From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 10/16/2005 6:18 AM
Hardline policy fails to halt extremism
Nick Paton Walsh
Friday October 14, 2005
The Guardian
The threadbare, battered republic of Chechnya was once the focus of Russia's problem with Islamic separatism. But over the past two years, the violence has been sweeping slowly westwards across the north Caucasus.
Last June, Nazran, capital of the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia, was seized for a night by militants who murdered up to 100 officials. Three months later, the bloodshed enveloped another peaceful town further west, at least 32 militants seizing 1,128 hostages at a school in Beslan. Minor attacks continue almost monthly across the region.
The ring of steel that yesterday surrounded Nalchik epitomises how Vladimir Putin's hardline policy in the north Caucasus has failed to contain the extremism once only a problem in Chechnya. Militants who fought for independence of the southern republic of Chechnya have become increasingly motivated by Islamic fundamentalism, their goal mutating into creating an Islamic state on Russia's southern flank.
Increasing poverty, coupled with corrupt local governments, has recruited militant groups - as has the brutality of Russian troops and local police against those they suspect of sympathising with the militants.
Kabardino-Balkaria, the Russian republic of which Nalchik is capital, escaped the unrest, being known for its spring water rather than its militancy. Two years ago the Beslan mastermind, Shamil Basayev, was thought to have sought refuge in Nalchik. A police crackdown led to the arrest of young mosque-goers like Rasul Tsakoyev, whose tortured body was found on a rubbish heap last year by his brother.
Young men are increasingly forced to choose between police brutality and the militant cause. In Dagestan, another volatile republic this time to the east of Chechnya, dozens of police have been killed so far this year.
In Chechnya, this cycle of violence has reached its destructive peak. The Kremlin is increasingly entrusting the fight to a group of militants known as the Kadyrovtsi, after the late president of Chechnya, Akhmed Kadyrov, and run by his thuggish son Ramzan. Their brutal grip on the republic is driving young Chechens to join the militants.
Two Kadyrovtsi whom the Guardian met on a recent trip to Chechnya said they were aware of 50 men who had "gone to the hills" in one month from one small town alone. One police chief said he thought there were at least 5,000 militants, increasingly under the control of Dokha Umarov, a separatist allied to Mr Basayev.
The lull since Beslan had led some to fear they would launch attacks ahead of elections on November 27 for a pro-Russian Chechen parliament. Nalchik may only be the start of an onslaught on southern Russia.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1591831,00.html