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How Jihad Made Its Way to Chechnya
KARAMAKHI, Dagestan -- This isolated southwest Russian village of
dirt roads and one-story clay brick houses was profoundly peaceful,
its residents say, until a Jordanian cleric named Khabib Abdurrakhman
arrived in the early 1990s with a seemingly irresistible deal.
To a hamlet made destitute by the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Abdurrakhman brought a slaughtered cow and a free feast every week.
In a place where many people were left jobless by the demise of the
local collective farm, he handed out $30 to every convert who came to
his simple mosque. And to those adrift in the social chaos of the
Soviet breakdown, he offered a new purpose in life -- a form of their
traditional Islam rooted in fundamentalism and militancy.
Few questioned where his money came from, or who were the other Arabs
who began to drift into the community. By the time questions did
arise, it was too late.
By 1999, Abdurrakhman's growing band of followers had transformed the
little settlement into an armed enclave, crisscrossed by tunnels and
trenches and stockpiled with weapons for Abdurrakhman's true mission:
severing Dagestan from Russian control and merging it into an Islamic
state with neighboring Chechnya.
"They tried to lure people in a friendly way at first," according to
Magomed Makhdiyev, the village imam, who says he tried to withstand
the fundamentalists' influence. "But by 1999, they were saying, 'Join
us or we'll cut your head off.' "
Abdurrakhman was part of a militant vanguard that deeply influenced
what was then a secular separatist movement in Chechnya, recasting it
in part as an international jihad that spilled over from the republic
to neighboring Dagestan. Today the Russian government insists that it
is impossible to understand the Chechen conflict without
understanding the role of people like Abdurrakhman.
Russian intelligence officials say he is just one of hundreds of Arab
radicals whose fervor and funds fueled fighting that has cost the
lives of more than 4,500 Russian soldiers and thousands of rebels,
plus many civilians, over the past 31/2 years.
Interviews with Chechen exiles, villagers in Chechnya and Dagestan,
Western diplomats and terrorism experts confirm that Arab militants
have played a significant role in the conflict. The full story has
yet to emerge, however. Arab and Chechen commanders waging war in the
republic are in hiding and could not be interviewed.
In the Russian government's view, Chechnya's war is nothing more or
less than a terrorist enterprise, paid for by a combination of al
Qaeda money and fraudulent charitable donations, commanded by Arabs
trained in Afghanistan and fomented by outsider clerics such as
Abdurrakhman preaching armed revolution under the theological
justification of an Islamic strain known as Wahhabism.
"There are no more al Qaeda camps" in Chechnya, Russian President
Vladimir Putin said in February. "But there is still al Qaeda
money. . . . There are instructors who are working, there are
mercenaries from a number of Muslim countries recruited by radicals.
Unfortunately, all that still exists there."
A Change of View
Until the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the
Russian argument got little hearing in the West, where officials
suspected that Russia was mainly trying to deflect criticism of human
rights abuses by Russian troops.
But in recent months, U.S. officials have increasingly subscribed to
the Russian view that Arab militants have helped Chechen rebels with
money and weapons, although the Americans say the guerrilla war still
has its roots in Chechens' decades-old resentment of Soviet, and
later Russian, dominance.
"Obviously there is still a strong internal impulse behind the
Chechen insurgency," said a senior U.S. diplomat. "But it has become
commingled with the broader international agenda of the Arab
fighters."
Bush administration officials say the United States has helped cut
off outside support of the conflict by routing the Taliban in
Afghanistan, helping drive Islamic fighters from the nearby Fergana
Valley in Uzbekistan and forcing Georgia to police the Pankisi Gorge
on the Chechen border. After denying for years that the valley was a
rebel sanctuary, Georgian officials now say that until last summer,
it was home to 800 rebels, including 80 to 100 Arabs in a unit that
received funds from al Qaeda.
Some terrorism experts say the West erred by dismissing Russia's
claims for so long.
"Chechnya and the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia partially replaced
Afghanistan as a center for terrorist training," said Rohan
Gunaratna, a terrorism expert and the author of "Inside Al
Qaeda." "The initial wave of terrorists who are now coming to Europe
trained in Chechnya or Algeria," he said.
