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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Kadyrov negotiating with hard boyz

2006-03-22

The Chechen leadership is negotiating with militants in an attempt to bring them back into civilian life, the prime minister of the North Caucasus republic said Wednesday. "This is useful and very effective, because returning them to peaceful life is better than fighting," Ramzan Kadyrov said in an interview with government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta. He said many militants were still following ideas popular in the mid-1990s, when the first Chechen campaign began. "We explain to them that the situation has radically changed, and guarantee [their] life and immunity if their hands are not smeared with blood," he said. "If people do not understand [this], we will fight them, and this is legal according to our customs." Kadyrov said a search for militant leaders was underway in mountainous areas, but added that this should not be confused with zachistki - operations the Army says flush out militants hiding among the local population, but that rights activists say have led to the disappearance and possible murder of hundreds of people. He added that he needed help of Chechen people to detain militant leaders. Chechens are now willing to cooperate with local law-enforcement bodies, Kadyrov said, which have good links with federal bodies and special services. Kadryov also said warlords Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov had masterminded the murder of his father, first Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, and the terrorist attack on a school in Beslan. "No one can win freedom and independence by these methods. People such as Maskhadov and Basayev make everyone think that Islam is a bloodthirsty religion," Kadyrov said. Ramzan Kadyrov took over from previous Chechen Prime Minister Sergei Abramov, who was injured in a car accident in November last year and announced his resignation February 28. Akhmad Kadyrov, who fought against federal forces in the first Chechen campaign but later condemned radicalism and sided with the Kremlin, was assassinated in May 2004 during Victory Day celebrations in Grozny.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Chechnya's Prime Minister Steps Down

2006-03-01

The Kremlin-backed prime minister of war-battered Chechnya said Tuesday he was stepping down to give way to the widely feared head of a shadowy security service, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. The news confirmed perceptions that deputy prime minister and local strongman Ramzan Kadyrov was consolidating power ahead of an expected move into the presidency. Outgoing prime minister Sergei Abramov and Chechnya's president offered conflicting explanations for Abramov's stepping down, raising questions about a possible power struggle within the Moscow-backed administration of Chechyna, where separatist rebels have fought Russian troops for most of the past dozen years. Chechen President Alu Alkhanov said Tuesday that the prime minister was stepping down for health reasons. But hours later, Abramov said he was stepping down to give way to Kadyrov, the son of a Chechen president who was assassinated after winning a Kremlin-approved election that was widely regarded as fraudulent.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Ramzan Kadyrov sez no more than 150-250 hard boyz in Chechnya

2006-01-19

There are currently no more than 250 militants active in Chechnya, the acting prime minister of the North Caucasus republic said Wednesday. "Our information shows that there are between 150 and 250 militants active on the republic's territory," said Ramzan Kadyrov, who is carrying out the duties of premier Sergei Abramov while he recovers from injuries sustained in a car crash. His statement contradicts figures given by Lieutenant-General Oleg Khotin, head of the joint provisional Interior Ministry force in the North Caucasus, who said at a Chechen Interior Ministry meeting Tuesday that there were between 70 and 75 small armed groups operating in the republic, with a total of about 730 militants.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Pro-Russian Chechens declare jihad on Wahhabism

2005-08-04

Chechnya's pro-Moscow Muslim clerics declared a jihad against extreme "Wahhabite" Islam on Thursday in the strifetorn region's second outspoken religious ruling in a week. "Today we unanimously adopted a resolution. (The religious leaders) announced that (Wahhabites) will bring nothing but harm to the people and to Islam," said Ramzan Kadyrov, a politician who attended the meeting of clerics. "They are Wahhabites, and we must destroy them. If you ask me, we have a place where we can bury them -- three metres down," said Kadyrov in televised comments. Russian authorities habitually call their opponents in the Chechen conflict "Wahhabites", a term describing the strict Wahhabi branch of Islam but which in Russia has become near-synonymous with "terrorist" during the Chechen conflict. Chechens traditionally follow a Sufi form of Islam, but the presence of Arab volunteers in the fighting has given Wahhabi Islam a foothold. Kadyrov is filling in as prime minister while the regional premier Sergei Abramov is away on a tour to improve Chechnya's image in Russia, and has wasted little time in imposing his stamp on the region. Earlier this week, he ruled gambling was against Islam and ordered all gaming halls closed. During a brief 1996-9 period of de facto independence from Russia, Chechnya's rebel leadership imposed elements of Islamic law. Since Russian troops returned to the region nearly six years ago it has followed secular Russian law and it is not clear whether Kadyrov's latest rulings are legal. Experts say they doubted a declaration of jihad would help Russia win the war and was more likely a ploy for Kadyrov, who commands an army of former rebels, to increase his clout. "You can accuse anyone of being a so-called Wahhabite. If a man has a grudge against his neighbour, it is easy to say he is a Wahhabite. And how can you prove he isn't?" asked Ismagil Shangareyev, director of Russia's Islamic Human Rights Centre. "It's like 1937, when people were accused of being Trotskyites who had no kind of idea who Trotsky even was," he told Ekho Moskvy radio.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Caucasus Corpse Count now at 15

