In light of this past Friday’s Russian March, noted political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky examines the growing Russian nationalist movement and its origins in the Second Chechen War and ongoing conflicts in the North Caucasus.

The Russian March to Nothingness
By Andrei Piontkovsky
November 3, 2011
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

In a country where the political regime is made up of a longtime diarchy of bandits, Putin and Kadyrov, the popular slogan “Stop Feeding the Caucasus” cannot be seen as something nationalistic or patriotic. Regardless of all its apparent radicalism, it is a deeply ingratiating, slavish, plebeian exhortation.

It means “we want to feed all of our own crooks and thieves: Putin and Abramovich, Sechin and Chemezov, Medvedev and Fridman, Deripaska and Timchenko, the Rotenburg brothers and the Kovalchuk brothers.

It means “we want to return Kadyrov’s criminal offshore accounts here to Putin’s domestic “lawful” arena, even if it requires an third, even bloodier, Chechen war.”

“We want an empire, but without black-assed people” – this is the fatal contradiction of the Russian national consciousness, decisively entangled in its own complexes.

Russians do indeed feel humiliated, offended, and robbed within their own country. As do Russian citizens of other nationalities.

Kadyrov’s palaces, motorcades and parties with Western and Russian superstar-prostitutes of both genders that cost millions in budget money are just as disgusting as the even more extravagant bells and whistles of Mr. Botox. But they have the same attitude towards the “feeding” of the overwhelming majority of North Caucasians as Abramovich’s yachts have towards ocean cruises for participants of the Russian March.

Russian laws definitely don’t operate in Chechnya. But does anybody really still believe that they operate in Russia?

The problem of the North Caucasus is much deeper and more catastrophic than the ratio of the amount of budget transfers to different regions.

What’s going on in the North Caucasus is increasingly surpassing the bounds of a serious regional conflict and is turning into a central existential problem for the Russian Federation. All of the mistakes, failures, and crimes of Russia’s post-communist government in the realms of security, economics, national policy, and federative organization have become entwined in the Caucasus.

Why did we fight two wars in Chechnya? For Russia’s territorial integrity. But territorial integrity does not imply scorched, unpopulated earth. We fought to prove to the Chechens that they are citizens of Russia. But we simultaneously destroyed their towns and villages with planes and salvo rocket systems (and the “Grad” system in open fields, with Putin and Stalingrad behind us) and kidnapped innocent people whose corpses were later found bearing signs of torture.

We have constantly proved to the Chechens the very opposite of what we proclaimed – we proved to them with all of our behavior that they are not citizens of Russia and that we have not considered them to be citizens of Russia for a long time already – but their towns and villages are Russian. And we proved this convincingly not only to the Chechens, but to everyone in the Caucasus. They were good at memorizing the visual lessons we taught them.

And this is the fundamental, tragic absurdity of the war that determined its inevitable result.

We lost the war against the Chechen separatists. One of the most brutal field commanders, Ramzan Kadyrov, won. He has such a degree of independence from the Kremlin that even the Soviet officers Dudayev and Maskhadov would never even dream of.

Having had to choose between the very bad and the monstrous as a result of his pre-election policies, Putin, I have to give him credit, chose the very bad. Admitting his defeat, he gave all the power in Chechnya to Kadyrov and his army and paid him compensation. In response, Kadyrov formally declared not so much loyalty to the Kremlin as his own personal union with Putin. The monstrous choice would have been to continue the war to the point of total destruction – in the spirit of Shamanov and Budanov.

Ms. Latynina, with her poetic nostalgia for the romantic times of the Circassian genocide, clearly sees this choice as a shameful rejection of the white man’s burden and a cowardly capitulation before the liberal-leftist dictatorship of multiculturalism. Oh, how wonderfully those shining Russian aristocrat officers butchered the natives back then, and even wrote in their journals – the Yezhednevny Zhurnals of the time – such intoxicating lines: “I f… and cry!”

War on Chechen separatism in the North Caucasus has been replaced by a different war, one generated by the first – the war on Islamic fundamentalism.

