Changing face of terror in Russia
Source: FT
By Charles Clover
Published: April 3 2010 03:00 | Last updated: April 3 2010 03:00
Posing for the camera, 17-year-old Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova brandishes a pistol and snuggles up to her husband, his own pistol-toting arm draped around her.
On Friday, Ms Abdurakhmanova became the face of Islamist terrorism in Russia, after authorities announced that she was one of two female suicide bombers who carried out the deadliest terror attack in Russia for six years, killing 40 in the Moscow metro on Monday morning. She is thought to have detonated an explosive belt in Lubyanka metro station, killing at least 26.
She and her husband, Umalat Magomedov,were foot soldiers in a shadowy grouping, the Caucasus Emirate, which claimed responsibility for the blasts on Wednesday.
Like al-Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups, it is less of an organisation and more of a brand name for a loosely affiliated movement of autonomous warlords, bound by little more than ideology and hatred.
Its leader, Doku Umarov, a pudgy, bearded 46-year-old rebel fighter, is said to roam mountain forest borders between Chechnya and Dagestan. He never sleeps in the same place twice, communicating by satellite telephone and internet.
His declared objective is liberation of the entire North Caucasus region from Russian rule and establishment of an Islamic caliphate. He underlined his message in a video released on Wednesday in which he claimed responsibility for the Monday attacks, warning: "The war will come to your streets [in Russia] . . . and you will feel it on your own skins."
Since Mr Umarov created the emirate in 2007, Russian special forces have done their best to destroy it, and the parliament of Chechnya has even tried to legislate it out of existence. In a jokingly worded resolution "On the disbandment of . . . the Caucasian Emirate" last October, they allu-ded to the futility of their objective by describing its location as: "Cave number 35, in unknown mountain-forest quadrant number 17".
"It is very virtual organisation," said Aleksei Malashenko, a specialist on the North Caucasus at the Moscow Carnegie Center. "It does not have a building or a headquarters. It is composed of different groups. It has no front and no army."
"They are more of a brand than an organisation," said Edilbek Khasmagomadov, a political analyst in Grozny, Chechnya. "Maybe it's better to say they are an organisation aimed at promoting their brand."
It has shown resiliency common to Islamic underground groups who use the internet to communicate with their members and sympathisers. It is also capable of carrying out deadly attacks.
Security forces believe that Monday's suicide bombers are recruited over the internet and trained in an area of Dagestan on the border with Chechnya. Women, the so-called "black widows", are often used as bombers, many of whom wish to avenge loved ones killed by Russian security forces.
Security officials believe the second bomber, who killed 12 people at Park Kultury metro station 45 minutes later, was Markha Ustarkhanova, a widow of a Chechen militant named Said Emin Khizriyev killed last October in a fight with security forces of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.
She made contact with Islamist radicals over the internet, according to her parents, speaking to Russian newspaper Kommersant. They had notified police after her marriage to Mr Khizriyev, and since last summer she had been listed as missing, the newspaper reported.
Russian officials say both women trained in a suicide brigade organised by terrorist mastermind Aleksandr Tikhomirov, aka Said Buryatski, who grew up in the Russian heartland but studied Arabic and eventually joined the Chechen underground.
The bombers apparently trained in Vedensky, Chechnya, on the Dagestani border and travelled to Moscow using intercity buses, on which documents are not checked. They were accompanied into the metro by two women with Slavic features and a man, according to security camera footage. Security experts say that the companions may have carried remote detonators in case of a last minute failure of will by the women.
Mr Buryatski was himself gunned down in a shootout with Russian special forces in Ingushetia on March 6. In his last blog entry, posted on Islamist website Hunafa.com, he defended the use of suicide bombers, saying they are not coerced. "What makes a person sacrifice himself in the service of Allah?" he wrote.
Analysts from the special services are at a dead end and "simply don't want to understand the fact that those who confront them [as suicide bombers] are absolutely sober people with cold logic and rationality, and not staggering zombies", one said.
Mr Umarov has been fighting Russia since the first Chechen war started in the early 1990s, and was one of a group of radicals who continued fighting, after Chechens under former President Akhmad Kadyrov made peace with Moscow. Chechnya is now governed by Mr Kadyrov's son Ramzan, after his father was assassinated in 2004.
Mr Umarov's father, wife and son were kidnapped by Russian security forces in 2005, and have disappeared. Shortly thereafter he formed the Caucasian Emirate, of Chechen separatists and Islamic radicals.
"They had an ideological shift," said Enver Kisriyev, a specialist on the region at the Russian Academy of Sciences "they went from being nationalists to saying that Islam has no nation."
The Russian government says that Mr Umarov is funded mainly from abroad, by Islamist sympathisers in the Middle East and friendly intelligence services who want to stir up trouble in Russia.
Experts say that while Mr Umarov has claimed many successful terror attacks, including Monday's blast, it is unclear how much real authority he holds.
