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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 10/25/2005 3:44 AM

Photo: AFP

Photo: AFP

Nalchik Flips

Created: 19.10.2005 16:23 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:59 MSK

Anna Arutunyan

The Moscow News

Thursday’s battle in Nalchik between federal forces and militant groups claimed the lives of 139 people and underlined Moscow’s need to fight terrorism.

President Putin lauded the results of the counterattack by Federal forces in Nalchik: 94 terrorists killed, 20 taken alive. Defense Minister Ivanov insists the Islamist gunmen were no invaders. But then why were there so many home-grown rebels in this south Russian province in the first place?

Yet another Russian republic in the volatile North Caucasus region was dragged into the separatist conflict last week as hundreds of local Islamic rebels took Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, by storm. The impromptu raid, which echoed similar attacks on Ingushetia’s Nazran in the summer of 2004, was quashed within 24 hours by federal troops in an operation that the Kremlin was quick to label a success story. By Friday evening, when federal authorities regained control of the city, 94 rebel militants were killed and over 20 were captured alive, while there were 12 civilians dead and well over a hundred wounded. Local police suffered some 33 casualties.

The standoff began Thursday morning at about 8:30, after local police launched an operation to capture about 10 militants holed up in a building in a Nalchik suburb. All 10 suspected militants were killed, but the raid set off a domino effect of shooting by Islamist militants who were gearing up for a later, more massive attack. At that point, law enforcement officials were saying the fighting had been sparked by an attempt by militants to free a group of detained adherents to the radical Wahhabi sect of Islam. The speculation would be confirmed later by Kremlin officials.

In retaliation for the successful police operation, militant gunmen, by various accounts numbering anywhere from 60 to 300, staged simultaneous attacks against three police stations, the city’s airport and the regional headquarters of the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service in what appeared to be an effort to divert police. The militants also attacked the regional headquarters of the Russian prison system, the Emergency Situations Ministry’s press office said. Russian television captured footage of cars overturned or gutted by gunfire, and bloodied bodies of what appeared to be attackers in the streets.

The gunfire quietened down after about six hours, but then reports came in on Thursday evening that militants had holed themselves up in two offices at a police station and were holding up to five hostages and battling security forces. The militants had been taking hostages from the start of the raid, some of whom had been released.

By Friday morning, the militants left the police station in a minibus, and were killed by local police at an intersection nearby. The hostages were freed. More hostages were freed when wounded militants released them in exchange for water. Russian forces killed the militants during a later raid.

While there is still no exhaustive explanation for the raid, the spontaneous attack seemed to bear all the hallmarks of a prevented invasion into a neighboring republic or a massive localized terrorist attack. Indeed, as soon as the raid began, federal forces blocked off the city to prevent the gunmen from escaping. Local authorities had already beefed up security after finding a stash of 500 kilograms of explosives in Nalchik the previous Sunday. More worrying was the arrest on Oct. 8 of two militants who were allegedly planning an explosion at the airport — one of the targets that happened to be seized in Thursday’s raids.

On Friday, President Vladimir Putin confidently praised the operation, calling it well-coordinated, effective, and tough. “Our actions must be commensurate with all the threats that bandits pose for our country,” he said in a televised address to top security officials. “We will continue to act as toughly and consistently as we did on this occasion.”

Meanwhile on Monday, a pro-Chechen separatist website posted a message by Russia’s most wanted terrorist leader, <NOBR>Shamil Basayev</NOBR>, both claiming responsibility for the attack (indicating 217 “mujahedeen” were involved) and explaining why it failed. According to Basayev, a “major information leak” four days before the attack was behind the high casualties on the rebel side.

By early this week, the Russian government boasted of a successful counterattack. The rebel raid was spontaneous or at least premature — a diversion as other Islamists tried to release a group of Wahhabites from prison. But more importantly, the attackers had not invaded Kabardino-Balkaria from neighboring <NOBR>Chechnya</NOBR>, the center of the separatist conflict that has festered into an Islamist insurgency in southern Russia. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, on a visit to India, curtly ruled out that possibility in a statement on Sunday. “Reports of this are pure nonsense,” he said, explaining that all the militants “had been in Nalchik from the start. It was a militant underground network.”

Indeed, insisting that an invasion like the 2004 Chechen raid of Nazran was prevented this time is a point of honor for the Russian defense forces, who have been criticized for a ham-fisted handling of the separatist conflict. With nearly all bodies of the gunmen identified, only a handful proved to be from the neighboring provinces of Chechnya and Ingushetia — the rest were locals.

Liberal newspapers like Vremya Novostei, meanwhile, pointed at all the failings of Ivanov’s self-confidence. Perhaps Russian security was indeed tight enough to prevent an inter-republican invasion, but then how did such a formidable “underground militant network” sprout up in Kabardino-Balkaria in the first place? The Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid also pointed out that the separatist movement is extremely unpopular among civilians — mostly Muslim — citing a case confirmed by local police when a mob of civilians “tore two militants to pieces.” But a shadow was also cast on whether Russian forces could really boast of killing 92 militants: the independent Ekho Moskvy radio reported that a journalist was detained for “taking the wrong notes” - particularly regarding the methods used to distinguish militants and civilians, methods some experts alleged were not thorough enough.

Pockets of gunmen continued to hold out in the city well into Tuesday, as police tried to capture the remaining militants. With a complete blockade of Nalchik still in effect, police and security forces launched special operations in three city districts to capture gunmen trying to flee. The latest death toll was officially 139 people.

http://www.mosnews.com/commentary/2005/10/19/nalchikflops.shtml


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