Over that time , Islamic terrorism has crept over the entire North Caucasus, where its number of followers has grown and the structures of its Jamaats have strengthened. And just like during the Chechen wars, we are increasing the number of Islamists with our policies. Take, for example, the rhetoric of our (at least for the time being) supreme commander, who is apparently experiencing a certain syndrome of a lack of brutality compared to Uncle Volodya. The entirety of his reaction to the terrorist attacks on Russian territory consists of uninterrupted calls to “utterly destroy” and punish everyone, even “those who do laundry and cook soup for the terrorists.”

Knowing the moral integrity of the counter-terrorism soldiers from Khanty-Mansiysk, sent off to the Caucasus as if on a temporary work assignment, Mr. Badminton, or at least his groomers, can’t be unaware that the only result of these calls is going to be a marked rise in the number of extrajudicial murders of people who are in no way involved with militants and reprisals against relatives of suspected terrorists. And this, in turn, increases the number suicide bombers and leads to new terrorist attacks on Russian territory.

This is the twelfth year we’ve been fighting this war without understanding the scale of ongoing tragedy – the entire country is sliding into a civil conflict between nationalities – which the government’s policies are entirely responsible for creating, having long burned this wick from both ends.

In the Caucasus, having unleashed and lost the war, the Kremlin is paying compensation in exchange for a sham submissiveness not only to Kadyrov, but to criminal elites in all other republics. This is used to purchase palaces and the golden pistols that dangle off the rumps of local leaders. But the young, unemployed residents who have lost touch with their communities take off to join in Allah’s wars or are squeezed out of the Caucasus onto the streets of Russian cities.

But that is where a generation of children whose parents have utterly and forever lost out because of the failed economic reforms of the past twenty years has already grown up.

Televised cultural rulers and other masterminds have explained to them that all of their problems have been caused by “uncles in pith helmets” and “non-indigenous criminal gangs” who want to break them apart. Gangs of teenagers from working-class backgrounds who have been deprived of their future have a hard time getting to “uncles in pith helmets” or the heavenly residents of Rublevka, and so they unleash their accumulated fury by beating to death “persons of a non-indigenous skin color.”

And today the two armies of desperados, deceived and robbed by, as it were, the exact same people, have been thrown at one another.

Mentally, there is a growing gap between Russian and Caucasian youths, who have grown up in the midst of a brutal war, first Chechen, and then Caucasian in general.

Young Muscovites march around the city with cries of “f… the Caucasus! F…!” and the young mountain youths walk around the streets of Russian cities in a demonstrably defiant and aggressive fashion. They have developed the psychology of the victors. In their minds, Moscow has lost the Caucasian war.

In mind and in spirit, the Caucasus and Russia are vastly separate entities. Although neither the Kremlin nor the North Caucasian “elites” are prepared to make a formal separation.

The Kremlin is still living with its phantom imperial illusions of wide zones of privileged interests that lie far beyond Russia’s borders, and local leaders, starting with Kadyrov, don’t want to turn down the transfers from Russia’s budget.

The Islamists don’t want to separate, either. They have dreams of a caliphate that includes quite a large part of the Russian Federation.

A situation so humiliating for Russia cannot go on forever.

But there is no easy way out. In today’s political system, with this government, there is no way out in general.

An attempt to put an end to Putin’s “Kadyrov project” by force, as is openly advocated by the professional Russian – poor Zhirinovsky – and therefore by default the majority of demagogues in the Russian March, would mean a full-scale third Chechen war that would become a military, political, and moral catastrophe for Russia. Even those who hate Kadyrov and the Chechens who suffer because of him, and moreover his personal army, would never agree to submissively return to the times of the total tyranny of the federations. To make the same mistakes three times in a row would be total lunacy. Even Putin, the most obstinate about the Chechen issue, understands that.

But that wouldn’t stop the “party of blood,” which hasn’t managed to come to terms with the loss of Chechnya as a zone to feed off of and, perhaps more importantly, as a zone to exercise its drunken power over the lives and deaths of any of its inhabitants. The Kadyrov project has stripped many federal siloviki of these two basic pleasures, having made them exclusive to Kadyrov, and they are genuinely hateful because of this.