Col. Ilya Shabalkin, a spokesman for Russian forces in Chechnya, said
Arabs still make up about one-fifth of Chechnya's roughly 1,000
active armed militants, who are increasingly confined to the
republic's forests and mountains. "The Arabs are the specialists,
they are the experts in mines and communications," Shabalkin said. He
identified their leader as Abu Walid, a Saudi who showed up in
Chechnya in the late 1990s.
The money, Russians say, comes from known terrorist groups such as al
Qaeda and from some 40 organizations masquerading as charities in the
Middle East, Europe and elsewhere. The flow of funds has diminished
since U.S. and Russian intelligence began jointly clamping down on
terrorist financing after the Sept. 11 attacks. Even so, the Russians
say, $500,000 to $1 million a month still reaches Chechnya, delivered
in small sums by couriers who travel Georgia's rugged mountain paths.
One source is a Saudi charity, al Haramain, according to Russia's
Federal Security Service. In an internal memo provided by the agency,
the FSB accused the charity of wiring $1 million to Chechen rebels in
1999 and of arranging to buy 500 heavy weapons for them from Taliban
units.
The memo quotes what it calls messages exchanged between Arab
commanders in Chechnya and al Haramain's director in Saudi
Arabia. "Today, al Haramain has $50 million for the needs of the
mujaheddin," one message from the charity read.
"The reason al Haramain provides assistance a little bit at a time is
because it is afraid of the accusations it is assisting the jihad,"
said another.
Russia forced al Haramain to close its offices in Georgia and
neighboring Azerbaijan in 2001, but its workers dispersed to similar
groups that continue to work freely in Azerbaijan, Sergei
Ignatchenko, the FSB spokesman, said in an interview.
A year ago, the United States and Saudi Arabia shut down al Haramain
branches in Somalia and Bosnia after U.S. officials asserted those
offices used charitable donations to finance terrorist activities.
Al Haramain says it distributed blankets, clothing and food in
Chechnya but stopped its work there 14 months ago. "We do not have
any relationship with any terrorist activities," said Shaykh Aqeel
Aqeel, the charity's director. "We work under the supervision of the
Saudi government."
Money From Bin Laden
Russian intelligence officials assert that Osama bin Laden donated at
least $25 million and dispatched numerous fighters to Chechnya,
including Ibn Khattab, a Saudi who led one of the best-trained
contingents. The United States now agrees that Khattab had al Qaeda
ties, and cited those links when it added three Chechen rebel units
to its list of terrorist organizations earlier this year.
American officials said that several hundred Chechen fighters were
trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and that bin Laden
sent "substantial amounts of money" to equip Chechen rebels in 1999.
Some reports suggest al Qaeda urgently requested that Islamic
organizations in Kuwait provide $2 million to the Chechen fighters as
recently as last May, the U.S. government said in a five-page
explanation of its decision to add Chechen groups to the list.
Gunaratna, the author, said Russia is exaggerating al Qaeda's
contribution but not bin Laden's interest in the Chechen rebel cause.
According to Gunaratna, the terrorist leader used a Persian Gulf bank
to help finance the militants, at one point ordering an investigation
into whether some Chechen leaders had siphoned off funds for
themselves.
U.S. officials said they uncovered one source of support for Chechen
rebels close to home: a Chicago-based charity called the Benevolence
International Foundation, which investigators said funneled $300,000
to rebels in Chechnya and Bosnia. The foundation's director, Enaam
Arnaout, denied any connections with al Qaeda.
But U.S. investigators said they found handwritten correspondence to
and from bin Laden in the group's office in Bosnia. In one letter,
according to court records, bin Laden declared: "The time has come
for an attack on Russia."
Ayman Zawahiri, who is the United States' most-wanted terror fugitive
after bin Laden, also saw potential in Chechnya as a sanctuary for
his Egyptian militant followers before he merged his organization
with al Qaeda in early 1998, Russian officials have said. Zawahiri's
plans for Chechnya fell apart after Russian authorities arrested him
in Dagestan in 1997, jailed him for six months and then freed him
before learning his true identity, according to FSB spokesman
Ignatchenko.
