Recently in Chechnya Category

There are several celebrated incidents in which Muhammad lashed out violently against poets, ordering their murder for the crime of making fun of him -- including Abu ‘Afak, who was over one hundred years old, and the poetess ‘Asma bint Marwan. Abu ‘Afak was killed in his sleep, in response to Muhammad’s question, “Who will avenge me on this scoundrel?” Similarly, Muhammad on another occasion cried out, “Will no one rid me of this daughter of Marwan?” One of his followers, ‘Umayr ibn ‘Adi, went to her house that night, where he found her sleeping next to her children. The youngest, a nursing babe, was in her arms. But that didn’t stop ‘Umayr from murdering her and the baby as well. Muhammad commended him: “You have done a great service to Allah and His Messenger, ‘Umayr!” (Ibn Ishaq, 674-676).

"Famous Chechen poet shot dead in 'contract killing,'" from RIA Novosti, November 16 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Prominent Chechen poet Ruslan Akhtakhanov who had angered Muslim separatists in the North Caucasus was shot dead in Moscow.

Akhtakhanov was shot five times in the head and leg as he parked his car on Begovaya St. late on Wednesday, police said.

He was a fervent advocate of Chechnya remaining part of Russia and was also believed to have spent 47 days held hostage by Chechen separatists.

Akhtakhanov was also a member of Russia’s Writers Union.

Authorities are treating the incident as a contract killing.

“The way in which the murder was carried out suggests it had been ordered,” Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told reporters on Wednesday....

Prosecutors had said Pete Seda was "well aware" the money was helping to fund Chechen jihadists, and the judge agreed. "Islamic charity leader sentenced to nearly 3 years," by Jeff Barnard for the Associated Press, September 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):

EUGENE, Ore. -- The leader of the U.S. branch of a defunct Islamic charity was sentenced Tuesday to nearly three years in prison after being convicted of helping smuggle $150,000 to Saudi Arabia.

U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan said that while he has no doubt the money went to Islamic fighters battling the Russian army in Chechnya, as the prosecution maintained, there's no proof directly linking Pete Seda to terrorism.

For that reason, Hogan said he wouldn't apply the so-called "terrorism enhancement" that could have sent Seda to prison for eight years. Instead, Hogan sentenced Seda to 33 months in prison, ordered him to pay the Internal Revenue Service $80,980 in restitution, and allowed him to remain free for 60 days before reporting.

Seda, also known as Pirouz Sedaghaty, is an Iranian-born U.S. citizen who ran the U.S. chapter of the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation based in Ashland. He worked in Ashland as a tree surgeon and was an outspoken proponent of the peaceful aspects of Islam. He was known for marching in the local July 4 parade with his camel.

Seda was convicted last year of tax fraud and conspiracy to defraud the government for helping Saudi Arabian national Soliman Al-Buthe convert a contribution from a doctor in England into traveler's checks, which Al-Buthe took with him on a flight to Saudi Arabia without declaring it to authorities. Prosecutors have been unable to force Al-Buthe to return to the U.S. to face the same charges as Seda.

Acting U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton said federal prosecutors felt they had proven Seda's connection to terrorism, but respected the court's ruling and were satisfied with the sentence.

"Money is the lifeblood of terrorist organizations," Holton said. "We are working very hard to cut off that lifeline. Shutting down al-Haramain internationally and here was an essential part of that."

Last week the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the U.S. Treasury Department rightly designated the Oregon branch of the Saudi Arabia-based charity a terrorist organization in 2004 for financing terrorist activities in Chechnya and Albania. But the appeals court found the department improperly seized the group's assets.

The unanimous three-judge panel found the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control violated the charity's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure by improperly using a "blocking order" to freeze the charity's assets without a warrant.

The foundation disbanded after the department froze its assets.

Seda declined to comment, citing the advice of his lawyers. Defense attorney Steve Wax said they planned to appeal both the convictions and the sentence....

Although Turkey is a NATO member, she has always supported the jihad in the North Caucasus.

The Turks have never openly supported the jihad, but always tried to use the jihad and jihadis for their own interests. And many Muslims made their way from Turkey to the Mujahideen, joining the jihad in Chechnya and Dagestan.

Many of the wounded jihadists received treatment in Turkish hospitals. And for many of them, that country became a refuge from persecution. There has been a great deal of Turkish emigration to Europe and other countries.

Confirmation of all this are certain telling facts. Three official representative of the leader of the Caucasus jihadists, Doku Umarov, were killed in Istanbul on September 16, 2011.

Until recently, Turkey tried to pursue a balanced policy between NATO and the Islamic world. However, Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan and his team are now seeking new contacts and relationships in the Islamic world.

Turkey had to enlist the support of its neighbors in order to begin openly to promote its ambitions in the Islamic world and the region.

Over the last year the Turks have made great strides in the region. They rendezvoused with Georgia and Iran, securing a secure Eastern border. They started a few ambitious energy projects. And they began to build a railroad that will connect them with Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran. This railroad completely changes the balance of power in the region.

I remember that I was told about a meeting that was supposed to ensure a steady supply of arms to the North Caucasian Mujahideen. A former military man, a Turkish citizen, promised to give the Mujahideen weapons seized from the Kurdish fighters. This project failed. The Mujahideen were wronged by the Turkish military, and said that as long as Turkey does not become an Islamic state, the Turkish military cannot be trusted.

After Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan openly began the Islamization of Turkey, the jihadists found fertile ground there. Turkey appeared ambitious to become the leader of Islam in the region.

Prime Minister Erdogan and Foreign Minister Davidoglu began to make up for lost time, and to prove their commitment to Islam, they began to support a terrorist organization, IHH. They began to advocate for the recognition of Palestine and began to speak openly against Israel.

An interesting fact is that Turkey has a problem of separatism, and not in its interest to support separatists elsewhere. In spite of this, the Turkish establishment is exacerbating relations with its former partner, Israel.

Turkey, like Iran, now has a real chance after the "Arab Spring" to gain prestige and influence extending to northern Africa.

The trend that we observe in the Caucasus, Turkey and North Africa, clearly proves that what has happened in these regions should not be called "Arab Spring"; it should be called "Islamic Spring," or better, as it says in the Qur'an, Jihad.

Hundreds of Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh and many Asian countries are now being sent to Turkey under the guise of being tourists. The bulk of these so-called tourists are men between the ages of 18 and 40. According to them, they're going to rest on the Mediterranean Sea, close to the border with Israel.

"The first blast occurred when officers attempted to detain a suspected militant in the Chechen capital of Grozny." See, if only the officers weren't so "Islamophobic" as to interfere with the activities of the glorious mujahedin, none of this would have happened. Will the Islamophobia never end? "Russian report: 7 dead in 2 blasts in Chechnya," from CNN, August 30 (thanks to Kenneth):

(CNN) -- Two blasts -- the second coming after police and passersby had gathered at the site of the first -- killed seven people and wounded 18 Tuesday evening in the Russian republic of Chechnya, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

The state-run agency said the first blast occurred when officers attempted to detain a suspected militant in the Chechen capital of Grozny. About 30 minutes after that explosion, a second blast hit the same area after people had gathered there, RIA Novosti said....

Rebels in Chechnya started out fighting for independence in the 1990s, but in recent years the fight has been aimed more at imposing Islamist rule and asserting their authority in the area.

The standard of living in the southwestern republic is poor compared with the rest of Russia. Unemployment is rampant and infant mortality is high. In addition, the Chechen population of about 1 million is mostly made up of Sunni Muslims, who maintain a distinctly separate cultural and linguistic identity from Russian Orthodox Christians.

Note CNN's spin: this is all about poverty, not jihad. That's why you see so many Haitian suicide bombers.

And you wondered what in the world your apartment neighbors were cooking. "Russian security forces foil Islamist terror plot to bomb train," by Alissa de Carbonnel for Reuters, August 16 (thanks to Twostellas):

Russian authorities have foiled a plot by militants who were building fertiliser bombs in a suburban apartment and planning to attack a bullet train between Moscow and St Petersburg, a newspaper reported.

Citing security sources, Kommersant revealed details of an alleged plot by militants from the North Caucasus that Russia’s top security official had described to President Dmitry Medvedev last month as a "large terrorist attack" targeting transport.

The Kremlin is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency in its mostly Muslim North Caucasus regions that continues to undermine Russia’s security and stability in the wake of two wars against Chechen separatists.

The insurgents claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed 26 people on a Moscow-St Petersburg train in 2009, as well as suicide bombings that killed 37 people at Moscow’s busiest airport in January and 40 in the metro in March 2010.

Militant leader Doku Umarov has vowed more bombings. An attack would be a blow to Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ahead of a March 2012 vote in which one of them is expected to run for president.

Kommersant said the suspected mastermind, a 22-year-old native of the North Caucasus province of Kabardino-Balkaria, allegedly recruited at least three men to help carry out the attack on the Sapsan, a high-speed train connecting Russia’s largest cities.

A Federal Security Service (FSB) source told the paper the group made bombs out of ammonium nitrate in a rented apartment near the busy railway line and had planned to place one on the tracks some 20 kilometres north of Moscow.

FSB officials declined to comment on the report.

In televised comments last month, FSB director Alexander Bortnikov told Medvedev that "a large terrorist attack" targeting "crowded facilities and transport infrastructure" had been averted near Moscow.

Kommersant said the suspected mastermind, Islam Khamuzhyev, had recruited two men with whom he played soccer and another he had met at a mosque to help in the attack.

"Misunderstanding" must be his middle name.

By controlling the price of oil, Muslim countries are protecting the jihad, whose goal is not creation, but destruction.

There is a false notion that Muslims are divided into two groups: supporters of jihad and those who simply worship Allah.

Any place where there is or was a war between the adherents of Islam and adherents of other religions is always of interest to the jihadists. I personally know many Islamic leaders and chiefs of armed groups in the Caucasus. In conversations with me they repeatedly told me that the "Wahhabis" (so-called adherents of militant Islam in the Caucasus) did not respect the traditions of the Caucasus. They said that these "new teachers for the Caucasian Islam" were not needed in the Caucasus.

The "new teachers" built their mosques and brought their teachers, spending millions of dollars to indoctrinate the youth, who departed from the traditional "Islam in the Caucasus" and turned toward Wahhabism.

Shamil Basayev said to me in 1997 with great pleasure that he had driven the Arabs and Turks from the Caucasus, but in 1998 he became the leader of the jihadists and the Imam of Chechnya and Dagestan.

Many military commanders and fighters and commanders have undergone such a change, having experienced an Islamic awakening.

They have even begun to change their names and adopt Arabic ones. The head of the Chechen special forces, “borz” (wolves), Ruslan Gelayev, called himself Khamzat Gelayev. Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov called himself Khalid Maskhadov.

Maskhadov was the elected in 1997. When he became president, he promised the international community that he would make Chechnya a secular state, but after one and half years he became leader of the Jihad in the Caucasus.

This is an interesting fact to ponder for those who want to establish contacts and negotiate with terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, and so on.

In 1997, I was invited to Grozny in Chechnya by the head of an antiterrorist center, Brigadier General Hunkar Pasha Israpilov.