They say the price of their support is possible allies in the clannish, inter-Kremlin dismantlement – Kadyrov.

The siloviki who have an infernal desire to work again in Chechnya, of course, are mentally closer to Putin and his gang than to anyone else. But they understand perfectly well that Putin will never purge Kadyrov.

Putting an end to the Kadyrov project would be an official admission of Russia’s defeat in the second Chechen war and the proclamation of a third. This would be a return to 1999 from a much worse starting point. It would mean the total political delegitimization of Putin as “the savior of the fatherland in 1999.”

Our best political publicists have equally convincingly and passionately explained to us that our children were burned in Beslan and the hostages suffocated in Nord-Ost for the sake of the greatness of Russia and the triumph of her geopolitical interests. And where now is this greatness or this triumph?

Putin will definitely become one of the first political victims of the third Chechen war. During all twelve years of his rule I have said repeatedly that the Putin regime is not compatible with the life of the country. But God forbid we escape from Putin at such a price. Moreover that it wouldn’t let us escape from Putinism and its roots.

In 1999, the most notorious Kremlin blackguards (their names are well-known) who lead Operation “Heir” entered into an alliance with siloviki who were thirsty for revenge and, after Basayev’s campaign to Dagestan and the apartment bombings in Moscow, Volgodonsk and the failed one in Ryazan, unleashed the second Chechen war in order to bring their own, as they thought at the time, obedient marionette to power. It is they who are they real murderers of Kungayeva, Budanov and the other tens of thousands of people, Chechen and Russian, who fell during their small triumphant war.

Russia’s official investigation of the murder of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova is being carried out in a dishonest fashion, according to Presidential Council on the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights member Svetlana Gannushkina, RIA Novosti reports.

Gannushkina said that Russian law enforcement agencies are no longer considering the possibility that federal security forces had a hand in Estemirova’s killing.

“We have the feeling that investigators have stopped [investigating] the version that was originally being looked into, about the connection between high-ranking law enforcement representatives and the Chechen government and the murder, and the connection with Natasha’s professional work – that she exposed [Abusubyan] Albekov’s public [and extrajudicial – ed.] execution,” she explained.

The human rights activist noted that the version currently being considered to be the most likely scenario – that Chechen militant Alkhazur Bashaev is responsible for the murder – “doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny.”

In addition, Gannushkina noted that an entire year has passed since Estemirova’s murder case has been last investigated.

Human rights advocates have long criticized the investigation of Estemirova’s murder in July 2009. Russia’s federal Investigative Committee has refuted their claims. On July 6, the activist’s colleagues presented Russian President Dmitri Medvedev with a report criticizing the investigation, and on July 14 promised to make the document public.

Natalya Estemirova, a member of the Chechen branch of the Memorial human rights center and expert counsel on Chechnya to Russia’s human rights ombudsmen, was kidnapped on the morning of July 15 near her home in Grozny. Her body, riddled with gunshot wounds to the chest and head, was discovered later that same day in an Ingush forest.

Colleagues and friends of the activist blame the Chechen government and President Ramzan Kadyrov personally for her death.

In 2009, Kadyrov sued Memorial head Oleg Orlov for slander in a civil case after the latter claimed the president was responsible for the killing. The court found him guilty in October 2009. However, a criminal case on the same charges filed by Kadyrov in July 2010 was turned down by a court just last month.

President Kadyrov’s debut as an official predator of press freedom comes as no surprise following last year’s surge in violence against journalists in the North Caucasus. The report cites 5 journalists killed in that region in 2009 alone, and 22 since 2000:

Often referred to as “Putin’s guard dog,” Ramzan Kadyrov shares the Russian prime minister’s taste for crude language and strong action. President and undisputed chief of this Russian republic in the North Caucasus since April 2007, he has restored a semblance of calm after the devastation of two wars. A high price has been paid for this superficial stability, the introduction of a lawless regime. Anyone questioning the policies of this “Hero of Russia” (an award he received from Putin in 2004) is exposed to deadly reprisals. Two fierce critics of the handling of the “Chechen issue,” reporter Anna Politkovskaya and human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, were both gunned down – Politkovskaya in Moscow in October 2006 and Estemirova in Chechnya in July 2009. When human rights activists blamed him for their deaths, Kadyrov was dismissive: “That’s bullshit, that’s just gossip,” he said.

