Posted on 02/01/2005 2:34:58 AM PST by Qisl
The death of Shamil Basaev has highlighted acute challenges in financial footage of the Chechen resistance. There is no definite answer to the question of the utmost importance. Who’s going to run the financial route to fighting Chechnya? Via this route the money gathered by brothers in faith from worldwide has been supplied to Chechnya so far. The task of finding a suitable candidate able to step into the vacant position of the main resistance financier is rather a challenging one due to some suspicions. They are linked to habitual theft of the money on its way to the ordinary executors in the Caucasus. In particular, there were cases under Shamil when the money mysteriously disappeared into just nowhere. There hasn’t been any report on how the sum of $3000000 was spent on the jihad needs in 2004 in Chechnya. It was Abu Hafs whom they had made responsible for distribution of the enormous sum. Anyway, emirs and the field fighters’ leaders got some money to later find out they were all fakes. Who’s to blame for this grandiose trick? The truth is hardly to be known in the nearest future. The way of money flows is too complicated to sort it out. The fishy story resulted in strong irritancy and mistrust sentiment in many jamaates. Low rank fighters said they couldn’t rely on the high rank commanders, which then spilled into open armed violence between the fighters’ units. It was in one of such shootings when Basaev got killed. In the opinion of influential Islamic circles it was a mistake to use Azerbaijan as a transit country for their financial flows. For instance the last year arrest of some Chechen resistance members and their Arab sponsors by the local secret services caused embezzlement of $2000 000 by those who stayed free. Moreover there’s a whole bunch of people settled in Baku who call themselves resistance fighters, but in fact they mooch living at the cost of those who sacrifice their lives for Jihad in Chechnya. Among them are Vakha Banzhaev, head of the Society of Prisoners of Filtration Camps, Ali Asaev, Maskhadov’s representative, and Al-Qaida emissary Abu Tarik. There is a similar situation in Georgia: part of the money transferred for Chechen resistance is misappropriated by Maskhadov’s representative Khizri Aldamov. Current financial strait could be the reason that in spring most of the Chechen resistance fighters won’t return to the places of their dislocation in summer military camps. Thus there will be no one left to offer resistance to Russians occupying the territory of the independent Islamic republic. They keep mum about the death of Basaev yet, for the chance of loosing the channel of finance is great. The dollar flow may run low, because the sponsors allotted money for a significant figure, which had great confidence among the representatives of the Arab world.
By the way, I was unaware that Basaev died. When did this glorious event take place?
Can you leave this up for awhile?
>>>The fishy story resulted in strong irritancy and mistrust sentiment in many jamaates.<<<
Qisl, it's hard to argue with that.
bttt
do you like kitties?
Does this pass the smell test?
Where is the link to the source?
This isn't worth the required effort to read.
Current financial strait could be the reason that in spring most of the Chechen resistance fighters won’t return to the places of their dislocation in summer military camps.
We should try and help these poor kids out by sending them
to Camp Gitmo!
Has Shamil Basaev died?
However, the op of this thread signed up today and is curiously silent.
bttt
Shamil Basaev will only attack Russian (Russian)
Isn't Shamil Basaev the terrorist blamed for the slaughter of school children in Beslan?
On December 7, Izvestiya published a second article by its special correspondent in Chechnya, Vadim Rechkalov, addressing the issue of why Russia's special services have been unable to catch rebel warlord Shamil Basaev during the ten years since the start of the first Chechen war.
In the first article, published on December 6, anonymous sources in the Chechen branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) said Basaev has more than 13,000 "accomplices." While most of these are not actual rebel fighters, they have been instrumental in helping Basaev and his men avoid capture and include not only ordinary citizens, but also employees of "the law-enforcement organs." A Russian counter-intelligence officer estimated that "up to 30% of the staff of the Chechen Interior Ministry" are rebel accomplices and that some of these sell rebel fighters internal passports, fictitious names, and other forged identification documents. The officer also told Rechkalov that Basaev is a hero for many Chechen boys and women, even including women who work in counter-intelligence "but sympathize with Basaev."
