Death of bin Laden is a 'Dasayev moment'

Al Qaeda in Russia

http://rt.com/politics/press/rossijskaya-gazeta/al-qaeda-russia-bin-laden/en/print/

Russian special services have been targeting insurgent leaders in special operations for 15 years. 

Russia has suffered no less, if not more, than the US from the actions of Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. The average American learned about the terrorist organization after September 11, 2011, but this radical extremism had found its way into our country in the mid-1990s during the first Chechnya campaign, and peaked in the second. It was Al Qaeda that formed numerous battalions of Arab mercenaries to fight against “the infidels” in the North Caucasus. According to the Russian intelligence agencies, one of bin Laden’s first envoys was Abu Sayyaf, who personally conducted negotiations with the Chechen leadership in the 1990s. At the same time, another Al Qaeda representative, the notorious Khattab, after getting into Chechnya, immediately set up militant training camps. Meanwhile, the more dignified “Russian” militants headed for “training” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Incidentally, the latter are still active. According to intelligence agencies, Russian Wahhabi Vitaly Razdobudko and other triggermen of the North Caucasian underground studied demolition techniques in one of these camps in Pakistan.              

Relations with Al Qaeda were built not only at the level of “an exchange” of skills and militants. Meetings on the highest level were conducted. In 1997-1998, when the Taliban controlled practically the entire territory of Afghanistan, the main terrorist ideologists, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev and Movladi Udugov, visited the country. First, they met with Osama’s righthand-man and leader of the Taliban, Mullah Muhammad Omar. And a while later, in a suburb of Kandahar, they were able to meet with “the terrible and awful” bin Laden himself. In January 2000, after another meeting with Yandarbiyev, Mullah Omar made the decision that the Taliban recognizes the independence of Ichkeria and announced the establishment of diplomatic relations with Aslan Maskhadov’s government.    

According to the head of the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, Konstantin Kosachev, “we have reasons to believe that Osama bin Laden was involved in a number of terrorist attacks committed in our country.”

Bin-Laden’s destruction is a great political achievement by US President Barack Obama, but this event will have practically no effect on Al Qaeda’s management, says Russia’s permanent envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin. In his opinion, bin Laden has long distanced himself from hands-on management and played an exclusively symbolic role. Unfortunately, in the 10 years of the search for Osama bin Laden, he and his entourage were able to socialize a new generation of young predators. Thus, in death, bin Laden will continue being the symbol of the radical extremist ideology, just as he was in life, says Rogozin.     

As for the current activity of Al Qaeda emissaries in Russia, one should not assume that this activity has declined. 

Eventually, these “students” become heads of the so-called “Islamic jamiat.” Today, in a single constituent territory, which happens to be very distant from the North Caucasus, eight organizations have been identified as being engaged in active recruitment of youth, including in universities. The recruitment of female suicide bombers is expanding. Meanwhile, according to intelligence data, followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami and the Taliban movement, which have been banned in Russia, are trying to create new cells in several regions of the country. RG has been informed by the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC) press service that last week one of the criminals who was liquidated in Chechnya has been identified as Al Qaeda’s main emissary in the North Caucasus – a Saudi Arabia native going by the nom de guerre of Moganned. According to the NAC, Moganned resided in the North Caucasus beginning in 1999, when he arrived in the Republic of Chechnya to replenish Khattab’s group from the territory of the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia.     

After the neutralization of Khattab and his successors by Russian FSB officers in 2002, Moganned de facto became the principal guarantor and “coordinator” of the monetary flow from abroad for the activities of the terrorist underground.  

The NAC notes that Moganned, together with Doku Umarov, was the most well-known figure among the criminals, was regarded as an indisputable religious authority figure and an influential field commander. According to the information obtained earlier from militants, in recent years Moganned competed with Umarov for control over the criminal underground. Practically all of the terrorist attacks with suicide bombers which took place on Russian territory within recent years were organized with his direct involvement.    

