Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005
From: Pavel Felgenhauer <pavelf@...>
Subject: re Nalchik

Dear David,

I have a serious conflict of opinion with the chief editor of The Moscow
Times Lynn Berry, concerning the situation in Nalchik,
Kabardino-Balkaria and I believe the public must be informed about it. I
have sent several letters to Berry, have got no response whatsoever and
would be much obliged if you could put the story on your list.

Berry decided not to publish my regular column this week that was filed
Sunday and was about the tragedy in Nalchik, but the story is, I
believe, more important than a simple clash of opinion between editor
and columnist.

Today there is mounting evidence from eyewitnesses in Nalchik that the
rebel attack or uprising on Oct. 13 was followed by a rampage by
security forces, by random revenge killings, ethnically and religiously
motivated murder of suspects from the minority Balkar tribe by the local
police force that is predominately Kabardin. Eyewitnesses (I met and had
contact with some) that are in no way connected with the rebels
ethnically or religiously, not only report horrific stories of
indiscriminate killings, a massacre, but also say that the number of
dead in Nalchik is several times higher than officially reported and
that there are over 300 corpses in the local morgue.

There is a cover-up of the alleged massacre in Nalchik that is run by
the Russian state propaganda machine and it seems that The Moscow Times
has succumb to becoming part of this cover-up. Not only have they
rejected my column, which could have been a coincidence, but also their
reporting of events in Nalchik is a copy-story of government propaganda.

The Tuesday Oct. 18 report in MT on the situation in Nalchik by staff
writer Nabi Abdullaev quotes Russian newspapers Izvestia and Gazeta that
cite relatives of dead Nalchik residence that the police planted arms
and ammunition on their bodies to claim they were terrorists. A
disclaimer follows the quote: "The reports could not be independently
verified." None of reports or quotes from government and security
officials that fill up the rest of Abdullaev's text has the same
disclaimer though "independent verification" was indeed lacking in most
cases.

The situation is especially urgent and of great public concern, because
the killings in Nalchik have not stopped ­ bloody cleansing or
zachistki, accompanied by heavy shooting are continuing in residential
areas. It is possible that the Nalckik situation, if the repression is
left unnoticed, will turn into something like the tragedy in Andigan,
where Uzbek solders massacred hundreds of civilians last summer.

Best. Pavel Felgenhauer. Independent defense analyst. Moscow.
---------

The column.
By Pavel Felgenhauer

The attack by rebels last week on Nalchik - the capital
Kabardino-Balkaria - was hardly a surprise. Local authorities have been
accused by human rights organization of brutal suppression of Islam and
of closing mosques in the predominantly Muslim Kabardino-Balkaria.
Experts have warned the Kremlin that repressions will backfire.

The security services and their local cadre in Kabardino-Balkaria still
do not know for sure where did the rebels come from, how many fighters
were involved in the attack, how many fled after the shootout and were
to. The official line is that the attackers were Islamic militants or
Wahhabis, but nowadays all armed resistance forces in the Northern
Caucasus are universally branded by the Kremlin as "Wahhabis" and
"international Islamist terrorists."

The authorities have accused well-known Chechen warlords Shamil Basayev
and Doku Umarov of contributing forces to the attack on Nalchik. Again,
the Russian security services do not seem to know how many if any
Chechens were involved or how did they penetrate Kabardino-Balkaria that
does not have a common border with Chechnya. It's possible that our
security officials are deriving their information on the Nalchik attack
from rebel Web sites, because they do not have any reliable agents of
the ground.

Small groups of rebels of 3 to 10 men simultaneously attacked police
stations and other military targets (9 locations in all) in Nalchik last
Thursday at 9 am. Most of the engagements lasted about an hour, and then
the rebels melted away before Russian reinforcements could enter the
city. Security forces and army units began putting up roadblocks around
Nalchik long after most of the action was over and these pickets did not
cover the entire perimeter of the city. Three small groups of rebels
(less than 20 men, most of them wounded) were stranded in Nalchik and
were killed by Special Forces the next day.

The authorities have announced that 92 rebels have been killed, 37 -
taken prisoner, 24 security force members and 12 civilians perished and
that there are over a hundred wounded. After the Beslan school
hostage-taking last year that ended in the loss of over 300 innocent
lives, there was much fear that something as bad may happen in Nalchik.
Vladimir Putin has praised the security forces for preventing the
capture of schools and mass hostage taking, though there is no evidence
that the rebels had any intention to capture any school. There is also
no evidence that if the rebels would have in fact attack the civilian
population in Nalchik, the security forces, could have done anything to
stop them.

The Kremlin has declared the entire engagement a victory, arguing that
the rate of casualties is strongly in favor of the security forces. But
the official body count raises many questions. The history of
contemporary urban anti-guerrilla engagements by Russian forces in the
Caucasus, Americans in Iraq and so on, indicates that dislodging,
killing or capturing over a hundred determined fighters, holed up within
a big modern city requires much effort, a week or so of action and lots
of tanks, heavy guns and attack aircraft support. The casualty list, the
duration of the fight and it's intensify in Nalchik do not match do not
match each other.

Information has been coming out of Nalchik that many families are
reporting that young men are missing without explanation. It would seem
that after the original rebel force mostly melted away, the security
forces began revenge attacks against the population, kidnapping and
killing suspects more or less at random. This may explain the abnormally
large number of "terrorists" killed. Local security officials could have
used the occasion to settle old scores with suspected "Wahhabis," while
the large number of dead "terrorists" pleased the Kremlin and allowed it
to declare victory.

In the past human rights groups have accused security forces in the
Caucasus of constantly kidnapping and massacring civilians, including
women and children to terrorize local populations to into accepting rule
from Moscow. Now Putin, during a televised meeting with his security
chiefs last Friday, has indorsed the same policy in Kabardino-Balkaria:
"We have acted ruthlessly and will do the same in the future."

Heavy-handed Russian policies have in the past only fanned the flames in
the Caucasus. Repression, kidnappings by security forces, mass murder -
have increased hatred, recruited new rebels and caused the conflict to
spread out of Chechnya over the region. Another victory, another
"liberated city," some have been "liberated" so many times, they have
been flattened.


Johnson's Russia List
#9271
19 October 2005
davidjohnson@... and
davidjohnson@...
A CDI Project/World Security Institute
www.cdi.org www.worldsecurityinstitute.org