He asked me to help the Chechens to coordinate with Georgia and develop a common policy to combat Islamic terrorism. This was an order of the Chechen Republic President Maskhadov.

At the meeting, we agreed that the jihadists and Islamic fundamentalists were a threat to the entire Caucasus and that joint efforts were needed to fight this scourge.

A few months after this meeting, the chief of the antiterrorist center, like many others, joined the Islamic Shura Council of the followers of the Sharia in the Caucasus, and took an active part in the spread of Wahhabism in the Caucasus.

On his orders, my brother and I were kidnapped from Georgia, as I wrote in an earlier article.

When we were captured, one of the terrorists said a very interesting thing: "You Christians and Zionists will never defeat us. When you squeeze us, our brothers will raise oil prices and you will have to negotiate with us and accept us and the Islamic state that we create. Then you will see what the Sharia is -- the sword of Islam."

I did not pay attention to his words. My brother and I had been beaten. But now, after 10 years, I realized what he meant. By controlling the price of oil, Muslim countries are protecting the jihad, whose goal is not creation, but destruction.

It's fizzy, and it's sold in a can, but that's about where the similarity stops. In any event, here is a fine case of a government that is enforcing Sharia intruding arbitrarily on people's lives, and doing so in an apparent rush to judgment. To challenge them would put one in danger of being accused of going against Islam itself, and that's been known to endanger life and limb, even in Chechnya. "Chechnya says energy drinks are un-Islamic and imposes sales ban," from Reuters, July 18:

Chechnya is to ban the sale of energy drinks such as Red Bull to under 18s, saying they are un-Islamic and dangerous, health officials said on Monday.

The ban would be the latest restriction from authorities in Chechnya, where shops can only sell alcohol during a small morning time frame, restaurants and cafes are shut during the Ramadan fasting month, and women must wear headscarves in state buildings.

"Energy drinks are comparable to beer," the deputy minister of health, Rukman Bartiyev, said, adding that they were harmful to health.

The proposed ban was met with praise from the more conservative sectors of society, but angered ordinary Chechens who are growing increasingly frustrated at laws that only apply to Chechnya and sometimes contradict the Russian constitution.

"There are just too many restrictions lately. We are building a small Islamic state in Russia that looks like Dubai," said a Grozny resident who gave her name only as Aset, 41.

A decade after Moscow drove separatists out of power in the second of two wars since the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Kremlin relies heavily on Chechnya's strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov to keep insurgents in check and maintain a shaky peace.

But critics of the hardliner say he runs the republic of 1.1 million as a fiefdom, consolidating power by leading a violent crackdown on opponents and imposing his own vision of Islam, leading analysts to warn that Chechnya could move to autonomy once again.

It is very interesting to read and listen to the critics who say "why worry about Islam?" and "jihadism is not a threat."

Well, Muslims are building mosques in non-Muslim countries, and they want Sharia courts as well, and Iran is building nuclear reactors and bombs. What's the problem?

These "critics" say that non-Muslim countries should simply try to start negotiations with Iran. They think that the Jihad is just a word. They think that Sharia is just some set of laws. And they think that Islamization is not a threat to them.

This is the same way that so many before them thought.

I can say that they are deeply mistaken. Jihadism is a threat that can come into the house of every person. Everyone could become a victim of a jihad terrorist. Many people think that with the death of Osama bin Laden our problems are over, but this is not true.

Jihad as a spring. It is sometimes compressed, and then strikes with great force. This is the whole history of jihadism. And there are so many examples of this in that history. I believe that these critics have not ever even seen a live jihadist. They do not understand how they are being used.

Jihadists are very generous. Wealthy sponsors spend a lot of money to bribe non-Muslims into supporting them, and to create structures that support them. These structures include the humanitarian, financial, religious organizations preach Islam.

In the Caucasus, there is also an economic superstructure supporting the jihadists, as well as schools and religious institutions. But the goal of all these organizations is solely to accumulate money for the continuation of jihad.

People who criticize us do not realize that from the perspective of the people in these groups, there is no bad jihadist or good infidel; as far as the jihadists are concerned, a kafir is a kafir.

After the terrorist attack in Budennovsk, Shamil Basayev became vice-premier of Chechnya. The Russians began to negotiate with him. But after several years of negotiations, Basayev and Khattab attacked Dagestan, and perpetrated a terrorist act in Beslan.

I once asked Shamil if he could repeat that act of terrorism in Budenovsky. He replied: "Let me have as much money as I need, and an act of terrorism will become a technical issue."

Terrorist acts to the jihadists are a technical issue. A murder victim? Statistics.

I once attended a sentencing in a Sharia Court. Three of the accused were given the death penalty. One was beheaded, while the others were shot, one with a machine gun, and one with a pistol. Those two were more lucky: they died quickly.

But most important is the disgusting fact that that they put their victims on their knees. They like to humiliate their victims. A young man -- the victim -- looked at the butcher over his shoulder. In my opinion, he did not believe that he would cut his throat. He probably thought that by kneeling humbly he would avoid a terrible death. I was told before his death that the victim believed that the executioner would show mercy and do the job quickly. The man drowned in his own blood.

The Chechen who shot this video turned into a drunkard from the shock.

And now they want to put us on our knees in a figurative sense. But if we do what they want, we still will not survive.

Asul Kasimov (left) with Ukrainian nationalist Anatoli Lupinos

Sharia, jihad, and an Islamic nation are inseparable concepts.

Islamization advances all three of these components, and consequently results in incredible violence and inhumane treatment.

It involves the legalization of ritual murders committed in the name of Allah.

Creating a society of obedient fear of death is their goal. In this environment, there is always one who cast the first stone.

"Stoning is not just stoning, it's Allah's revenge." Thus spoke a mullah...his name was Asul Kasimov. After a few hajj pilgrimages, he believed that Allah controlled his actions. In a "Sharia short course" that Asul gave me, he and other spiritual leaders of the Caucasus jihadists argued that Sharia courts offered the only fair trial on earth. Even the smallest doubt and objection was not accepted by them as evidence, and discussion was not part of the arsenal of the jihadists.

Imam Asul Kasimov, as well as other leaders of the Caucasus jihadists, dreamed about setting up Sharia courts in the Caucasus and around the world.

"Sharia is the sword of Islam," he said. "Allah will destroy all unbelievers and sinners," boasted a young imam to me.

"Only the Sharia can establish order on earth," asserted the others. "Jews invented democracy to enslave Muslims. We do not need their courts. We have the court of Almighty -- the Sharia."

In the Caucasus, stoning was not very much in vogue. Most jihadists liked to kill people publicly with a machine-gun or a knife. Many heads were cut off during the jihad and after. But the jihadists did stone the so-called agents of the Zionists. If Jamaat (the guard of the jihadists) noticed a betrayal of the jihad, the death penalty could not be avoided.

The only controversy over public execution was over whether it was permissible to say during the execution, "In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful." Everyone also agreed that Sharia punishment the most humane in the world.

The introduction of Sharia in the North Caucasus remained unnoticed as long as those laws were not applied to foreigners.

Once in 1998 in Grozny, I turned on the TV and I was very surprised. On one jihadist channel, "Marsho" (which means freedom in Chechen language), I saw Franco Zeffirelli’s movie Jesus of Nazareth. This was while Sharia was being implemented in Chechnya. I was pleased to watch film, but the next day the same channel showed a man being beheaded. He was a Christian missionary who had bought time on the television channel.

Over several years in the North Caucasus the adherents of Sharia kidnapped around 6000 people, demanding ransom for their release. This resulted in over 100 people being sentenced to death and executed. Several murders and demonstrations shown on television. The death sentence was handed down most often to women who had been charged with adultery. A feature of Sharia is that you first condemn and then look for evidence of guilt, so that escape from punishment is not possible.

One jihadist told me that he had personally executed several Zionist agents by tying them to railroad tracks. They were Muslims, but they were not saved; when the train passed, they were decapitated.

And imams such as Mullah Asul Kasimov (the number one terrorist in Azerbaijan) will always find a justification from the Koran for such activity.

Jihad is not only a mujahid with machine-gun; jihad is an ideology that develops, adapts, and seeks new opportunities and allies to strike at the enemies of Islam.

Before a jihadist or a jihadi group will strike at a target, they learn it well. It is already well known that they bide their time, and human life has no value to them.

But by far the most terrible weapon the jihadists employ is the lie, the blurring of the mind.

Not far from Grozny, only around a half hour's drive, hundreds of mujahideen have been trained for a future of shooting the enemies of Islam. They had come there from many countries, as well as from the Caucasus. I visited two jihad training camps in the North Caucasus, in Chechnya. At one of them I was a frequent guest for 3 months. It was founded by the Jordanian Arab jihadist Amir ibn al-Khattab (real name: Samer Saleh al-Suveylem). Chechens called this camp "the Islamic Institute of the Caucasus."

There were many Arabs there, but they ignored me because I was not Muslim. Only one Arab spoke to me. He knew that I knew the jihad leaders Khattab and Basayev personally. My Chechen guide explained to me what was what.

Before this camp opened, there was a children's recreation area on that site. Ironically, in 1997 in that same area there began the "training of death." Since 1997, this Institute has trained thousands of Mujahideen. Arabs taught Institute attendees the Qur'an and Islam. The instructors for military training were the Chechens. Their responsibility was to train young students in the possession of weapons. Training in the creation of a bomb using any available materials was the responsibility of the Arabs.

"They have a lot of practice," remarked one of the mujahideen. He learned about the camp from a friend. Advertising had also been on TV. "They promised to us salaries, weapons, uniforms and free education in the madrasah. I'm lucky if I die for the faith of Islam," he said, and looked at me proudly.

At first I was not clear on what was the point of creating this camp. The Chechens have always been good warriors. I was surprised that they had to be taught by Arabs.

Abdul-Walid from Saudi Arabia, a teacher of explosives, explained to me that jihad is not only physical war. It is a religion, and the essence of Islam as written in the Qur'an. "The Chechens are good soldiers, but they do not understand Islam," he said. "They fight with the Russians, but do not know that the real enemy of Muslims and Islam is the Jew. This the Qur'an teaches us. Nobody can win the war without the will of Allah."

In this camp I also heard about the organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood. Khattab created a branch of Muslim Brotherhood in the northern Caucasus. I learned that many students come from the Middle East, too, and will learn military affairs from Chechen trainers, as the Chechens learned Islam from the visiting teachers.

This symbiosis has been very beneficial to all concerned. Jihadism became stronger in the Caucasian region, and the visitors learned martial arts. One Caucasian jihadist gave me an example of how the Chechens did not know Islam: once he was in the mosque reading the sacred pages of the Qur'an, but later, after he was educated in Saudi Arabia and returned to the northern Caucasus, he realized that the text he had been reading was not from the Qur'an.

Maybe it was a joke, maybe not. But they all serious about one thing: they believe that if you are not Muslim, jihadists can kill you, and this is not a sin.

In the camp the trainees are fed so well that many students came from poor regions of Russia and Azerbaijan. They were given uniforms and guns. Also, at that time I already knew that the families of the deceased received compensation from the sponsors of jihad.

The jihadists have succeeded in just one or two years: jihad is not only continuing, but is also spreading to new territory.