2005-07-19

Around 15 people were killed and more than 20 injured on Tuesday when an armoured police carrier was blown up by rebels in Russia's Chechnya. Itar-Tass news agency quoted local Prime Minister Sergei Abramov as saying 11 policemen and three civilians had died in the blast which left the police vehicle a twisted wreck. A member of the FSB state security service also died in the attack in the village of Znamenskoye, about 60 km (40 miles) northwest of the regional capital, Grozny, he said. Moscow has been trying for years to crush a separatist insurgency in mainly Muslim Chechnya. It has most of the region under nominal control, but police and troops still die daily, mainly in Grozny or the remote mountain villages. President Vladimir Putin blames the war on international terrorists seeking to destabilise Russia, and responded to the blast by demanding quicker moves to close weak spots on the border with the ex-Soviet states of the South Caucasus. Znamenskoye, like most of Chechnya's low-lying north, has been largely untouched by the war that has raged in the region for a decade, although a suicide bombing killed 59 people in the village in 2003. "Today a terrorist act was committed ... and as a result people have been killed, people have been injured and people have been seriously injured," said pro-Moscow President Alu Alkhanov in a televised statement. Pro-Moscow officials were quoted by local agencies as blaming the attack on forces loyal to warlord Shamil Basayev, whom Moscow links to international terrorist groups and is called Russia's most wanted man. "The tragic events in the Nadterechny region (of Chechnya) show that all we are planning must be done, and must be done quickly," said Putin at a government meeting, referring to plans to both toughen security and boost the economy to try and undermine the rebels' support base. He has long refused to contemplate a negotiated end to the Chechen war, but his pledges to destroy the rebels are yet to bring an end to the fighting. A rebel Web site said fighters had fired at the vehicle to attract police, then detonated an explosion to kill them. "As a result of this explosion the terrorists arriving at the scene were destroyed. There were no losses on the Chechen side. The resistance fighters returned to their base without any particular problems," www.chechenpress.com said.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

5 dead in clash over a cow between Russian troops, Chechen police

2005-03-23

Five people died in a clash between federal soldiers and pro-Moscow Chechen police provoked by a dispute when a federal military vehicle ran over a Chechen's cow, a spokesman for the Chechen Interior Ministry said Tuesday. The incident, which occurred on the outskirts of Grozny, underlined the tensions that exist even between Moscow's forces and locally recruited Chechen police over treatment of civilians in Chechnya. Interior Ministry spokesman Ruslan Atsayev declined to give any further details. He was too embarrassed to talk about it. An Interior Ministry official said that the Chechen police had tried to prevent a column of federal army vehicles from leaving the spot. Local inhabitants from the village of Berkat-Yurt also went out onto the road to demand compensation for the loss of the animal. He did not say when the clash occurred. "Heated arguments sparked a shootout, in which two policemen, two local residents and one Russian serviceman were killed," a local official was quoted by Interfax as saying. Chechen Prime Minister Sergei Abramovich, meanwhile, said police discovered two land mines along the route his motorcade was taking in Grozny and suggested he could have been targeted for assassination. Separately, Interfax quoted an official in the prosecutor's office in Grozny as saying that several civilians have been kidnapped in the past 24 hours. A woman told prosecutors that 10 gunmen wearing camouflage uniforms broke into her apartment in Grozny at night and took her son. Another two men are believed to have been kidnapped in the north of Chechnya, the report said.

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Caucasus

Caucasus Corpse Count

2004-07-14

Rebels took 12 members of Chechnya’s presidential security service captive, an official said Wednesday, contradicting earlier reports that 18 of the officers had died in heavy fighting. The Interfax news agency had quoted security service chief, Chechen First Deputy Premier Ramzan Kadyrov, as saying Tuesday that 18 of its members had been killed in fighting outside the southern village of Avtury. However, Kadyrov told NTV television later that six had been killed. Interfax quoted Chechnya’s chief prosecutor, Vladimir Kravchenko, as saying Wednesday that 12 of the security service officers had been taken captive. Kravchenko said about 30 security troops apparently were ambushed by 60 or 70 rebels, according to Interfax. In addition to the six security servicemen, five rebels were killed, he said. The ITAR-Tass news agency, citing an unidentified Chechen police official, gave different numbers, reporting 11 security troops were taken captive and five killed. It said four Chechen police also died in the fighting. The loss of his forces is a harsh blow to Kadyrov, a son of the Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated two months ago. The heavy fighting outside the village of Avtury came hours before a roadside explosion hit the motorcade of the Chechnya’s acting president, Sergei Abramov, killing one person and injuring two others. Abramov was unhurt in the blast in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny. Russia’s chief prosecutor, Vladimir Ustinov, said President Vladimir Putin had ordered him to travel to the North Caucasus "in connection with aggravation of the situation" in the region, which includes Chechnya.