The report blames the Kremlin for buying Kadyrov’s loyalty and for using government-run media outlets to create the veneer of a legitimate press. The analysts were equally scathing of the prime minister himself:

“Control” is the key word for this former KGB officer: control of the state, control of the economic and political forces, control of geopolitical strategic interests and control of the media. The national TV stations now speak with a single voice. …The Nashi (Ours), a young patriotic guard created by the Kremlin in 2005 at the behest of Putin and others who lament Russia’s imperial decline, sues newspapers critical of the Soviet past or the current government when it is not staging actual manhunts. As well as manipulating groups and institutions, Putin has promoted a climate of pumped-up national pride that encourages the persecution of dissidents and freethinkers and fosters a level of impunity that is steadily undermining the rule of law.

Putin and Kadyrov found themselves among fifteen other presidents and prime ministers condemned as predators of press freedom, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. All over the world, says the organization, 9 journalists have been killed since the beginning of 2010, and another 300 are sitting behind bars. In Russia alone, the Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that 19 journalists have been murdered as a direct result of their work since 2000. A murder conviction has only been handed down in one of those cases.

The United Civil Front, a Russian pro-democracy social movement lead by Garry Kasparov, has issued a statement in response to Monday’s bombings on the Moscow metro. The attacks were the worst the city has seen in six years, leaving at least 39 dead and wounding more than 100. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin quickly promised “to destroy the terrorists,” and reports surfaced late Wednesday that Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov has taken responsibility for the attacks.

The government has come under criticism from an uncharacteristically wide range of sources for failing to live up to its promises to protect its citizens. Rights activists and oppositionists fear that the government will use the attacks as an excuse to impose further infringements on civil liberties, as has been the pattern over the past ten years.

Don’t Believe Putin
March 31, 2010

Compatriots!

The issue of citizen safety has once again become as sharp as ever before. However, the safety of Russia’s citizens has not depended on the citizens themselves for already the past ten years. The political regime established in Russia does not allow Russian citizens to influence the government through lawful means – with elections for local and federal authorities. As a result of the destruction of democratic freedoms, those very institutions of power have been destroyed, including the independent courts and the police.

The tragic events that occurred in Moscow on March 29, 2010, could be appropriated by the current government for an even larger infringement of the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation. The apartment bombings in Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk in the fall of 1999 triggered the beginning of a second military campaign in Chechnya and immediately provided Vladimir Putin with the necessary ratings for victory in the 2000 presidential elections. As a result of the terrorist attacks in the Dubrovka Theater in October 2002 and in Beslan in September 2004, elections for governors and regional leaders in Russia were abolished.

And today, after the events of March 29 in Moscow, it is obvious that these measures did not increase the safety of Russia’s citizens in the least. Regardless of the loud proclamations sounded over the course of the ten years of Vladimir Putin’s rule, neither he nor his team has succeeded in coping with terrorism on the territory of the Russian Federation. All of the pathos-laden talk about the necessity to reform the security agencies rings as hollow as ever before.

Instead of providing safety to the residents of Moscow and other Russian cities, the security forces have spent these years breaking up peaceful demonstrations of discontent where the government’s actions, including the failed federal policies in the Caucasus, are criticized.

Therefore, we call upon our compatriots not to succumb to the provocations organized by the Russian intelligence agencies, and not to forget the main cause of the troubles that have befallen our country. Any announcements by the government about the tightening of any kind of regulations on public order or attempts by Kremlin-controlled media outlets to distract citizens from the essence of the problem should be taken as the Putin regime’s routine bloody publicity spin. But all of this already happened at the beginning of the last decade. Now the time has come for society to fight against terrorism and the political extremism of the government.