Every day for months, I looked at the people who wanted to kill the "enemies of Islam." At the beginning of the training they would in conversation talk about various things, but after a few months in the camp the only topic of conversation was the jihad and the Zionists. All other people were Zionist agents.

But worst of all were those who were not included in these conversations. They were spending their time praying, were never late for classes, and were dressed in Arab costumes of bright material. Just hearing the azan made them raise their heads and start praying (making namaz).

Looking at this, I realized that all these brainwashed people were serious about killing. They had different techniques, but one idea. They were ready to explode bombs and kill innocents just because these innocents were not Muslim. And during the killings and executions they say: in the name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate.

Based on the geopolitical location of the Caucasus, the Christian states Georgia and Armenia are key nations opposing the advance of the global jihad. This is, of course, also true of the state of Israel in the Middle East.

The entire history of these countries is a struggle against the Islamisation of the region. Georgia has always been attractive to the Persians (Iranians) and Ottomans (Turks); both with great pleasure that would have swallowed it, thereby opening up for themselves the path to the North Caucasus.

After the the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Christian countries of the Caucasus again become interesting for the Islamic jihadists. Uncertain economic circumstances led the leaders of the Caucasian republics to seek ties with Iran, as well as with Turkey. Iran and Turkey and other countries professing Islam invested huge sums in the Christian Caucasian republics.

Iranian, Arabian and Turkish banks, registered in Azerbaijan and in Georgia, were sometimes used for this purpose. One of these banks is the Royal Bank in Baku, Azerbaijan. This bank has undertaken many dubious investments in the economy of the Christian republics in the Caucasus.

An Iranian banker who works in Azerbaijan in the Royal Bank told me that he has long promoted Georgian businessmen, representing the interests of Georgians who wanted to do business in Iran. One Georgian businessman with whom he has worked is today one of the major importers of oil products in Georgia. Despite international sanctions against Iran, in Georgia there was an abundance of Iranian oil products. According to the Iranian banker, a large shipment of oil that was sent to Georgia several years ago has still not been paid for, but despite this, he continues to lobby for Georgian businessmen in Iran.

The Iranian banker is not particularly interested in monetary gains. According to him, the purpose of his financial activities was to advance the strategic interests of Iran in the Caucasus. During the first Chechen jihad, he also aided Chechen businessmen in Iran.

This Iranian banker also told me how easy it was to do business with the Iranians. A few months ago, together with the Georgian President, he met in New York with the influential American businessman and a onetime possible candidate for the U.S. presidency in 2012, Donald Trump.

A similar situation exists with Turkey. Turkey is one of the most powerful investors in Georgia. Turkey is investing very large sums of money in the Georgian economy. Turkey is not officially an Islamic state. The Turks do not openly support jihad, but many of the jihadists and their sponsors are quite comfortable in that country. Representatives of jihadists from the Caucasus are in Turkey doing business informally, and thereby replenishing the coffers of the jihadists.

In addition, the Turkish government is building a few mosques in Georgia and minarets in the Adjara region, which borders Turkey.

Georgia opened its borders with the countries of the North Caucasus, as well as with Iran and Turkey, without requiring passports at border crossings. Mujahedeen traffic through Turkey and Iran was well established during the earlier jihad in the Caucasus, in 1994, when there were not the close economic relations between these countries that exist now. The governments of the Caucasian states have promised to stop the traffic of mujahedeen but they cannot do so now: their promises ring hollow given their close political and economic relations with Iran.

In the 1990s and thereafter, I heard Georgian politicians say that in the event of military conflict between the Western world and Iran, Georgia should become an outpost of NATO forces in the Caucasus. But now that possibility is highly questionable, due to Georgia's close economic relations with Iran.

It is also very interesting that the chief spokesman of the jihadists in Georgia has said, "Jews and Zionists are true enemies of Islam. They are the main target of jihad." I interviewed many of the jihadists, and they all kept saying the same thing.

The Israeli Information Portal izrus.co.il published this information (translate from the Russian):

Last week, a representative of the official leadership of the republics of the North Caucasus highlighted the Israeli perspective on the arrival from the Middle East of a prominent figure in the jihadist movement in the former Soviet Union. Appropriate verbal messages and some information was given through the MK Faina Kirschenbaum, who occupies the post of secretary general of the second-largest coalition party -- "Israel Our Home."

According to that source, one of the leaders of the jihadist movement in the North Caucasus has recently arrived in the Middle East: an Arab Islamist known by his nickname, Abu Rabia. According to the competent authorities in the North Caucasus region, he is now, apparently, in Egypt or in Turkey. The same sources do not exclude the possibility that in the near future, Abu Rabia may, under some pretext, try to cross into Israel.

It is also noted that in recent years, Abu Rabia kept in touch with the Chechen leader of the jihadist movement in the North Caucasus, Doku Umarov, and in Turkey with a native of the former Soviet Union, Zaurbek Guchaevym.

From the results of investigation carried out by the portal IzRus, it appears that during the years from 2001 to 2011 an Arab named Abu Rabia has repeatedly been mentioned in reports on the North Caucasus of the Russian and English-language media, as well as in Islamist forums in Russian and Arabic. Summarizing the information from these sources, we can conclude that from the beginning of the 2000s he was operating mainly from the territory of Georgia (the Akhmeta district in the north of the country). From there, Abu Rabia was engaged mainly in the transfer of funds to foreign mujaheddin in the North Caucasus, which came to him from sponsors in the Middle East (including through the Saudi Fund, "Al-Haramain"). In some cases, he was involved in providing documents for the transfer to Russia of Arab warlords.

This confirms that the economic expansion of Iran and Turkey into Georgia has begun to show "political benefits,” and the Caucasus region is becoming a convenient place for jihadists -- a place that can be used as a base as part of the jihad against Israel.

A doubly failed jihad: Not only did the bomb go off in his hotel bathroom, now he's going to jail. An update on this story. "Chechen-born boxer found guilty of terror for explosion in hotel in Danish capital," by Jan M. Olsen for the Associated Press, May 30 (thanks to Kenneth):

COPENHAGEN - A Chechen-born man was convicted of attempted terrorism Monday for accidentally setting off a letter bomb that investigators believe was intended for a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.

Standard question: Whose prophet?

The Copenhagen City Court said Lors Doukayev, a one-legged amateur boxer, was trying to assemble the bomb when it went off in a hotel bathroom on Sept. 10 last year.

Allahu ak...dang!

Doukayev, a 25-year-old citizen and resident of Belgium, received cuts to his face in the explosion. No one else was injured.

Prosecutors said Doukayev, who pleaded innocent to terrorism, was preparing the bomb to target a Danish newspaper which sparked fiery protests in Muslim countries by printing 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. They believe his intention was for it to arrive on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

The court dismissed Doukayev's claim that he carried the explosives and a gun for personal protection and was trying dismantle the bomb when it went off. He was also found guilty of unlawful weapons possession.

The device was filled with steel pellets and contained triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, which terrorists used in bombs that killed 52 people in London in 2005.

Wearing headphones, Doukayev listened quietly as the verdict was read and translated into French. He then smiled and waved to the interpreter.

Doukayev's defence lawyer, Niels Anker Rasmussen, said he was surprised by the verdict, but had not decided yet whether to appeal. A sentencing hearing was scheduled for Tuesday.

Investigators initially had difficulty determining Doukayev's identity, saying he used three different names in his travel documents, and had even scratched the serial number off his prosthetic right leg.

How is it that Dokka Abu Usman, who situates everything he says in the context of Islam and frequently quotes the Qur'an, have misunderstood Islam so thoroughly as to think that Muslims must fight in order to impose Sharia? Can some Muslim in the U.S. please explain how his vision of Islam differs from Dokka's, and what he would say to Dokka if he had the chance to try to convince him that his understanding of Islam was wrong?

"Emir Dokku Abu Usman about bin Laden, the Caucasus Emirate and casualties among the Mujahideen," from the Kavkaz Center, May 17 (thanks to Joseph):

KC: The beginning of this spring has been marked by casualties among the Mujahedeen of the Caucasus Emirate. The leading commanders of the Emirate - Emir Supyan, Emir Hassan, Emir Abdullah and others - martyred (Insha'Allah). These are tangible casualties. Can we say that the Mujahideen are weakened?

Dokka Abu Usman: The casualties we incurred have not weakened us and will not weaken us in the future, Insha'Allah. War is impossible without casualties. Since 1999, we have lost many of our emirs and leaders, but the Jihad did not stop, but vice versa, it expanded and strengthened. Generations of the Mujahedeen replace each other. New young men take place of the deceased. More and more young men want to join the Mujahedeen, but unfortunately we cannot accept all the newcomers. Another thing is that due to casualties, we have to correct our plans, to change tactics on the fields. However, that does not mean that a relative calm, for example, in Ingushetia, testifies about the weakening of the positions of the Mujahedeen.

At one place, the activity of the Mujahedeen could be reduced for tactical reasons, and in other place, they could be intensified. There could be calm in Nalchik, but a major sabotage attack could be carried out in Vladivostok. We consider the Caucasus Emirate and Russia as a single theater of war.

We are not in a hurry. The path has been chosen, we know our tasks, and we will not turn back, Insha'Allah, from this path. Today, the battlefield is not just Chechnya and the Caucasus Emirate, but also the whole Russia. The situation is visible to everybody who has eyes. The Jihad is spreading, steadily and inevitably, everywhere.

I've already mentioned that all those artificial borders, administrative divisions, which the Taghut drew, mean nothing to us. The days when we wanted to secede and dreamed of building a small Chechen Kuwait in the Caucasus are over. Now, when you tell the young Mujahedeen about these stories, they are surprised and want to understand how those plans related to the Koran and the Sunnah.

Alhamdulillah! I sometimes think that Allah has called these young people to the Jihad, so that we, the older generation, could not stray from the right path. Now we know that we should not be divided, and must unite with our brothers in faith. We must reconquering Astrakhan, Idel-Ural, Siberia ´- these are indigenous Muslim lands. And then, God's willing, we shall deal with Moscow ulus (district - KC).

KC: As you know, the US said that they had been able to kill bin Laden. There was a statement on behalf of al-Qaida posted on the Internet, which confirmed the martyrdom of their Emir. What is your assessment of what happened? The US says that the death of bin Laden will positively (for the West) affect the overall situation in the world.

Dokka Abu Usman: If the death of Sheikh Osama bin Laden is confirmed, then we will only say the words from the Holy Koran - "We all belong to Allah and to Him shall be our return".

We ask Allah that He accepts the martyrdom of Sheikh Bin Laden, because that man abandoned his wealth and peaceful worldly life for the sake of protecting Islam. And that is a great goal, and the reward for it is great.

With regard to the question of whether bin Laden's death will affect the situation in the world, I think that the infidels do not believe themselves that their life became easier. According to all signs, it is clear that the world is in such situation that the death of the leaders of the Jihad cannot stop the process of the revival of Islam.

That development will go forward, regardless of the fact if the United States, Russia or the UN want it or not.

We all see that the world has changed very much.

