Moscow:
A former Chechen separatist who reinvented himself as a proponent of global jihad stepped out of the shadows on Wednesday to take responsibility for two suicide bombings on Moscow's subway, and to offer himself as the face of an increasingly lethal pan-Caucasus insurgency.
The separatist, Doku Umarov, last year revived a suicide battalion believed to be behind some of the most notorious attacks of the last decade, and then issued a warning in February that he was planning attacks in central Russia. In the recording released on Wednesday, Umarov seemed to take pleasure in thrusting the bloody violence of the Caucasus upon the comfortable residents of the capital. "You Russians hear about the war on television and the radio," Umarov said on the video, apparently made hours after the subway blasts. "I promise you the war will come to your streets, and you will feel it in your own lives and on your own skin."
In assuming a public role and taunting Russia with his pronouncements, Umarov seemingly played into the hands of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, offering evidence that the threat in the Caucasian republics was part of a broader Islamic insurgency that threatened Russia's security. That may provide Putin with a fresh rationale to pursue a take-no-prisoners policy in the Caucasus, but analysts have warned for some time that it was precisely that approach that was driving citizens towards a more radicalized insurgency.
But the insurgents lacked a central figurehead, a role that Umarov now seems determined to seize for himself.
Grigory Shvedov, the editor of the Web-based news service Caucasian Knot, said Umarov, 45, had long been influential as a guerrilla fighter but has traditionally depended on younger, more charismatic proteges to communicate with the public.
"I don't think he is going to be as popular as bin Laden, but he is definitely raising his profile," Shvedov said. "He is not a very public person. It will be interesting to see to what extent he will be developing his portfolio as a speaker."
Umarov's statement came to light as another double bombing killed at least 12 people in Dagestan, ratcheting up fears that Russia was seeing the beginnings of a broader campaign. Suicide bombing was nearly unheard of in the region until 2000, and subsided for years before returning in 2009. The first bomb on Wednesday, in the town of Kizlyar, exploded in a parked car, killing two police officers who had pulled up in their vehicle. As rescue workers and police officials gathered, a man wearing a police uniform walked into the crowd and detonated explosives strapped to his body. The city's police chief was killed and two dozen people were injured.
President Dmitri A. Medvedev said the bombings on Monday and Wednesday were "links of the same chain."
"All this is the manifestation of the same terrorist activity which has recently started to resurface in the Caucasus," he said.
In his four-minute video statement, Umarov railed against the federal antiterrorist operations that have become a central element of Moscow's strategy in the region. He said he had planned Monday's bombings as revenge for a recent operation that killed civilians who were gathering wild garlic in the woods near the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia.
"On the 11th of February, 2010, officers of the criminal formation known as the FSB carried out an operation to destroy peaceful citizens," he said. "Any person who will condemn me for those operations, or who will accuse me of terrorism, I am laughing at those people. I can only grin, because I haven't heard that Putin was accused of terrorism for the murder of civilians who were killed at his order." The FSB is Russia's security service.
Umarov's career has tracked the southern Russian rebellion, which was once powerful enough to force the Russian army from Grozny. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he left a career as a construction engineer to fight with Chechen separatists. In 1997, when Russian troops had withdrawn from Grozny, he was appointed the head of the fledging government's Security Council. But within 10 years, Russia had crushed the separatist movement and killed its most charismatic leaders. In the process, human rights groups say, its brutal tactics alienated the population.
"The nationalists became despondent," said Mark Galeotti, a specialist in Russian security issues who heads New York University's Center for Global Affairs. "They realized that if they were going to keep fighting, they needed a bigger cause, something more grand, more heroic, so that they felt history would be on their side."
In 2007, Umarov declared himself the emir of the Caucasus Emirate, which aimed to establish a Shariah-based state independent of Russia. With him came many of the former separatist fighters.
"It was a big step for quite a big number of rebels in the North Caucasus," Shvedov said. "It would be natural for the majority to follow."