Translation by theOtherRussia.org.

In a statement on Thursday to the Russian news agencies Interfax and RIA Novosti, law enforcement sources said that the murder had been solved and a killer had been identified. The killer has not, however, been detained, and a search is currently underway. Investigators, the sources said, are also still working to establish the identity of the person who ordered the murder.

Oleg Orlov of the Memorial human rights center, where Estemirova had worked, has already refuted the announcement. Speaking to Gazeta.ru, Orlov said that his colleagues at Memorial have spoken with representatives of the groups investigating Estemirova’s murder, and that these representatives denied that the announcement was true. “They said that they haven’t established the name of the murderer,” said Orlov.

While Gazeta.ru was able to obtain an unofficial confirmation from sources in the Chechen Investigative Committee that the culprit has been identified, all official sources proved to be unreachable on Thursday. The Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General of Russia refrained from commenting, and the official representative of the Chechen Investigative Committee was out of the office and did not answer her cell phone throughout the course of the day. The newspaper was also unable to reach the press secretary of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who had promised to monitor the course of the murder investigation.

The 50-year-old Estemirova had been the lead member of Memorial’s office in the Chechen capital of Grozny, and had worked to investigate kidnappings and murders of people in Chechnya. She was kidnapped herself not far from her home in the capital on June 15 of last year, and was later found shot dead in the Nazranovsky district of Ingushetia.

Memorial, which soon after announced that it was shutting down operations in Chechnya, blamed Estemirova’s murder on President Kadyrov, claiming that the volatile situation in the republic was the president’s responsibility. Kadyrov successfully sued Orlov for slander, and a Moscow city court fined Orlov 70 thousand rubles (about $2300). In the beginning of February, after experiencing pressure from public officials and a particularly public dressing-down from his mother for failing to respect his elders, Kadyrov dropped all further suits against other human rights activists, including the prominent 82-year-old Lyudmila Alexeyeva.

The news of Estemirova’s murder had a powerful resonation throughout the world. In particular, United States President Barack Obama issued a statement calling on the Russian authorities to investigate the murder and punish those responsible. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said that he did not believe that Kadyrov had participated in the tragedy, and considered the murder to be an act of provocation against the government.

Kadyrov, however, gave several interviews after the murder in which he spoke out harshly against the slain activist. Defending himself on Radio Liberty and saying that he took no part in the killing, the Chechen president said that he “had no reason to kill a woman who nobody needed.” Referring to her place on a public council under the Grozny city administration, he added that “she has never had any honor, dignity, or a conscience, and all the same I named her as a council representative.” He also did admit that he had later dissolved the council.

When asked if he thought the murder would ever be solved, Orlov stated that the politics tied up in the Estemirova’s case made it hard to say. “In naming this or that person as having participated in the murder, or in naming the person who possibly ordered the murder, the investigators and prosecutors are invariably stepping into a type of political realm,” he told the Kasparov.ru online newspaper.

Memorial member Aleksandr Cherkasov noted the 2002 murder investigation of an outspoken Chechen village leader, Malika Umazheva, as a cautionary tale. An official investigation blamed the killing on militants who it turned out had long been dead, and also on people who had only issued confessions under torture. Memorial’s own investigation established that Umazheva had been murdered by federal security forces, likely in retaliation for the leader’s fervent criticism of the ongoing Russian federal raids in her village.

In a statement on Tuesday, Director Holly Cartner of Human Rights Watch in Europe and Central Asia said that the baseless detention of lawyers Dmitri Egoshin, Roman Veretennikov and Vadislav Sadykov of the Joint Mobile Group of Russian Non-Governmental Organizations should be properly investigated by the Russian authorities.

The three lawyers were detained without charge by regional Chechen security forces on February 7. After being illegally held for 15 hours, they were released on February 8 with no explanation of the basis for their detention. Security officials destroyed tape recordings confiscated from the rights advocates, who fear that their offices may also have been raided.