According to the Russian FSB, Moganned was planning to organize a transfer of new armed gang members from Georgia to the North Caucasus in the spring-summer of 2011 and ensure, through his subordinate militia, full control over the movement of gang members in the North Caucasus. As was reported by the NAC, Moganned, together with Umarov, was on the most-wanted list of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies. In the fall of last year, due to continuous FSB and Russia’s Ministry of Interior’s search operations, he went into hiding and was found due to the well-coordinated efforts of the republican and federal law enforcement agencies and special services.     

It should be noted that targeted elimination of separatist leaders began in April 1996 with the destruction of Dzhokhar Dudayev. Then, while speaking on a satellite telephone, he was killed by a guided aircraft missile.    

The well-known Arab terrorist Khattab was liquidated in March 2002, as a result of a cunning operation by the Russian special services. Khattab was delivered a letter from his mother, and the paper was soaked in poison. 

In February 2004, in the Qatari capital of Doha, the SUV of one of the Chechen separatist leaders, Dzhokhar Dudayev’s associate and one of the apologists for radical extremism in North Caucasus – Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev – was blown up. Russia had spent three years asking, in vain, for his extradition from the Qatari authorities. Instead of extraditing him, the Qatari leadership gave Yandarbiyev political asylum – and that is considering the fact that in 2003, the UN Security Council Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee approved Russia’s proposal to include Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in the international list of terrorists. Immediately after the explosion, Moscow officially denied any involvement. Later, however, the Qatari court sentenced two Russians, Anatoly Belyashkov and Vasily Pokshev, to life in prison for the murder of the leader of Chechen separatists. Both of the convicts, who according to some sources were officers of the Main Intelligence Directorate, were handed over to Russia after the verdict was announced.          

In March 2005, in the Chechen village of Tolstoy-Yurt, another president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Ichkeria, Aslan Maskhadov, was killed. Special service officers surrounded him in one of his homes. For an hour, they tried to negotiate with Maskhadov, but he refused to surrender.    

In July 2006, as a result of a planned intelligence operation – during the purchase of a Kamaz truck loaded with weapons – perhaps the most notorious terrorist, Shamil Basayev, was killed.

It should be noted that very rarely have special service officers managed to take leaders of the criminal underground alive. 

They have never voluntarily turned themselves in – firing back to the bitter end or exploding themselves. One exception was the operation to capture and transfer to Moscow Salman Raduyev, an odious field commander and Dzhokhar Dudayev’s son-in-law. Last year, intelligence agencies were able to make significant headway by taking alive Ali Taziyev, also known as Magomed Yevloyev or Magas. According to the FSB, Magas had, together with Basayev, organized the attack on Nazran in 2004. Subsequently, it was discovered that he was involved in organizing the explosions on two buses in Stavropol, as well as in the kidnapping of the former Ingush President Murat Zyazikov’s relative. In 2009, the terrorist organized the explosion of the internal affairs building of Nazran, killing a large number of law enforcement officers. It was he who prepared the assassination attempt of Ingushetia’s current president, Yevkurov, who sustained serious injuries as a result. According to various reports, after Magas began to testify, supplying information on his accomplices and appearances, the criminal underground of Ingushetia suffered a severe blow – dozens of militants were destroyed and arrested.           

So far, the fate of the leader of the armed gang in the North Caucasus, Doku Umarov, who was also targeted in a special operation in late March, remains uncertain. 

Then, as a result of a surgical air force strike and a ground operation, the terrorist base in the Sunzha District of Ingushetia, a training ground for suicide bombers, was destroyed. Among the 19 bodies of the destroyed militants, some were recognized as being Umarov’s bodyguards and one as his personal doctor. The remains of the top terrorist himself, however, were not found. However, Doku Umarov, who was not only responsible for the command, but also for the criminal ideology and who actively promoted himself online at any given opportunity, has been idle for already more than a month.