Johnson's Russia List
#6251
17 May 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org

[Contents:
  1. Interfax: Bush's rating low in Russia - Poll.
  2. Interfax: Russia will not join NATO - Putin.
  3. strana.ru: AIDS - Draining the Nation's Economy. Mass treatment 
"a massive diversion of funds," says report.
  4. RIA Novosti: AMERICAN AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA HOPES FOR AN AGREEMENT 
ON EASED VISA OBTAINING PROCEDURE.
  5. The Russia Journal: John Helmer, Putin’s play to win Wall Street hearts.
  6. The Russia Journal: Andrei Piontkovsky, A foretaste of Foros.
  7. RFE/RL: Francesca Mereu, Russia: Communist Leader Decries Arms-Reduction 
Agreement As 'National Treason'
  8. IWPR'S CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE: Sergei Rasulov and Nabi Abdullayev,
DAGESTANI BLAST INQUIRY "FLOUNDERING." Officials have fingered a Dagestani 
warlord for the slaughter at last week's military parade, but important 
questions remain unanswered.
  9. Business Week International: Paul Starobin, The Next Oil Frontier.
How America's soldiers, oilmen, and diplomats are carving out a new sphere 
of influence on Russia's borders.
  10. Robert Bruce Ware: Who Are Russia's Assassins?]

*******

#1
Bush's rating low in Russia - Poll

MOSCOW. May 17 (Interfax) - U.S. President George W. Bush is not very popular 
with Russians, the Public Opinion Foundation says. This information was 
obtained from a poll totaling 1,500 respondents conducted on May 11 
   Only 25% of Russians like Bush as a politician and 45% of those polled 
said they do not like him (in November 2001, this ratio was 32 to 37). 
   The sociologists believe that Russians with university degrees tend to be 
the toughest on Bush: 57% of them said they do not like the U.S. president. 
   In response to the open-ended question "What could you say about George W. 
Bush, what does his name bring to mind?", 12% of the respondents mentioned 
negative things. People who said they do not like Bush characterized him as 
"aggressive," "militant," "primitive," possessing "a low level of intellect," 
"insincere," "arrogant," and "egotistical." 
   The respondents who said they like Bush characterized him as "energetic," 
"decisive," "strong," "fair," "democratic," and "patriotic" (6%).

*******

#2
Russia will not join NATO - Putin

SOCHI. May 17 (Interfax)- Russia is not going to join NATO, Russian President 
Vladimir Putin said. 
   At a joint news conference with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma in Sochi 
on Friday, Putin said that an intensive dialogue is currently under way to 
establish a new Russia-NATO council 'at 20.' Each country will have one vote 
in this body and decisions will not be made in blocs. 
   Putin said that consultations on this issue "are almost completed," and 
Russia will participate in decision-making processes for issues such as 
terrorism, humanitarian operations and a number of other issues. 
   "I am fully confident that Ukraine will participate in efforts aimed at 
expanding cooperation with NATO and Western countries," the Russian president 
said. 
   Putin said that "Ukraine has its own relations with NATO." Only Ukraine 
and NATO have the right to make decisions in this sphere. "It is a matter of 
two partners," the Russian president said. 
   Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma welcomed changes in relations between 
Russia and NATO, which were officially announced at NATO foreign ministers 
meeting in Reykjavik. 
   "This is a landmark event, the acknowledged end of the Cold War and proof 
that Russia is not an enemy, but a partner in global cooperation," the 
Ukrainian president said. 
   Kuchma said that Ukraine welcomes Russia's steps and "will take the same 
road." NATO serves as an element of stability in Europe and "it is impossible 
to ignore this," the Ukrainian president said. 

*******

#3
strana.ru
May 17, 2002
AIDS - Draining the Nation's Economy
Mass treatment "a massive diversion of funds," says report
By Michael Stedman
 
Grim warnings of rampant HIV/AIDS having potentially huge impact on Russia's 
economy have been delivered in research charting an infection spreading - 
alongside Ukraine - faster than anywhere else in the world.

The toll, calculated in statistics costing the effect on national wealth, the 
labor force, and the country's "physical capital," could cut gross domestic 
product by 4.15 percent in 2010 and 10.5 percent by 2020, a new report says.

Significant impact on Russia's long-term development is chronicled in 
research by the World Bank Moscow office, Russia's Moscow AIDS Center and the 
Center for Economic Research at Charles University, Prague.

Mass treatment in Russia, even with big future cuts in the cost of medication 
to US$3000 per person per year, and whether left with the budget or partially 
privatized, "constitutes a potentially massive diversion of funds, which, by 
economic definitions, partially will need to be converted from private and 
public investments to consumptive use," the report says.

Impact is aggravated in Russia because the population is already on the 
decline and reckoned to go on falling, say authors Christof Ruhl, World Bank 
Moscow Chief Economist, AIDS center head Vadim Pokrovsky, and Prague 
university economics professor Viatcheslav Vinogradov.

Overall, the combined impact means an even bigger blow to the economy, social 
security systems for pensions and health care, and maintenance of stable 
public service provision, they believe.

In the most pessimistic scenario estimating speed of transmission, current 
treatment costs of US$9000 per person per year were not sustainable, leaving 
the budget with "hardly enough to provide the services necessary to run a 
functioning economy," the report said.

Without preventive policies or treatment, substantial erosion of GDP, growth 
and investment could be anticipated, the calculations indicate.

Long-term growth would be cut annually by half a percentage point by 2010 and 
a full percentage point annually by 2020, with investment falling off in the 
worst scenario by 5.5 percent in 2010 and 14.5 percent in 2020, and 
"effective labor supply" also expected to fall.

This would be due more to the overall decline in the number of available 
workers rather than because of productivity loss by infected personnel, the 
researchers believe.

They say rate of population growth is reckoned to stay negative by almost all 
observers, including Russian official sources such as Goskomstat or the 
Ministry of Labor.

Russia had 86,000 registered cases of HIV/AIDS in December 2000. The figure 
had risen to 1777,000 cases one year later. It now stands at 194,000 
registered cases.

*******

#4
AMERICAN AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA HOPES FOR AN AGREEMENT ON EASED VISA OBTAINING 
PROCEDURE 

MOSCOW, May 17, 2002. /From RIA Novosti correspondent/--American Ambassador 
Alexander Vershbow is hoping that at the next week's Russia-US summit an 
agreement will be reached on the eased visa-granting procedure. The American 
Ambassador told about this while speaking at the international conference 
"The New Agenda of Russia-American Relations" held in Moscow on Friday. 

According to the Ambassador, the issue is more important for the young 
generation. Vershbow thinks that it is essential that they are taking a more 
active part in the development of relations between Russia and the USA. 

Vershbow noted that the number of Russians going to the US had increased. The 
US General Consular Department has implemented a reform to ease the procedure 
of handing in of application forms. The Ambassador noted that it would now be 
possible to send application forms by mail. "We are for expanding contacts 
between the two countries," said the leader of the American diplomatic 
mission. 

Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov spoke up for resolving issues 
related to the simplification of migration and visa procedures. 

According to Meshkov, "more contacts, culture enrichment are needed." "It 
will contribute to strengthening confidence that will be part and parcel of 
secure and stable relations between the two countries. " 

*******

#5
The Russia Journal
May 17-23, 2002 
Putin’s play to win Wall Street hearts
By JOHN HELMER 

The haste with which President George Bush announced this week’s arms
control treaty with Russia – minutes after negotiators for the two sides
claimed to have been working on the text, and days before they had finished
work on the side document on missile defense – must have been embarrassing
for President Vladimir Putin. 

