A new terror-war front: the Caucasus

Chechen warlords, including the Arab-born al-Khattab, began to integrate their private armies with the global Islamic terror network, according to the FSB. In the summer of 1999 forces under al-Khattab and another leader, Shamil Basayev, invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan. That same year a wave of terror bombings killed 300 Russians, and in October 1999 Russia again invaded Chechnya. The FSB asserts that the 1999 bombings were the work of the same people who plotted the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US - though this has not been proven.

Though Chechnya is now almost entirely occupied, the war continues to kill about a dozen Russian soldiers weekly, and nearly a quarter of a million Chechen civilians remain refugees in neighboring areas - including the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia. The FSB says that there are 2,000 armed men in the gorge, most of them probably Chechens.

While Western governments still criticize Moscow for alleged human rights violations in the 28-month-old war with Chechnya, emphasis since Sept. 11 has been on cooperation with Russia in the global antiterror campaign.

Among items Ignatchenko is willing to share with journalists is a tape recording of recently intercepted satellite phone conversations - in Arabic - between al-Khattab and Chechen rebel operatives working in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. A Russian-language transcript provided by the FSB shows al-Khattab concerned with moving funds from unidentified sources into Chechnya, acquiring better radio equipment for his forces, and evacuating wounded fighters for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. The transcript also reveals al-Khattab's fears about using his satellite phone - an understandable concern, given Mr. Dudayev's fate.

The FSB also asserts that "hundreds" of battle-hardened Chechens served with Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, as instructors in the terror training camps and as fighters. "Chechens were in great demand because they are some of the best experts in mine warfare," says Ignatchenko.

Though Washington has so far refused to identify by nationality the 254 Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners captured by US forces in Afghanistan and now held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Ignatchenko says they include "several" Chechens. Some, he says, have discarded their Russian passports and are masquerading as Afghans.

US-Russian cooperation since Sept. 11 could become strained, however, over Moscow's claims of a Chechen-terrorist domino effect in Georgia.

Russian military chief of staff Anatoly Kvashnin, said last week that "Russia and Georgia should destroy this terrorist center in the Pankisi Gorge together." FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev went to Georgia last week for talks.

But Georgia, a country whose independence is precarious beside its powerful Russian neighbor, fears any Moscow-led military operation on its territory. Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze has asked Washington to step up American security assistance to his country. In his statements to the Georgian newspaper, Remler indicated that the US may provide such aid and help creation of an antiterrorism force within the Georgian Defense Ministry.

The idea of increased US influence in Georgia has already brought a flurry of angry denunciations from Russian officials.

"Chechnya is at the heart of a very complex geopolitical knot," says Sergei Arutyunov, a Caucasus specialist at the Institute of Ethnology in Moscow. "The presence of outside terrorists is one of the complications, but it does not justify foolish simplifications," he says. "There must be negotiations and a political process in Chechnya before the terrorists can be isolated and removed. And this cannot happen as long as the Kremlin believes that more military operations are the only way."

Last week Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said of the Pankisi Gorge: "On the one hand it is, of course, sovereign Georgia's business. On the other, must we really sit and wait to see how tensions mount there and how this region is turning into a mini-Chechyna or mini-Afghanistan?"

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