Chechen Rebel (ChRI Pres. Maskhadov) Says Basayev Will Be Tried for Beslan

[Aidoneus]

Chechen Rebel Says Warlord Will Be Tried for Beslan
By Oliver Bullough

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Chechnya's rebel leader said on Friday he would put warlord Shamil Basayev on trial one day for the mass hostage-seizing at a Russian school in which more than 320 people were killed, half of them children.

"I responsibly announce that after the end of the war, individuals guilty of conducting illegal acts, including Shamil Basayev, will be passed to a court of law," said Aslan Maskhadov in a statement reacting to Basayev's claim to have masterminded the raid in Beslan.

Maskhadov appeared to be suggesting he would punish Basayev under Islamic sharia law which he introduced when he was president of a de facto independent Chechnya for more than two years in the late 1990s.

--snip--

But the two men had seemed to be uniting their efforts this year. Maskhadov's strong condemnation on Friday could weaken the rebel forces who are now more active than they have been for years.

The Russian military reported fierce fighting across the region overnight, involving commanders under Maskhadov's control. One rebel Web site said guerrillas were controlling two villages.

--snip--

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=721&e=1&u=/nm/20040924/wl_nm/russia_chechnya_dc

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al-Jazeera's version makes reference to more of ChRI Pres. Maskhadov's words:--

--snip--

Maskhadov called for the creation of an international tribunal to try war crimes on both sides.

"But I have to point out that such acts (as Beslan) are a consequence and response to the genocidal war waged by the Russian leadership against the Chechen people, in which the Russian army has killed 250,000 people, including 42,000 children," he said.

--snip--

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/ED9DD499-C899-4F0E-91A9-81192FA576E0.htm

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the full English version of Maskhadov's recent statement can be read here, translated unofficially from the original by Norbert Strade.

---------------------

As I noted in two previous postings (from 9/13, and 9/14, battles take place between ChRI armed forces and the occupyers all across the whole length of the nation and have been stepped up as of late, as the piece above hints at. In the previous week alone, in addition to events mentioned in the posts referenced above, fighting took place in the villages of Shatoi, Achkoi-Martan, Shali, Nad-Terekhney, Vedeno, Itum Kali, Nozhai-Yurt, Urus-Martan, all across the Argun Gorge region and the capital of Djokharkala/Grozny itself.

Chechens & Ingush across wide areas report a more serious stepping up of visible military patrols in the republics, with heavy armour on display and so-called "cleansing operations" (more or less random kidnappings, followed by a process of torture or ransom) carried out with greater frequency. In a perhaps related or unrelated note, a Chechen man and father of ten who resides as a refugee in Ingushetia was found murdered and severely mutilated a few days ago. No leads in the investigation as yet, and little interest in the western liberal press and politicians.

Most recently, and what is referred to in the piece, the villages of Geldygen and Avtury have been apparenly fully reclaimed by Chechen Armed Forces after heavy fighting with the occupyers.

Fighting has continued in the Vedeno, Itum-Kali, Shatoi, and Achkoi-Martan areas, as well as in the village of Mayrtup near Geldygen in the Kurchaloi district. In Itum-Kali, a farmer's house was shelled by Russian artillery, some of his cows died but the farmer survived with an injury; in Shatoi, a house and car were hit with artillery shells. Other "cleansing operations" were also carried out in Argun and Djokharkala/Grozny, and elsewhere, with several people seized and taken hostage back to local prison camps and military bases.
Russia's pet warlord, Ramzan Kadyrov, refers to a major victory near Alleroi, though I find no mention of this in Chechen sources (not even with their spin put on it), and head spokesman for the occupation, who acts rather like the CENTCOM duckspeakers but with a slightly different accent, Shabalkin refers to a similar battle near Urus-Martan; they report around 10 Chechen dead from the fighting.

[HuckleB]

1. Another article on this story:

Chechen Rebel Says Warlord Will Be Tried for Beslan

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-chechnya.html

"Chechnya's rebel leader said on Friday he would put warlord Shamil Basayev on trial one day for the mass hostage-seizing at a Russian school in which more than 320 people were killed, half of them children.

"I responsibly announce that after the end of the war, individuals guilty of conducting illegal acts, including Shamil Basayev, will be passed to a court of law,'' said Aslan Maskhadov in a statement reacting to Basayev's claim to have masterminded the raid in Beslan.

Maskhadov appeared to be suggesting he would punish Basayev under Islamic sharia law which he introduced when he was president of a de facto independent Chechnya for more than two years in the late 1990s.

Despite Maskhadov's statement denying any link with the Beslan attack, Russian officials have put a $10 million bounty on both him and Basayev and continued on Friday to assert the two had been hand-in-glove in the bloody operation.