For the first time in decades, the awakening of the Islamic Ummah from hibernation has become so clear and widespread. The Mujahedeen and true scholars operate more than ever simultaneously in different regions of the globe, supporting each other and realizing the common goal. Ordinary Muslims take to the streets and express their support for the Mujahedeen, demanding to restore the Sharia.

And in response, the infidels are frightening the public with al-Qaeda that allegedly became more active in the Caucasus, the Philippines, Yemen and Somalia.

KC: In this regard, we would like to hear your opinion about so-called "Arab revolutions". Some experts say that these revolutions were initiated by Western countries.

Dokka Abu Usman: For the West, these developments were as much a surprise as for the Arab regimes. It is obvious. And it is all nonsense that America planned here, and the CIA acted there...

Allah, praise to Him, shook those regimes by His Will and Wisdom, humiliated those Taghuts who were in power for many years and humiliated the religion, and humiliated the Muslims.

And it is another problem that Western countries are trying to use the wave of "Arab revolutions". And they manage to do it, although not everywhere.

At present, it is not all clear, and it is not clear how the events will unfold further.

Everybody sees today how America and other Western countries betray their allies, puppets, who faithfully served them for many years. Subhan'Allah, these dictators sought greatness from the infidels, while all the glory belongs to Allah and his Messenger . Now the masters rejected them and left them to be devoured by the crowd.

The time has come for collapse of dictatorial regimes, which the Prophet Muhammad warned about, and it is obvious.

Even if the infidels manage put in power new puppets, I'm sure that there will be no longer former control over these countries now. A completely new situation emerges before our eyes, Allah opens up new opportunities for the Muslims.

Another problem is how this opportunity will be used by the Muslims. Because Allah does not change the condition of the people unless they change it themselves.

At present, there is a state of confusion in Libya. Although, according to incoming information, groups of Mujahedeen are operating there. There is a hope that they will be able to lead the Muslims.

There is no sufficient information about the situation in Egypt and Tunisia. We hope for the best, but at present, certain calm is felt there, and, unfortunately, news reaches us that some well-known Jamaats are again going to play the game of "Democratic Islam".

Events in Syria, as it seems, just start to unfold. There is unrest in Algeria, Morocco and Jordan.

Perhaps, the most interesting events, of all Arab countries, can be expected in Yemen, where the positions of the Mujahedeen are most promising and from where a serious military movement could start.

The only thing I can say for certain is that if there are no armed force of Muslims, no Jihad and no fighting, nobody would allow us to establish the Sharia of Allah. If it were possible, it would have been done already by our Prophet .

KC: May Allah reward you in goodness for the interview and your comments.

More on this story. It's either paintball or honor killing, says Kadyrov. The full HRW report can be found here. "Report: Chechen women attacked with paintball guns for 'immodest' dress," by Fred Weir for The Christian Science Monitor, March 11:

Chechnya's Kremlin-installed strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has ordered Chechen women to wear "modest attire" that covers their entire bodies, including their heads, whenever they go outdoors, and has sent vigilantes into the streets to attack disobedient women with paintball guns, according to a report just released by New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The often violent "virtue campaign" that Mr. Kadyrov launched in 2006 contravenes Russian law and violates the basic constitutional rights of Chechen women, who are Russian citizens, the group says. Yet both the Kremlin and Kadyrov's main sponsor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, have remained silent about the issue.

Although Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has directed Chechen authorities to look into the paintball attacks, the federal authorities have not otherwise taken any steps to put an end to the Chechen leadership’s enforcement of a compulsory Islamic dress code in Chechnya.

The Kremlin has fought two bloody wars against separatist insurgencies in the past 17 years, aimed at forcing mainly Muslim Chechnya to remain under Russian sovereignty. Two years ago Moscow declared victory and withdrew most troops, leaving Chechnya under Kadyrov's control.

Critics say the failure of the Russian government to enforce its own fundamental law in the republic calls into question the point of those two conflicts, which claimed an estimated quarter of a million lives.

"The enforcement of a compulsory Islamic dress code on women in Chechnya violates their rights to private life, personal autonomy, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion, thought, and conscience," says the report. "It is also a form of gender-based discrimination prohibited under international treaties to which Russia is a party. … This policy is also in breach of Russia’s Constitution, which guarantees freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and gender equality." [...]

Drawing on the testimonies of dozens of Chechen women, the report details coercive methods applied to enforce the dress code, including public shaming, threats, and even physical violence.

Kadyrov has publicly explained that Chechen women must be compelled to dress "modestly" in order to spare their menfolk the painful duty of killing them if they stray.

"A woman should know her place," he said during a televised interview last July. "[In Chechnya] man is the master. Here, if a woman does not behave properly, her husband, father, and brothers are responsible. According to our tradition, if a woman fools around, her family members are obliged to kill her.... As president, I cannot allow them to kill. Therefore, let women not dress indecently."

Last summer vigilantes, whom many of the women believe to be members of Kadyrov's security forces, staged mock assassinations of several "disobedient" women on the streets of Chechnya's capital of Grozny using paintball guns. One young woman reported being attacked while walking down Putin Avenue, the city's main street, with a friend:

"We were dressed modestly but not covered up – no headscarves, sleeves a little above the elbow, skirts a little below the knee," she said. "Suddenly a car with no license plates stops next to us. The side window rolls down and there is this gun barrel. . . I thought the gun was real and when I heard the shots I thought, 'This is death.' I felt something hitting me in the chest and was sort of thrown against the wall of a building. The sting was awful, as if my breasts were being pierced with a red-hot needle, but I wasn’t fainting or anything and suddenly noticed some strange green splattering on the wall and this huge green stain was also expanding on my blouse. So, I understood it was paint." [...]

"On most of the territory of Chechnya it is sharia law that operates, and not the laws of the Russian Federation," says Valentina Terevatenko, head of an independent women's union in the southern city of Novocherkassk, which has close ties with Chechen women's groups. "I think the silence of the Russian authorities about this can be explained by the exigencies of the war on terrorism. They are buying calm in Chechnya at the cost of human rights, including those of women." [...]

He adds that Kadyrov's imposition of tough strictures on Chechen women enjoys considerable sympathy among Russian conservatives, including the powerful Orthodox Church, which recently floated the idea of a dress code for Russian women.

"Kadyrov has managed to achieve most of what the Chechen separatists wanted, but he has gotten it by legal means," says Mr. Mukhin. "All he has to do is display outward loyalty, and Putin lets him do [within Chechnya] whatever he wants."

Sure -- he's not a terrorist, so he must be a moderate. That's how they think in the U.S. State Department as well.

By thugs inside as well as outside the Chechen government. Human Rights Watch has published a detailed update on its report from last November, in which it noted that Chechnya's enforcement of an Islamic dress code violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Where is Obama, who argued so passionately for the "choice" to wear the hijab in Cairo?

Below are excerpts from "You Dress According to Their Rules," from Human Rights Watch, March 10 (thanks to Twostellas):

... Kadyrov has made the “virtue campaign” for women a policy priority since 2006. He made numerous public statements, including on Chechen television, which appears to be under his control, regarding the need for women to adhere to “modesty laws,” by, among other things, wearing a headscarf and following men’s orders. He has described women as men’s “property” and publicly condoned honor killings. Other Chechen officials have echoed his views in their own public remarks. Several dozen women interviewed by Human Rights Watch in Chechnya indicated that they found the virtue campaign deeply offensive but could not protest it openly, fearing for their own security as well as that of their relatives. [...]

The enforcement of a compulsory Islamic dress code on women in Chechnya violates their rights to private life, personal autonomy, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion, thought, and conscience. It is also a form of gender-based discrimination prohibited under international treaties to which Russia is a party, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. This policy is also in breach of Russia’s Constitution, which guarantees freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and gender equality. [...]

In a televised interview in July 2010, Kadyrov expressed unambiguous approval of the paintball attacks by professing his readiness to "give an award to" the men engaged in these activities and arguing that the targeted women deserved this treatment. Then, at the start of the Ramadan holiday in mid-August 2010, groups of men in traditional Islamic dress claiming to represent the republic's Islamic High Council (muftiat) started approaching women in the center of Grozny, publicly shaming them for violating Islamic modesty laws and handing out brochures with detailed descriptions of appropriate Islamic dress for females. They instructed women to wear headscarves and to have their skirts well below the knees and sleeves well below the elbow. The purported envoys from the Islamic High Council were soon joined by aggressive young men who pulled on the women's sleeves, skirts, and hair; touched the bare skin on their arms; accused them of being dressed like harlots; and made other humiliating remarks and gestures. In interviews with Human Rights Watch, dozens of victims and witnesses described a pattern of harassment that continued throughout Ramadan, and that in some cases involved law enforcement authorities as enforcers of the women’s dress code.

Although Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has directed Chechen authorities to look into the paintball attacks, the federal authorities have not otherwise taken any steps to put an end to the Chechen leadership’s enforcement of a compulsory Islamic dress code in Chechnya. They have also failed to indicate in any public way that describing women as property and justifying violence against women is unacceptable. [...]

... Women caught without headscarves in the street have been publicly humiliated on local television. The Chechen courts now apply rules drawn from Sharia law, in contravention of Russian law. As a result, for example, a woman who is widowed may have any children over 12 years of age and her property taken away from her by her deceased husband's family.[...]

Another victim, a woman of 29, told a Human Rights Watch researcher that on June 6 she was walking down the same street in the afternoon with two other young women, all of them without headscarves, when two cars drove up to them. Bearded men in military-style black uniforms, who looked like law enforcement officials, shot at them from the cars’ windows with pink and blue paint, screaming, “Cover your hair, harlots!” Male passersby applauded the attackers and yelled, “Serves you right for having no shame!” [...]

And a threatening leaflet:

Dear Sisters!

We want to remind you that, in accordance with the rules and customs of Islam, every Chechen woman is OBLIGED TO WEAR A HEADSCARF.

Are you not disgusted when you hear the indecent “compliments” and proposals that are addressed to you because you have dressed so provocatively and have not covered your head? THINK ABOUT IT!!!

Today we have sprayed you with paint, but this is only a WARNING!!! DON’T COMPEL US TO RESORT TO MORE PERSUASIVE MEASURES!!!”

There is much more.

He also called upon his "brothers and sisters in Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab countries" to "create a revolution, and by this I mean instating the word of Islam... the law of Allah."

"UPDATE 1-Russian rebel calls for jihad, praises Arab unrest," by Amie Ferris-Rotman for Reuters, March 3:

MOSCOW, March 3 (Reuters) - Chechen-born rebel leader Doku Umarov, Russia's most wanted man, called on Muslims throughout the country to wage jihad against the state in videos posted on websites on Thursday....

"Spring has come, the end of February, so I ask you, brothers, to activate jihad, eliminate the enemies of Allah," Umarov said in an eight-minute, Russian-language video posted on several insurgency-affiliated sites.

"I want to appeal to those ... everywhere in Russia where there are Muslim brothers today ... I call on you to open up the front in all places," Umarov said. Sporting a long black beard, he was flanked by two men and was filmed in snow-covered woods....

Umarov, 46, in a separate video, urged his "brothers and sisters in Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab countries" to "create a revolution, and by this I mean instating the word of Islam... the law of Allah"....