Rechkalov's second installment focused on how the rebels hide from security forces. In 2000, he wrote, Russia's special services obtained a video taken at a base of Khattab, the late Saudi-born Chechen rebel field commander, in Chechnya's Nozhai-Yurt district. "A comfortable campsite for around 50 people," is how Rechkalov described the video's setting. "Tents are standing, a waterfall is making noise. Fighters are relaxing, posing for the cameraman, grilling shashklik. The federal forces have looked for that base for four years. Both from the air and [using] dismounted reconnaissance groups. Chechnya is not big -- 17,000 square kilometers, and the Nozhai-Yurt district is even smaller. The search area is around 3,000 square kilometers. They have combed the length and breadth of this territory, but to this day they have not found the Khattab base with the waterfall."
One of the few people Rechkalov interviewed who agreed to go on the record, Alexander Potapov, deputy head of the Chechen FSB, estimated that there are some 2,500 rebel bases and encampments in Chechnya. They range in size from those that can accommodate four or five fighters to the one that GRU military intelligence spetsnaz commandos discovered near the village of Ulus-Kert in the Shatoi district, which could accommodate 200 fighters. However, no fighters were at that base when it was discovered: it, like others, was designed so that it was extremely difficult to approach it without being seen. "How many times has it happened: spetsnaz enter a base, campfires are smoldering, food in kettles is still hot, but there are no people -- they've gone," Potapov said. "Let's say that each base on average can accommodate 20 people. Multiply 20 by 2,500. It turns out that there are 50,000 places for the 1,500 active fighters wandering the mountains and woods with weapons in their hands."
An FSB spetsnaz officer told Rechkalov that rebel bases located in Chechnya's woods or mountains are generally located 1-3 kilometers from populated areas and while unoccupied are looked after by rebel accomplices. These rebel bases have no paths leading to them and are camouflaged so that they cannot be detected either from the ground or the air. Bases often include bunkers and storehouses for keeping items ranging from food and ammunition to clothing and blankets, and these are sometimes booby-trapped with mines or grenades for potential intruders. Some "medical bunkers" have been known to have not only medicine, but also medical equipment -- even including, in one case, an operating table. For security reasons, the precise location of each storehouse or bunker is known only to one rebel fighter, who is responsible for it.
The rebels "are fighting in their native environment," the FSB spetsnaz officer stressed. "They have climbed those mountains since their childhood, herded sheep, and played war there. They notice any changes in the landscape, any footprint, every broken branch. To remain unnoticed in the mountains is impossible even for specialists like GRU spetsnaz or us. Besides which, the mountains are rather densely populated."
Still, the FSB spetsnaz officer said that most rebel fighters "live not in caves, but in cities and villages . . . . In practically every village, especially in the mountainous regions, there are reporting points," he said. "If it is in a village, it's a private house, if it's in a city, it's an apartment that doesn't attract attention . . . As far as possible, they try to put the safe house under the protection of the local police, so that the cops don't stupidly raid it, but, on the contrary, guard it. If it is a private house, then it should be located on the edge of the village, so that in case of danger one can quickly run to the woods or into a ravine. It is desirable if the house is located on a dead-end street. That way no one can approach it unnoticed."
Rechkalov quoted an officer with the Chechen FSB's Vedeno district department, who had searched for a "bandit" who was reportedly hiding in a bunker inside a house. "We arrived, led everyone into the courtyard, and began searching," the officer told the Izvestiya correspondent. "Poked through everything -- no bunker. The house was big, comfortable, lots of rooms, a lavatory. But no bunker. We were ready to leave, but one of our guys needed to use the john. The mistress of the house wanted to send him out to the garden even though the house had a john, but she said it was under repair. Then it dawned on me. I went into the john. Everything looked standard -- bath, toilet, bidet, expensive sanitary engineering, tile lying in packages. I blew into a small hole [in the wall]; there was a strange sound. I pushed a pebble through it, and it was as if it had fallen into a well." The FSB officer said that he and his colleagues discovered an "underground room" beneath the bathroom, complete with ventilation, electricity, a small desk, and a trestle-bed. CDI Russian Weekly CHECHNYA: LAND OF A THOUSAND SAFE HOUSES
Qisl, they alleged that Shamil Basaev was dead in 2002, yet he took credit for the Beslan massacre. Where do you get your information?
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