Cartner stressed the importance of bringing the offending officers to responsibility and of assuring safe working conditions for human rights advocates in Chechnya and the other volatile republics in Russia’s North Caucasus.

Referring to a January 23 statement by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Cartner said that “this arbitrary detention clearly demonstrates that the Chechen law enforcement agencies continue harassing human rights defenders despite Prime Minister Putin’s recent call for a healthy working environment for human rights groups.”

The rights organizations Amnesty International, Civil Rights Defenders and Front Line also issued statements condemning the incident.

The three detained lawyers meanwhile plan to file charges against the security officers in court.

The incident is a disturbing reminder of last year’s increase in violent persecution of human rights workers in the North Caucasus. Natalia Estemirova of the Memorial human rights organization was kidnapped and murdered in Chechnya in July, leading the organization to close its operations in the area. One month later, charity workers Zarema Sadulaeva and Umar Dzhabrailov were found dead in their car in the Chechen capital of Grozny. Domestic and international human rights groups have continually blamed the Russian authorities for allowing continued violence to endanger activists and reporters in the volatile area.

According to the report, Isa Yamadayev says in the letter that his life is in danger, and he asks for personal support from the president. “One after another my brothers are killed. In 2003 militants killed Yamadayev Dzhabrail. In 2008 in Moscow they killed Ruslan Yamadayev; in the United Arab Emirates my brother Sulim Yamadayev was shot. Now the hunt is open for me,” he says.

Yamadayev refers in the letter to common speculation in the press that the Kremlin has given carte blanche to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, and therefore closes its eyes to the murders of political opponents in the region.

“Is it really so that now, without analysis, all opponents of Kadyrov are declared enemies of Russia and can be killed? Human rights advocate Natalya Estemirova of Memorial, killed in 2009, Movladi Atlangeriyev, kidnapped in Moscow in 2007, and then killed in Chechnya, the president of Konvers-Group Aleksandr Antonov and his anonymous guard, killed in Moscow in 2009. They are what, also enemies of Russia?” the letter asks.

Yamadayev says that he sees only one answer to this question: That President Medvedev is not informed of the true state of affairs concerning the investigation of these crimes.

At the end of his letter, Yamadayev expresses certainty that he will also be killed, and asks Medvedev “to stop this mad conveyer of death.”

The Yamadayev brothers were former allies of the Kadyrov family in Chechnya, but their relationship took a turn for the worse after the death of former President Akhmad Kadyrov in 2004. Relations between the clans spoiled altogether after a crash between the Kadyrov motorcade and a convoy driven by Badrudi Yamadayev.

Several months after the crash, Ruslan Yamadayev was shot and killed in Moscow. In March 2009, unknown persons shot Sulim Yamadayev; one of the suspects had close ties to President Ramzan Kadyrov. The Times newspaper in London cites Sulim’s killing as the sixth violent murder of Kadyrov opponent in a row. Isa Yamadayev had stated in May that he believed his life to be in danger.

The Kremlin-backed Kadyrov regime in Chechnya has recently come under fire for murdering members of opposition forces, a charge that both the Kadyrovs and the Kremlin deny. Nevertheless, the murdered Yamadayev brothers are among a number of other recently targeted opponents. Former Kadyrov bodyguard Umar Israilov was assassinated in Vienna after becoming a critic of the regime. Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, the president of a breakaway Chechen republic, was killed in exile by Russian military intelligence in 2004.

—

Stop the Terror!
August 11, 2009

Statement by the Moscow Helsinki Group

Reports about the death of our colleagues are becoming a tragic routine. Today, we found out about the murder of Zarema Sadulaeva and her husband Umar Dzhabrailov, activists from “Save the Generation” non-governmental organization, who were kidnapped in Grozny the day before. They dedicated themselves to helping victims of an unreported war, including handicapped children injured by land mines. This murder became the latest proof of the authorities’ inability to provide elementary security for its citizens and yet another reminder of how high the cost of fighting for justice can be.

We classify what has happened as an extrajudicial execution.