He has said he ordered the bombing in January of Russia's busiest airport in which 37 people were killed, as well as twin suicide bomb attacks on the Moscow metro last year in which 40 died....

In a sign the insurgency could spread, Umarov said he wanted Russia's "occupied Muslim lands" such as the oil and petrochemicals producing regions of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, to join in jihad.

"This is a total war," he said before raising his index finger to the camera....

Yes, but only one side looks at it that way.

"'I don’t see the point in wearing it,' says the student, whose long dark hair flows out from under her head covering. 'But if I don’t, I know I will be punished. I am scared of that.'"

"Women Live in Fear During Chechnya's Islamic Revival," by Diana Markosian for VOA News, February 23 (thanks to Twostellas):

At the entrance to a school in Grozny, the capital of Russia’ s Chechen republic, two security guards grip their guns as they order a woman to cover her head before walking into class.

“ You can’ t go inside with your head like that,” one of them yells, tapping his AK-47.

The young student rumbles inside her purse before pulling out a black silk scarf.

“Is this better?” she asks, covering up her entire head with the scarf, matching her kohl-lined eyes.

Under the Russia-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya is swiftly becoming a conservative Muslim state, a sharp change from the officially atheist Soviet Union when women in the Caucasus burnt their headscarves. Many Chechen women here are the first in three generations to cover their heads.

This has coincided with the almost complete disappearance of the ethnic Russian population in Chechnya. At the time of the Soviet collapse, 20 years ago, ethnic Russians account for 30 percent of Chechnya's population. Today, they are less than one percent.

But now, “the headscarf is a symbol of purity and worth,” says Malika Omarova, head of the Union of Chechen Women in Grozny. “ When I was a student, I never wore a headscarf, not one person forced me. But, I want our women to wear them - it is in our blood. That is what makes us Chechen.” [...]

Zalina, a 19-year-old student and hair stylist, says wearing a headscarf is not really a choice.

“ I don’ t see the point in wearing it,” says the student, whose long dark hair flows out from under her head covering. “But if I don’ t, I know I will be punished. I am scared of that.”

It's really something of a formality to ask at this point. As Human Rights Watch reported in November:

Chechen women have essentially become the target of a quasi-official "virtue" campaign. For several years, the Chechen authorities have discriminated against women who refuse to wear headscarves, prohibiting them from working in the public sector.

That does not include incidents in which Chechen police shot paintballs at unveiled women, and men with automatic rifles harassed women for not wearing the veil during Ramadan.

Chechnya's own president has said that male relatives were right to shoot women with "loose morals." Refusing to wear the hijab could put one's life at risk, and it is more or less official (short of actual legislation that might catch Moscow's eye) that the state will not care.

Obama spoke of a need to protect the rights of women who choose to wear the hijab. Where is he for the women who do not, like those in Chechnya who will now "choose" to throw a veil over their heads in the interest of keeping their heads attached to their necks?

"Russia's Chechnya asks workers to wear Muslim dress," from Reuters, February 18 (thanks to Twostellas):

Russia's Chechnya region has asked state workers to dress conservatively, including headscarves for women and an Islamic dress code on Fridays, in its leaders' latest assertion of Muslim customs.

A decade after Moscow drove separatists out of power in the second of two wars since the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Kremlin relies heavily on Chechnya's strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov to keep insurgents in check and maintain a shaky peace.

Against the backdrop of a persistent Islamist insurgency in Chechnya and neighbouring parts of Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus, regional leaders and rebel fighters alike have embraced an Islamic revival.

Kadyrov's past efforts to enforce a dress code have angered rights activists who say such rules may violate Russia's secular constitution.

Human Rights Watch: "Russian law guarantees all women, including those in Chechnya, the freedom to choose how they dress as part of their constitutional right to freedom of conscience, but to date the Kremlin has taken no action to put an end to this unwritten but unlawful policy in Chechnya."

"We recommend that male state workers come to work in a suit and tie, and that women dress in a skirt below the knee and the appropriate headgear," Chechen government deputy head Magomed Selimkhanov told reporters.

On Fridays -- the main day for prayers in Islam -- employees of both sexes should observe "a traditional Muslim dress code", meaning covered arms and legs.

Selimkhanov said his "recommendation" was "purely advisory". News agency Caucasian Knot reported that he had signed a document stating Muslim dress was "essential" for state workers.

Four years ago Kadyrov issued a "recommendation" that women don headscarves to enter state buildings. A spate of attacks last year on women for not wearing headscarves angered women who said being forced to dress a certain way violated their rights.

"This Islamic dress is part of a problem that has existed in Chechnya for some time now... Every year the Chechen authorities come up with something of this sort," said Ruslan Badalov, a human rights activist who heads the Chechen Committee for National Salvation.

"It is a Caucasus tradition to look respectful in front of family but this should never be enforced," he told Reuters. The Kremlin is warily watching the resurgence of Islam in Chechnya, which some analysts say is moving towards a push for autonomy once again.

Glorying in death and destruction to appease his bloodthirsty god. "Islamist rebel says he ordered Russian bombing," from Reuters, February 8 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

LONDON (Reuters) - Islamist rebel leader Doku Umarov said on Monday he had ordered a suicide bombing that killed 36 people at Russia's busiest airport last month.

Umarov, 46, speaking in a video carried by the Islamist website www.Kavkazcenter.com, said there would be further such attacks in pursuit of an independent Muslim state governed by Sharia law in Russia's Caucasus region -- a territory embracing Chechnya, Dagestan and other nearby territories.

Umarov appeared in the video, apparently made on the day of the January 24 attack on Moscow's Domodedovo airport, wearing combat fatigues, talking quietly and hesitantly.

"The special operation today in Moscow ... was carried out on my orders," said Umarov, who styles himself the Emir of the Caucasus.

"These special operations will continue ... to show the chauvinist regime of (Russian Prime Minister Vladimir) Putin in Moscow ... that we can carry out these operations where we want and when we want," he said, pointing a finger toward the camera.

The attack bore the hallmark of Caucasus rebels but Monday's video was the first time Umarov had claimed direct responsibility for it....

The attack on Moscow's Domodedovo airport took place in a crowded terminal building on a busy late afternoon. Russian officials say the suicide bomber was a 20-year-old native of the North Caucasus.

Umarov appeared in a separate video on February 5 declaring that Russia faced a year of 'blood and tears' if it refused to abandon its North Caucasus territories. He appeared with a young man he described as a 'brother' being dispatched to Moscow to carry out an unspecified operation....

World leaders issue their usual expressions of sorrow and outrage (not reproduced below; why bother?) -- but what will they end up doing to try to prevent another attack like this? Not much in the way of actual focus on the real perpetrators. "'I will kill you all': at least 35 die in Moscow airport bombing," by Maria Antonova and Stuart Williams for AFP, January 25:

A suicide bomber shouted ''I will kill you all'' before triggering the deadly blast that killed at least 35 people at Russia's Domodedovo airport, according to media reports.

The bomber carrying a suitcase walked into Moscow's busiest airport and set off a huge explosion today in the packed arrivals hall, in an attack slammed by the Kremlin and the world as an act of terror.[...]

The Emergencies Ministry said 35 people were killed, 86 hospitalised with injuries and 94 were given medical treatment.

The Guardian reported that up to 168 people were injured, many of them critically.

Witnesses said the bomber shouted: ''I will kill you all'', before triggering the blast that sent ball bearings and shrapnel across the airport, The Independent reported on its website on Tuesday.

America's CBS News said a man in blood-soaked clothes said he was just a few metres away from the explosion and saw a man who may have been the suicide bomber.

''I saw the suitcase, the suitcase was on fire,'' Artyom Zhilenkov, a 35-year-old driver, told CBS.

''So, either the man blew up something, or something went off on the man's body, or the suitcase went off.''

Mr Zhilenkov said he thought he had been severely injured, but doctors told him he was coated in other victims' blood.

''The guy standing next to me was torn to pieces,'' he said.

CBS correspondent Mark Phillips also said the bomber shouted: ''I will kill you all'' just before he detonated his explosives[.]

Russian investigators found a head of "Arab appearance" that is presumed to have belonged to the suicide bomber, Interfax said.

According to preliminary information, the bomber was a resident of the overwhelmingly Muslim Northern Caucasus region, Interfax said....

The Russian capital has been repeatedly rocked by attacks over the past few years blamed on militants from the Northern Caucasus region, where Russia has for years been battling an Islamist insurgency.

Double bombings carried out by two female suicide bombers on the Moscow metro on March 29, 2010, killed 40 and wounded more than 100.

The Kremlin fought two wars against separatist rebels in Chechnya in the 1990s but the insurgency has now become more Islamist in tone and has spread to neighbouring Ingushetia and Dagestan....

Yet another Islamic charity ends up financing jihad terror. Once authorities realize that this is one way for Muslims who are not prepared to join in hot warfare to aid the jihad, they will no longer consider this kind of thing anomalous. More on this story. "Feds seek terrorism boost on tax fraud sentence," from AP, November 23:

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) -- The co-founder of an Islamic charity once based in Oregon faces sentencing.

Pirouz Sedaghaty (Say-dah-GAH-tee), also known as Pete Seda (SAY-dah), was due in U.S. District Court in Eugene on Tuesday to be sentenced on convictions he helped smuggle $150,000 out of the country in 2000 as part of Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation's efforts to support Islamic fighters in Chechnya.

Court papers show prosecutors want to sentence him to eight years in prison, justifying the maximum sentence for tax fraud and conspiracy with evidence the money was used to promote terrorism. They also want unpaid taxes of $81,000....

Will the Islamophobia never end? "Chechnya parliament attacked: Islamic suicide bombers, gunman assault government building," by Michael Sheridan for the New York Daily News, October 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Islamic rebels crying out "Allahu Akbar" stormed the parliament building in war-torn Chechnya on Tuesday, killing at least three people.

The militants, who have been fighting the Russian-controlled government since the 1990s, used a suicide bomber to blast open the gates then flooded into the building firing weapons that injured more than a dozen people.

The assault was mounted by three men while politicians and government employees arrived for work, according to Reuters.

Strapped with a bomb, one of the three blew himself up giving the others access to the parliament, and wounding several people.

The two remaining gunmen entered the building screaming in Arabic, "God is Great!" The terrorists opened fire, and according to The Associated Press, at least two police officers were killed, along with one parliamentary official....

It's bitterly ironic how often we're told that Muslim women in the West wear Islamic dress freely and proudly. Yet Islamic spokesmen in the West never seem to get around to addressing this kind of coercion.

An update on this story. "Chechnya Coerces Women on Dress, Activists Say," by Sophia Kishkovsky in the New York Times, September 27 (thanks to Larry):

MOSCOW -- Women in Chechnya are under pressure to adopt Islamic dress, according to human rights activists and an Islamic fundamentalist video circulating on the Internet in the latest example of deteriorating women's rights under Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the president of the restive southern Russian republic.

Activists in Chechnya, where Russia has waged two wars against separatists in the past 16 years, said intimidation reached a peak during the fasting month of Ramadan. There was also a crackdown on violations of Islamic law such as the sale of food before sundown and any sale of alcohol, they said.

The activists who spoke from Chechnya insisted on anonymity because they said they feared reprisals.