Last April, Umarov took another decisive step by announcing the revival of Riyadus-Salikhin, or the "Garden of Martyrs," a suicide formation once led by Shamil Basayev that had lain dormant for five years. The battalion took responsibility for a 2002 hostage-taking at a Moscow theater. Since May, 17 suicide bombings have been recorded in the Northern Caucasus, Shvedov said.
Umarov is a rough-hewn fighter who speaks accented Russian, and for outreach he seemed to rely heavily on his protege Alexander Tikhomirov, a young convert whose videos promoting suicide operations have been widely disseminated.
But Tikhomirov was killed a month ago during a federal raid on the Ingush village of Ekazhevo; as government forces surrounded his hideout, he delivered a last sermon that a fighter recorded on his cell phone. His death was followed, three weeks later, by the killing of another close associate, Anzor Astemirov. Both deaths seemed to force Umarov to adopt a more public role.
Some experts argue that the militant underground in the Caucasus has become so dispersed in recent years that neither Umarov nor anyone else could emerge as its leader. Sergei A. Arutyunov, a Caucasus expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences, called Umarov "yesterday's man," an aging holdout from the separatist swelling of the 1990s. Galeotti said Umarov had "very, very little power" in a movement made up of widely dispersed warlords.
"These Moscow attacks are significant precisely because they assert the notion that people should pay attention to him," he said. "He needs spectaculars. What this will do is feed him a little more oxygen. It keeps him in play a while longer."
Certainly, both officials and journalists have trained their attention on Umarov's organization in recent days. A source in the General Prosecutor's Investigative Committee told the newspaper Kommersant that Tikhomirov had recruited 30 potential suicide bombers, who were sent for training at a madrasa in Turkey and then returned to Tikhomirov's authority. The investigator said according to his data, nine of those women had already carried out attacks, and the rest are fugitives.
Federal officials made no response to Umarov's announcement on Wednesday night, but Ziyad Sabsabi, who represents Chechnya in Russia's upper house of parliament, said he believed the fighter would not live long. "It doesn't matter that he has claimed responsibility for these bestial murders," Sabsabi said. "In any case, his days are numbered. He will be found, and so will his entourage."
The separatist, Doku Umarov, last year revived a suicide battalion believed to be behind some of the most notorious attacks of the last decade, and then issued a warning in February that he was planning attacks in central Russia. In the recording released on Wednesday, Umarov seemed to take pleasure in thrusting the bloody violence of the Caucasus upon the comfortable residents of the capital. "You Russians hear about the war on television and the radio," Umarov said on the video, apparently made hours after the subway blasts. "I promise you the war will come to your streets, and you will feel it in your own lives and on your own skin."
In assuming a public role and taunting Russia with his pronouncements, Umarov seemingly played into the hands of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, offering evidence that the threat in the Caucasian republics was part of a broader Islamic insurgency that threatened Russia's security. That may provide Putin with a fresh rationale to pursue a take-no-prisoners policy in the Caucasus, but analysts have warned for some time that it was precisely that approach that was driving citizens towards a more radicalized insurgency.
But the insurgents lacked a central figurehead, a role that Umarov now seems determined to seize for himself.
Grigory Shvedov, the editor of the Web-based news service Caucasian Knot, said Umarov, 45, had long been influential as a guerrilla fighter but has traditionally depended on younger, more charismatic proteges to communicate with the public.
"I don't think he is going to be as popular as bin Laden, but he is definitely raising his profile," Shvedov said. "He is not a very public person. It will be interesting to see to what extent he will be developing his portfolio as a speaker."
Umarov's statement came to light as another double bombing killed at least 12 people in Dagestan, ratcheting up fears that Russia was seeing the beginnings of a broader campaign. Suicide bombing was nearly unheard of in the region until 2000, and subsided for years before returning in 2009. The first bomb on Wednesday, in the town of Kizlyar, exploded in a parked car, killing two police officers who had pulled up in their vehicle. As rescue workers and police officials gathered, a man wearing a police uniform walked into the crowd and detonated explosives strapped to his body. The city's police chief was killed and two dozen people were injured.
