Domain: kavkazcenter.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to kavkazcenter.com.
Comments · 12
-
Re:Belgium is a NATO member
The military intelligence service (Pesikunnan Tiedusteluosasto General Staff Intelligence Division), which is accountable to the Defence Minister, has no separate legal basis. It is responsible for ensuring the territorial integrity of the country and to that end it monitors the national territory, in cooperation with other authorities, by land, sea and air. It also carries out signals intelligence via the Communications Experience Facility (VKL).
And there is good reason for it to do this:
Russia and China may have been responsible for large-scale hacking into the Finnish Foreign Ministry's computer networks, a Finnish television channel reported.
And
Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja has said at a press conference on October 31 that revelations of large-scale data Russian surveillance in foreign ministry systems are embarrassing to Finland and to the ministry of foreign affairs.
The simple fact is, that Finland is spied on by everybody AND they are also spying on other nations. And to be honest, I do not have an issue with my friends spying on me. I esp. do not mind it, if they point out a terrorists act from elsewhere, or they find somebody else spying on us and then tells us about it. -
Re:The fall guy
Well, he's had his passport revoked, is being hunted around the world, and is being vilified in almost all public media.
Snowden isn't being hunted around the world because his passport is revoked. He is in Russia. Snowden isn't being vilified in "almost all public media." It is quite the reverse - he is being hailed as a hero by Chinese, Russians, many Europeans, and others across the world.
Well, at least he took refuge in Russia. What use do they have for four laptops full of NSA secrets?
Russia warns Ireland it will retaliate in spy row
Ireland Is Training Base for Russian Spies
As many Russian spies in UK today as in Cold War: Soviet defector
Canadian navy officer sentenced to 20 years for being Russian spy
10 in US held as spies for Russia
Russian spies in Australia at 'near Cold War level'
Germany jails Russian spy couple
Belgian diplomat suspected of being Russian spy
Finnish academic charged of aiding Russian spies
Spies in Sweden mostly from China, Russia, Iran
Estonia shaken by new Russian spy scandal
Georgia: Russian Spy Ring Smashed in Tbilisi -- Officials
Spain-Russia spy row leads to diplomats' expulsionRussian warplanes breach NATO airspace - British and Norwegian jets intercepted Russian military aircraft
... close to the U.K. and Finland
Russian spy plane flies by Swedish military drillThis report comes after the newspaper wrote on 22 April, 2013 that Russian fighters had made dummy attacks close to Swedish territory during the Easter weekend.
RAF catches Russian bombers in UK airspace
UK jets shadow Russian bombers
Russian bombers’ secret UK missions ‘not a friendly act’
Russian subs stalk Trident in echo of Cold War - ... hunting down British Vanguard boats in a return to Cold War tactics
Russian around - A DESPERATE hunt was on last night for a Russian nuclear submarine lurking off the coast of Britain. -
Re:Um... "suspect"
If there are groups within Chechnya that have decided we're part of their enemy
They have decided so five years ago, and it didn't have anything with your friendly relations with Russia. They just decided they want to go full Islamist.
-
Re:Terrorist or freedom fighter?
They are Islamist, that much certain, so why are they bombing USA, after all USA was probably more on the side of Chechens in their search for independence from Russia
Chechen insurgents have been openly anti-West (and, in particular, anti-US) ever since Doku Umarov proclaimed "Caucasian Emirate" in 2007.
-
Re:"From the Russian region near Chechnya"?
He's likely a Sunni muslim, but it's quite possible that isn't really a factor here; this could simply be an international protest bombing regarding the west's stance on Chechen independence. Chechens are Muslims the way that Russians are Orthodox Christians and Americans are Catholic or Calvinist in origin; Islam hasn't as far as I understand it been a feature element of their struggle.
Your information is not quite wrong, but extremely outdated to the point where it's not relevant today.
First of all, a TL;DR version of where things are today. Here's the official statement of the Chechen separatist leader, Doku Umarov. This is from 2007:
"Today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine our brothers are fighting. Everyone who attacked Muslims wherever they are are our enemies, common enemies. Our enemy is not Rusnya only, but everyone who wages war against Islam and Muslims. And they are our enemies mainly because they are the enemies of Allah."
(source)Now the complete story for those who are interested.
Yes, originally, Islam for Chechens was largely a part of cultural self-identification, and not a thing in and of itself. In fact, they weren't particularly religious, especially after the Soviet period. And traditionally they aren't just Sunni Muslims, but they also belong to the Sufi Qadiriyya tarikat (the standing president, Ramzan Kadyrov, has a last name that is directly connected - it indicates that his family is hereditary Qadiriyya sheikhs), with a minority belonging to Naqshbandi tarikat.
