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  Chechnya-based Terrorists (Russia, separatist)

  Updated: July 11, 2006

  • What terrorist groups operate in Chechnya?
  • Are all Chechen separatists terrorists?
  • Who are the Chechens?
  • What major attacks are the Chechen groups responsible for?
  • Are there links between Chechen groups and al-Qaeda?
  • Does the Russian government say that al-Qaeda is active in Chechnya?

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  What terrorist groups operate in Chechnya?

  Information about groups linked to the conflict in Chechnya is hard to confirm, but experts say the struggle is between local separatists—a loosely organized group, with semi-independent commanders—and the Russian army. Chechnya’s long and very violent guerrilla war has attracted a small number of Islamist militants from outside of Chechnya—some of whom are Arab fighters, with possible links to al-Qaeda. Tens of thousands of Chechens and Russians have been killed or wounded in two costly wars in Chechnya, and hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced.

  Among the Islamist militants, the most prominent was Shamil Basayev, Russia's most wanted man, who, on July 10, 2006, was killed in an explosion in Ingushetia, a republic bordering Chechnya. Basayev fought for Chechen independence for more than a decade, and was the mastermind behind the worst terrorist attacks on Russian soil. His death cast doubt on the future of the Chechen separatist movement.

  Are all Chechen separatists terrorists?

  No, and the connection between terrorists and the Chechen leadership remains unclear. Western governments, including the United States, have said that Russia has tried to portray all Chechens as Islamist terrorists in order to justify the harsh measures Russian forces use to try to crush Chechen resistance. But it is true that Chechen separatists have employed brutal tactics against civilian targets, including, for example, hospitals and theaters. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has said that “the lack of a political solution and the number of credible reports of massive human rights violations, we believe, contribute to an environment that is favorable toward terrorism.”

  Who are the Chechens?

  The Chechens are a largely Muslim ethnic group that has lived for centuries in the mountainousCaucasus region and has consistently resisted Russian subjugation. During World War II, the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin accused the Chechens of cooperating with the Nazis and forcibly deported the entire population to the central Asian republic of Kazakhstan. Tens of thousands of Chechens died, and the survivors were allowed to return home only after Stalin’s death in 1953.

  What major attacks are the Chechen groups responsible for?

  The most notorious and devastating attack came in 2004, when Basayev, ordered an attack on a school Beslan, a town in North Ossetia. More than 300 people died in the three-day siege, most of them children. There were thirty-two militants, all but three or four were non-Chechens, and all but one were reportedly killed during the siege.

  Other attacks include:

  • In October 2005, at least eighty-five people were killed in street fighting in the southern Russian city of Nalchik after Chechen rebels assaulted government buildings, telecommunications facilities, and the airport.
  • A three-day attack on Ingushetia in June 2004, which killed almost a hundred people and injured another 120.
  • A December 2002 dual suicide bombing attack on the headquarters of Chechnya’s Russian-backed government in the Chechen capital, Grozny. Russian officials claim that international terrorists helped local Chechens mount the assault, which killed eighty-three people.
  • Two Chechen men armed with grenades and other explosives were arrested in a Grozny market in December 2002.
  • The October 2002 seizure of a Moscow theater where some 700 people were attending a performance. Russian special forces launched a commando raid, and the opium-derived gas they used to disable the hostage-takers killed more than 120 hostages, as well as many of the terrorists. Shamil Basayev, one of the most radical Chechen commanders, took responsibility for organizing the Moscow theater raid.
  • A bomb blast that killed at least forty-one people, including seventeen children, during a military parade in the southwestern town of Kaspiisk in May 2002; Russia blamed the attack on Chechen terrorists.
  • In Moscow, an August 1999 bombing of a shopping arcade and a September 1999 bombing of an apartment building that killed sixty-four people, and two more terrorist bombings in September 1999 in the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan and southern Russian city Volgodonsk. Controversy still surrounds questions about whether these attacks were conclusively linked to Chechens.

  Are there links between Chechen groups and al-Qaeda?

  Experts cite several ties, including:

  • The late Chechen warlord Khattab, a Jordanian-born fighter who was killed in Chechnya in April 2002, and Osama bin Laden. Khattab apparently first met bin Laden while both men were fighting the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The U.S. ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow, said shortly after September 11, “We have long recognized that Osama bin Laden and other international networks have been fueling the flames in Chechnya, including the involvement of foreign commanders like Khattab.”
  • Zacarias Moussaoui, whom U.S. authorities have charged with being the “20th hijacker” in the September 11 attacks, was reported by the Wall Street Journal to be formerly “a recruiter for al-Qaeda-backed rebels in Chechnya.”
  • Chechen militants reportedly fought alongside al-Qaeda and Taliban forces against the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in late 2001. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan was one of the only governments to recognize Chechen independence.

  Does the Russian government say that al-Qaeda is active in Chechnya?

  Yes. Russian authorities, including President Vladimir Putin, have repeatedly stressed the involvement of international terrorists and bin Laden associates in Chechnya—in part, experts say, to generate Western sympathy for Russia’s military campaign against the Chechen rebels. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov claimed that a videotape of Khattab meeting with bin Laden had been found in Afghanistan, but Russia has not aired the tape publicly. Most experts put the number of foreign militants in Chechnya at approximately 200, out of several thousand fighters.

   

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