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Caucasus

Chechen Leader Unhurt in Motorcade Blast

2004-07-13

Chechnya’s acting president escaped an assassination attempt Tuesday when an explosion tore through his motorcade, although one of his bodyguards was killed and three other people were wounded, officials said. Sergei Abramov, who was appointed to lead the Kremlin-backed Chechen government after the May 9 assassination of Akhmad Kadyrov, was not injured by the roadside blast in the ruined Chechen capital of Grozny. The attack came six weeks ahead of a scheduled presidential election in Chechnya. The explosion underscored Russian forces’ inability to purge insurgents from the city, despite a huge troop presence, and challenged Kremlin contentions that Chechnya is stabilizing after nearly five years of war. Earlier, Chechen officials said 18 members of the presidential security forces and 24 rebels were killed about 20 miles outside Grozny near the village of Avtury -- some of the bloodiest fighting in months. The explosion that hit the convoy was believed to have been a land mine set off by remote control, a method frequently used by separatist rebels to kill and demoralize Russian forces. One of Abramov’s guards, who was in a car following the president’s, was killed and three others were wounded, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Chechen Prosecutor Vladimir Kravchenko as saying. Abramov was en route to an inspection of a construction site, ITAR-Tass said. Such inspection trips are an important symbolic component of the Chechen administration’s efforts to portray life as returning to normal in Grozny, much of which is a jagged landscape of war-ruined buildings. Russia, unable to defeat the rebels and refusing to negotiate with them, has focused on trying to undermine support for the militants with civic improvement projects and by conducting elections in the republic. But rebels and their supporters have inflicted a series of brazen terrorist acts, including the explosion at a stadium that killed Kadyrov; the 2002 truck-bombing of the Moscow-backed Chechen government’s headquarters, which killed 72 people; and last year’s truck bombing of a military hospital treating soldiers wounded in Chechnya.

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Caucasus

Blast hits acting Chechen president's motorcade

2004-07-13

An explosion hit the motorcade of Chechnya's acting president on Tuesday, the Interfax news agency reported. Sergei Abramov was unhurt but other casualties were reported. Chechnya's acting president escaped injury in the Chechen capital Tuesday when an explosion hit his motorcade, but one person was killed and three were wounded, officials and news reports said. Sergei Abramov took over administration of the violence-plagued region when President Akhmad Kadyrov was assassinated in May. The Interfax news agency said the dead victim was one of Abramov's bodyguards and that one vehicle in the column of cars was damaged. A Chechen official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the victims were not traveling in Abramov's car. The Chechen official said one person was killed and three were wounded in the blast. Interfax and the ITAR-Tass news agency reported one dead and two injured. Abramov aide Igor Tarasov told Interfax the explosion occurred as the motorcade was traveling through Grozny's violent Lenin district.

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Caucasus

Russia captures Kadyrov assassins

2004-06-10

Authorities have detained two suspects in last month’s killing of Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, a prosecutor said Thursday. Allies of the assassinated leader, meanwhile, chose their candidate to replace him in an election this summer. Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said the two detainees ``participated in preparing and carrying out the explosion’’ that killed Kadyrov and five other people at a stadium in Chechnya’s capital of Grozny on May 9, the Interfax news agency reported. Fridinsky claimed that the suspects, residents of Chechnya who were aged 28 and 22, had admitted involvement, Interfax reported. An aide to Fridinsky, Vladimir Rudyak, confirmed the detentions. Prosecutors have said the circumstances of the bombing suggested it was an inside job that could have included someone from Kadyrov’s own security detail. They said the explosive had been planted under the VIP section at the stadium and had escaped the attention of security forces who swept the site beforehand. A new presidential election is scheduled for Aug. 29, and Kadyrov’s allies - including his influential son, Ramzan Kadyrov, who headed his security force and is now Chechnya’s first deputy prime minister - informally chose Alu Alkhanov, the region’s top police official, as their candidate, according to Russian news reports. ``Kadyrov always had hope in Alkhanov, that he would establish order in Chechnya, and he always declared that everything should be put in the hands of the Chechen police,’’ Ramzan Kadyrov, who at 27 is too young for the presidency, said on NTV television. ``And since he’s the head of the police, we think he will establish order.’’ Chechnya’s ethnic Russian acting president, Sergei Abramov, seemed to signal Kremlin support for Alkhanov’s nomination, telling NTV he is ``a worthy person, a true Chechen and a professional leader.’’ Interfax quoted Chechen State Council head Taus Dzhabrailov as saying Akhmad Kadyrov’s allies would support Alkhanov if he agreed to run. Alkhanov, 47, opposed Chechnya’s fight for independence in the mid-1990s and has countered the rebels in the war that broke out after Russian forces entered Chechnya in 1999, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. He had been chief of the transport police in Grozny since 2000 before being named interior minister in April 2003, it said.

