#5
National Post (Canada)
October 30, 2002
Terror links are overblown
Most Chechens dream of a free state, not an Islamic one
By Matthew Fisher (mfisher@nationalpost.com)

Vladimir Putin insists there is an international dimension to last week's attack by Chechen terrorists in Moscow that would justify Russian forces striking beyond their own borders in what could be described as the country's own global war on terrorism.

The Russian President's intention to pursue those responsible "wherever they may be located" was made to a Cabinet meeting on Monday. His remarks coincided with suggestions by Russian investigators that the terrorists who seized a theatre in Moscow last Wednesday had been in telephone contact with allies in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as well as with unidentified Middle Eastern embassies in Moscow.

There have also been unsubstantiated reports in the Russian media that some of the 18 women terrorists killed when Russian commandos stormed the theatre were not Chechens at all, but were from Persian Gulf countries. Suspicions of a Middle Eastern connection have been further heightened by knowledge that the Chechens provided a taped announcement of their demands to al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite television network that has regularly been used as a conduit for propaganda from Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network.

It was not the first time Mr. Putin has tried to link the insurrection his country faces in Chechnya with global terrorism. This connection has been a constant and growing theme of the Kremlin since suicide bombers from the Middle East attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Another popular theme is that Russia, like the United States, is in danger of a terrorist attack that may involve nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

Until now, Western governments have been reluctant to embrace Mr. Putin's views on the international nature of the Chechen conflict.

Although it is widely acknowledged that Chechen fighters are hardboiled, ruthless and heavily implicated in drug trafficking, kidnapping and torture, the Western perspective is that while Russia faces a ferocious internal rebellion, the West is confronted by a global jihad by Islamic fundamentalists.

Some Western observers draw a parallel between Chechnya and Algeria, where more than one million people died in a bloody war of independence from France in the 1950s.

But Russia is undoubtedly correct in charging that some Chechen secessionists have connections with groups such as bin Laden's al-Qaeda. These links began to be forged soon after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Iron Curtain came down.

Saudi Arabian and Iranian clerics saw the upheaval as a chance to spread their competing visions of Islam to areas that had been forced to abandon their Muslim roots and embrace communism and secularism.

This rivalry was most obvious in the Balkans, Central Asia and the Caucasus. Mosques were built. Islamic schools, including those teaching Wahhabism, the austere brand of Islam from Saudi Arabia, were established.

Mullahs came to teach the Koran. Attempts were made to re-establish ancient trading patterns with Turkey and the Middle East.

This activity was initially fairly benign. But when people in Chechnya and the Balkans began to agitate and then fight for their own states, wealthy benefactors from the oil-rich desert sheikdoms stepped forward with open hearts and open wallets. The links mutated somewhat as the long-lost Muslim brethren from the north were provided with financial and logistical support and, in some cases, with military training and direct military assistance.

By the mid-1990s it was possible to bump into Muslim soldiers in Bosnia who, by their appearance and behaviour, seemed to be Arabs, not Muslim Slavs. Around that same time, reporting on fighting in the rubble of the Chechen capital, Grozny, I met several heavily armed and heavily bearded men speaking Arabic.

The United States has amassed evidence that some Muslims from the Balkans, Chechnya and Central Asia attended al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and stayed on to help the Taliban win a civil war. But as far as we know, the three Russians being held as suspected al-Qaeda members by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay are not Chechens.

That the 50 Chechens who seized 750 civilians in Moscow were terrorists is, by any definition, beyond dispute. They deliberately selected a soft target and then made plain their intention to kill themselves and murder all of the hostages to focus attention on their cause.

However, the influence of Islamic fundamentalists on the impoverished plains and mountain redoubts of southern Russia is easy to exaggerate. Not many Chechens went to Afghanistan. Not many Islamic radicals joined the fight in Chechnya.

A small number of Chechen factions occasionally spout Islamic rhetoric. A few may even dream of an Islamic state in the Caucasus. But most Muslim rebels there have little interest in an extreme interpretation of the religion of their forefathers. Nor do they bear a grudge against Western civilization. Their sole ambition is to expel the Russians from Chechnya.

Very few Chechens regard themselves as foot soldiers in a pan-Islamic war. In fact, Chechen rebels constantly appeal to the West for sympathy and support for what they regard as a war of independence.

The conflict in Chechnya is awful and ugly, but it is homegrown and is driven by local ambitions rather than a grand Islamic vision. It is hard to see it as part of a broader war by Islamic fanatics that are hell-bent on paralyzing the Judeo-Christian world.