Word: chechenization
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...didn't take long for the official line to unravel. By Saturday, FSB officials admitted that traces of explosives had been found on the wreckage of both planes and said they were checking the backgrounds of two women whose Chechen-sounding names were on flight manifests. No relative or friend has yet inquired about the women's fates. A group of Chechen fighters is known to have been in Moscow in recent weeks, according to both Chechen and FSB sources, and a group with ties to al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the attacks. But why the official reluctance...
...same time, even under the pressure of relentless Russian military action, many Chechen commanders had vigorously resisted efforts by Qaeda emissaries to enlist their men in schemes to attack U.S. targets in Russia. Still, the bitterness and despair engendered by the five year crackdown have seen Islamist influence grow. This is manifested in the emergence of suicide bombers, although the Chechens depart from conventional Qaeda practice by using women in this role - a habit learned, perhaps, from the secular nationalists of Sri Lanka's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, the movement that claims authorship of suicide bombing as a terror...
...There had always been a "global jihadi" perspective in at least a section of the Chechen insurgency, not least because of the arrival of foreign fighters in the 1990s fresh from their war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. A more radical element in the Chechen resistance, personified by the notorious commander Shamil Basayev, had made common cause with this element in recruiting a new generation of fighters more extreme in their commitments and Islamist ideology - and it may well be elements of this group behind the current wave of attacks. (Basayev had, for example, boasted some time ago about training...
...worldview of al-Qaeda's global jihad, some terrorism remains rooted in specific national conflicts. Indeed, part of al-Qaeda's game plan has been to do everything in its power to draw localized insurgencies involving Muslims in different parts of the world under its own global banner. The Chechen insurgency is, first and foremost, a nationalist struggle to secede from Russia, and the rise of a more extremist and Islamist element within that insurgency is, in part, an effect of the often indiscriminate brutality of the Russian crackdown, and Moscow's rejection of any political dialogue with the secular...
...resilience of the Chechen insurgency - and the increasing barbarity of its actions - put Putin in something of a bind. He staked his political career on his promise to eliminate the Chechen separatist movement, and he has obviously failed to achieve this. The failure may be not simply tactical, but strategic. By closing down the political track of dialogue with the nationalists, Putin has committed himself to pursuit of a military victory. And not only has such a victory proved elusive; its pursuit has seen the Chechen insurgency evolve into something a lot nastier and more dangerous. Then again, Chechens blowing...