United Press International
September 24, 2004 Friday 12:58 PM Eastern Time

Analysis: Russo-Chechnya war escalates

By RICHARD SALE

The massacre at the Beslan school that killed hundreds, including
more than 170 children, was a locally directed operation and not an
al-Qaida terrorist plot, U.S. intelligence officials said.

For 52 hours, 33 attackers held hostage 1,100 teachers and children.

The massacre began when a terrorist explosive went off, apparently by
accident, and Russian Alpha Special Forces rushed the school as
terrorists began shooting hostages and detonating explosives,
according to several newspaper accounts.

According to U.S. government sources, the operation was set up by
Shamil Basayev, who was trained in an al-Qaida terror camp and who at
one time had a close relationship with terrorist mastermind Osama bin
Laden, an account confirmed by bin Laden expert, Rohan Gunaratna.

Gunaratna, in his book, “Inside al-Qaida,” noted that shortly before
the Soviet Union collapsed al-Qaida set up an office in Baku and
supported the Azeri mujahidin in their war against Christian Armenia
for control of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave from 1988 to
1994.

When war broke out between Russia and Chechnya in 1994, Basayev
emerged as the most capable military commander, U.S. government
officials said.

Several U.S. intelligence sources have said that al-Qaida’s major
involvement in Russia began in December 1994, when a former Soviet
Air Force general, Jokar Dudayev, began a movement for an independent
Chechnya.

Gunaratna confirmed this, adding that a series of terror bombings in
Russia began not long after.

But in spite of the al-Qaida connections, this latest school massacre
was not authorized or supervised by bin Laden or elements of
al-Qaida, in spite of statements to the contrary by Russian
officials, U.S. officials said.

“It was not an al-Qaida operation, nor is Chechnya a major theater
for al-Qaida,” according to Stephen Blank, an Army War College
terrorism expert.

But U.S. intelligence officials told United Press International that
the targeting of non-Muslim children, along with the recent blowing
up only a week earlier of two Russian airliners “represents a
definite escalation,” in the Russian-Chechnya war.

Blank agreed: “The targeting of non-Muslim children is a very
sinister development.”

North Ossetia where the school is located, is predominantly Christian
and usually allied to Moscow, he said.

Since Aug. 24, Russia has been hit by four terrorist strikes,
resulting in the deaths of about 450 innocent civilians, according to
B. Raman, former senior official of India’s intelligence service.

The children were being used as hostages to wrest certain concessions
from the Russian government, U.S. government officials said.

There were 90 deaths from the two Russian aircraft blown up on Aug.
24 by “black widows,” or Chechen women, who stood in the rear part of
the aircraft or were in the bathroom, when they detonated their
explosives, Blank said.

Ten persons were killed when another Chechen woman blew herself up
outside the entrance to a Metro station.

“All of this implies a high level of planning and coordinated
activity,” said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro.

Cannistraro explained that the Chechen female suicide bombers were
called “black widows” because so many Chechen women have lost
husbands or fathers or other male members of their families to
Russian attacks.

“Chechnya has a large pool of these women to draw on,” he said.

In the Beslan massacre some of the attackers were Ingush, from a
nearby statelet known to be “a hotbed of radical Islamists,”
Cannistrro said.

A former senior CIA official said that the explosives used in Beslan
were believed to have traveled to the Beslan through Ingushetia.

“The Russians have played this czarist game of empire, divide and
rule and has allowed a whole group of corrupt little statelets to
form out of Georgia,” said Blank.

The result is that terrorists move easily back and forth over
Russia’s borders, weakening its security, he said.

Ariel Cohen, a Caucasus expert at the Heritage Foundation, told UPI
some time ago: “The whole Russian-Chechen war is a nightmare. There
are plenty of side deals between the Chechens and Russian military,
the latter easily bribed into selling the Chechens weapons and
explosives.”

Blank went even farther: “The Chechens would not survive without the
support they get from the Russian army. That army is notoriously
corrupt.”

Fiona Hill, Chechen expert at the Brookings Institution, agreed,
adding: “The Chechens even have sympathizers inside the FSB” (the
Russian internal security service.)

She added that the Russian military is involved in criminal
operations involving “drug smuggling, prostitution, exchanging
weapons with Chechens for profit.”

To this list Blank added: “the widespread smuggling of drugs,
contraband, explosives, and nuclear materials.”

Said Hill: “The Russian army “has helped to fund and prolong the war
by capitalizing on it. It’s a total failure of Russian political
governance.”

Blank said that the airport security guard who allowed the two
Chechen women to board the aircraft they destroyed did so after
accepting a bribe of $34. “I mean, I’ve heard of cheap — but $34?”
he said.

The continuing violence has killed a number of behind-the-scenes
diplomatic initiatives to try and end the Chechen war for secession,
Hill said.

The first series had been halted by 2002, when Chechen terrorists
took 600 hostages at a Moscow theater, she said.

The Moscow theater assault of October, 2002, was alarming because it
meant Chechens were targeting foreigners for the first time.

According to U.S. officials, the Bush administration has offered
Russia intelligence, technology and specialist support.

But the State Department is “resolutely opposed” to any Russian
military action that targets the state of Georgia.

To Blank, one of the most dangerous aspects of this war is that it
can spread, “and it has already begun to spread.”

“It could swallow most of Russia if it gets out of hand,” a U.S.
government official said.

The solution? A Russian cleanup of its security services, Blank said.

“The violence will go on unless there is fundamental reform of the
entire Russian security sector. There has to be comprehensive
reform,” he said.

“As it is, Moscow cannot defend Russian security and they can’t
effectively project power beyond Russia’s borders until this
(cleanup) happens,” he said.