..."

----------

Other related stories and reports in recent days:

In Beslan's Wake, Ancient Hatreds May Boil Over -- Ossetians Blame Ingushis for Killings
http://www.iht.com/articles/539756.html

A police state minus the police -- Putin and Russia take no responsibility for North Ossetia, though they still want it in the fold
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1310472,00.html

Russia uses KGB playbook on press -- Reporters covering Beslan say they were drugged by officials
http://search.csmonitor.com/search_content/0921/p01s03-woeu.html

Putin Reforms Cause North Caucasus Anxiety -- Abolition of direct elections in the North Caucasus likely to deepen bureaucratic feuds and corruption
http://www.chechentimes.org/en/press/?id=21898

[HuckleB]

2. Hmm.

So if the story isn't about Chechen terrorists killing children, it's not worth paying attention to?

I hope I'm wrong about this.

[gottaB]

4. sensationalism

Is it driven by the media, or does it reflect the public's genuine interests?

This is often noted in coverage of African affairs. Horrible violence makes headlines and dominates coverage. Analysis and reporting of political solutions are sorely lacking.

Maskhadov's statement is indeed worthy of notice. I don't know enough to make sense of it, other than what's been reported. I'd like to hear comments from others who have been following the conflict.

[gottaB]

5. p.s.

I ran across the research of Ethan Zuckerman on what he calls Global Attention Profiles (GAP):

GAP research demonstrates that the most accurate predictor of a media outlet’s attention is the size of a nation’s gross domestic product. This correlation is significantly greater than the correlation between media attention and the size of a nation’s population, and appears to be the strongest correlation between media attention and 21 factors examined. Generally speaking, violent conflict seems to have less effect on media attention than the size of a nation’s economy does.

I'm sure that's essentially the case, though I also suspect the coverage of violent conflict is not stochastic. Perhaps the patterns are revealed over time.

http://h2odev.law.harvard.edu/ezuckerman/

[HuckleB]

3. kick

[HuckleB]

6. kick

[Aidoneus]

7. advice:

You just need to set off the right radars. For example, random references to:

NADER KERRY BFEE BU$HITLER DEAN CHENEY-OFF TANG CBS FLAG DINO ZELLMILLER ZIONIST GUNCONTROL NADER NADER NADER NADER NADER NADER NADER NADER NADER NADER NADER NADER NADER NADER

etc, etc..

[Aidoneus]

8. since then..

further fighting has taken place across the area.

1 Russian FSB & 2 Interior Ministry forces were killed in the capital in an attack by a man or two from Basayev's unit;
in Shatoi district, two armoured vehicles were destroyed and 4-6 occupation forces wounded in an attack;
across the border in Ingushetia near Surkhakhi, a unit of 2 dozen Ingush-Chechen fighters ambushed a Russian reconaissance patrol, with at least 3 casualties bewteen the two sides;
across the other border in the Dagestani city of Buynaksk, a regional Interior Ministry was gunned down, though I couldn't tell from the text whether he survived or not (this doesn't have much, if anything, to do with Chechens, as there are many other complicated and simple matters at work there);
a family of Syrians living in Moscow were tracked down and assaulted by fascist gangs;
sometime Saturday, a mine was exploded under occupying forces near Novy-Atagi, with 2 reported dead from Russian sources;
major fighting by Chechen Armed Forces was kept up in the Kurchaloi & Shali districts, as mentioned previously: on the 23rd, a unit of 300 Chechen forces attacked the Russian and Kadyrovist military in Mayrtup, Alleroi, Geldygen and Kokhin-Yurt villages. The next day forces entered Avtury and carried out operations against the Russian forces there, including a signal post and local military base for Kadyrovist militia. Estimates from Chechen reports suggest between these two operations to have inflicted at least 25 casualties, suffering overall at least 4 of their own deaths and 9 wounded (hard for me to make this whole part out, sorry). The operation in Avtury seems to have been provoked by a "cleansing operation" and shelling carried out the previous day or earlier in the day (can't quite make the sequence out), so as to punish the occupying forces for the kidnapping attempt.

That's about what I can find for now.. reads a bit like reports from Iraq

[bemildred]

9. Descent into chaos.

Sad to see Pooty-Poot walking into this.
Sad to see all those dead people.
I have reached the conclusion that humans in groups
are not much smarter than ants.

[Aidoneus]

10. descending, & happily diving head first

I would say that ants have a few better things going for them..

some other random things I've not had the chance to work into anything else lately, before this falls into the archives, my attention shifts back away, or whatever..