The disclosure allows almost two weeks to examine what has been drafted
before Bush and Putin will sign the documents. Already, it is plain that
the only concession Washington has made to Russian concerns is to call the
warhead limits document a treaty, even though it isn’t binding in any of
the specific ways nuclear arms control has been mandated between Washington
and Moscow for a generation. 

Bush’s aides have already conceded it was the U.S. Senate’s demand to have
Putin’s signature on a treaty that would be subject to ratification that
was more compelling for Bush than Putin’s demand to sign a document called
by that name.

In fact, there are so many loopholes in the treaty, and so much time in
which to fudge, the text may encourage even more suspicion between the
adversaries than was meant to be put to rest. 

Americans have already started asking, for example, whether Russian nuclear
warheads will actually be more secure, and less threatening, if they are
taken off their rocket launchers and inventoried in a warehouse, rather
than dismantled and destroyed? 

If Imelda Marcos, the notoriously acquisitive wife of the former dictator
of the Philip-pines, had publicly signed a promise to reduce her gargantuan
shoe collection in the presidential palace of Manila, would that have
reassured anyone that she was committing herself to limiting the profligacy
of her personal spending out of public funds? 

The Bush-Putin treaty of 2002 has the Imelda quality – a promise to
restrain profligacy, which depends on the character of the profligates to
honor it.

But wait a minute! Whatever may be said about those who run the
military-industrial complex of Russia, Putin cannot be judged to be
profligate with public funds. Indeed, most interpretations of why he has
agreed to Bush’s treaty credit him with accepting the need to conserve
funds by reducing the arms budget as much as possible.

So what else is driving the leadership of Russia to accept Washington’s
terms? The answer becomes clearer from the bulletins of the U.S.-oriented
brokerages and investment houses. 

It is their assessment that dramatic improvements in the atmosphere of
political relations between the United States and Russia reduce investor
wariness, and allow the boards of trustees, managers, and credit committees
of large U.S. investment funds and banks to pump more cash into Russian
assets. 

This happened often enough during the Yeltsin period that now, when Russia
is one of the few emerging market risks to be generating acceptably high
rates of return, there is a potentially enormous sentiment on Wall Street
in favor of a repeat.

The reasoning is straightforward. No matter what performance the Euro
economies turn in, it is the headquarters of the dollar that continues to
dictate economic terms to the rest of the world. 

The dollar looks for the best rate of return that can be justified in line
with the risk. If Putin can convince Wall Street that he can do two things
– sustain domestic growth rates and maintain amiability with the Bush
administration – then Russian risk shortens, and the spread between risk
and profit grows more attractive. Accordingly, investment analysts start
betting that the inflow of American portfolio and direct investment into
Russia will skyrocket. 

From Putin’s perspective, if this happens, he may be able to turn fantasy
growth rate projections into real ones, and generate a far bigger tax take.
And of course, if government revenues expand in step, there just may be
enough of a windfall to fund the military-industrial complex after all. 

And if that happens sometime before the year 2012, the loopholes of the
Bush-Putin Treaty will have served a Russian strategic purpose and not
simply an American one. 

The three-pager Bush and Putin are about to sign makes more sense as a
treaty with Wall Street than with Washington. If so, it may prove to be a
better, longer-lasting deal for Russia than the one Imelda Marcos had with
her shoemakers.

*******

#6
The Russia Journal
May 17-23, 2002
A foretaste of Foros
By ANDREI PIONTKOVSKY 

‘My dear comrades, isn’t it time we started setting the fashion in the
world automobile industry?" These were the words with which a young,
energetic and immensely popular general secretary addressed a group of
corpulent men who, together with local gangsters, had spent a quarter of a
century running the assembly lines set up on the banks of a great Russian
river by some inventive sons of the Mediterranean.

Back in those prehistoric times, the bourgeois, decadent concept of
political ratings didn’t yet exist. Had there been such a thing, the
charming chatterbox’s fall in popularity would have been accurately traced
back to that precise moment.

"My esteemed minister-capitalists, isn’t it time we set ourselves some more
ambitious objectives? Shouldn’t we try to catch up with the leading
industrialized countries?" With these words, 16 years later, a young,
energetic and immensely popular president addressed a group of remarkably
similar men, involved in remarkably similar activities, only this time at
the national level.

A few days later, he delivered the same message to an expanded assembly of
top Party and economic cadres, or, as one would say these days, of the
Russian political elite. Not so long ago at all, the elite’s behavior, in
appearance at least, on such ritual occasions, fitted Joseph Brodsky’s words:

"When He enters, they all rise – some out of duty, the rest out of joy."

But this time, "He" was met by the heavy silence of an audience that
remained seated and faces wearing a mute but growing irritation. The elite
knew that the president realized the people seated before him had not only
long since made it in life, but had achieved such ambitions as would make
the fortunes of even their great-grandchildren.

To reproach them with lack of ambition and demand of them another leap
forward to catch up with Portugal, of all places, was the height of
tactlessness and blatantly violated the agreements on the transfer of
power. All the more so as the president himself likes to repeat that he is
nothing more than a manager hired by the Board of Directors. (Mao Tse Tung
was more poetic: He compared himself to a solitary monk wandering the world
with an umbrella full of holes.)

The audience had another, very Russian, reason for their irritation. The
president’s glorious first days overflowed with so many fighter planes,
submarines, patriarchs, outhouses in which the enemies of the Reich met
their end, Pavlovskys squealing about a "mystical link between Putin and
the people" and fearless chekists marching confidently into power that the
Russian political elite pricked up its ears like an old war horse, fancying
it had heard the familiar horn sounding.

As if submitting to a desire born out of historical memory, this political
elite, ruthlessly whipped by Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Stalin
the Bloody, obediently bent over and lowered their trousers to reveal their
guilty buttocks to the president, mistaking him for the long-awaited night
porter.

They expected a spanking at the very least, and maybe something more
decisive, a more Caligula-style affirmation of his status and role.

But maybe all the president’s chekists, drunk on their new-found
opportunities, raced off to provide protection for furniture stores,
trading in the honor of Iron Felix for a soup ration of dollars. Or maybe
the whole idea simply put him off.

Whatever the case, the elite grew tired of its awkward position and, not
getting the deep satisfaction it desired, felt doubly insulted and
humiliated. The court stopped playing to its king’s wishes.

When this happens, the king usually gets himself a new court. Or the court
gets itself a new king.

The writer is director of the Center for Strategic Research.
  
*******

#7
Russia: Communist Leader Decries Arms-Reduction Agreement As 'National 
Treason'
By Francesca Mereu

In Moscow yesterday, Communist leader Gennadii Zyuganov criticized the 
arms-reduction deal to be signed by the United States and Russia at the 23-26 
May presidential summit as "large-scale national treason." Zyuganov -- who 
last month saw his party almost entirely sidelined from parliamentary 
politics -- also vowed to initiate a vote of no confidence in the government 
at the end of the month.

Moscow, 17 May 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Communist leader Gennadii Zyuganov yesterday 
invited foreign journalists to hear his views on the new arms-reduction 
agreement likely to be signed by the U.S. and Russian presidents during a 
summit in Moscow and St. Petersburg from 23-26 May. It is a topic -- like the 
Kremlin's increasingly pro-Western posture -- about which he has little 
positive to say. 

Zyuganov sain that in preparing to sign next week's agreement on reducing 
Russia's nuclear arsenal from some 6,000 warheads to between 1,700 and 2,000, 
the Kremlin is committing "national treason." 

"I'm talking about [U.S. President George W.] Bush's visit to our country and 
about the new arms-reduction treaty. We don't consider it a real agreement on 
arms cuts, but the total destruction of our nuclear arsenal. Two generations 
of our fellow countrymen spent a third of the national budget to build it," 
Zyuganov said.

Zyuganov said, should the agreement be signed at next week's presidential 
summit in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Communist Party will initiate a 
no-confidence motion against the government by the end of the month. 