Threats tapered off, they said, as Ramadan ended in mid-September. Men in Islamic clothes had been approaching women whom they deemed unsuitably dressed to pull them by the arm, an offense according to Chechen custom.

A woman activist said that incidents she recorded in August included a woman being taken away by men in a jeep for wearing a skirt they regarded as see-through and no head scarf in Grozny, the Chechen capital. Other men handed out leaflets to women advising them how to dress, she said.

According to Chechen tradition, women should not wear sleeveless clothes; they usually wear a strip of headscarf more like a hairband than a hijab. Until recently, it was considered the prerogative of male family members to decide their style of dress, but Islamic activists, with support from Mr. Kadyrov, are calling for much fuller cover.

The run-up to Chechen Women's Day, a holiday decreed by Mr. Kadyrov to honor 46 Chechen women who drowned rather than succumb to Russian soldiers in 19th century wars, featured fawning praise in the Chechen media of women as wives and mothers and calls to observe Islamic morals.

Chechen television reported on September 16 about a march in Grozny of female students of an Islamic university in Islamic dress. The event, organized by a club called "Ramzan" and a government agency responsible for "spiritual and moral education," was dubbed "Beauty of the Chechen Woman."

"Every person must strive to beauty, and a young woman who puts on a hijab looks beautiful, as befits the dictates of the Almighty," Sado Meserbiyev, the chairman of "Ramzan," said.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in August that women's rights were being violated by efforts to impose an Islamic dress code. It said women without headscarves or in immodest dress had been attacked with paintball guns in Grozny. [...]

Yet attacks by insurgents who say they are true representatives of Islam continue, even as Mr. Kadyrov introduces measures that he says are meant to preserve peace and the purity of Islam....

Footage on the Internet shows women in dresses with short sleeves and no headscarves being sprayed with paint from passing cars. Mr. Kadyrov told Chechen television in July that he approved of such action.

"Even if it was done with my permission, I wouldn't be ashamed," he said. "It turns out that the girls who were sprayed with paint had been warned several times previously. After such an incident, a girl should just disappear from the face of the earth, lock herself in the house and not go out because she behaved so inappropriately that such a thing happened to her."...

It's all her fault, doncha know.

Islamic "charities" supporting jihadists: funny how that keeps happening. And it does because there is not the traditional separation between combatant and charitable activities in zakat as there is in the Western tradition, where charitable groups are strictly non-combatant. Rather, Qur'an 9:60 makes no such distinction when discussing groups to whom zakat may be allotted, including those fighting "in the cause of Allah" (jihad fi sabil Allah).

An update on this story, and yet another report related to the "volatile Caucasus." One can't help but wonder which attack (or attacks) in our years archived stories about the region might have been the fruits of Sedaghaty's "charity."

"Founder of Islamic Charity Convicted," from Right Side News, September 11:

After a week-long trial, a federal court in Eugene, Oregon has convicted Pete Seda, the founder of an Islamic charity accused of funneling $150,000 to Chechen mujahideen.

Seda, also known as Pirouz Sedaghaty, was charged with conspiring to move money out of the United Sates without declaring it, as required by federal law, and with filing false tax returns to hide the fact that the money ever existed. According to federal officials, Seda accepted a large donation intended to support "our Muslim brothers in Chychnia," and then surreptitiously shifted the money to Saudi Arabia in the form of difficult to trace traveler's checks.

The lifeblood of terrorism is money--if we can stop the flow of money to violent extremist organizations, we'll be safer both here and abroad," U.S. Attorney Dwight C. Holton said in a statement. "By lying to the IRS about where this money went, the defendant sought to hide the true destination of this money." Holton continued, "The jury's verdict demonstrates once again the critical role--and effectiveness--of civilian criminal courts in the battle against terrorism."

During the trial, officials described how they lost track of the money when it was deposited in Saudi Arabia, but they suspected that it eventually made its way into the hands of Chechen rebels. Prosecutors had argued that Seda had a "dark side," one that was "insistent on helping the cause of the mujahideen covertly, secretly, and without leaving a paper trail."

Seda came under the scrutiny of U.S. law enforcement because of his leadership within the U.S. branch of al Haramain Islamic Foundation (AHF), an international organization that has been banned by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the United Nations for its support of international terrorist organizations. During the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Cardani told jurors that "al Haramain subscribed to a very violent form of Islam." He told the jury that the organization supported "violent jihad...aggressive, kill people jihad."

Knowing of the organization's role in the global terrorist support structure, Seda opened up the American branch of al Haramain in Ashland, Oregon. Despite attempts by the defense to paint Seda as a man dedicated to interfaith dialogue and peace building, the government presented witnesses who describe the "darker" side of the defendant.

Former congregants of AHF detailed how they would occasionally hear fiery prayers denouncing the United States and Muslim integration in the West. A former employee, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, explained that it was his job was to distribute moderate materials to non-Muslims, but to provide "true believers" with copies of the "Noble Quran," which contained an appendix entitled, "A Call to Jihad: Holy Fighting in Allah's Cause," extolling the righteousness of violent jihad. Gartenstein-Ross also testified how he had distributed Mohammad bin Jamil Zino's "Islamic Guidelines for Individual and Social Reform." In the book, Zino explains:

"Jihad is obligatory on every Muslim in two ways: by spending one's wealth or offering oneself for fighting in the cause of Allah."...

There is "no compulsion in religion" according to Qur'an 2:256. However, Islamic law abounds in subtle and not-so-subtle means of coercion (cf. Qur'an 9:29) to impose itself on non-Muslim or not-Muslim-enough societies. Hence, in practice, there is no compulsion in religion until the jihadist thugs are strong enough to make you an offer you can't refuse. And once Sharia's strictures are in place, there is not only compulsion in religion, but the power to imprison and kill to enforce it. Chechnya is rushing headlong in this direction.

"RPT-Women without headscarves targeted in Muslim Chechnya," by Amie Ferris-Rotman for Reuters, August 21:

GROZNY, Russia, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Many women in Russia's volatile Chechnya region said on Friday they had been harassed and some physically harmed by bands of men for not wearing headscarves during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Qur'an 4:34, in its letter and spirit, green-lights the idea of striking disobedient women.

Against the backdrop of a spreading Islamist insurgency, many fear that growing interest in radical Islam could fuel separatism in the volatile North Caucasus, where the Kremlin watches uneasily as sharia law eclipses Russian.

Residents and witnesses told Reuters that bearded men in traditional Islamic dress have been roaming the streets both on foot and in cars since Ramadan started on Aug. 11, demanding bare-headed women wear a headscarf.

"Two men came up to me, one furiously fingering a prayer bead, and said it wasn't pretty to have a bare head during Ramadan," 38-year old Markha Atabayeva told Reuters in the Chechen capital Grozny. "They instilled such fear in me".

Atabayeva was one of at least a dozen women who told of harassment or attacks. One of the women's assailants told Reuters "hundreds" of women had been warned.

Atabayeva said earlier she had seen a group of men with automatic rifles taunting women for not wearing headscarves.

A woman in her mid-30s said she was punched in the face by a man in Islamic dress after refusing to put on a headscarf he had given her.

The men's action follows a radical order earlier this week from Chechnya's spiritual leader to shut all cafes during the month of Ramadan, as well as paintball attacks on bareheaded women in June.

A number of other women described this week how men in cars threatened them with violence if they did not cover up. While some women carry headscarves in their bags, those without were encouraged to go home immediately.

The action targeting women highlights tension over efforts by Chechnya's firebrand Moscow-backed leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, to enforce Islamic rules that can violate Russia's constitution.

One of the assailants, who described himself as an "activist", told Reuters: "We are trying to warn women of their possible sins before God".

"We do this through force, fighting and battles," he said on condition of anonymity, adding that hundreds of Chechen women had been "warned" since the start of Ramadan.

Another assailant said they were working under orders from Chechnya's Centre for Spiritual-Moral Education, which Kadyrov set up 18 months ago.

Critics say that in return for keeping a shaky peace in Chechnya, site of two separatist wars with Moscow since the mid-1990s, Kadyrov is allowed to impose his vision of Islam.

Kadyrov's spokesman declined to comment on the action against women failing to wear headscarves. Alcohol is all but banned in Chechnya and women must wear headscarves in state buildings. Polygamy is encouraged by authorities.

Symbolically, trying to plunge the area into darkness is rather appropriate for the jihadists. "Two killed in hydro plant terrorist attack," from ABC.au and Reuters, July 21 (thanks to Dumbledoresarmy):

Russia says Muslim militants are behind a deadly attack on a hydro electric power plant in the volatile North Caucasus region.

Militant fighters attacked the power plant overnight with a grenade launcher, according to security services.

Two guards were killed in the assault and as many as four bombs exploded in the plant's generator area.

The attack took place in the republic of Kabardino-Balkria in the North Caucasus bordering Chechnya and Dagestan.

Authorities say the attackers may also be behind other strikes on security services in the area.

There are frequent attacks in Russia's North Causasus region and militants seeking an independent Islamic state often target police stations and state infrastructure.

Media quoted emergencies ministry workers as saying it took almost three hours to contain a fire that followed the blast.

Feel the love. "Russia's Muslim south triples sharia bride price," by Amie Ferris-Rotman for Reuters, July 7 (thanks to Twostellas):

The price tag on a bride in Russia's Ingushetia province has been tripled by the regional government, in a sign the Muslim North Caucasus region is slipping out of Kremlin control as sharia law eclipses Russian.

Against the backdrop of a bubbling Islamist insurgency, the revival of Islam in the North Caucasus following the break-up of the Soviet Union almost 20 years ago has brought sharia law to the region, revered by both rebels and ordinary citizens alike.

The issue of the 'kalym', a price paid by a groom to the family of the woman he chooses to marry, is the latest example of a broader trend that has troubled the Kremlin.

"The increase of the kalym was decided by the residents themselves," the Kremlin-backed leader of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

At an Ingush conference for Muslim scholars and elders this week, attended by Yevkurov, the money a groom must pay the bride's family for her hand was increased from 12,500 roubles (265 pounds) to 40,000 roubles (851 pounds), the local government said on official website.

"It is time to raise the rates, and with them the responsibility of the groom," a statement on the site said.

Wary of the dangers of separatism after two bloody wars with Chechnya since the mid-1990s, the Kremlin has watched uneasily as central power yields to Islamic tenets in the region.

Polygamy, illegal under Russian law, is encouraged by local authorities in the region. Last month rights workers blamed police for paintball attacks on Chechen women for not wearing headscarves, and Islamist fighters in Ingushetia have gunned down kiosk workers for selling vodka.

During their meeting, Putin looked concerned as he told Yevkurov that the price rise for a bride did not correspond to Russian inflation.

Putin added he was not sure if the practice, widespread in the Caucasus and Central Asia, was Muslim in its nature.

"We have yet to thoroughly examine this," he told Yevkurov....

The article does mention the "ideology of global jihad" -- we'll give them that -- but softens the assertion by saying the "youths" under its sway are "driven by poverty." The problem there is, of course, that the jihadist ideology does not depend on poverty, which is why we see so many well-off or even privileged jihadists who defy that stereotype -- the would-be Time Square jihadist, for one. For the eager jihadist, there is always an excuse or grievance on which to deflect responsibility.