The 'problem' is still spreading nicely, it's almost like it was planned that way. It is known that well over half of the gunmen in the last big event were from the rest of the North Caucasus (and one Siberian--can't leave him out).
Now, it is said and suspected that the Moscow bombings around that same time, also from February, and a lot more than just those, were in fact by Karachai militants (small Turkish nation on the western flank).
Intelligence agencies--not usually people I would place a pound of spit's worth of trust in, but it helps a bit when they're unduckspeaking on these things--are also suggesting now that one of the major Karachai fighters living abroad was the real mastermind behind Beslan (besides him, the ethnic-Russian "Colonel", the Ingushi "Magas"--whose identy is confirmed as no less than 4 different people so far--, somebody new next week, etc). I suspect that story will change at least a dozen times every month for the next year. :shrug:
It is true that Basayev took the blame for all of those too, but it is his tendency to act as a lightning rod for the darker handiwork of other commanders in the area, part as a favour to less tainted figures who would like to stay less visible, and part just because it's just what is expected of him and it would take too long to explain the real, nuanced facts. For example, Gelayev's unit pioneered Chechen suicide bombing during their early catastrophe at Komsomolskoie (surrounded and hit hard, then betrayed by the FSB's pet slave-trader Arbi Barayev, whose nephew would take that threatre a couple years), but Shamil's 50lbs of beard takes the heat for it all anyway--a considerate man, giving an easier storyline to present, I guess. For another example, they also tried to claim the sunk Kursk sub, so I guess it's hard to tell where his dark sense of humour takes over sometimes..
He has some friends among the Karachai and the others, of course (a Karachai unit has long been a regular part of his 'Abkhaz Battalion', some fought with him in Dagestan'99 with the mostly Daghestani fighters, gaining combat experience for new recruits fighting the Russian occupyers in Chechnya to this day, etc..), but actually there's a lot more to matters there than him, even--that doesn't happen much in their 'hood, but it happens. A year or two back he was even at the scene (coincidentally enough--apparently his hosts were on the same shitlist as he is) of a pretty serious gunfight in a Kabardin village that he was visiting at the time. How he moves at will even up to a year ago is a curious fact he'll probably take to the grave!
There are some people, not a few in number, in those other republics quietly, and openly (after the whole disaster that came to Russian-Chechen relations, "hands off" is the state policy on these things, knowing any finger lifted makes matters worse), preparing for a fight, and they're all well supported from a whole network inside Russia itself (just as the Chechens, Ingushi, & Daghestanis are--the whole talk of "al-Qa`idah" is just to hide that uncomfortable fact). I think that's what Basayev was referring to when he tried to make it seem like he could guarantee quiet 'just like that'. However much the government & media openly lie, at least the intelligence services are aware of these facts (hell, it's from their open reports I read some of this from, this translated from lenta.ru, for example).

Strange event near an Ingush village--a military academy was shelled by the Russian army for about 90min (one of theirs, I assume). Apparently, Ingush militants were reported in the area, so the best way imagined to combat them was for ... the army to bomb itself?! Earlier they were proudly displaying a female hairdresser--the most dangerous profession known to man--, bravely being taken down by the *anti-terror* fighters and inflicting a serious loss on ... somethingorother. A ChechenPress author pointed out the Naked Gun reference there:--comedy writers starve as reality makes a mockery of their parodies..

And not wanting to be left out, the Justice Minister of the Greek-chauvinist government of south Cyprus finally uncovered the "Chechen trace" hidden in the Turkish areas of the north. It's something of a habit for clowns of official stripe to bravely seek out and uncover the 'Chechen trace' in their midst: it's something of an initiation ritual, a European leader is a Nobody unless he's found it (and like gods, if they're not really there then they must be invented).

Personally, I'm praying for tidal waves. Or, perhaps a series of Precision Smart-Floods against the Officially Uniformed Idiots running things. A clean sweep, almost universally, seems inevitably necessary, if anything at all..

(one of these days, I'll think of a way to stay within proper English language guidelines and not place so many sentences in parenthesis. And as for organization, I'd apparently rather have my throat cut than put more than a minute's worth of thought into that..)

[TheLastMohican]

11. Lenta. ru is not a credible source

They've been caught on too many lies before. It's a FOX of Russia.

[bemildred]

13. If one avoided sources that lie, one would have to give up reading. nt

[bemildred]

12. Interesting bits, thanks.

From other (apolitical) sources* I get the impression that
the "readiness" of Russian troops in the N. Caucasus is very
low, begging for food and such while the Officer Corps runs
guns and drugs. But when you have modern weapons one
can still do a lot of damage. And it must be confessed that
even though it gets little press, the locals give a good account
of themselves, the Russians have taken a pretty good beating
themselves. It would be interesting to know how recruitment is
going for the Russian Army these days.

* - "The World's Most Dangerous Places", 5th ed, 2003