But the Communist leader may not be able to deliver on his threat. The 
Communists and their allies control only about 100 of the 450 seats in 
Russia's Duma, or lower house of parliament. The Duma is dominated by 
pro-Kremlin factions, and without a majority, the Communists will not be able 
to push through a motion of no confidence.

Last year, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin pledged to cut their respective 
nuclear arsenals. After months of negotiations, officials this week hammered 
out the details of an agreement that both sides agreed could be signed at 
next week's summit. But the agreement, which is only three pages long and 
includes no specific timetable or verification procedures, has come under 
criticism from many observers, including Zyuganov, who called it a 
non-agreement. 

"It is a short agreement. In earlier agreements, [eventual] problems [and] 
verification measures were carefully and competently analyzed. In this 
agreement, there aren't any guarantees regarding verification. Putin will be 
forced to cut our warheads. [The Americans] are just dictating their 
conditions. They will put [their warheads] in a new storage room and when 
they need them they'll put them on their launchers again. This is not an 
agreement," Zyuganov said.

Moreover, Zyuganov said, U.S. plans to build a missile-defense system could 
eliminate the effectiveness of Russia's remaining smaller missiles, thus 
weakening the country's defense capabilities even further.

The Communist leader also said he opposes Putin's decision to welcome the 
deployment of U.S. troops in Georgia and the former Soviet republics of 
Central Asia, and the withdrawal of Soviet-era military bases in Cuba and 
Vietnam. Zyuganov said the decisions amount to the total destruction of 
Russia's strategic and military potential. 

Asked about Putin's friendly relations with the West, Zyuganov -- who in the 
past month has seen his Communist Party largely sidelined from parliamentary 
proceedings -- said the stance of the Russian president was only succeeding 
in fostering anti-American sentiment in Russia. 

"This is not a pro-Western policy, this is an anti-Western policy. Only 
during the Cold War did we have such an anti-American mood in the country. 
According to the latest polls, the anti-American mood has increased by some 
16 to 18 percent. Look at the mood of the citizens. What we propose is a 
'good-neighbor' policy: a policy that reflects the interest of our citizens 
and not the interest of the oligarchs. We are for good relation with the U.S. 
and for good and long relations with all of our neighbors. It is in our 
interest. But now we are being pushed toward a confrontation with the Islamic 
world and with China. This is a policy that takes you nowhere," Zyuganov said.

According to a recent poll by the VTsIOM Russian public-opinion center, 8 
percent of Russians think next week's summit will bring negative results for 
Russia. Thirty-six percent of respondents anticipate positive results, and 39 
percent expect no significant results at all. In addition, 37 percent of 
Russians see U.S.-Russia relations as "good and calm," while 28 percent see 
them as "cold."

*******

#8
From: "Institute for War & Peace Reporting" 
Subject: Caucasus Reporting Service No. 129
Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 

WELCOME TO IWPR'S CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE, No. 129, May 17, 2002.

DAGESTANI BLAST INQUIRY "FLOUNDERING"
Officials have fingered a Dagestani warlord for the slaughter at last
week's military parade, but important questions remain unanswered.
By Sergei Rasulov in Kaspiisk and Nabi Abdullayev in Moscow

Russian officials have named their prime suspect for a horrific bomb blast
at a Victory day parade in the Dagestani town of Kaspiisk a week ago, but
have so far failed to establish a motive.

Three suspects, initially detained for the May 9 explosion, which killed
42 people and wounded 90, were cleared of involvement. Then officials
blamed Rappani Khalilov, a little-known Dagestani militant, said to be
hiding in Chechnya, for the massacre. No one has explained why.

The bomb, an anti-personnel mine, filled with pieces of steel wire and
with a force equivalent to three kilograms of dynamite, appears to have
been planted to cause the greatest possible destruction. It was left in
shrubs next to a road, where a crowd was gathering, and detonated as a
military brass band marched past.

Excerpts from an amateur video taken by a Kaspiisk resident and broadcast
on television show the military band playing a festive tune before being
engulfed in billowing black smoke. Screams break out. As the smoke clears,
soldiers in camouflage and civilians are seen sprawled around a deep
crater in the street, with blood pouring from their wounds.

Twenty-two people, including six children, were declared dead at the site,
and about 110 more were hospitalised. As of Sunday, 20 more had died of
their injuries. The dead included 21 soldiers stationed in Kaspiisk,
mostly musicians marching in the parade, and 13 children who were running
in front of the band.

When an IWPR correspondent reached the blast site an hour after the
explosion, it was dotted with large pools of blood, strips of victims'
clothing, shoes and sheet music.

Alimagomed Isayev, 32, was in the crowd a few dozen metres away from the
epicenter of the explosion. "At first, people scattered in all directions
in panic," he said. "But they quickly came back to help the moaning
victims. They didn't know what to do and stood motionless in despair,
women were moving among the maimed bodies and sobbing hysterically. Then
we began to load all those who were covered with blood into cars and drive
them to hospitals."

Two hours after the explosion, with the area sealed off and explosives
experts investigating the fragments of the bomb, federal servicemen began
to compile the first list of the deceased. A young lieutenant loudly read
out the names, "Kravchenko Alexander, Bass Sergei. . ."

A burly major in a black beret stood nearby, his hands covering his face,
tears running down the cheeks. "Bitches, bitches," he cursed.

Kaspiisk, a town of 70,000 people, is the headquarters of the Russian
federal border guards and marines stationed in Dagestan.

The latest bomb blast occurred a few minutes before President Putin was
due to address World War Two veterans at a Victory Day rally in Moscow.
Signaling how seriously he took the news, Putin said he would take
personal charge of the inquiry into the attack. He ordered Nikolai
Patrushev, head of the counter-intelligence service, the FSB, to head the
team of investigators and to report directly to him.

Unusually, the authorities did not directly accuse Chechen rebels of being
behind the bombing. Speaking on national television, Viktor Kazantsev,
Putin's plenipotentiary in the Southern Federal District, told Russians
not to jump to such a conclusion.

The rebels themselves denied any involvement. "The Chechens and those who
sympathise with the Chechens in their struggle have nothing in common with
such actions because it would mean playing into the hands of our enemies,"
Akhmed Zakayev, a spokesman for separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, said in
a statement posted on the separatists' website Chechenpress.com on May 10.

However Patrushev, who flew to Dagestan to lead the investigation, said on
the same day that the explosion "may be a result of events taking place on
the territory of Chechnya".

Three ethnic Dagestani suspects were arrested in St. Petersburg on May 11
and flown to the republic's capital, Makhachkala. A day later, they were
cleared of involvement in the May 9 attack but remained in custody on
suspicion of having carried out other bombings in Dagestan.

Later Dagestan's interior minister Adilgirei Magomedtagirov blamed Rappani
Khalilov, a Chechnya-based warlord of Dagestani origin, for the bombing.
The minister said that Khalilov was hiding in the Nozhai-Yurt region of
eastern Chechnya. "As interior minister I swear that he will be either
seized or eliminated," Magomedtagirov told reporters in Makhachkala. He
said his ministry, rather than federal forces, would carry out the
operation.

According to the Dagestani interior ministry, Khalilov has employed about
40 militants in as many as 15 terrorist attacks in the republic over the
past eight months. His name first surfaced after a bomb exploded near a
military truck in Makhachkala in January, killing seven servicemen and
injuring 20. Russian deputy prosecutor general Vladimir Kolesnikov claimed
that most of Khalilov's group had undergone training in Chechnya,
Georgia's Pankisi Gorge, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

At the same time, other versions for the bomb explosion are being widely
discussed in Dagestan. In November 1996 Kaspiisk was the scene for another
horrendous attack against Russian servicemen. An apartment block, which
was home to border guards and their families, was destroyed by a bomb,
killing 68 people. Nobody was ever convicted of that crime that many
linked to the battle for control of Dagestan's lucrative caviar trade.
Some believe the same smuggling business - rather than radical Islam - may
be involved this time.

