

Russia -- military analyst Aleksandr Golts, at RFE/RL Moscow, 01Mar2006
Aleksandr Golts
(RFE/RL)
PRAGUE, July 10, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- RFE/RL's Russian Service spoke on July 10 with military analyst Aleksandr Golts in Moscow about the death of radical Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev.
RFE/RL: How will Basaev's death influence the military-political situation in Chechnya and will someone now appear who is capable of becoming his successor?

Aleksandr Golts: An analogous situation occurred sometime around 2000 or 2001 when the Russian generals boldly reported to the president that they had destroyed the organized resistance in Chechnya. And that was true. But the problem was that in such a war, the unorganized resistance is always much more dangerous than the organized resistance.

When the actions of the enemy are controlled from a single center, it is always possible to infiltrate it and to learn of his plans. There is always the possibility, with help and technology and ...
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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 7/11/2006 3:16 AM
Monday, July 10, 2006

Chechnya: Basayev's Death Poses Fateful Choice For Moscow

By Liz Fuller

RFE/RL -- News Analysis graphic, button, bug
(RFE/RL)
PRAGUE, July 10, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The death late on July 9 of Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev creates a window of opportunity for those few Russian officials who advocate peace talks as the only logical way to end the ongoing fighting across the North Caucasus.





At the same time, if the Russian leadership chooses to spurn that opportunity, the North Caucasus resistance is already reportedly planning -- apparently in line with an eight-year plan of action drafted and endorsed four years ago -- to take the fighting across the Volga and into the heartland of Russia.

The circumstances of Basayev's death remain sketchy. He is said to have been killed when a lorry packed with explosives detonated in the village of Ekazhevo, southeast of the Ingushetia capital, Nazran.

Whether the explosion was freakishly fortuitous for Moscow -- as the deaths of ...
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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 7/18/2006 11:43 PM
Shaheed Abdallah Shamil Abu Idris
Publication time: 18 July 2006, 19:09
News has just arrived (July 10, 2006) on my desk that Abdallah Shamil Abu Idris, the Military Amir of the Mujahideen of Caucasus, has become a Shaheed.

He's probably better known to most readers of this column as the fearless Chechen commander Shamil Basaev although the likes of Vladamir Putin have always regarded him as an enemy of Russia.

Precise details are sketchy at the moment although the report before me comes from the Military Council of State Defense Council Majlisul Shura of CRI Abu Umar and it states very tersley that he died as a result of an "accidental spontaneous explosion of a cargo vehicle with explosives on July 10, 2006, in Ekazhevo village, Ingushetia".
Three other fighters also died along with the famous Chechen rebel leader. May Allah (swt) grant all of them what they deserve.

The news provided one of those awful coincidences which make you shudder and reminds ...
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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 7/19/2006 2:30 AM
Putin: Don't lecture me about democracy
Publication time: Today at 11:42 Djokhar time

Vladimir Putin delivered a barbed retort to George Bush's muted criticism of Russia's democratic record yesterday when he told reporters at a joint press conference that he did not want to head a democracy like Iraq's.

The remark, which raised a loud laugh from the assembled press pool, capped a joint appearance that exposed how relations between the two men have become strained in the past two years, since Washington began criticising Putin's iron grip on Russia's media and politics.

Bush said that, during two hours of discussions, 'I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion. I told [Putin] a lot of people in our country ... would hope that Russia would do the same thing. I fully understand, however, that there will be a Russian style of democracy.'

Putin replied, smiling: 'I'll ...
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