CIA assassination attempt in Ingushetia

[Paul Rigby]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/...ml?_r=1&hp

Leader of Russian Region Is Attacked

By Clifford J. Levy

June 23, 2009

MOSCOW — The reformist leader of an unstable region near Chechnya, who had been installed by the Kremlin to calm tensions there and seemed to be making progress, was seriously wounded on Monday in an assassination attempt.

The leader, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, president of Ingushetia, was being driven to work when a suicide bomber in a Toyota Camry packed with explosives swerved into his motorcade and set off an enormous blast, officials said.

The attack underscored the difficulties facing Russia’s government as it continues to grapple with Islamic extremism, widespread corruption and clan rivalries in the Caucasus mountains, which are on the country’s southern rim.

Ingushetia and another nearby Muslim region, Dagestan, have been deeply troubled for years. Both regions border Chechnya, where Moscow has suppressed Muslim separatists in two civil wars since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Mr. Yevkurov was at first treated at a hospital in Nazran, the major city in Ingushetia, which has 450,000 people. A team of doctors was airlifted from Moscow to oversee his care, officials said, and then Mr. Yevkurov was to be transported to a hospital in Moscow.

Mr. Yevkurov’s driver died in the explosion, and there were conflicting reports about whether one or more of his bodyguards died. His brother was said to have been wounded.

Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, appeared on national television and declared that the attack was evidence that Mr. Yevkurov’s policies were winning over the local population and beating back militants.

“The president of Ingushetia has done a lot of late to strengthen law and order and build up civil peace in the republic,” Mr. Medvedev said. “Of course, the bandits do not welcome these efforts, and what has happened is their response to the Ingushetia authorities’ work and greater activity in these areas.”

Earlier this month, Mr. Medvedev visited Dagestan after its interior minister was assassinated. He blamed violence in the region on foreign extremists, calling them “freaks who come to our country for the sole purpose of causing damage to it.”

A day later, a senior judge in Ingushetia was assassinated. Soon after, a former deputy prime minister of Ingushetia was gunned down.

The explosion on Monday that wounded Mr. Yevkurov was so powerful that it crushed his car and damaged nearby houses.

“I thought that it was my gas stove that blew up,” a woman told state television. “My daughter fell down, I saw the roof tumbling down. I saw the fence toppling over, windows falling out and everything burning.”

Mr. Yevkurov, 45, a former Russian military intelligence officer, was appointed last fall by Mr. Medvedev after unrest in Ingushetia had escalated under the previous leader, Murat Zyazikov. Some officials in Moscow expressed fears that Ingushetia was on its way to succumbing to the kind of hostilities that once roiled Chechnya.

Seeking to build public trust, Mr. Yevkurov ruled with far more restraint than his predecessor, who was widely reviled and accused of being dictatorial and corrupt. Mr. Yevkurov met regularly with opposition politicians and leaders of advocacy groups, and even publicized what he said was his personal cellphone number in order to solicit complaints from citizens.

He strove to live modestly, disdaining the lavish presidential residence and other perks that typically accrue to leaders in the region, who have a reputation for corruption.

Human rights advocates, who had harshly criticized his predecessor, praised him.

“He attempted to show, and prove, that the authorities are seeking to protect society from the terrorist threat,” said Aleksandr Cherkasov, an expert on the Caucasus at Memorial, one of Russia’s premier human rights organizations.

“It was not only his words,” Mr. Cherkasov said. “It has been done through significant actions. His policies have offered hope that the situation can be improved. Because of that, he has been dangerous to the separatist underground.”

Even as the Kremlin has embraced Mr. Yevkurov’s style in Ingushetia, it has supported a more hard-line one in Chechnya.

The strongman president there, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, has succeeded to some extent in pacifying Chechnya and rebuilding the capital, Grozny. But human rights groups have called his tactics brutal, saying that he has employed torture and extrajudicial killings.

In April, the Kremlin formally declared the end of military operations in Chechnya, portraying the move as evidence of the success of its strategy there. But the violence has not completely subsided.

On Monday, after meeting with security officials, Mr. Medvedev met with Mr. Kadyrov, and reiterated his backing for Mr. Kadyrov’s work.

[Magda Hassan]

http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009...dyrov.html

12 June, 2009, 00:12
The President of Russia's Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, has accused the United States of working to destroy Russia.


Kadirov says the US is trying to undermine the country by creating conflict and tension in Russia's southern republics in the North Caucasus.
In recent weeks the number of attacks in Ingushetia and Dagestan has increased sharply.
These events are just part of the violence that has flared up in various parts of the Caucasus during the last two weeks.

The President of the Chechen Republic, whose father was killed in a terrorist attack, is pointing the finger not at Islamists in the Middle East or Afghanistan but at the USA.
“I like to call things by their proper names. The center is in America. And it is America that is working to undermine the sovereign Russian state. It's not the terrorists, not the Islamic radicals. It has nothing to do with Islam. They [the US] have invented this system. They are creating problems for Russia; they want to undermine Russia,” Kadyrov said in an interview posted on the official website of the Chechen President and Cabinet on Wednesday.
Kadyrov had identified Washington’s tools in this process as public bodies or NGOs (non-governmental organizations).
Kadyrov says they use professional subversives in their mission to destabilize the region.
The Chechen President has added that the US failed to undermine Russia through Chechnya and is now trying to do it through Dagestan and Ingushetia.
“They have such a system: all kinds of public organizations that were set up to spread rumors and gossip, to stir people, as they know that it is possible to create problems for Russia in the Caucasus only on religious grounds. They are training and using top experts. Take the Arabs that are moving here – Yaser, Makhdan – they have been here for 14 years already. They speak Russian better than I do but do not know a single word in Chechen. They were perfectly trained. They don't take part in combat. They are intelligence officers. They are being provided for, they are guarded and financed. They have been sent to Russia to take part in subversive operations,” Kadyrov said.
Some analysts agree the recent wave of violence shows signs of being centrally controlled.
“The attacks in the Caucasus obviously seem organized and planned and have the aim of showing that neither the federal center nor the regional authorities can control the situation in these republics”, independent analyst in Moscow Dmitry Evstafyev said.
Even though many experts agree that the recent wave of violence in the Caucasus was organized from outside, Ramzan Kadyrov remains in a minority in laying the blame on the United States.
While there may be disagreement about who is behind the violence, it is believed the attacks are unlikely to stop while the militants continue to be financed.
The situation in the North Caucasus remains volatile. Hundreds of terrorist-related crimes have already been committed in 2009.