Additional reporting by Isabel Gorst
By Charles Clover
Published: April 3 2010 03:00 | Last updated: April 3 2010 03:00
Posing for the camera, 17-year-old Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova brandishes a pistol and snuggles up to her husband, his own pistol-toting arm draped around her.
On Friday, Ms Abdurakhmanova became the face of Islamist terrorism in Russia, after authorities announced that she was one of two female suicide bombers who carried out the deadliest terror attack in Russia for six years, killing 40 in the Moscow metro on Monday morning. She is thought to have detonated an explosive belt in Lubyanka metro station, killing at least 26.
She and her husband, Umalat Magomedov,were foot soldiers in a shadowy grouping, the Caucasus Emirate, which claimed responsibility for the blasts on Wednesday.
Like al-Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups, it is less of an organisation and more of a brand name for a loosely affiliated movement of autonomous warlords, bound by little more than ideology and hatred.
Its leader, Doku Umarov, a pudgy, bearded 46-year-old rebel fighter, is said to roam mountain forest borders between Chechnya and Dagestan. He never sleeps in the same place twice, communicating by satellite telephone and internet.
His declared objective is liberation of the entire North Caucasus region from Russian rule and establishment of an Islamic caliphate. He underlined his message in a video released on Wednesday in which he claimed responsibility for the Monday attacks, warning: "The war will come to your streets [in Russia] . . . and you will feel it on your own skins."
Since Mr Umarov created the emirate in 2007, Russian special forces have done their best to destroy it, and the parliament of Chechnya has even tried to legislate it out of existence. In a jokingly worded resolution "On the disbandment of . . . the Caucasian Emirate" last October, they allu-ded to the futility of their objective by describing its location as: "Cave number 35, in unknown mountain-forest quadrant number 17".
"It is very virtual organisation," said Aleksei Malashenko, a specialist on the North Caucasus at the Moscow Carnegie Center. "It does not have a building or a headquarters. It is composed of different groups. It has no front and no army."
"They are more of a brand than an organisation," said Edilbek Khasmagomadov, a political analyst in Grozny, Chechnya. "Maybe it's better to say they are an organisation aimed at promoting their brand."
It has shown resiliency common to Islamic underground groups who use the internet to communicate with their members and sympathisers. It is also capable of carrying out deadly attacks.
Security forces believe that Monday's suicide bombers are recruited over the internet and trained in an area of Dagestan on the border with Chechnya. Women, the so-called "black widows", are often used as bombers, many of whom wish to avenge loved ones killed by Russian security forces.
Security officials believe the second bomber, who killed 12 people at Park Kultury metro station 45 minutes later, was Markha Ustarkhanova, a widow of a Chechen militant named Said Emin Khizriyev killed last October in a fight with security forces of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.
She made contact with Islamist radicals over the internet, according to her parents, speaking to Russian newspaper Kommersant. They had notified police after her marriage to Mr Khizriyev, and since last summer she had been listed as missing, the newspaper reported.
Russian officials say both women trained in a suicide brigade organised by terrorist mastermind Aleksandr Tikhomirov, aka Said Buryatski, who grew up in the Russian heartland but studied Arabic and eventually joined the Chechen underground.
The bombers apparently trained in Vedensky, Chechnya, on the Dagestani border and travelled to Moscow using intercity buses, on which documents are not checked. They were accompanied into the metro by two women with Slavic features and a man, according to security camera footage. Security experts say that the companions may have carried remote detonators in case of a last minute failure of will by the women.
Mr Buryatski was himself gunned down in a shootout with Russian special forces in Ingushetia on March 6. In his last blog entry, posted on Islamist website Hunafa.com, he defended the use of suicide bombers, saying they are not coerced. "What makes a person sacrifice himself in the service of Allah?" he wrote.
Analysts from the special services are at a dead end and "simply don't want to understand the fact that those who confront them [as suicide bombers] are absolutely sober people with cold logic and rationality, and not staggering zombies", one said.
Mr Umarov has been fighting Russia since the first Chechen war started in the early 1990s, and was one of a group of radicals who continued fighting, after Chechens under former President Akhmad Kadyrov made peace with Moscow. Chechnya is now governed by Mr Kadyrov's son Ramzan, after his father was assassinated in 2004.
Mr Umarov's father, wife and son were kidnapped by Russian security forces in 2005, and have disappeared. Shortly thereafter he formed the Caucasian Emirate, of Chechen separatists and Islamic radicals.
"They had an ideological shift," said Enver Kisriyev, a specialist on the region at the Russian Academy of Sciences "they went from being nationalists to saying that Islam has no nation."
The Russian government says that Mr Umarov is funded mainly from abroad, by Islamist sympathisers in the Middle East and friendly intelligence services who want to stir up trouble in Russia.
Experts say that while Mr Umarov has claimed many successful terror attacks, including Monday's blast, it is unclear how much real authority he holds.
Additional reporting by Isabel Gorst
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