"Blasts, shootings kill five in Russia's N.Caucasus," from Reuters, June 4:

Near the town of Malgobek in Ingushetia, a policeman was killed and 25 people injured when a second bomb exploded in a shop bombed earlier in the day, a police spokesman told Reuters.

Police at the scene told Reuters an insurgent was also killed in a gunfight that ensued between officers and militants.

In a separate incident, a woman selling vodka from a kiosk was shot dead in Malgobek by unidentified gunmen, sources close to the police said.

The mainly Muslim North Caucasus is plagued by violence. Youths, driven by poverty and the ideology of global jihad, stage attacks almost daily. Many want to carve out a separate sharia state where strict Islam is practiced.

Kiosk sellers have been targeted in the past for selling alcohol by Islamist militants wanting to enforce sharia law in Ingushetia....

The intrepid mujahedin, targeting commuters getting on trains. "Train station bomb kills one in Russia: officials," from Reuters, May 7:

(Reuters) - One woman was killed and five others injured when a bomb exploded on a train station platform in the southern Russian region of Dagestan Friday, local officials said.

A spokesman for the local transport police said the blast was caused by a bomb planted in a rubbish bin on the platform of a train station in the town of Derbent.

"The blast hit the platform as people boarded a commuter train," the spokesman said, adding that three police and three civilians were wounded by the blast.

One woman later died of her injuries, said a spokeswoman for Derbent hospital.

Russian police are on alert for possible attacks ahead of Sunday's celebrations of the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War Two.

Insurgents from neighboring Chechnya have in the past launched attacks on Victory Day, a holiday associated with the mass deportation of ethnic Chechens by Soviet leader Josef Stalin during the war.

Dagestan, Chechnya and neighboring Ingushetia are at the center of an Islamist insurgency aimed at establishing an independent Islamic state.

That last paragraph is a major improvement over the Associated Press' account (thanks to Dumbledoresarmy for noting this), which explains: "Regarded as Russia's most ethnically diverse republic, Dagestan lies between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea. In recent years, it has been roiled by almost daily violence sometimes blamed on interethnic struggle."

And nothing more. Just your standard, garden-variety roiling. Move along, now.

The State Department seems to think that, among the other attacks carried out by Doku Umarov's group, a massacre on the Moscow subway isn't jihadi enough for the jihadi club. This decision seems far more political than practical, though it is not clear what Foggy Bottom hopes to gain by looking the other way. "State Department to leave Chechen rebel group off terror list," by Josh Rogin for Foreign Policy, April 29:

The State Department's update of its annual list of official terrorist groups is imminent, but the group that just attacked Moscow won't be on the list.

The Caucasus Emirate, which has been waging a jihad against the Russian government, is led by Doku Umarov, who calls himself the "emir of the North Caucasus." He was previously President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, but dissolved that Republic and established the Emirate in its place in 2007 in order to impose sharia law in his territory.

Umarov declared all the way back in 2007 that his group was expanding its struggle to wage war against the United States, Great Britain, and Israel. Last month, he released a video claiming credit for the suicide attacks in Moscow in March that resulted in the deaths of 39 people.

But apparently, the State Department chose not to include Caucasus Emirate in the newest update to its list of foreign terrorist organizations, according to Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-FL, who is calling on the State Department to add the group for the sake of national security and U.S. -Russia relations.

"This is a low profile organization that has continued to carry out high profile acts of terrorism, including the twin bombings in Moscow recently," Hastings told The Cable in an exclusive interview, "They've got a jihad against Russia and the United States. If that ain't a terrorist organization, I don't know what is."

Hastings is introducing a new Congressional resolution Thursday detailing the crimes committed by Caucasus Emirate and urging the State Department to add them to the list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Hastings, who is a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), got involved in the issue after hearing about the group from scores of Russian lawmakers. He said listing the group would be an easy win for U.S.-Russian relations.

"President Obama has pressed the reset button, but too often we find ourselves not trying to do things with the Russians," said Hastings, "The State Department has the opportunity to amend the report to include this organization."

Some experts note that there is internal debate within the Chechen rebel community about whether the group's declarations of jihad against the West is really such a good idea.

"It seems that the Caucasian rebels themselves are frightened by their own 'war declaration' against the West," Andrei Smirnov wrote in an article for the Jamestown Foundation, "The absurdity of the rebels' declarations lies in the fact that they declare war against the West, and at the same time beg for aid in their anti-Russian struggle."

"Whatever the Caucasian rebels say, it is clear that they do not have much in common with the interests of the international Jihadi movement," Smirnov went on, "This movement has no smaller plans than the Jihadi movement worldwide, but it nonetheless limits itself to activities inside Russia's borders and has no ambitions to grow into an international problem."...

They are already a facet of a major "international problem,", and "regional" jihadist groups, united by the intention to impose Sharia law, have a funny way of forming broad alliances, and sharing resources and personnel -- see, for example, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and the former Salafist Group for Call and Combat in northern Africa.

Yet Putin continues to back Iran's "peaceful" nuclear program, despite the fact that the mullahs hold to essentially the same world view and political ideas as those of the Chechen jihadists. "At least four officers killed in Russia's Chechnya," from Reuters, April 19 (thanks to Maxwell):

MOSCOW, (Reuters) - Militants killed at least four members of the Russian security forces on Thursday and Friday in the North Caucasus, where the Kremlin is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency, Russian media reported....

Suicide attackers killed 40 people on the Moscow metro last month and turned the global spotlight on Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus, especially Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.

The Islamist militants say they want a sharia-based, pan-Caucasus state independent of Russia.

In those three regions, at least 862 people were killed last year in clashes, bombing and gun battles, according to the Internet news agency Caucasian Knot.

Despite efforts by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to eradicate what he has called a "cancerous tumour", critics say poverty, patronage from abroad and heavy-handed tactics by Russian forces encourage the insurgency.

Yes, of course. Poverty -- that's why there are so many Haitian suicide bombers. And the Russians may indeed be heavy-handed, but the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism would still exist even if they weren't.

Big surprise. Note that he says that these attacks were "revenge." Jihad attacks are always framed as revenge, because from the standpoint of Islamic law only defensive jihad is justified at this point -- also, to frame mass murder in this way helps take the sting out for sympathizers to the cause who may be stopped short by the barbarity of attacks like these. "Islamist group claims Moscow bombings," from World News Australia, April 1 (thanks to Twostellas):

A Chechen militant leader has claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings on Moscow's Metro that killed 39 and wounded scores of others.

In a video statement recorded on Monday, Dokka Abu Usman, the leader of the Islamist "Emirate of the Caucasus", said the motive for the deadly blasts was revenge.

Usman said the attack was to avenge "the massacre by Russian invaders of the poorest residents of Chechnya and Ingushetia, who were picking wild garlic in the Arshty village on February 11, 2010, to feed their families".

In the clip, published on Chechen Internet site The Kavkaz Centre, he warned of fresh strikes against Russia, saying the troops stabbed their victims to death and then "mocked" their corpses.

He warned Russians that the "war will come to your streets, and you will feel it with your own lives and skins."...

Stubbornly ignorant and unwilling to investigate the jihad doctrine, State Department officials led the U.S. into war to support jihadists in Bosnia and Kosovo. Now the same mistake is being repeated. "U.S. Supports Islamic Terror Against Russia," by Julia Gorin at Republican Riot, March 29 (thanks to Pamela):

We don't yet know the whole story behind the two female suicide bombers who killed 38 people in Moscow and injured scores of others. Although their affiliation is unclear, the working assumption is that the bombers were tied to the Chechen rebel movement in the North Caucasus.

There is, however, something which we do know for sure, and which we paid no attention to despite its clear connection to the kind of terror Moscow witnessed yesterday morning.

There was a little-noted meeting that took place in December 2009, in Tbilisi, the capital of U.S. ally Georgia. That month Georgia hosted a conference of jihadists to plan "operations" against Russia. There was no news coverage of the event, and so it took a paid advertisement in the Washington Times to make it known. Stubbornly, still no news organization or blog picked up on it. And so here we are.

Below are the relevant parts of the paid-for article from last month, titled "The Georgian Imbroglio -- And a Choice for the United States." (Original emphasis preserved.) It was penned by James George Jatras, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer as well as foreign policy analyst for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee.

Americans must be made aware of Saakashvili's extending refuge to jihadists responsible for countless acts of terror in southern Russia and his regime's extraordinary coordination efforts to permit them to step up attacks in the Caucasus region.

Specifically, according to reliable sources [with lines to two foreign intel services], in December 2009 a secret meeting took place in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, with representatives of numerous jihad groups based in various Islamic and European countries for the purpose of coordinating their activities on Russia's southern flank. The meeting was organized under the auspices of high officials of the Georgian government; while Saakashvili himself was not present, officials of his ministry of internal affairs (allegedly G. Lordkipanidze) and others acted as hosts and coordinators. Georgian Ambassador to Kuwait Mayering-Mikadze purportedly facilitated travel for participants from the Middle East. In addition to "military" operations (i.e., attacks in southern Russia) special attention was given to ideological warfare, for example, the launching of the Russian-language TV station "First Caucasian."

Are we to believe that U.S. intelligence agencies were unaware of this meeting and other similar actions? The question then is unavoidable: has Washington decided to turn a blind eye -- or even worse, to encourage our "ally" Saakashvili to play the "jihad card" against Russia? Could such a thing be possible at a time when the world's media are filled with reports of jihad attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Israel, Philippines, and other countries -- not least the United States (Fort Hood, Fort Dix)? The threat comes from the same ideology that motivated the 9/11 attacks against our country and which seeks to create through violence a worldwide Islamic caliphate governed by Sharia law....

There is much more. Be sure to read it all.

According to this story, one of the bombers in yesterday's attack in Moscow may also have been mentally retarded. Such gallant mujahedin, pressing the most vulnerable members of society into the business of mass murder. And it would not be the first time we have seen this tactic employed. "Russia hunts 21-strong 'Black Widow' cell as first images of suicide bombers are released," by Will Stewart for the Daily Mail, March 30:

The first images of the 'Black Widow' suicide bombers were released today as Vladimir Putin vowed to 'scrape out the attackers from the bottom of the sewers'.

As Russia held a day of mourning for the 39 people killed in the underground terror attack, the country's prime minister vowed vengeance on those who had helped mount the attack.

The police and security services now believe there are in a desperate race against time to find the gang with fears they could be plotting another outrage.

It was suggested today that some 21 more 'widows' are at large following reports that the women were part of a 30-strong band of suicide bombers trained at a Muslim school in Turkey. Nine have already perished in earlier attacks, Russian media said.

The dead women in Monday's attack are both believed to be aged between 18 and 25 and to have carried the explosives - packed with nails and metal fragments to maximise death and destruction - in shahid belts or handbags.

According to police who have viewed CCTV which has not yet been released, one was said to be mentally retarded.

A source close to the investigators said that the women suicide bombers travelled to Moscow early on Monday by coach from a unnamed Caucasus town, prompting the belief that the attack was by militants from volatile Chechnya.

The women were accompanied by a tall man with Caucasus appearance, dressed in dark blue coat with white marks. He had five days growth of beard. Both women were identified by the driver of the coach.

