Islamic terrorists staged a large-scale attack against targets in the obscure Caucasian city of Nalchik on Thursday. Israeli site DEBKA reports that the terrorists were affiliated with al Qaeda.
The Nalchik Wahhabi cell of al Qaeda is notably dangerous and ruthless. It provided the jumping off base for the raiders who besieged the Beslan school a year ago, leaving 332 dead, most children.After tha[t] attack, on Sept. 13, 2004, DEBKAfile reported that the small, out-of-the- way province of Kabardino-Balkaria (est. pop. one million) attracted an al Qaeda presence from 2002 when American bases went up in Georgia. Its leaders decided to counter the US presence by establishing a strategic base in the Muslim Northern Caucasus, the southwestern region of the Russian Federation.
Most of the province’s inhabitants are ethnic Circassian Muslims. The unrecorded chapter of the Chechen intelligence war of the 1990s relates how the Circassian community of Jordan, which was the security buttress of the Hashemite throne, was used by US, British and French intelligence as a pipeline into the Chechen breakaway movement for close surveillance of its conflict with Russia. Al Qaeda, which tracks and meets every American intelligence move connected with the global war on terror, countered by going into the remote and relatively affluent Kabardino-Balkaria to quietly acquire its own Circassian asset.
Until early 2005, the Kabardino-Balkaria cells were the rear bases of the Saudi Wahhabis fighting in the Chechen rebellion against Russia. They were also used for trading intelligence and weapons. But then the Saudi fighters moved out of Chechnya to join Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s terrorist ranks in Iraq. Al Qaeda then promoted the Nalchik Wahhabi cell to become its leading Caucasian base.
Dan Darling at Winds of Change presents an overview and also addresses the linkages between various Islamic terrorist groups.
The attack on Nalchik in Kabardino-Balkaria is yet another sign of the deteriorating situation in the North Caucasus. While this is the first high-profile attack by Basayev's Chechen fighters and their allies since Beslan, this is unfortunately just the latest indication of the waning Russian control in the region. For some time now, there have been nearly as many clashes between Russian forces and Chechen fighters in Dagestan and Ingushetia as there are inside Chechnya proper and Basayev's followers now consist of large numbers of Dagestani and Ingush Muslims in addition to actual Chechens and Arab al-Qaeda fighters.
Oddly, National Public Radio interviewed a Russian security expert Friday and I was struck by his virtual refusal to even mention the Islamic nature of the attackers.
Mark Steyn was listening to the same broadcast and has a lot to say about that coverage and more.
What happened in Russia on Thursday was serious business, not just in the death toll but in the number of key government installations that the alleged insurging rebel militants of non-specific ideology managed to seize with relative ease. The militantly rebellious insurgers of no known religious affiliation have long said they want a pan-Caucasian Islamic state from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, and the carnage they wreaked in the hitherto semi-safe-ish republic of Kabardino-Balkaria suggests that they're more likely to spread the conflict to other parts of the Russian Federation than Moscow is to contain it.Posted by Alan at October 16, 2005 03:12 PMDid you see that news item in Stavropolsky Meridian last October? "Strontium, Uranium And Plutonium Found In Train To Caucasus." When a region already regarded as a Bud's Discount Warehouse for nuclear materials is getting sucked deeper into the maw of Islamism, why be so sheepish about letting us know the forces at play?
The Russians couldn't hold on to Eastern Europe. They couldn't hold on to Central Asia. Why would they fare any better with the present so-called Russian "Federation"? The country is literally dying. It's had a net population loss every year since 1992, one of the lowest fertility rates in the world -- 1.2 children born per woman -- and one of the highest abortion rates: some 70 percent of pregnancies are terminated. Russian men now have a lower life expectancy than Bangladeshis -- not because Bangladesh is brimming with actuarial advantages but because, if he had four legs and hung from a tree in a rain forest, the Russian male would be on the endangered species list.
Yet, within their present territory, there remain a few exceptions to the grim statistics cited above, parts of Russia that retain healthy fertility rates and healthy mortality rates. And guess what? They're the Muslim parts. Or, as the New York Times/NPR/Agence France Presse/Scotsman/Toronto Globe & Mail would say, they're the insurgent rebel militant parts. Many of these Russian Muslim areas -- like Bashkortistan (and no, I didn't make that up, it's a real stan. Check it out in the World Book Of Stans) -- are also rich in natural resources.
If you're an energy-rich Muslim republic, what's the point of going down the express garbage chute of history with the Russian Federation? The Islamification of significant parts of present-day Russia is going to be a critical factor in its death spiral.