by Gordon M. Hahn
RUSSIA
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by Gordon M. Hahn
CONTENTS
RUSSIA
CENTRAL ASIA
IIPER is written and edited by Dr. Gordon M. Hahn unless otherwise noted. Research assistance is provided by Yelena Altman, Sara Amstutz, Mark Archibald, Michelle Enriquez, Seth Gray, John Andrew Jones, Casey Mahoney, Anna Nevo, Daniel Painter, and Elizabeth Wolcott. IIPER accepts outside submissions.
To access the full report, click here Download Hahn_IIPER50
by Gordon M. Hahn
CONTENTS
RUSSIA
CENTRAL ASIA
IIPER is written and edited by Dr. Gordon M. Hahn unless otherwise noted. Research assistance is provided by Yelena Altman, Sara Amstutz, Mark Archibald, Michelle Enriquez, Seth Gray, John Andrew Jones, Casey Mahoney, Anna Nevo, Daniel Painter, and Elizabeth Wolcott. IIPER accepts outside submissions.
To access the full report, click here Download Hahn_IIPER49
by Gordon M. Hahn
CONTENTS
RUSSIA
CENTRAL ASIA by Yelena Altman and Gordon M. Hahn
To access the full report, click here Download Hahn_IIPER48
by Gordon M. Hahn
Once again, the New York Times has chosen to pass over the most murderous organization in Russia, the Caucasus Emirate (CE) mujahedin, and instead focus on a political pathology that can be tied to ethnic Russians and Russia. This time, the NYT, has turned to a favorite - Russia’s ethnic ultra-nationalist skinheads – who have engaged in very little violence compared to the CE jihadists and other elements in the North Caucasus.
The article begins by setting the standard U.S. mainstream biased framework: “Twelve years ago, a little-known bureaucrat named Vladimir V. Putin began a war on Chechnya, vowing to crush a fierce rebellion and return the territory to the Kremlin's control. It was a decision that made Mr. Putin, then the prime minister, into the man he is today. In a matter of months, amid a rush of patriotic fervor, he was elected Russia's president.”
The real facts are that the second war started when in August 1999, a force of some 1,500-2,000 foreign globali jihadists, local jihadists, and Chechen fighters invaded neighboring Dagestan to establish a Sharia law-based state. Dagestanis joined Russians in fighting the invasion off. Then the Russians made the decision to end the bacchanalia of kidnappings, murders and beheadings being carried out in Chechnya by Chechen criminal and separatist elements and ‘Afghan Arab’ global mujahedin trained, supplied and funded by Al Qa`ida (see Gordon M. Hahn, “Getting the Caucasus Emirate Right,” CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program Report, August 2011, pp. 1-6).
Continue reading "ONCE AGAIN THE U.S. MAINSTREAM MEDIA LOOKS PAST THE NORTH CAUCASUS JIHADISTS" »
by Gordon Hahn
The U.S. mainstream media continues to get the involvement of the global jihad and Al Qa`ida (AQ) in Chechnya and the North Caucasus over the last decade and a half. In September, Time published Simon Shuster’s sadly misinformed “How the War on Terrorism Did Russia a Favor.” Shuster makes it clear that his real concern is not to understand the history of Al Qaeda’s involvement in this now Jihadi-plagued region, but rather to accuse Russian Prime Minister and former president Vladimir Putin of lying about it. The U.S. mainstream’s longstanding abhorrence of Putin has been the main driver of all of its ‘news’ reporting and ‘analysis.’
To be sure, there is much to criticize Putin over––but this obsessive disdain for far-from-the-world’s most authoritarian leader has become the prism through which U.S. mainstream media interprets every minor and major issue regarding Russia. In short, if Putin said it, then it has to be wrong.
Thus, Shuster argues: “There was scant evidence, however, that the Chechen rebels were part of some global Islamist terrorist network, as Putin and his government repeatedly claimed.” The fact is that Osama bin laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, and AQ in general paid special attention to Chechnya and the Caucasus going back to at least 1996. Zawahiri even was briefly detained in Dagestan in that year. A simple internet search will garner you piles of U.S. court documents showing how AQ-affiliated ‘philanthropic’ foundations such as the Benevolent International Foundation and al-Haramain began sending what would come to tens of millions of dollars in funding, training, recruits, and supplies to the de facto independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeriya (ChRI) during the inter-war period in 1996-1999.
ARTICLE CRITIQUE
With Minor Improvement, The Washington Post Again Misleads U.S. Public on Russian-Muslim Relations
By Gordon M. Hahn
The Washington Post, through the pen of Kathy Lally, is up to its old tricks. Writing articles that try their best to appear unbiased, it tries to impress on the uninformed its one-sided view of Russia and, in this case, its relations with its Muslim.
In a September 5th article on the jihad in Dagestan “In Russia’s Dagestan, resentments erupt into violence”, the WP and Lally do their best to give the appearance of balance. Sure enough, the article begins with mention of suicide bombers emerging (going on for over two years already in Dagestan) and that weekly “three policemen are killed and numerous civilians become casualties.” But there is no mention anywhere in the article of the organization behind these attacks: the jihadi terrorist network of more than a thousand mujahedin and tens of thousands of supporters called the Caucasus Emirate (CE).
In years past, the WP never mentioned the CE’s amir Dokku ‘Abu Usman’ either. Thus, minor progress can be noted here in that Umarov is mentioned along with his alliance with Al Qa`ida. But this is like writing about Ayman al-Zawahiri and mujahedin in Afghanistan and Pakistan without mentioning Al Qa`ida or Anwar al-Awlaki and mujahedin in Yemen without mentioning Al Qaidia in the Arabian Peninsula. Lally writes about Umarov as if he were a lone terrorist trapped in the woods not the amir of the CE and its thousand or more mujahedin: “Doku Umarov, a Chechen terrorist with al-Qaeda connections suspected of hiding in Dagestan who has been accused of terrorist attacks on Moscow.” In fact, Umarov’s role is much more central. He appoints and leads the top amirs of the CE’s four main regional networks spread across the North Caucasus called ‘vilaiyats’ or governates, including the amir of the Dagestan Vilaiyat’s (DV) mujahedin. A former DV amir, moreover, is the CE’s Shariah Court judge or qadi.
Continue reading "THE WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE ON RUSSIA-MUSLIM RELATIONS " »
by Gordon Hahn
A report of the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program
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Our point of view is not political, is not theoretical, and is not academic. It comes from decades of working at the grassroots of Soviet and post-Soviet society and being avid watchers of Russian politics, economics, history, societal conditioning and current mindsets. Please review our history in order to better understand our perspective on Russia today.
This blog has a companion program, the Russia Media Watch (RMW), which analyzes select pieces of western media for accuracy or inaccuracy of content based on 17 objective criteria. Analyses are then sent to the journalist, the publication and to a wide list of American Congress members, think tanks, business and civic leaders throughout the country.