In another version of events, which has been widely discussed in the
national press, its claimed the bombers may have been trying to undermine
Dagestan's leader Magomedali Magomedov ahead of new elections for the post
of head of the republic in June. Magomedov is expected to be the only
candidate for the job he has held since 1994.

However, respected Dagestani sociologist Enver Kisriev, said this theory
did not hold water. "Such an explanation for the attack might make sense,
if there was any suggestion that it would hurt Moscow's relations with
Magomedov," said Kisriev. "But today Magomedov's position inside the
republic and Moscow's support for him are remarkably strong."

Sergei Rasulov and Nabi Abdullayev are correspondents with Novoe Delo in
Makhachkala and the Moscow Times respectively.

*******

#9
Business Week International
May 27, 2002
The Next Oil Frontier
How America's soldiers, oilmen, and diplomats are carving out a new
sphere of influence on Russia's borders
By Paul Starobin, with Catherine Belton in Moscow, Stan Crock in
Washington, Dexter Roberts in Beijing, and Haleh Anvari in Tehran

It's Happy Hour at Fisherman's Wharf, an expatriate hangout in Baku, a
port on the Caspian Sea in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. The
place is just around the corner from the town's only McDonald's, and on
a Friday in April, a gaggle of Brits, Americans, and Aussies are
gathered on bar stools to munch peanuts, quaff beer, and shoot the bull.
Talking about Web access in this, an authoritarian Muslim country, one
guy, looking as if he had just returned from a long stint on an offshore
oil rig, says to his buddy: "Yeah, but can you get hustler.com?"

The all-male oil worker is a type Americans can readily identify. Most
Americans, though, couldn't find Azerbaijan on the map. And they
probably wouldn't be able to find--or spell--Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, or Tajikistan. But American soldiers, oilmen, and diplomats
are rapidly getting to know this remote corner of the world, the old
underbelly of the Soviet Union and a region that's been almost untouched
by Western armies since the time of Alexander the Great. The game the
Americans are playing has some of the highest stakes going. What they
are attempting is nothing less than the biggest carve-out of a new U.S.
sphere of influence since the U.S. became engaged in the Mideast 50
years ago. The result could be a commitment of decades that exposes
America to the threat of countless wars and dangers. But this huge
venture--call it an Accidental Empire--could also stabilize the fault
line between the West and the Muslim world and reap fabulous energy
wealth for the companies rich enough and determined enough to get it.

The buildup of this commitment has been breathtakingly fast. Consider:

-- A year ago, not a single U.S. soldier was in the region. Today,
roughly 4,000 servicemen and women are building bases, assisting the
Afghan war, and training anti-insurgency troops along a rim of peril
stretching 2,000 miles from Kyrgyzstan, on China's border, to Georgia,
on the Black Sea. In early May, U.S. advisers started training
antiguerrilla forces in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, where Muslim
insurgents believed to be connected to al Qaeda are taking refuge from
their struggle against Russian troops across the border in Chechnya. A
few days before that, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared on a
visit to Kyrgyzstan, where the U.S. Air Force has a base, that coalition
troops would stay there "as long as necessary."

-- From incidental sums fewer than five years ago, the amount of U.S.
investment in the region has jumped to $20 billion. The biggest
recipient: Kazakhstan, a vast state with huge oil reserves and a
dictatorial ruler, ex-Communist boss Nursultan A. Nazarbayev.

-- The energy giants have revved up their commitment to the Caspian
region, one of the last big undeveloped clusters of fields on the globe.
Major investors include ChevronTexaco Corp. (CVX ), Exxon Mobil Corp.
(XOM ), BP PLC (BP ), and Halliburton (HAL ) . BP alone, for example,
plans to put up to $12 billion into the region over the next eight
years.

-- U.S. government aid to the region, including programs to improve
irrigation, battle drug traffickers, and train software programmers is
on track to jump 50% from pre-September 11 levels, to $809 million a
year.

Every day the Americans dig themselves in deeper into this part of the
world, where 74 million people bring an exotic mix of Turkic, Mongol,
Persian, and Slavic influence. What is fast evolving is a policy focused
on guns and oil. The guns are to protect the local regimes from Islamic
radicals and provide a staging area for attacks on Afghanistan. The goal
is "to get rid of terrorism, not just get it out of Afghanistan," says
A. Elizabeth Jones, Assistant Secretary of State for European and
Eurasian Affairs. The guns, of course, will also protect the oil--oil
that Washington hopes will lessen the West's dependence on the Persian
Gulf and also lift the nations of the Caucasus and Central Asia out of
their grinding poverty. "If you have prosperity, you have stability,"
Jones says.

Estimates of the Caspian oil pool vary greatly--from 200 billion
barrels, on the level of a Saudi Arabia, to fewer than 100 billion
barrels, still on a par with the reserves of the North Sea and at
current oil prices worth $2.7 trillion. Besides, world oil prices are
highly sensitive even to relatively small increments of additional
production. The Caspian could have a huge impact on the ability of OPEC
to influence the oil market, says a U.S. government energy analyst. By
2010, the Caspian could claim 3% of global oil output, according to
Moscow brokerage Renaissance Capital.

Chevron was the pioneer: In 1993, it bought into the huge Tengiz field
in Kazakhstan, with an estimated 6 billion to 9 billion barrels of
reserves. In October, 2001, almost $4 billion in investment later, a
Chevron-led consortium opened its 980-mile pipeline from Tengiz to the
Russian port of Novorossisk on the Black Sea. BP's Caspian project is
one of its biggest anywhere. ExxonMobil has also been spreading into the
region, with stakes in the Tengiz field and in offshore Caspian deposits
belonging to Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. All three oil majors are hungry
to get in on future finds. "I don't think ChevronTexaco's appetite for
investment in this part of the world is satisfied yet," says Dennis
Fahy, general manager of ChevronTexaco Corp. in Kazakhstan.

Key to the game are the pipelines, where diplomacy and oilcraft meet.
The Caspian is a landlocked sea. Its vast oil output must be piped
overland to the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, or the Persian Gulf before
it can be pumped into tankers. The U.S. wants a pipeline that will help
its friends in the region and freeze out its enemies--especially the
Iranians, also located on the Caspian. That's why Washington is strongly
discouraging plans by some oil majors to lay a pipeline across Iran,
lobbying instead for a proposed $3 billion, 1,090-mile pipeline to carry
up to 1 million barrels of oil a day from Baku through Georgia to the
Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in NATO ally Turkey.

Nothing is easy in this part of the world, however. Georgia, run by
former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, has been wracked by
civil war, organized crime, and terrorism. It's hardly a safe place for
a pipeline. So the Pentagon is sending 150 military trainers to Georgia
to help with anti-terrorism efforts and is helping Azerbaijan to bolster
its Caspian Sea Navy and modernize an air base for potential use by U.S.
forces. These represent "concrete steps" the U.S. will be taking to
provide security for Caspian oil investments, says oil analyst Julia
Nanay at Petroleum Finance Co. in Washington. BP, which is seeking to
recruit other investors for the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, is expected to
make a final decision by June about going ahead. "Construction is going
to be approved," says Richard Pegge, a senior manager in BP's Baku
office.

Iran is not giving up--which means tensions may get worse in this
already tense region. "Iran's strategy is to be the main transit route
out of the Caspian," says Tehran oil consultant Bijan Khajehpour. The
Iranians are still seeking investors for their pipeline--and acting
tough to defend their oil stakes. Last summer, Iranian gunboats and a
fighter jet chased a BP research vessel out of waters disputed by Iran
and Azerbaijan. BP has not resumed exploration in that area.

