IM WILL USE FORCE. BUT WITH WITS
by Mikhail Fadeev

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
October 3, 2005, Monday

SOURCE: Rossijskaya gazeta, September 29, 2005, p. 9

Today the first militia figures of the commonwealth will discuss the
strategy of fighting one of the three main evils on the post-Soviet
territory- terrorism, corruption and illegal migration. (…) Russian
Interior Ministry Rashid Nurgaliev is fighting to the Council of
the Interior Ministers of the CIS. On the eve he gave an exclusive
interview to Rossijskaya Gazeta.

Question: How do the estimations of the common threatens of the
ministers coincide? What can militia set against extremism?

Rashid Nurgaliev: The Interior Minister of the every CIS country
quite understands, that the terrorist threat exists for every state.

(…)First and foremost local terrorist groups blend into a single
trans-national system, the forgotten ideas of “Islam caliphate” are
reviving now. (…) It is necessary to fix operational information
interchange. And to create within the framework of the CIS countries
special data bases on international terrorist organizations, on
fulfillers of acts of terrorism and their accomplices. We need to
“raise” terrorists’ contacts, follow established by them sequences,
detect and hew away their financing resources and material basis. Our
armory of modern means includes force operations, powerful computer
technologies and analysts research.

Question: Will you insert into the data base not only terrorist?

Rashid Nurgaliev: Beside counter-action terrorism, at the meeting
the ministers will define steps of fighting corruption and illegal
migration. What’s more, we plan to introduce changes to the instruction
on a single way of implementing interstate detection of people, and
also joint formation and employment of accounts of the Interstate
information bank, created and functioning on the basis of the Main
Information Analyst Center of the Russian Interior Ministry.

At the council we will discuss not only operational cooperation,
but also further development of a single legal field. There are also
moot points concerning reciprocal cooperation with the Armenian police.

They involve realization of the decisions, made on June 23, 2005 in
Krasnodar, about the cooperation on the suppression of activities of
organized criminal groups, and also detection and detainment of people,
being on the wanted list We will arrange this meeting of the United
Collegium of the Interior Ministers of our states in the summer 2006
in Yerevan, concerning cooperation on fighting illegal migration.

Question: Have you intention to form some new interstate structures?

Rashid Nurgaliev: I think, the Council of the Interior Ministers is
quite enough to solve tasks and coordinate activities. Our aim is
much more serious: we want to create powerful, single, anti-criminal
front=line. And you know, what encourages us most of all? Not only
pragmatic conscious of necessity to integrate. The main thing is
that all of us are old friends. Some of us have studied together,
other have worked together. (…)

The cooperation encompasses almost all directions of operational
service activities. Speaking about efficient cooperation- I’ll
enumerate only a few latest examples. The operation on detainment of
active members of the terrorist organization “Hizb-ut-Tahrir”, carried
out last year in Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. 12 people, being
on the international wanted list, were detained. There were charged
of terrorist acts, arms and drug trade, homicides, and pillages.

The Six-month operation “Shield-2”, carried out by the Russian
Interior Ministry officers assisted by the colleagues from the Interior
Ministries of Uzbekistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Moldova,
Tajikistan, Turkmenia and Ukraine. As a result they confiscated tons
of drugs, create common computer data base on drug-dealers, kinds
of packages, and labels of Afghan heroin, made the map of possible
drug-trafficking routes.

The operation “Search” was performed by the Interior Ministries of
Russia, Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Ukraine. 8,297 accused
were detained, 2,660 of whom were on the federal wanted list, and 176-
on the interstate wanted list, they found 3,361 missing people.

(…) Together with foreign colleagues we are forming the Interstate
information bank, are sharing information on the line of the National
Central bureau of the Interpol. (…) We help our colleagues to train
personnel. On the whole 461 militia men and police men form the CIS
countries study in educational centers of the Interior Ministry. We
plan to increase quotas on education. We borrow a good deal of useful
things from our neighbors. The Byelorussian special forces demonstrated
a few know-how’s, enabling to economize time while rescuing hostages,
during the joint exercises under Smolensk. And Kazakhstan has developed
a modern system of biometrical control “CIS-visit”, that has been
adjusted to our tasks and is being assimilated throughout the country.

Question: Do you have contacts only with Byelorussian special
subdivisions?

Rashid Nurgaliev: Not only. For example, in October in the Krasnodar
training ground training musters of special forces of Russia and
Armenia will take part. We can need cooperation at any moment. (…)

Question: (…) How will you fight drug-trafficking – financing
of terror?

Rashid Nurgaliev: (…) According to our data, up to 60% of finance,
that are at disposal of the world’s terrorism, are formed at the
expense of criminal offences. Groups, specialized in different kinds of
economic crimes, illegal turnover of weaponry, human trade and other
types of criminal activities play a great role there. And certainly
drug-trafficking, in which almost all terrorist organizations are
engaged

You know, that in our country the coordination of fighting
drug-business is relied on the Federal Service on control over
drug-turnover. In the Russian Interior Ministry system almost all
the services, in a varying degree, take part in this work. According
to the estimations of the experts, these days in Russia there are
4 millions of addicts. Officially 54,000 women are registered. The
real figure is seven or eight times as high as that. (…)

We can efficiently struggle drug crimes only by combining our
efforts. And we have foundation for it: only by the Interior Ministries
lines 48 agreements work, due to which last year more than twenty
international drug criminal groups were detected. We know exactly,
that several gangs in Chechnya have been deprived of supplying with
weaponry and ammunition, obtained on the drug-dealers money.

(…)

Translated by Alexandra Zajtseva