However, during their first war of independence in 1994-96, Chechens - and especially their young men - have gotten more into religion. And, unfortunately, they also had a large number of Afghani mujahideen and other "professional jihadis" (like ibn al-Khattab) come to support them, and those guys were already largely brainwashed into Salafism by Saudi Wahhabist preachers. Saudis sent preachers to Chechnya, as well. As a result, as youth were turning to religion, they more often than not picked up the more "pure" Salafism over their Sufi tradition. Now, Salafi belief is that ethnic or cultural nationalism is shirk (worshipping something other than Allah), and the only cause worth fighting for is the security of Islam on a given territory. So that's the ideology that was spread in the country, and a number of "new wave" Chechen politicians - like Shamil Basaev and Doku Umarov - were openly backing it, and opposing the older nationalist politicians like Dzhokhar Dudaev or Aslan Maskhadov.
So after the Russian withdrawal in 1996, the new government of de facto independent Chechnya was split between the nationalist and the Islamist factions, and the overall politics had elements of both (e.g. their constitution declared freedom of religion, and yet they had Sharia courts and a "Ministry of Sharia Security"). However, as time went by, nationalists were losing their positions, and Islamists were gaining them, since foreign (still mostly Saudi) propaganda never stopped. This also caused a rift in Chechen society at large, as new, predominantly young and zealous, Salafi converts confronted their Sufi parents over their "idolatry" and "fake Islam".
In 1999, the Islamists have decided to move on their own, and unilaterally invaded the neighboring Russian region of Dagestan, beginning the Second Chechen War. Nationalists did not support it - in fact, they vehemently objected to it once it began - but most of the army was under Islamist control already. The invasion was stalled by Dagestani militia, and then pushed back. Putin decided to not stop at the border, but rather reassert the (never abandoned) claim to Chechnya as a Russian region, and the war continued until the entire republic was under Russian control.
Now, as part of that war, Russian government enticed a number of prominent Chechen leaders to switch to their side by exploiting the Salafi/Sufi conflict. In
-
Re:Just us, or ...
Because there are many other folks covering that side of the story?
-
Re:Consider the nordic countries
I agree on most parts, but I have something to say about option "Finland", where I happen to live. Under Russian pressure, a web-site (hosted in Finland) criticizing (among other things) Russia's actions in Chechnya (http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/) was forced to close. This happened in the end of year 2004. Finnish officials denied (as usual) that Russians had anything to do with it, whereas Russians (as usual) clearly said they had. Btw, kavkazcenter is a great resource of news outside mainstream media. Russia and USA is not that far from each other nowadays, but it's of course more hip to criticize USA.
-
Oh No! Zionist Propaganda on Slashdot?
Oh No! Zionist Propaganda on Slashdot?
Inform yourself first, get another perspective, here are some links for you:
http://www.sandersresearch.com/
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/105200
http://crossfirewar.com/
http://www.voltairenet.org/en
http://www.intifada.com/
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/
http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/index.html -
Re:Reading the artcle......
Given that Chechen separatists have already started dissiminating information that Litvinenko converted to Islam shortly before death, there might be some truth to this.
-
Islamist Radicalism on the Web
Naturally, many people hear about Radical Islam on the web and the investigative types want to see it for themselves. Well, obviously, unless you can read Arabic or a few others languages with large activist Muslim populations, you won't get very far with that idea.
One site political observers may find interesting in light of Iraq, however, is Kavkazcenter (formerly Kavkaz.org). One might consider Chechnya to be Russia's Iraq. It remains a quagmire in which any obvious means of extricating military control becomes ever more remote as time goes on and the reasons for and results of each conflict share many similarities (though Chechnya is arguably a much, much more ancient one). Like Iraq, the threat of jihadism has radically increased with "foreign occupation" as an extremely successful rallying point for it, while secular nationalism has fallen to the wayside as a dissident cause (and was, I would say, dealt a death blow when Russia killed Aslan Maskhadov, its former figurehead). If you want to read jihadism unapologetically propounded in English, in depth, in light of current events, Kavkaz Center is about as good as source as you'll find. -
Allahu Akbar 16 crusaders killed/wnded in Chechnya
Many Russian atheist-crusader pigs have been killed this weekend in Chechnya.
The war on western state-terrorism continues.
-
Get your site out of the US
Firstly, if this is a "semi-official" (government-run or -connected?) news site, why isn't it hosted in Iran proper?
If for some reason that's not possible, the best thing one could do if they run a site like this is get it out of the "Land of the Free" United States and host it in a country that actually respects political* free expression. For example, the Iraqi resistance website is hosted in the Netherlands. I've come across a lot of similar sites run by organizations like HAMAS or the Hizballah, and IIRC they were hosted in the Netherlands, too. The Chechens used to have their website hosted in Lithuania, until they posted a communiqué from Shamil Basaev after the Beslan incident, whereupon they got temporarily shut down (probably under pressure from Russia); now the site appears to be in Sweden.
So your best bet if you're running some site like this is to look at Europe, particularly Scandinavia, and ignore any claptrap you hear about "Constitutional" protections in the US (much like the government itself does).
--
* In the US, you can get away with some of the most blatant racism and the bizarrest pornography, all under the ægis of freedom of expression, but anything that comes a bit too close to pissing off the State will quickly find you shut down.