The Iranian-U.S. face-off has inspired some tricky maneuvering by some
of the local dictatorships. Kazakhstan, the region's biggest oil power,
with an estimated 1.1 billion metric tons of oil reserves, is aiming for
a southern pipeline route to the Persian Gulf to serve growing Asian
markets, including China. "We consider the Iranian route to be the best
one," says Kairgeldy Kabyldin, managing director of state-owned
oil-and-gas company KazMunigas.

The White House still hopes to win over Kazakhstan, one of many
repressive Central Asian and Caucasus regimes it is courting. But the
U.S. is also cultivating activists, a move whose long-term benefits are
unclear. This is a region where ethnic hatreds go back centuries and
where locals who want to help fight terrorism may be dangerous fanatics
in their own right--just like the U.S.-armed mujahideen who expelled the
Soviets from Afghanistan and morphed into the Taliban. Just talk to Aki
Eshqi. Dark eyes blazing, the 34-year-old sips espresso in a Baku caf?
and warns of a growing underground of Iranian-linked militants in
Azerbaijan. Eshqi, who works for a foundation to promote ethnic Azeri
solidarity, is eager to operate as America's eyes and ears in
Azerbaijan, pointing out Iranian infiltrators such as the Islamic group
Hezbollah.

Why so gung ho? Because Eshqi is an Azeri nationalist who aims to make
northern Iran--an ethnic Azeri territory--part of a greater Azerbaijan.
Eshqi says Azeri-armed bands in northern Iran are prepared to fight for
their cause. "They know it's not their time [for a shooting battle],"
Eshqi says, but they are hoping the U.S. will help. The State Dept. has
indeed met with representatives of ethnic Azeris in northern Iran.

Not everyone is putting out the welcome mat. Russian hard-liners see the
southern-rim thrust as a strategy of U.S. encirclement. "Your foreign
policy," a group of ex-military officers recently wrote President
Vladimir V. Putin, is "the policy of licking the boots of the West."

Putin is trying to calm the hotheads. He may be calculating that his
struggling country, barely able to supply its own armed forces, can
benefit from the Pentagon's thrust. Putin and Bush plan to discuss U.S.
military activities and intentions in the Caucasus and Central Asia at
their upcoming summit on May 24 in Moscow.

There's certainly plenty to talk about. On a mid-April trip to the
region, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld met with Nazarbayev to discuss
Pentagon access to airfields in Kazakhstan. Some 1,000 troops of the
U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Div. are already stationed at the ex-Soviet
Khanabad Air Force Base in southern Uzbekistan. They arrived last
October to launch operations against Afghanistan, 125 miles to the
south. Now, local prostitutes dream of relieving American Rambos of
their dollars--as do the owners of Las Vegas, a nightclub featuring a
fluorescent mural of the Manhattan skyline. "They can have beer, vodka,
whiskey, whatever they want," says bartender Jamshid Rakhimov, 20.
Fascinated by the female soldiers at the base, Uzbek guards offer to
sell snapshots of women G.I.'s riding motor scooters.

Russians are not the only ones nervous about U.S. troops in Central
Asia. The State Dept.'s research shows that most people in Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan oppose an extended U.S. military presence.
"If the U.S. overstays its welcome in the region, it could alienate key
allies in the war against terrorism," the department concluded in its
Apr. 4 analysis.

That risk also exists in oil-rich, BP-dominated Azerbaijan. "Bush sees
us as the 51st state," scoffs Teymur Mamedov, a 32-year-old logistics
manager for a Western oil-services company in Baku. "But it doesn't work
that way. There's nothing to hold us together--only money, and that's
not enough."

Still, the Azeri government views the expanded U.S. security role in the
country as an insurance policy against any future bid by Russia to
reassert control. "Azerbaijan is trying first of all to become a player
around the table, not to be the table for someone else to play cards
on," says Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov.

Then there's China. Moscow's influence in its old backyard of Central
Asia may be waning, but Beijing's is rising. And the Chinese suspect
that the Pentagon's real goal is not anti-terrorism but access to bases
to keep an eye on, and if need be, contain China's activities in the
region. "It's all part of the game big powers play," says Wang Yizhou of
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Not to be outdone,
the Chinese are giving the Kazakhs military wares, such as
communications equipment.

The Chinese can play the power game, but in this chess match the U.S.
has more pieces. Uzbek President Islam A. Karimov is grateful that the
Pentagon-led campaign in Afghanistan dealt a blow to the local Islamic
guerrilla group that fought alongside the Taliban. Now. he's opening up
the country's state-owned gold mines to $100 million in investment from
Denver's Newmont Mining Corp. (NEM ), the world's biggest gold miner.
Since 1992, Newmont has operated a modest 50-50 joint venture with the
state. Now it will do the mining itself at a new site in which it will
hold a 60% interest. The goal is to produce 300,000 ounces a year. "This
is a strategic investment that has the potential to become a large core
asset," says Tim Acton, the company's manager for Central Asia and
Russia.

But the southern rim of Russia remains one of the toughest places on
earth to do business. American investors who have braved the the region
have memorized the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)--the U.S. law
defining the kinds of transactions that meet the test of an illegal
bribe. Even savvy companies can be stymied. Bechtel National Inc. had
hopes of building a $2.5 billion pipeline to ship gas from Turkmenistan
across the Caspian Sea and into Turkey. But it pulled out of
Turkmenistan in the fall of 2000 after it became clear that
FCPA-permissible business was impossible with the regime, headed by a
cult-of-personality dictator, President Saparmyrat A. Niyazov, known as
the Turkmenbashi, who has turned the entire country into a showcase for
his personal portrait. "They just wanted to be bought off, as quite
often happens in this area, and we don't do that," says a senior Bechtel
official.

The expats who tough it out have an adage: Business may be difficult,
but life is good. In Baku, top Western executives live in Wellington
Heights, a luxury high-rise with a spectacular view of the harbor and
the city's most famous sight, the centuries-old Maiden's Tower. Even
though most city residents lack properly filtered water in their
kitchens, Western managers, accountants, bankers, and lawyers tied to
the oil business are spending millions of dollars renovating 19th
century townhouses with wrought-iron balconies as finely crafted as
those in Paris. Most of the expat executives are middle-aged men, and
with their fat wallets--let's face it, it's not their bulging
waistlines--they are magnets for beautiful young local women.
"Certainly, sexual harassment rules don't apply here," says one American
male fortysomething businessman, recounting the perks of life in Baku.

Sensitive to the imperialism rap, the Bush Administration says its goal
in the southern rim is not to exploit but to nurture prosperous,
democratic societies--societies in which locals won't choose to join
terrorist groups. This is why the U.S. in mid-March inked an agreement
with Uzbekistan. America pledged to protect the country from external
threats in return for its pledge to liberalize its Soviet-style economy,
improve its human-rights record, and ease government-imposed press
censorship. There's room for progress: Uzbek police, including Karimov's
own national security service, "used suffocation, electric shock, rape,
and other sexual abuse" to obtain confessions from detainees in 2001,
according to the State Dept.'s most recent report on human-rights
practices in the country. Opposition figures worry Karimov will play the
U.S. need for military bases against any American attempt to stay his
hand.

In southern Azerbaijan, amid lemon trees, lazy rivers, and cows that
meander across roads, the State Dept. is funding a human-rights center
in the town of Lenkoran, 25 miles from Iran. Religious observance is
much stricter here than in Baku. It's not hard to see where local
sympathies lie. "America has established a bad policy regarding Iran,"
says Hamdulla Aliyev, a mullah. Inside the center, local Azeri leaders
offer seminars on elections and hand out literature on the rights
citizens can demand if interrogated by the police. Still, even among
center leaders, there's skepticism about America's purposes. "If there
was no oil in Azerbaijan, I am sure America would not help us," says one
of the staffers.