'One was dressed in black trousers, another in black skirt, black tights and spangled black shoes,' said the Kommersant newspaper. Their appearance indicated they were from the Caucasus region.

The newspaper said the women had been taught by an Islamic militant who had himself being killed last month in an operation by the FSB, which replaced the KGB. 'Around 30 of them were taught in Madrasah (Muslim school) in Turkey and then came back to perform their tasks,' said Kommersant.

'Nine of them have already blown themselves up, the others are being checked now.'...

Jihad in Moscow: an update on this story. "Double suicide bombings kill 37 on Moscow subway," by David Nowak for the Associated Press, March 29:

MOSCOW - Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up on Moscow's subway system as it was jam-packed with rush-hour passengers Monday, killing at least 37 people and wounding 102, officials said.

The head of Russia's main security agency said preliminary investigation places the blame on rebels from the restive Caucasus region that includes Chechnya, where separatists have fought Russian forces since the mid-1990s.

The first explosion took place just before 8 a.m. at the Lubyanka station in central Moscow. The station is underneath the building that houses the main offices of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the KGB's main successor agency.

A second explosion hit the Park Kultury station about 45 minutes later.

Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu said the toll was 37 killed and 102 injured, but he did not give a breakdown of casualties at each station, according to Russian news agencies.

"I heard a bang, turned my head and smoke was everywhere. People ran for the exits screaming," said 24-year-old Alexander Vakulov, who said he was on a train on the platform opposite the targeted train at Park Kultury.

"I saw a dead person for the first time in my life," said 19-year-old Valentin Popov, who had just arrived at the station from the opposite direction.

In a televised meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev, Federal Security Service head Alexander Bortnikov said body fragments of the two bombers pointed to a Caucasus connection. He did not elaborate.

"We will continue the fight against terrorism unswervingly and to the end," Medvedev said. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on an official trip to Siberia, was being kept informed of developments, news reports said.

The blasts practically paralyzed movement in the city center as emergency vehicles sped to the stations.

In the Park Kultury blast, the bomber was wearing a belt packed with plastic explosive and set it off as the train's doors opened, said Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia's top investigative body. The woman has not been identified, he told reporters.

A woman who sells newspapers outside the Lubyanka station, Ludmila Famokatova, said there appeared to be no panic, but that many of the people who streamed out were distraught.

"One man was weeping, crossing himself, saying 'thank God I survived'," she said.

The last confirmed terrorist attack in Moscow was in August 2004, when a suicide bomber blew herself up outside a city subway station, killing 10 people. Responsibility for that blast was claimed by Chechen rebels.

Russian police have killed several Islamic militant leaders in the North Caucasus recently, including one last week in the Kabardino-Balkariya region. The killing of Anzor Astemirov was mourned by contributors to two al-Qaida-affiliated Web sites.

The killings have raised fears of retaliatory strikes by the militants.

In February, Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov warned in an interview on a rebel-affiliated Website that "the zone of military operations will be extended to the territory of Russia ... the war is coming to their cities."

Umarov also claimed his fighters were responsible for the November bombing of the Nevsky Express passenger train that killed 26 people en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Umarov is also implicated in the assassination of a Russian Orthodox priest.

The Moscow subway system is one of the world's busiest, carrying around 7 million passengers on an average workday, and is a key element in running the sprawling and traffic-choked city.

A surprisingly forthright article in the Monitor about the presence of jihadists in Chechnya, which the mainstream media usually does not acknowledge. "20 insurgents killed as Jihadist attacks rise in Russia's Caucasus," by Fred Weir for the Christian Science Monitor, February 12 (thanks to Larry):

One of the biggest thorns in Russia's side since the Soviet Union's collapse has been Chechnya, one of seven republics along its southeastern flank known collectively as the north Caucasus.

After two wars, Moscow has largely tamed Chechnya's separatists with the help of strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, though not without cost. An estimated quarter million people have been killed, and the tiny republic has turned into a totalitarian statelet. Dissenters face kidnapping, torture, and extrajudicial execution, says Alexander Cherkassov of Memorial, Russia's largest independent human rights group.

"Now we are seeing the same methods being applied in Ingushetia and Dagestan," he says....

But there's one problem: While the Chechnya rebellion was nationalist, this threat has jihadist overtones.

"The Chechen rebels were originally fighting for independence, to break away from Russia and form their own nation," says investigative journalist Yulia Latynina. But now "the problem is jihadists; these people are fighting for God, not for freedom, and that is a whole different kind of challenge."...

That is a distinction that very few analysts have grasped.

Somehow, Moscow fails to see this trend as the direct threat to its sovereignty that it is. "Muslim revival brings polygamy, camels to Chechnya," by Amie Ferris-Rotman for Reuters, December 16:

GROZNY, Russia (Reuters) - Adam, 52, keeps his three wives in different towns to stop them squabbling, but the white-bearded Chechen adds he might soon take a fourth.

"Chechnya is Muslim, so this is our right as men. They (the wives) spend time together, but do not always see eye to eye," said the soft-spoken pensioner, who only gave his first name.

Hardline Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov is vying with insurgents for authority in a land ravaged by two secessionist wars with Moscow. Each side is claiming Islam as its flag of legitimacy, each reviles the other as criminal and blasphemous.

Wary of the dangers of separatism in a vast country, Moscow watches uneasily as central power yields to Islamic tenets. It must chose what it might see as the lesser of two evils.

It's really just limiting itself to a choice between a faster or slower version of the same thing.

Though polygamy is illegal in Russia, the southern Muslim region of Chechnya encourages the practice, arguing it is allowed by sharia law and the Koran, Islam's holiest book.

By Russian law, Adam is only married to his first wife of 28 years, Zoya, the plump, blue-eyed mother of his three children, with whom he shares a home on the outskirts of the regional capital Grozny.

His "marriages" to the other two -- squirreled away in villages nearby -- were carried out in elaborate celebrations and are recognized by Chechen authorities.

The head of Chechnya's Center for Spiritual-Moral Education, Vakha Khashkanov, set up by Kadyrov a year ago, said Islam should take priority over laws of the Russian constitution.

"If it is allowed in Islam, it is not up for discussion," he told Reuters near Europe's largest mosque, which glistens in central Grozny atop the grounds where the Communist party had its headquarters before the Soviet Union fell in 1991.

"As long as you can feed your wives, and there's equality amongst them, then polygamy is allowed in Chechnya," he added.

Islam is flourishing in Chechnya which, along with its neighbors Dagestan and Ingushetia, is combating an Islamist insurgency which aims to create a Muslim, sharia-based state separate from Russia across the North Caucasus. [...]

Animals are also being used to reintroduce Islam at Chechnya's round-the-clock Muslim television channel, where 60 young bearded men and headscarved women create children's programs in large studios adorned with photos of Mecca.

A bevy of bumble bees joyfully scream "Salam Alaikum" (Peace be with you) upon entering the studio of Ruslan Ismailov, who is making a full-length cartoon on hi-tech Apple computers for the channel, which is called "Put," meaning "The Way" in Russian.

"The bees appeal to children, and they will teach them how to live properly by the Muslim faith," Ismailov said.

Set up two years ago by the state and broadcast to thousands across the North Caucasus, instantly becoming one of the top channels in the region, it also features programs for women on how to keep home and reading of the Koran throughout the night.

"It's no secret what Chechnya has been through," said the channel's general director Adam Shakhidov, sporting a ginger beard and traditional black velvet cap.

"Two wars, the Soviet Union and today's Muslim extremism... it's time to show the true beauty of Sufism and install the basis for sharia," he said.

You guessed it, it was more Misunderstanders of Islam -- the "Caucasian Mujahadeen," which of course means they're from the Caucasus, not that they're white (although they are). If opposition to jihad is white supremacist, shouldn't the "Caucasian Mujahadeen" be just fine with anti-jihadists?

"North Caucasus group in Russia train bomb web claim," from the BBC, December 2 (thanks to Alan of England):

A North Caucasus Islamist group has claimed responsibility for a bomb that killed 26 people on a Moscow-to-St Petersburg train, a website says.

The website claim on Kavkazcenter.com said last Friday's attack was carried out by the "Caucasian Mujahadeen" on the orders of its leader, Doku Umarov.

He is described as one of Russia's most wanted rebels, but it was not possible to verify the claim's authenticity.

Moscow had earlier described the Nevsky Express attack as an act of terrorism.

Doku Umarov, a Chechen, is considered the leader of the Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus. He says he is fighting to expel Russian forces, and to turn the region into an Islamic emirate.

Wednesday's web statement said Friday's attack was an "act of sabotage", and part of a series of operations targeting strategic sites in Russia.

"Today, we carry out sabotage operations on electricity transmission lines, oil-and-gas-wires. Many of the operations are under preparation status.

"We intend to conduct such diversions in future, which are the just acts of vengeance... These diversions will continue for as long as the occupants in the Caucasus will not stop its policy of killing ordinary Muslims purely on religious grounds."...

The "rebels," of course, are Islamic jihadists -- holding to the same ideology and belief-system as the Iranians whom the Russians have been foolishly and short-sightedly aiding. "Murder on the Nevsky Express," by Matthew Campbell and Anna Voutsen in the Sunday Times, November 29:

The first sign of something wrong as the Nevsky Express raced through the night came when the train began to "tremble". Then the carriage gave a violent lurch to the left and Igor Pechnikov was hurled from his seat.

He was one of the lucky ones. At least 30 other passengers aboard the luxury express from Moscow to St Petersburg were killed and scores more injured when a bomb went off, derailing the last three carriages, including Pechnikov's, at 130mph.

"I flew through half of the carriage," he said yesterday after being led from the twisted wreckage.

Rescue workers searching the mangled debris for 18 people still unaccounted for escaped injury when a second bomb partially detonated nearby yesterday afternoon.

There was no claim of responsibility but suspicion immediately fell on rebels fighting Moscow's rule over the mountainous republic of Chechnya in the northern Caucasus region. They have carried out similar attacks....

Maybe ABC was playing the dhimmi. On the other hand, I think it's good for Americans to hear Basayev saying what he is saying. It counters a bit of the "Islam is peace" propaganda that continues to inundate us. From the BBC, :

Russia says it is outraged by an interview with Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev broadcast on America's ABC television network.

The Russian foreign ministry summoned a senior US diplomat in Moscow to express its "strong indignation" over the show....

The interview with Shamil Basayev - recorded at his hideout in Chechnya - was aired on ABC's Nightline programme on Thursday.
Many children were hurt in a gun battle as the Beslan siege ended....

In the interview, Mr Basayev - speaking through an interpreter - admitted that he was "a bad guy, a bandit".

"Ok, so I'm a terrorist, but what would you call them (the Russians)?

"If they are the keepers of constitutional order, if they are anti-terrorists then I spit on all these agreements and nice words," he said.

The warlord accused Russia of killing thousands of Chechen women, children and old people in what he described as "a colonial war".

When asked if Beslan-style attacks could happen again, he said: "Of course they can. As long as the genocide of the Chechen nation continues... anything can happen."

The warlord also refused to accept responsibility for the deaths of children killed in Beslan, blaming instead Russian authorities.