From: MSN Nicknamepsychoteddybear24  (Original Message)    Sent: 2/8/2008 9:46 AM
Chechnya Weekly - Volume IX, Issue 5
February 7, 2008

IN THIS ISSUE:
* Gunmen Shoot Up Home of Zyazikov's Chief Bodyguard
* Putin Pays a Surprise Visit to Botlikh
* Newspaper Describes How Chechen Officials Get Compensation Payment
Kickbacks
* Briefs
* Counting Chechnya's Rebel Fighters: Kadyrov's Fuzzy Math
By Mairbek Vatchagaev
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Gunmen Shoot Up Home of Zyazikov's Chief Bodyguard

On February 6, unknown attackers fired automatic weapons and grenade
launchers at the home of Khusein Medov, the head of Ingushetian
President Murat Zyazikov's personal bodyguards. An anonymous source
in Ingushetia's "power structures" told Kavkazky Uzel that the
attack took place on the evening of February 5 at Medov's home in
Nazran's Nasyr-Kortsky municipal district and that the attackers had
approached the home in a car and escaped after firing on it. There
were no reports of any fatalities or injuries in the attack. On
February 4, bomb disposal experts defused a large improvised
explosive device on the Caucasus federal highway. "The bomb was made
by hand out of an artillery shell and was furnished with a
mechanical timer," a law-enforcement source told Kavkazky Uzel.

The attacks followed the announcement by the operational anti-
terrorist headquarters in Ingushetia on February 3 that it was
lifting the "counter-terrorist operation zone," which was declared
for several regions in the republic on January 25. The cities of
Nazran and Magas, the village of Barsuki and the environs of the
village of Nesterovskaya were originally included in the "counter-
terrorist operation zone," which was subsequently expanded to the
villages of Troitskaya and Nasyr-Kort. The Ingushetian branch of the
Federal Security Service (FSB) had justified the declaration of
a "counter-terrorist operation zone" on the basis of information it
said it had received about plans by the "gangster underground" to
carry out bombings and "attacks against administrative buildings"
and to provoke clashes with the police. However, the fact that the
planned site for the January 26 demonstration was included in
the "counter-terrorist operation zone" led some observers to suggest
that the real aim of declaring such a zone was to foil the protest
(Chechnya Weekly, January 31).

Whatever the case, the stepped up anti-terrorist measures apparently
failed to shut down insurgent operations. Three policemen and a
passerby were wounded in an attack by gunmen in Nazran on February
3. A policeman was wounded when a police post in Nazran came under
fire on February 2, Kavkazky Uzel reported.

Meanwhile, security forces continue to take actions that are more
likely to strengthen the insurgents than to weaken them. On February
1, FSB officers in Nazran shot a 21-year-old resident, Yusup
Chapanov, in the back as he was returning from Friday prayers at a
mosque. In a report published on February 3, Prague Watchdog
correspondent Ruslan Elmurzaev quoted relatives of Chapanov as
saying at his February 2 funeral that as far as they knew, the
victim had been mistaken for a man on the federal wanted list.
Chapanov's relatives said they intend to seek justice through all
the channels open to them. "We didn't spend 21 years looking after
him and bringing him up so that someone could kill him by mistake,"
Magomed, the slain man's uncle, told Elmurzaev. "For us it's
important that those responsible are punished, so that `mistakes' of
this kind in Ingushetia are not repeated."

On January 30, Russian soldiers near the village of Surkhakhi in
Ingushetia's Nazran district opened fire on a car that Ramzan
Nalgiev and Dzhabrail Mutsolgov were driving, after which they
blocked the road with armored vehicles and blew up the young men's
car. The FSB subsequently claimed the two were wanted terrorists—a
claim that relatives of the victims categorically denied (Chechnya
Weekly, January 31). Prague Watchdog noted similar incidents that
have taken place in Ingushetia over the last year. One took place
last November, when a six-year-old boy in the Sunzhensky district
village of Chemulga was shot to death during a special operation,
after which Russian soldiers placed a sub-machine gun next to the
boy's corpse (Chechnya Weekly, November 15, 2007). Another happened
in the town of Karabulak last September, when FSB officers shot a
young man in the town of Karabulak and then, according to
eyewitnesses, placed a grenade in his hand (Chechnya Weekly,
September 6, 2007).

"So great is the anger caused by the Russian military among the
local population that when on February 1 the Russian special
services tried to seize a young man and abduct him, the Ingush men
present at the scene immediately attacked the heavily-armed soldiers
with their bare fists and took the man back," Prague Watchdog wrote.
The website noted that according to Mashr, an Ingush human rights
group, there have been 160 abductions and around 600 murders in
Ingushetia since 2002—very high figures for a republic whose
population is only 480,000.

As two Russian human rights campaigners and experts on the North
Caucasus, Tanya Lokshina and Eliza Musaeva, noted in an interview
conducted by the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus last
October and recently published on its website
(Peaceinthecaucasus.org), such actions serve to build support for
Ingushetia's insurgency.

Lokshina, who heads the Demos Center for Information and Research, a
Moscow-based human rights think-tank, said Ingushetia's civilian
population is caught in a vicious circle. "Let's say that rebels
organize an attack," she said. "The next day, security forces
respond to this attack by conducting a special operation. Sometimes
these operations are conducted jointly by the local police and
federal forces, but in many cases local police are excluded. During
these operations, almost as a rule, civilians are grossly
mistreated. As a result, the public has developed sympathy for the
rebels. Not because they actually support the insurgency, but
because on a human level they sympathize with the victims of federal
forces. Siding with the rebels has become the civilians´ way to
protest. This is particularly true in the case of the young people.
There is a growing level of sympathy for the insurgents in
Ingushetia, among the younger generations. Probably partially also
because young men are the main targets of these counter-terrorist
operations."