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251. Gaza Plunges Deeper into Misery

Author:
Anthony Newkirk
Publication Date:
11-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Foreign Policy In Focus
Abstract:
This month, the Shurat HaDin Law Center is taking foreign tourists on an eight-day "exploration of Israel's struggle for survival and security" that includes briefings by intelligence officers and demonstrations by masked commandoes, as well as visits to military trials of Hamas members. Make no mistake, the region certainly is witnessing a struggle for survival and security that involves tremendous human suffering. However, this struggle is not exactly as the Shurat HaDin Law Center would like to imagine it because the primary victims are the inhabitants of the Occupied Territories, people for whom bare survival is now more important than security--to say nothing of statehood. The long ordeal of Gaza under Israeli occupation--which is still continuing, even though Israeli troops and settlers officially "withdrew" a year ago--exemplifies the Palestinian struggle for survival and security. Ever since the establishment of a Hamas-led government last spring, the United States and the European Union have been waging economic warfare against the Palestinian Authority. As Israel's summer "incursion" in the Palestinian Authority has plunged Gaza's population deeper into misery, the European Union now states that it will not restore aid until the Palestinian Authority "commits" to peaceful relations with Israel, renounces violence, and respects all agreements made between the PLO and Israel. On September 20, Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy Elliott Abrams said that U.S. direct aid will not resume until Hamas fulfills similar conditions as specified in the Palestinian anti-terrorism Act of 2006, the legal mainstay of the U.S. blockade. However, the record shows that Western powers are notorious for changing their definitions of specific peace terms, which always makes weak adversaries like the Palestinians appear to be intractable. A week before the beginning of Operation Summer Rains on June 28, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that from January to mid-June Israeli forces fired 8,380 artillery shells into the tiny Gaza Strip and armed Palestinian factions fired 896 home-made Qassam rockets into Israel.
Topic:
Security, Ethnic Conflict, and War
Political Geography:
Middle East

252. Currents and Crosscurrents of Radical Islamism

Author:
Julianne Smith, Aidan Kirby, and Daniel Benjamin
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The second phase of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Transatlantic Dialogue on Terror took place against a backdrop of rapid change. When the first conference in this series took place in Berlin in the spring of 2005, scholars and practitioners were still absorbing the details of the previous year's attacks against the Madrid light rail system, the murder of Dutch artist Theo van Gogh and a host of other attacks and foiled plots. Global radicalism continued to be shaped by the deepening insurgency in Iraq, in which radical Islamists from inside and outside that country play a pivotal role. In the months following the Berlin meeting, the bombing of the London Underground, the attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh and Amman, and a stream of revelations about radical Islamist activity from Europe to the Middle East to South Asia and Australia — where a group of conspirators were arrested for plotting an attack against that country's sole nuclear facility — had also to be taken into account.
Topic:
International Relations, Ethnic Conflict, Islam, Religion, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Europe, South Asia, Middle East, London, and Australia

253. Chechnya Weekly: Volume 7, Issue 41

Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Kommersant reported on October 25 that investigators believe former officers of an Interior Ministry unit from Siberia's Khanty-Mansiisk Autonomous Okrug, which had been deployed in Chechnya, were involved in the October 7 murder of Novaya gazeta correspondent Anna Politkovskaya (Chechnya Weekly, October 12). Politkovskaya published an article in September 2001 accusing officers from the regional Department of Internal Affairs (UVD) in the city of Nizhnevartovsk of committing various human rights abuses while stationed in Chechnya. In particular, she accused Sergei Lapin, a senior lieutenant from the Nizhnevartovsk UVD's criminal investigation department, known by his nickname “Kadet,” along with two of his superiors, Major Aleksandr Prilepin and Colonel Valery Minin, of complicity in the January 2001 abduction and murder of Grozny resident Zelimkhan Murdalov. In subsequent articles, she accused these and other members of the Nizhnevartovsk unit of murdering a number of other Chechen civilians. Novaya gazeta subsequently received an email death threat signed by “Kadet” and Politkovskaya fled to Austria for a time (The Monitor, October 18, 2001).
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia and Chechnya