America's best hope for engendering good will may be to solve the
still-simmering regional conflicts that killed some 100,000 people
during the past decade. White House officials, for example, are worried
that the Azeri army may get enough of a boost from U.S. weaponry to try
something foolish--such as attacking Armenian troops still occupying a
part of Azeri soil after a bitter war sputtered out in 1994. Prodded by
the U.S., Aliyev and Armenian President Robert Kocharian are planning to
meet in Prague in late May. "We have every reason to push" for a peace
deal, says John M. Ordway, U.S. ambassador to Armenia.

The Kremlin is willing to help but isn't optimistic. "It was Russia's
mission for so long to protect Western civilization from the Asians,"
says Vyacheslav A. Nikonov of the Polity Foundation, a Moscow political
think tank. "If Americans are going to take over this job, God bless
them."

Such sentiments aren't souring the can-do spirit of many Americans.
James C. Cornell, president of RWE Nukem Inc. in Danbury, Conn., plans
to double its uranium production in Uzbekistan. "When the U.S. is
engaged militarily, it creates an umbrella for so many activities--not
just business, but also education, culture," he says. "All things become
possible." Trouble is, quagmires become possible, too.

*******

#10
From: "Robert Bruce Ware" <...@brick.net>
Subject: Who Are Russia's Assassins?
Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 

Who is responsible for a long series of terrorist bombings in Russia?  Is
it the militant separatists, the Islamist extremists, or the government
itself?  The answers may have much to do with the two bombs that did not
explode.

Unfortunately, neither of those was in Kaspisk.  On the morning of May 9,
2002, an explosion killed more than 40 people, almost half of them
children, and injured more than 150 others in the quiet town on Russia's
Caspian seashore.  The blast occurred at a Victory Day parade commemorating
the defeat of Germany in World War II.  Elderly veterens and families lined
the parade route down Kaspisk's main street. A group of children followed a
military marching band.  Just as the band struck up the Victory Day tune an
anti-personnel mine was detonated by remote control, sending nails, bolts,
and metal fragments in all directions.  Instantly the street was filled
with battered musical instruments, body parts, and streams of blood.  The
explosion targeted children, parents, elderly people, musicians, and the
fragile stability of the region.

Kaspisk is in Russia's southernmost republic of Dagestan, bordering
Chechnya.  In the nineteenth century Dagestanis and Chechens were united
against Russian colonialism, but since the demise of the Soviet Union
Dagestan has remained loyal to the Russian Federation.  Especially after
1996, when crime and then militant Islamist insurgency spilled across the
Chechen border, Dagestanis turned their backs on Chechnya.  Yet in both
republics Islamist extremists, known locally as Wahhabis, increasingly
coordinated their activities.  

The Victory Day explosion is a grim reminder to Dagestanis that they have
not escaped the region's endemic violence.  Once again there is an urgency
to the darkly familiar questions about terrorism in Russia, answered only
by a weary and predictable cadence of claims and counter claims.  Within
forty-eight hours of the blast various parties had blamed Chechen
militants, Islamist extremists, and the political establishments in Moscow
and in Dagestan.  Typically, no one had taken responsibility.

Since May 9 several published reports have referred to the frequency of
bombings in Dagestan, and the fact that many have gone unsolved. While this
is true, most of these explosions have been small scale and have targeted
Dagestani political and business elites.  The mayor of Mahachkala, Said
Amirov, has been the target of fifteen assassination attempts.  One of
these, in September 1998, involved a car bomb that killed several
bystanders, but usually these attacks injure few ordinary citizens.  Rarely
have explosions in Dagestan targeted families.  There have been two recent
exceptions, including the unsolved explosion of an apartment block in
Kaspisk that killed 68 people in 1996.  

Yet few reports have mentioned an incident that occurred twelve miles north
of Kaspisk, in the Dagestani capital of Mahachakala, exactly two years
before on May 9, 2000.  On that date, just three hours prior to the
commencement of Victory Day celebrations, a routine patrol by a squad of
police and a specially trained dog discovered a plastic bag hidden in a
flower bed near the large Lenin monument on Mahachkala's Central Square.
The bag contained two metal boxes filled with six kilos of explosive, two
electric detonators, a control panel, and a microcircuit.  Reports by
explosives experts indicated that the powerful bomb would have killed or
injured most of the thousands of people in the large square and damaged or
destroyed most of the surrounding, government buildings. The bomb was
located 4 meters from a ceremonial stand upon which many Dagestans
political leaders and several honored citizens were scheduled to speak.
Since this incident, Mahachkala's well-lighted central square has been
patrolled around the clock.  Is that why the assasins turned to this year's
Victory Day celebration in nearby Kaspisk?

After the bomb was discovered two years ago in Mahachkala many people in
Dagestan blamed Chechen militants. Others speculated that the bomb was an
artifact of local political rivalries.  Yet this seemed unlikely because
political assasinations in Dagestan have rarely targeted bystanders, and it
would be suicidal for a Dagestani political faction to murder hundreds of
innocent people on Victory Day.  Yet significantly, no one in Dagestan
speculated that Russian federal agents were responsible for the bomb since
the device would have killed many of the Dagestani leaders who have proven
crucially loyal to Moscow.  Intead people in Dagestan tended to compare the
bomb to another that had leveled an apartment building in the Dagestani
town of Buinaksk less than a year earlier, just before a series of
apartment block explosions in cities to the north.

Ninety-four people died in their sleep when an explosion leveled a
nine-story Moscow apartment building on September 9, 1999. Four days later,
118 died in another Moscow apartment blast. Just three days after that, 17
people died when a bomb exploded in a truck parked near an apartment
building in the city of Volgodonsk, to the south. The recently appointed
Prime Minister Putin saw a Chechen connection, though this was denied by
Chechen president, Aslan Maskhadov. Further doubts were raised after
September 22, when another suspected bomb, discovered in the basement of an
apartment building in Ryazan, turned out to be part of a "training
exercise" for federal security services. The next day Russian aircraft
bombed the Grozny airport, and a week later Russian troops reentered
Chechnya. 

In Russia, Putin's reputation soared on his hardline prosecution of the
conflict in the Caucasus, but there were lingering suspicions that the
blasts had been the work of government authorities seeking to generate
public support for an invasion of Chechnya. The Ryazan incident led to
speculation that federal security services had planned an explosion there,
and perhaps had planted the bombs in Moscow and Volgadansk. Earlier
questions had been raised when the speedy removal of rubble seemed to
preclude a full investigation of the Moscow blast sites. Others pointed out
that Chechen commanders such as Shamil Basayev and Salman Raduyev were
usually quick to claim responsibility for their exploits. Wouldn't Basayev
have taken credit if the apartment blasts had been his work? Indeed why
would any Chechen wish to enrage Russians by attacking civilians in their
beds? And why did the explosions stop when Russian troops reentered
Chechnya? If Chechens were behind the blasts then wouldnt the blasts have
continued after warfare resumed?

Two Septembers later these questions were temporarily sidelined by a pair
of terrorist attacks in New York, followed by a third attack in a city to
its south. Washington was suddenly in a mood to consider Moscow's
consistent claims that Chechen militants were tied to Osama Bin Laden.
American officials confirmed the links between Al Qaeda and a Chechen field
commander of Arab origin known in the Caucasus as Amir al-Khattab, whose
death was reported in April 2002. 