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Caucasus

Ramzan Kadyrov now running Chechnya

2004-05-12

The troubled Russian province of Chechnya is now in effect being run by the son of Akhmad Kadyrov, the leader who was assassinated at the weekend, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday. However, Ramzan Kadyrov will not be able to run for president himself because he is three years under the legal minimum age of 30, said Aslambek Aslakhanov, who advises Putin on his native Chechnya. Ramzan Kadyrov was summoned to Putin's side shortly after his father died in a bombing Sunday, and has been made first deputy to the acting Chechen president, Sergei Abramov -- a 32-year-old accountant who was previously Chechen prime minister. Ramzan Kadyrov used to head his father's security service in Chechnya, where Moscow has been fighting separatists for a decade, and many analysts have been expecting him to step into his father's shoes. "He is an outstanding figure in Chechnya, he is the de facto leader," Aslakhanov told reporters. "He has authority. It is hard for Abramov ... he knows about finances but does not have enough experience of political authority." But he dismissed speculation that the Kremlin would find a way to let the younger Kadyrov, a bearded boxer aged 27, stand for president in an election set for Sept. 5. "According to the constitution he will not be president, because he is too young ... It is not realistic to hold a referendum to change the constitution," he said. Aslakhanov said he expected Kadyrov to maintain his father's line of refusing to negotiate with rebels on any topic but their surrender. "I do not think Ramzan will depart from the principles laid down by his father," he said. Aslakhanov, who is widely respected in Chechnya for his outspoken criticism of human rights abuses, has also been linked to the presidency. But he dismissed the idea, saying, "I have never had any presidential ambitions."

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Caucasus

Kadyrov assassination has al-Qaeda hallmarks

2004-05-11

THOUSANDS of mourners yesterday flocked to the funeral of pro-Russian Chechnya President Akhmad Kadyrov, whose assassination on Sunday appeared to bear the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation. The mourners paid their respects in Kadyrov's native village of Tsentoroi, in the country's south, where mourning ceremonies were expected to go on for three days after the explosion at Grozny stadium, which the Grozny emergency medical centre said killed a total of 24 people. Russian authorities put the figure at six. With the killing of a man whose election was engineered by Moscow in an attempt to give international legitimacy to the puppet Government in Grozny, Russia now faces a political vacuum. This will make its attempt to extricate itself from the Chechen quagmire immensely more difficult. The timing of the bomb blast is of enormous significance. It came on the anniversary of VE Day, always a solemn occasion in Russia. On this day the country remembers its victory over Nazi Germany and the 20 million war dead. The focus since Soviet times has been on the armed forces, honoured for their heroism. To choose this day to humiliate Russia's army in the centre of Grozny was a deliberate show of defiance in the face of years of heavy-handed military operations in Chechnya. The daring and expertise in placing a bomb right beneath the VIP stand at Grozny stadium suggests meticulous planning. Mr Putin has long insisted the rebels are backed by foreign Islamist extremists, and recently Moscow has produced evidence that some Chechen leaders have been working in close co-ordination with al-Qaeda. Washington, although concerned by Russia's tactics in Chechnya, has classified the separatists as part of the anti-Western Islamist terrorist movement. The explosion is almost certainly the promised revenge for the Russian murder of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, the exiled Chechen militant who was blown up in his car in Qatar in February. The killing of Kadyrov was a top priority for the rebels, who have not forgiven the former separatist leader for throwing in his lot with the Russians. Islamist militants see that as tantamount to deserting his religion, for which the penalty is death. Sergei Abramov, Chechnya's Prime Minister, was named yesterday as acting president, but initial reaction from Mr Putin's camp to Mr Kadyrov's death showed he would find it hard to continue attempts to let Chechens run Chechnya. Russia insisted yesterday it would not change course in Chechnya, and Mr Putin has repeatedly said that there will be no talks or negotiations with the separatists. But although his popularity remains high and his tough line on Chechnya is widely supported, the festering problem blights a range of policies. It will make it harder for Mr Putin to push through urgent military reform or to instil a greater degree of professionalism in the army.

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