254. Chechnya Weekly: Volume 7, Issue 40

Author:
Naima Nefliasheva
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Police in Nazran, Ingushetia, on October 16 violently broke up a demonstration by dozens of activists demanding that the federal authorities find the killers of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. “In Nazran the meeting was broken up with brute force and five people were detained by the police,” Oleg Orlov of the Memorial human rights group told the Reuters news agency. “A young activist had her nose broken by a policeman who hit her in the face. The police threw our pictures of Politkovskaya onto the ground and stamped on them.” Novye izvestia on October 17 quoted Memorial staffer Shamil Tangiev as saying he took the activist who was beaten up, Yektaterina Sokiryanskaya, to the hospital, were she was diagnosed with a broken nose and a concussion. Interfax quoted Ingush Interior Ministry Beslan Khamkhoev as saying: “There was an attempt to hold an unsanctioned meeting. For some reason, there was a disagreement between the members of the meeting, which turned into a fight. To preserve order and safety, policemen were forced to intervene.”
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia

255. Chechnya Weekly: Volume 7, Issue 39

Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
As was the case with the dozens of other murders of journalists in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, the murder of Anna Politkovskaya on October 7 has been followed by much speculation about the identity of those who ordered the investigative journalist's murder and their motives for doing so. Sadly, given how few of these cases have been solved, the theories are likely to remain unconfirmed indefinitely.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Soviet Union, and Chechnya

256. Chechnya Weekly: Volume 7, Issue 36

Author:
Andrew McGregor
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
The Kremlin on September 18 asked the State Duma to approve an amnesty plan for militants in Chechnya and other republics of the North Caucasus. The Associated Press, citing Itar-Tass, quoted the chairman of the Duma committee on criminal legislation, Pavel Krasheninnikov, as saying that the Kremlin's amnesty would remain in effect for six months after its approval by parliament and would also apply to Russian servicemen suspected of committing crimes while serving in Chechnya and other republics in the North Caucasus. Interfax quoted Krasheninnikov as saying that the amnesty would not apply to “recidivists, foreigners or persons without citizenship,” or to Russian servicemen who sold weapons, ammunition or other military equipment while serving in the “counter-terrorist” operation in the North Caucasus. The Duma is scheduled to take up the Kremlin's amnesty plan on September 22.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Chechnya, and North Caucasus

257. Chechnya Weekly: Volume 7, Issue 35

Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
A shootout on September 13 between a group of armed Chechen OMON police commandos and Ingush police manning a traffic police post on the Chechen-Ingush administrative border resulted in the deaths of seven people–one Ingush police and six Chechen OMON. Among the victims was the Chechen OMON's chief of staff, Buvadi Dukhiev, who was shot and severely wounded after he arrived on the scene of the battle and tried to convince both sides to stand down. Dukhiev died later in the hospital. Ten Ingush and 11 Chechen policemen were wounded in the battle, Interfax reported.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia and Chechnya

258. Chechnya Weekly: Volume 7, Issue 34 (September 08, 2006)

Author:
Mayrbek Vachagaev
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
On September 4, Chechen President Alu Alkhanov called for renaming Chechnya the “Nokhchiin Republic,” which is the republic's name in the Chechen language. The idea, however, received a thumbs-down the following day from the republic's prime minister and de facto strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov, as well as from a number of federal officials. Some analysts saw this as yet another sign that Kadyrov's power is growing at Alkhanov's expense.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia

259. Chechnya Weekly: Volume 7, Issue 33 (August 17, 2006)

Publication Date:
08-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Many observers have been predicting that Ramzan Kadyrov will assume the Chechen Republic's presidency soon, after he reaches the constitutionally-mandated minimum age of 30 on October 5. On August 10, for example, Kommersant quoted Frants Klintsevich, deputy chairman of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party's faction in the State Duma, as saying he had no doubts that Kadyrov, who is currently Chechnya's prime minister, would become Chechnya's president this fall. Other observers, however, have begun to express doubts about whether Kadyrov will become Chechnya's president, at least in the near term.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Chechnya

260. Chechnya Weekly: Volume 7, Issue 32

Publication Date:
08-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
On August 10, an attempt was made on the life of Ingushetia's Nazran district prosecutor, Girkhan Khazbiev. According to Newsru.com, a bomb went off at Khazbiev's house in Nazran's Oltievo municipal district at about 1 AM, Moscow time, after which he and members of his family went outside to see what had happened. At that moment, a second blast occurred. Khazbiev was not hurt in the attack, but his 27-year-old younger brother, Adam Khazbiev, was killed, and 13 other people, including other relatives of Khazbiev and people from neighboring homes, were injured. According to investigators, following the detonation of the two improvised explosive devices unidentified attackers tossed four hand grenades that exploded in and around the yard of Khazbiev's house. Those injured in the attack had shrapnel wounds, and four of the 13 people injured were reported to be in grave condition.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia and Chechnya