Is The War In Chechnya About To Restart?

Fierce Fighting in Grozny Raises Specter of ISIS Influence in Russia -- Anna Nemtsova, Daily Beast

Hours before Russian President Putin’s annual address to the nation, the Chechen capital saw the worst combat in years.

MOSCOW — The capital of Chechnya, Grozny, seemed to blow up around 1:00 a.m. on Thursday morning. News about hundreds of insurgents occupying schools, kindergartens and other state buildings and killing traffic policemen on the way into the city appeared on social networks and was passed from mouth to mouth. Artillery fire could be heard in Avtozavodsky district, on Chernyshevskogo and Putin avenues in downtown Grozny.

Inevitably, some of this may have been exaggerated in social media. But there is no question that a new battle has begun in an old war that Moscow—and many in Grozny—had hoped was over. Analysts also are raising the possibility that the so-called Islamic State, widely known as ISIS or ISIL, may have, at a minimum, ideological links to the attackers.

Read more ....

My Comment: Fighting has been ongoing and escalating in neighboring Dagestan for the past year .... but this full scale attack by Islamic militants in Chechnya is a surprise, and I expect Chechen and Russian military forces to respond by escalating their war and ops against these groups.

Bombing Attacks Return To Chechnya

Three Bombings Kill 9 In Chechnya -- CNN

Moscow (CNN) -- Three suicide bombings Tuesday night in Grozny killed nine people and wounded 20, Russian officials said Wednesday.

The Russian Investigative Committee said the bodies of two of the attackers have been identified. They were both Chechens, born in 1989 and 1990, the committee said.

In an emergency video conference with the country's top police officers Wednesday, Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev gave the casualty figures for what he called the "cruel terrorist act."

Read more ....

More News On Today's Suicide Attacks In Chechnya

Death toll in Grozny twin attacks reaches nine -- RIA Novosti
Triple suicide bombing kills police in Chechnya on Eid -- BBC
Suicide bombings kill nine in Chechnya -- UPI
Nine Killed, More than 20 Wounded in Chechnya Suicide Attacks -- Voice of America
Deadly suicide blasts rock Chechen capital -- Deutsche Welle
Eight killed in Chechnya suicide attack: report -- Reuters
Nine Killed In Chechnya Attacks -- Radio Free Europe
Chechen bombers mimic tactics used in Iraq, Afghanistan -- RT
Chechnya's leader promises hardline response to suicide bombings -- The Guardian

Russian Spetsnaz Officer`s Diary On The Chechen War

The Diary of a Killer in Chechnya -- At War/New York Times

Every so often a lengthy newspaper or magazine article arrives that all but demands a fuller and even longer treatment. Such was the case in the Oct 31. issue of The Sunday Times magazine in London, which published translated excerpts from the diary of a Russian spetsnaz officer who served for more than a decade as one of the Kremlin’s shadowy fighters in the Chechen wars. (Access to the article is protected by a pay-to-view firewall; to read it, you’ll have to buy at least a temporary subscription.)

Read more ....

My Comment: This is a riveting account, and confirms what some of my Russian friends who served in Chechnya told me when I visited my family in Russia last year.

On a side note, a riveting photo gallery of the war(s) in Chechnya can be found here.

The Continuing War In Chechnya

To Smother Rebels, Arson Campaign in Chechnya -- New York Times

SHALI, Russia — The men who set fire to Valentina Basargina’s house arrived in the stillness of 3 a.m. There were three of them. Each wore a camouflage uniform and carried a rifle. One held a can of gasoline. They wore masks.

They led Ms. Basargina and her son outside and splashed gasoline in their two rooms, she and her relatives said. One man produced a T-shirt, knotted onto a stick. It was damp with gas.

“This is for the one who is gone,” he said in thickly accented Russian. Ms. Basargina’s nephew had recently disappeared; the police had said he joined the small but smoldering insurgency fighting for Chechnya’s independence from Russia.

The man lit the torch and tossed it inside. The air whooshed. Flames shot through the house.

The attack, late last month, was part of what Chechens described as an intensified government effort to stamp out the remnants of a war that has continued, at varying levels of ferocity, for nearly 15 years.

Read more ....

My Comment: This is not going to stop the insurgency .... it never does. It only builds resentment and anger that will carry into the next generation.

A Vexing Reminder Of War In Chechnya's Booming Capital

From The International Herald Tribune:

GROZNY, Russia: The surprise lay under tiles in the basement of the kindergarten on Kadyrov Street, to be found by laborers toiling in the war zone-turned-construction site of Chechnya's capital city.

The bodies were exhumed and reburied with respect, though there was no pause in the banging of hammers and plastering of walls to accommodate a forensic study of the basement. That, human rights workers say, is nothing unusual in a city more or less at peace now, but with many grim basements and much rebuilding under way.

Read more ...

My Comment: After the massacre of almost 300 school children, parents, and teachers in Beslan, the legitimacy that Chechnyan's had for independence from the international community disappeared. Unfortunately for the average citizen of Chechnya, the pain from this conflict will not be gone for the next 50 years.