Dagestan

Russia has been combating Islamic terrorists in Dagestan, though this area doesn't receive quite the same attention as neighboring Chechnya. Today saw another of what seems like "a drop in the bucket" campaign.

A local police official in Russia's Southern Federal District says the leader of an Islamist militant group was killed today in a special operation in the Daghestani capital, Makhachkala.

Makhach Rasulov was reportedly killed in a three-hour gun battle when police launched a pre-dawn raid on a suspected rebel hideout.

Rasulov was a leading figure in the Shariat militant group, which is held responsible for a string of attacks in the region, including a bombing in July 2005 that resulted in the death of 10 federal soldiers.

Two policemen were killed in the operation.

Two policemen have been killed during a security raid to destroy a gang of bandits in the capital of Dagestan, a North Caucusus republic bordering Chechnya, local officials reported, local police in Makhachkala told the news agency RIA-Novosti.

In an article a year ago, Johnson's Russia List described the activity of this Shariat group.

For six months now the Russian republic of Dagestan has been pounded with a series of deadly terror attacks killing several major political figures and scores of Interior Ministry policemen. Makhachkala, the republic's capital, has suffered the most. If official statistics are correct, there have been 58 terror attacks (other reports says 70) since the beginning of 2005, 40 of which have taken place in Makhachkala.

"There are endless attacks on law enforcement authorities and the killing of government figures," Magomedali Magomedov, the head of Dagestan's State Council, tells us. But who is doing the killing and why? Magomedov says that "extremists, wahhabis, bent on the destruction of authority in the republic of Dagestan and destabilization of the region" are to blame.

On Friday, l July, at 2:15 in the afternoon, those extremists killed 11 of Moscow's elite spetsnaz policemen and wounded 25 other servicemen and passersby in yet another major bombing in Makhachkala. As if to send a message to the Dagestani court trying the case against Muad Abdurazakov (alias Abkhazsky Murad) and Abdulkhalim Abdulkarimov, both accused of carrying out the 9 May 2002 Victory Day parade bombing in Kaspiisk which left 42 dead and 132 wounded, a bomb hidden under a city water pipe on Atayeva street blew up a military truck full of Moscow's MVD troops outside a public bathhouse.

Authorities are pointing an accusing finger at the "Shariat djamaat" terrorist organization operating in Dagestan. I have in the past reported on the activities of the Shariat which is subordinated to Dagestani field commander Rappani Khalilov, who, if he is still alive, reports to Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev. Khalilov is said to have been the organizer of 2002 Kaspiisk terror attack, but was reportedly killed in 2003, although no body has ever been found.

The Shariat djamaat most recently claimed responsibility for the assassination of Dagestan's Minister of Nationalities, Information and External Communication Zagir Arukhov. Shariat is also believed responsible for the assassination of deputy MVD minister Magomed Omarov in February 2005. This time Shariat targeted Moscow's elite MVD "Rus" battalion which had been sent to Dagestan only two weeks ago to help the local MVD conduct "operation filter" designed to ferret out the republic's Islamic extremists. "Filter" had got underway on 4 June after a 3 a.m. garbage pile bomb blew up an UAZ police vehicle with three policemen inside.

A couple weeks ago, an American journalist was detained in Dagestan, for reasons apparently no more complicated than the fact Russia loves to frequently raise the CIA Bogeyman as a way to distract from its own failures in bringing security to the region.

Yet the problem could be more serious then just the desire of Russian authorities to get rid of an independent and inquisitive U.S. journalist. First, the Kremlin is not interested in letting the Americans know what is really going on in the volatile Russian south. Russian officials regard all Americans who go to the North Caucasus, be they members of humanitarian organizations or journalists, as spies, and do not hide their objective of closing off the region to U.S. observation. A source in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow told Jamestown that "the Russian officials often say during the meetings that ‘we won't let you [Americans] be there [in the North Caucasus.]'" There is a widespread opinion in Russia that the Americans are interested in destabilizing the region to weaken Russia, and the Kremlin itself has such a view. On September 4, 2004, after the Beslan tragedy, President Vladimir Putin said in his appeal to the nation that "some want to tear away a fat piece from us [Russia], and others help them. They help because they believe that Russia is still a threat to them as a major nuclear power. So this threat should be eliminated. And terrorism is, of course, just an instrument to achieve these goals" (Interfax, September 4, 2004). It was clear to everybody in Russia who watched Putin's speech on TV that it was the Americans who still regarded Russia as a threat. That same day, Mikhail Leontyev, anchor of Odnako, a political program on the state's Channel One television, openly blamed the United States for the terrorist attack in Beslan, thus making Putin's statement even more clear.

Since then, the Russian authorities have unofficially tended to explain away all failures in the war with the Caucasian insurgency or their inability to apprehend Shamil Basaev by referring to nefarious schemes of Americans. The latest example is Ramzan Kadyrov's recent statement that assistance from foreign secret services helps Basaev remain on the run. Ramzan did not mention the CIA, but this acronym can be heard very often in closed meetings with Russian and pro-Russian Chechen officials. Last year, Taus Dzhabrailov, who was the head of the Chechen pro-Russian State Council at the time, said in a speech at a meeting in the Presidential Palace Hotel in Moscow, which this author attended, that U.S. "scissors" wanted to cut the North Caucasus away from Russia. Dzhabrailov simply rehashed the phrase from Putin's appeal, making it more blunt.

It is quite understandable why the Kremlin needs to boost the myth among Russians that the U.S. government is involved in assisting the Chechen and the North Caucasian insurgency. In this case, there is no need to explain to the public why the government is not only unable to beat the insurgency in Chechnya, but even fails to quell the militants' attempts to organize large-scale terrorist attacks in Russia and to spread the war throughout whole North Caucasus. "The insurgency is so powerful because the Americans help them" is the unofficial explanation that the Russian authorities have tried to sell to the population for the last several years.

Nevertheless, the fact that the Kremlin clearly fears trips by Americans to the North Caucasus demonstrates that the Russian officials really believe in the myth that they themselves created. The people behind the Kremlin walls are genuinely frightened of the prospect that the United States might use the North Caucasus, Vladimir Putin's Achilles Heel, as leverage to bring pressure on the Russian authorities. The people in the Kremlin remember very well how the Americans helped the mujahideen in Afghanistan and that the defeat of the Soviets in this war resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union. That same scenario could be easily repeated if only the Americans wanted to do this. Georgia, which is now in a state of cold war with Russia, could play the role that Pakistan played in the Afghan war—the rear for the guerillas and a route to deliver money and weapons to them. Russian officials seriously believe that some day this nightmare may come true.