President Dmitri A. Medvedev said the bombings on Monday and Wednesday were "links of the same chain."
"All this is the manifestation of the same terrorist activity which has recently started to resurface in the Caucasus," he said.
In his four-minute video statement, Umarov railed against the federal antiterrorist operations that have become a central element of Moscow's strategy in the region. He said he had planned Monday's bombings as revenge for a recent operation that killed civilians who were gathering wild garlic in the woods near the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia.
"On the 11th of February, 2010, officers of the criminal formation known as the FSB carried out an operation to destroy peaceful citizens," he said. "Any person who will condemn me for those operations, or who will accuse me of terrorism, I am laughing at those people. I can only grin, because I haven't heard that Putin was accused of terrorism for the murder of civilians who were killed at his order." The FSB is Russia's security service.
Umarov's career has tracked the southern Russian rebellion, which was once powerful enough to force the Russian army from Grozny. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he left a career as a construction engineer to fight with Chechen separatists. In 1997, when Russian troops had withdrawn from Grozny, he was appointed the head of the fledging government's Security Council. But within 10 years, Russia had crushed the separatist movement and killed its most charismatic leaders. In the process, human rights groups say, its brutal tactics alienated the population.
"The nationalists became despondent," said Mark Galeotti, a specialist in Russian security issues who heads New York University's Center for Global Affairs. "They realized that if they were going to keep fighting, they needed a bigger cause, something more grand, more heroic, so that they felt history would be on their side."
In 2007, Umarov declared himself the emir of the Caucasus Emirate, which aimed to establish a Shariah-based state independent of Russia. With him came many of the former separatist fighters.
"It was a big step for quite a big number of rebels in the North Caucasus," Shvedov said. "It would be natural for the majority to follow."
Last April, Umarov took another decisive step by announcing the revival of Riyadus-Salikhin, or the "Garden of Martyrs," a suicide formation once led by Shamil Basayev that had lain dormant for five years. The battalion took responsibility for a 2002 hostage-taking at a Moscow theater. Since May, 17 suicide bombings have been recorded in the Northern Caucasus, Shvedov said.
Umarov is a rough-hewn fighter who speaks accented Russian, and for outreach he seemed to rely heavily on his protege Alexander Tikhomirov, a young convert whose videos promoting suicide operations have been widely disseminated.
But Tikhomirov was killed a month ago during a federal raid on the Ingush village of Ekazhevo; as government forces surrounded his hideout, he delivered a last sermon that a fighter recorded on his cell phone. His death was followed, three weeks later, by the killing of another close associate, Anzor Astemirov. Both deaths seemed to force Umarov to adopt a more public role.
Some experts argue that the militant underground in the Caucasus has become so dispersed in recent years that neither Umarov nor anyone else could emerge as its leader. Sergei A. Arutyunov, a Caucasus expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences, called Umarov "yesterday's man," an aging holdout from the separatist swelling of the 1990s. Galeotti said Umarov had "very, very little power" in a movement made up of widely dispersed warlords.
"These Moscow attacks are significant precisely because they assert the notion that people should pay attention to him," he said. "He needs spectaculars. What this will do is feed him a little more oxygen. It keeps him in play a while longer."
Certainly, both officials and journalists have trained their attention on Umarov's organization in recent days. A source in the General Prosecutor's Investigative Committee told the newspaper Kommersant that Tikhomirov had recruited 30 potential suicide bombers, who were sent for training at a madrasa in Turkey and then returned to Tikhomirov's authority. The investigator said according to his data, nine of those women had already carried out attacks, and the rest are fugitives.
Federal officials made no response to Umarov's announcement on Wednesday night, but Ziyad Sabsabi, who represents Chechnya in Russia's upper house of parliament, said he believed the fighter would not live long. "It doesn't matter that he has claimed responsibility for these bestial murders," Sabsabi said. "In any case, his days are numbered. He will be found, and so will his entourage."
Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world