Recently, however, issues of government sponsored terrorism in Russia were
revived by a Russian billionaire named Boris Berezovsky.  Berezovsky once
supported Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, but he has since fallen out
with the Putin administration and is residing in Europe.  Berezovsky made
headlines this year by financing and promoting "Assassination of Russia", a
French film that examines the Russian apartment blasts in light of the
Ryazan incident. Following its London premiere in March, the film was
screened in April at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. It will soon
be shown in New York and Boston. 

Berezovsky alleges, and the film suggests, a Russian government conspiracy
to reignite the Chechen conflict by murdering Russian civilians. The
charges that have been revived by Berezovsky and the filmmakers, but which
were long a staple of Western media speculation, are based essentially on
motives purported to the Russian military and political establishments.
Supposedly, the Russian military wished to return to Chechnya in order to
overcome the humiliation that it suffered in 1996, while President Yeltsin,
Prime Minister Putin, and other officials viewed the prospect of war as a
means to guarantee the upcoming presidential election. Some speculators
have offered Putins subsequent political success as proof of his complicity.

It is possible that some or all of this is true. The Ryazan incident is
disturbing by any account, and deserves, at the very least, a serious
investigation. Yet any serious investigation should consider all of the
alternatives.  Few analyses of terrorism in Russia have focused upon the
turbulence of Dagestan's recent history and its implications for
investigations in Russia and the United States.

On September 4, 1999, just five days before the first Moscow explosion, a
truck bomb ripped through an apartment block in Buinaksk, Dagestan, killing
64 people. The building had once housed military families. The next day
Basayev and Khattab launched their second invasion of Dagestan in a month.
Why the second invasion when Basayev had declared on August 22, at the end
of his first incursion, that the next stage in his Dagestani adventure
would be "political not military"? There is reason to suppose that the
second invasion of Khattab and Basayev was intended to relieve the Islamic
fundamentalists, locally known as "Wahhabis", who were under Russian
military attack in the central Dagestani village of Karamakhi and in the
two neighboring villages of Chabanmakhi and Kadar. Together these fortified
villages came to be known in Dagestan as the "Islamic djamaat".

Wahhabism spread to Dagestan from Tajikistan in the early 1990s, and its
proliferation in Dagestan was generously funded by individuals and
organizations in the Persian Gulf.  In 1998, Dagestani officials accused
those organizations of waging jihad against the traditonalist Moslems of
Dagestan.  In the autumn of 2001, Dagestani authorities closed the local
branch office of the Benevolance Foundation, a Chicago-based charity
affiliated with Osam Bin Laden.  Khattab and other leaders of the Wahhabi
movement have served as intermediaries for much of the radical Islamist
funding that has come to region.  Yet the puritanical Wahhabis were out of
step with Dagestan's moderate traditionalist Muslims.  In August and
September, when militant Wahhabis twice invaded Dagestan from Al
Qaeda-supported bases in Chechnya, Dagestanis rallied around their
political leaders.  They pushed the insurgents out with the helpof the
Russian military.

Between those two invasions of Dagestan, on August 29, 1999, the fortified
villages of the Islamic Djamaat were attacked by Dagestani OMON security
forces. Moscow exercised restraint due to the consequences that it feared
might follow from attacks waged, not against Chechen insurgents along the
Dagestani border, but against Dagestani villagers at the heart of the
republic. However, in early September, when assaults by the Dagestani OMON
ended catastrophically with the deaths of twelve servicemen who were killed
during street battles in the villages, federal forces began an artillery
assault. It was not the first violence the villages had seen. 

Confrontations began in the summer of 1996 following the murder of a
village mayor. On 12 May,1997 a quarrel between fundamentalist Wahhabis and
moderate Islamic traditionalists over arrangements at a funeral led to a
melee involving 600 people and resulting in a fatality. In December 1997,
representatives from these villages, styling themselves "Fighting Squads of
the Djamaat of Dagestan" established a "Military Mutual Assistance Treaty"
with Chechen commander Salman Raduyev. The Treaty affirmed that Chechen
government forces and the Islamic Djamaat of Dagestan were unified in the
struggle for an independent Islamic Caucasian state. On the night of 22
December 1997 Wahhabis from this Djamaat joined with Chechen raiders to
attack the 136th Motorized Brigade based in the nearby village of Gerlakh,
outside Buinaksk. The "Central Front for the Liberation of the Caucasus and
Dagestan" claimed responsibility for the incident, which resulted in 3
civilian fatalities and 14 casualties. 

In May 1998 the Islamic Djamaat defeated a contingent of 150 police
officers who were dispatched after gunmen seized the Karamakhi police
station. On 5 July 1998, approximately 1000 gunmen gathered at a meeting
near Karamakhi to demand the resignation of the entire Dagestani
government, union with Chechnya, and the withdrawal of all federal troops
from Dagestani soil. Having refused to recognize any government authority,
and having successfully resisted government control, the Islamic Djamaat
developed a reputation as a "little Chechnya" in the center of Dagestan.

In the winter of 2001, a Dagestani court convicted five so-called Wahhabis
from the Islamic Djamaat for the Buinaksk apartment explosion. One of them,
who had worked as a cook for Basayev and Khattab, confessed that he had
brought the explosives from Chechnya beneath a truckload of watermelons.
Later retracted this admission. 

Could there have been a connection between the Buinaksk blast and the
explosions in Moscow and Volgadansk? In an interview published in the
Prague periodical Lidove Noviny (p. 7 by Petra Prokhazkova) on September 9,
1999, Shamil Basayev said: "The latest blast in Moscow is not our work, but
the work of the Dagestanis. Russia has been openly terrorizing Dagestan&
For the whole week, united in a single fist, the army and the Interior
Ministry units have been pounding three small villages&And blasts and bombs
-- all this will go on, of course, because those whose loved ones, whose
women and children are being killed for nothing will also try to use force
to eliminate their adversaries. This is a natural process and it is yet
more evidence of Newton's third law, that each action generates a reaction&
What is the difference between someone letting a bomb go off in the centre
of Moscow and injuring 10-20 children and the Russians dropping bombs from
their aircraft over Karamakhi and killing 10-20 children? Where is the
difference?"

Among those whose women and children were in Karamakhi during the Russian
assault was Khattab, who was married to a Karamakhi woman. On September 15,
1999, an Associated Press reporter (Greg Myre) quoted Khattab as saying:
"From now on, we will not only fight against Russian fighter jets (and)
tanks. From now on, they will get our bombs everywhere. Let Russia await
our explosions blasting through their cities. I swear we will do it." Yet
in a subsequent interview with the Interfax news agency Khattab denied that
he had anything to do with the Moscow attacks. "We would not like to be
akin to those who kill sleeping civilians with bombs and shells," Khattab
was quoted as saying.

Yet Khattab and other Wahhabis affiliated with the Islamic Djamaat clearly
had a motive for blowing up Russian apartment buildings. In September 1999,
when the Islamic Djamaat was being bombarded their motive was somewhat more
crystalline and immediate than were those of other suspects, such as the
Russian military and political establishments. Indeed, the last of the
blasts, in Volgodansk, occurred on September 16, the same day that the
Wahhabis in Karamakhi were defeated. If the blasts were connected to the
fighting in Dagestan, then one might expect them to conclude at the same
time that the fighting did. Moreover, the Wahhabis and Al Qaeda would have
had as much to gain from war as Russias military and political leaders
since warfare would also mobilize their own supporters and spur the
international fund raising upon which they depend, much as did their
attacks upon the United States. Moreover they would have much to gain from
sustaining and expanding the present instability in the Caucasus with the
recent attack in Kaspisk.  