We demand an end to the terror unleashed against civic activists and peaceful citizens in the North Caucasus. The circumstances surrounding cases of kidnapping and murder, which have become more frequent in recent times, provide a basis to say that federal and regional authorities exhibit a criminal inaction.

We call on authorities to make an effort to end terror; to track down and punish criminals.

On our part, we pledge that we will not stop the battle for dignity and human rights in any part of the country, including the North Caucasus.

Sooner of later, those who murder civic activists and their patrons will face a just and lawful retribution.

We will do everything possible for this.

August 11, 2009

Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group

Andrei Naletov, Committee for Anti-war Actions

translation by theotherrussia.org

“This step will continue to lead Chechnya out from Russia’s legal framework,” journalist and researcher Vladimir Voronin told the Kasparov.ru online newspaper.  Voronin said the order was at once a populist measure, and a step that will allow Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov to maintain a large deal of freedom and independence from the federal center for Chechnya.

The counter-terrorism operation in Chechnya was initiated in September 1999, after a series of apartment bombings left hundreds dead in Moscow.  The Kremlin linked the bombings to Chechen terrorist groups.  Military operations had started earlier, in the summer of 1999, after a group of Chechen insurgents invaded the neighboring Republic of Dagestan.  Active combat continued until 2000, when a largely defeated insurgency turned to low-scale bombings and clashes.

In recent years, Ramzan Kadyrov has consolidated power in the Republic, using strict military control and a wash of federal money to help rebuild Chechnya.  Rights activists have alleged that Kadyrov’s regime has worked outside the law, using tactics including torture and kidnapping against perceived enemies.

Grigory S. Shvedov, the editor of the Web-based news service Caucasian Knot, told the New York Times that the on-the-ground situation in Chechnya remained tense.

“The number of bombings, terrorist attacks and murders as in the past remains high; they occur every week,” Shvedov said. “It is a fairytale that Chechnya has become a stable region.”

Yamadayev was a former Chechen rebel and warlord who switched over to the Russian side and went on to lead the “Vostok” (East) special military battalion.  He was widely believed to be a leading opponent of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who has consolidated power in the beleaguered North Caucasus republic in recent years.

According to Dubai police, Yamadayev was shot from behind in the underground parking area of a luxury residential building where he was staying, dying instantly.

Major General Dahi Khalfan Tamim told Reuters that, “the case is clear and there is no confusion over what happened. An organized criminal group was behind the assassination.”

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has fought two wars against separatists in Chechnya, a primarily Muslim region.  Many former rebel leaders, including Kadyrov and Yamadayev, eventually joined the Russian army, going on to become top leaders and decorated officers.  Although authorities have severely cracked down on militants, a low-level insurgency continues in the area, particularly in the neighboring Republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan.

Yamadayev was one of a group of powerful brothers who made up the Yamadayev clan.  As Kadyrov pushed out opponents in Chechnya, the clan clashed with the president in a power struggle waged in the courts and the streets.  In April 2008, some of Yamadayev’s forces were involved in a shootout with Kadyrov’s men after a road collision, which by some estimates left 18 people dead.  After the incident, Kadyrov publicly accused Sulim Yamadayev in a series of crimes, calling for his arrest and prosecution.

In May 2008, Yamadayev was relieved as commander of the Vostok battalion.  Three criminal cases were also launched against the former warlord.

On September 24th 2008, one of Sulim’s brothers, former State Duma deputy Ruslan Yamadayev, was shot to death in Moscow.  At the time, the Kommersant newspaper reported that Sulim Yamadayev was trying to go underground, switching apartments repeatedly and surrounding himself with bodyguards.  No suspects have been apprehended in the shooting.

Yamadayev is the sixth Chechen who opposed Kadyrov to be murdered outside the republic in recent months.  Three more Chechen exiles have been shot to death in Istanbul, Turkey since September.  Another, Umar Israilov, had accused Kadyrov of torture before he was publicly assassinated in Austria in January.

Kadyrov has strongly denied involvement in any of the murders, describing them as an attempt to destabilize Chechnya and discredit him.  He called Sulim Yamadayev’s death “tragic.”