Arab influence in the first war between Chechen separatists and
Russian soldiers, from 1994 to 1996, was minimal. Independence-minded
Chechens considered themselves able to handle their own affairs, said
Shamil Beno, who served as Chechnya's foreign minister in 1992 and as
the republic's representative in Moscow in 2000-2001.
Dzhokhar Dudayev, Chechnya's president from 1991 until his death in
1996, was afraid of terrorist funds, Beno said in an interview: "He
wanted checks done to see if it was terrorist money or not."
Those scruples faded in the mid-1990s, as more and more Arab
missionaries and fighters flocked to the republic, proclaiming
Islamic law, or sharia, and promoting Wahhabist traditions. Warlords
had come to dominate Chechen society, and some of them embraced the
fundamentalist cause.
The Arabs' goal went beyond preserving Chechnya's freedom: They
wanted to merge Chechnya and Dagestan to create an Islamic state.
Chechnya and Dagestan were poorer than the rest of Russia, and
Dagestan, though home to a mosaic of ethnic groups, was predominantly
Muslim. Its access to the Caspian Sea and its oil and gas reserves
gave it a strategic importance to Russia that Chechnya did not share.
One of the new leaders was Khattab, who fought with bin Laden in
Afghanistan as a teenager and who had publicly praised the al Qaeda
leader as the "main commander of the mujaheddin worldwide." Khattab's
position in the rebel movement was assured when he won over Shamil
Basayev, Chechnya's best-known militant.
Planning a Takeover
Beno, who was once Basayev's close friend, said Basayev changed after
he met Khattab in 1995. "He started moving from freedom for Chechnya
to freedom for the whole Arab world. He changed from a Chechen
patriot into an Islamic globalist," Beno said.
Basayev has told reporters he visited training camps in Afghanistan
three times in the early 1990s to study the tactics of guerrilla
warfare. In Chechnya, he and Khattab built their own training camp in
the village of Serzhen-Yurt, complete with advanced communications
equipment.
Their plans to take over Dagestan revolved partly around the village
of Karamakhi, where Abdurrakhman, the Jordanian cleric, had begun
preparing for jihad years earlier. By mid-1999, the village had been
turned into a fortified base for rebels and religious fundamentalists.
Residents recall the sign that stood on the dirt road that led off
the main highway: "This territory is under the jurisdiction of sharia
law." A green Muslim flag was posted on a hill.
The hamlet's 14 policemen had been kicked out, and the Russian
constitution declared invalid. Those caught drinking alcohol were
beaten with sticks. Religious edicts were announced over a new
broadcasting system, residents said.
Two rocket launchers, machine guns and explosives were hauled in and
hidden. "There were so many Chechens and Arabs here we couldn't count
them," said Makhdiyev, the imam. "They would come in carloads, 10 or
15 cars at a time."
Khattab visited the village, solidifying his ties by marrying a local
17-year-old girl. But the settlement remained divided between
opponents and supporters of the Wahhabis. "Some people joined because
they believed it was the right way," said Makhdiyev. "Others were
just in dire straits. They went for these kopecks," or coins.
In August 1999, Chechen rebels launched incursions into Dagestan, but
the operation failed miserably. Within a few weeks, Russian troops
had driven hundreds of rebels under Khattab and Basayev back across
the border into Chechnya. Russian troops announced the capture of
Karamakhi in September.
That month, Moscow apartment houses were hit by a series of bombings
that killed close to 300 people and were blamed by Russian
authorities on Chechen rebels. Russian warplanes began hitting their
positions and by October, 80,000 Russian troops were marching into
Chechnya to reclaim the republic. Khattab was killed by Russian
troops last year.
Villagers are still rebuilding what was destroyed by the Russian
bombers. A new beige mosque is nearly finished, the ground around it
a sea of mud.
A few rebel supporters, after being released from jail, asked their
neighbors to forgive them and were accepted back into the village,
said Makhdiyev.
"They say they were lost," he said. "They swore they would never do
it again."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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© 1997-2005, Islamic Supreme Council of America
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