But unlike the Moscow establishment, Islamist extremists would also have
much to gain from the wholesale assassination of Dagestan's political
leadership and the deaths of hundreds of Dagestanis on May 9, 2000.  It is
unlikely that Russian federal agents would have wished to eliminate
Dagestan's loyalist political leaders.  The Victory Day 2000 bomb discoverd
in Mahachkala is important to any analysis of terrorism in Russia because
in the case of that incident there is a clear distinction between the
motives of Islamist extremists and the motives of the Moscow establishment.
 The former had a motive; the latter did not.  If there is a connection
between the Victory Day 2000 bomb discovered in Mahachkala and the Victory
Day 2002 bomb that exploded in Kaspisk, then the Moscow establishment is
also unlikely to be responsible for the Kaspisk blast. Statements by
Basayev and Khattab suggest that the apartment blasts in Buinaksk, Moscow,
and Volgodansk were the work of Islamist extremists. Is there reason to
suppose that those who are responsible for the terrorist acts in Dagestan,
Moscow, and Volgodansk are connected, at least financially, to those who
are responsible for terrorist acts in New York and Washington, and that
they operate on the basis of similar motives?  

The invasions of Dagestan in August and September 1999 and the terrorist
explosions in that September in Buinaksk, Moscow, and Volgodansk were the
motives for the the second war in Chechnya from October 1999 to the
present.  This war has not served the interests of Chechen nationalists.
Chechnya achieved de facto independence from Russia following the
Khasavyurt Accord in August 1996.  That independence has been severely
compromised by the events of August and September 1999, and by the
consequent Russian invasion.  Another of the enduring questions about that
war is why Basayev and Khattab launched the first invasion of Dagestan on
August 2, 1999, when that action was so flagrantly contrary to Chechen
national interests.  Based upon remarks that Basayev made in the spring and
summer of 1999, I previously attributed the invasion to an intelligence
failure on his part.  It remains probable that an intelligence failure was
a part of the cause, in that Basayev and Khattab certainly overestimated
the support that they were likely to receive from the majority of Dagestanis.

However, developments of the past year suggest that the strange series of
events that occurred in Russia during the summer and autumn of 1999 might
be understood within a broader geopolitical context.  While a further war
with Russia was not in the interest of Chechen nationalists, it certainly
was in the interest of militant Islamist extremists, whose movment was
forged through war with Russia in Afghanistan during the 1980s.  As in the
case of that earlier war in Afghanistan, and as in the case of the first
Chechen war, the current war in Chechnya is useful to the Islamist
extremist movement for purposes of recruitment and fundraising.  Thus while
the current war in Chechnya has been a losing proposition for Chechen
nationalists, it could not have been anything other than a winning
proposition for Islamist extremists.  That may ultimately be the reason why
Dagestan was invaded and why the September 1999 explosions occurred.

The Dagestani people responded to those events not by supporting the
insurgents, but by rallying around their political leaders and calling upon
Moscow for military and economic support. On September 16, 1999, the same
day that the Karamakhi Wahhabis surrendered, and the same day as the
explosion in Volgodansk, the Dagestani legislature outlawed Wahhabism.
Clearly, retribution of the part of the Wahhabis could be a motive for the
attempted assassination of the Dagestani political leadership on Victory
Day 2000 and for continuing efforts to destabilize Dagestan through
terrorist explosions. There is no question that local Wahhabis have been
connected with other explosions in the North Caucasus that seem to have
been intended to extend and expand the conflict in Chechnya.

Moreover, if the recruitment and fundraising needs of Islamist extremists
have been served by a running war with Russia, then war with the United
States would certainly do the same, particularly in so far as it was
provoked at time when the second war in Chechnya was slowly winding down.  

It is clear that all of the following events, occurring from the end of
1997 to 2002, have ultimately served this purpose, and possible that they
were intended to do so: 1) Khattab's raid, with fighters from Karamakhi and
Chechnya, upon the 136th Russian Motorized Brigade near Buinaksk, Dagestan,
December 1997; 2) the occupation and looting of Dagestan's main government
building by 200 gunmen under the leadership of the Khachiliev brothers,
affiliated with Islamists in Karamakhi, May 1998;  3) in Karamakhi,
Wahhabis take the police station on the same day; puntitive efforts by
Dagestani police are subsequently defeated; 4) the assassination of
Dagestan's moderate Mufti (Islamic leader), Mahachkala, August 1998; 5) the
bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, August 1998; 6) an explosion
at a Vladikavkaz market, in the Russian Republic of North Ossetia, kills
50, March 1999; 7) the first invasion of Dagestan, August 1999; 8) the
apartment blast in Buinaksk, Dagestan, September 1999; 9) the second
invasion of Dagestan, September 1999; 10) apartment blasts in Moscow and
Volgodansk, September 1999; 11) large bomb discovered in Mahachkala,
Dagestan, Victory Day, May 2000; 12) attack on the USS Cole, Yemen,
September 2000; 13) near-simultaneous car blasts in the neighboring
southern towns of Mineralnye Vody and Yessentuki and the village of
Adyge-Khabl in the Karachayevo-Cherkessia region kill 28, March 2001; 14)
attacks upon the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside
Washington DC, September 2001; 15) a blast in Mahachkala kills Russian
troops, January 2002; 16) a bomb in a Vladikavkaz market kills 8, April
2002; 17) a bomb in Kaspisk, Dagestan kills 42, Victory Day, May 2002. The
list omits several blasts that occurred in Russia without clear connection
to Wahhabis, and several attempts on American targets that occurred during
these years.

This is certainly not to suggest that all of these events were the results
of tight central coordination, nor that they were all steps in the same
methodical plan.  Evidently, several of these events were perpetrated with
a view toward local objectives more than toward any overarching
geopolitical strategy. But their end results have all served the same
purposes, and with the exceptions of the events in Moscow, Volgodansk,
Mahachkala, Vladikavkaz, and Kaspisk, it is clear that they were all
financed by the same loosely affiliated network of organizations with
sources in the Persian Gulf.  The purpose of this essay is to suggest that
the events in Moscow, Volgodansk, Mahachkala, Vladikavkaz, and Kaspisk were
parts of the same pattern of events that have provoked and perpetuated
warfare between Russians and Muslims, and have thereby promoted recruitment
and fund raising for Islamist extremists.  

Nor is warfare with Russia and the United States the ultimate geopolitical
objective of Islamist extremists.  Ultimately this is an intra-Islamic war
between fundamentalist extremists, on the one hand, and moderate and
secular Muslims, on the other. By provoking and perpetuating wars with
Russia and the United States the extremists are making a pitch to rank and
file Muslims around the world.  The extremists want show that that they are
the only Islamic leaders with the strength to assert Muslim interests
against the major world powers.  They want to drive a wedge between
moderate regimes and their Moslem populations by forcing those regimes to
choose between membership in the international community and the Islamist
agenda.  Their goal is the overthrow of moderate and secular regimes in
Moslem countries, and the unification of the world's Moslem population.
Wars with Russia and the United States are means to this end.  Russia and
America are little more than pawns in this game, and so far they have both
been playing into the hands of the extremists.  Dagestan is a helpful
microcosm for purposes of understanding the real paramaters of the current
war, for in Dagestan it has very clearly been a struggle between a small
minority of Islamist extremists and an overwhelming majority of moderate
and progressive Muslims.

Of course all of this does nothing to explain the incident in Ryazan, the
one from which Berezovsky builds an alternative explanation.  That incident
also demands thorough investigation, but it is unlikely that Berezovsky
will add much light to its analysis.  In fact, in an interview published in
The Russia Journal (August 12-18, 2000, p.1, by Ekaterina Larina)
Berezovsky ironically linked the explosion at Moscow's Pushkin Square in
August 2000 to Chechen terrorists. Referring to Putin's earlier vow to
eradicate "the terrorist threat in Chechnya" Berezovsky declared: "This
(bombing) will happen again if the policy of "smashing the bandits in their
lairs" continues." Opportunists are nothing if not predictable. At least it
is possible to identify one of the assassins of Russia.

******

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