Latest North Caucasus Weekly Articles

Tempers Cool In Qatar Assassination Row

Last weekend brought another indication that Russia and Qatar may be able to negotiate a settlement in their dispute over the alleged involvement of Russian intelligence operatives in the assassination of a Chechen extremist. The head of the Russian Security Council, Igor Ivanov, met with... MORE

French Journalist Examines The Chechen Tragedy

The distinguished French journalist Sophie Shihab has written regularly about Chechnya for Le Monde and other periodicals since well before the outbreak of the first Chechen war a decade ago. To this day she continues to bypass the Russian authorities’ information blockade by visiting Chechnya... MORE

Media Censorship Grows In Ingushetia

The April 15 issue of Novaya gazeta included a long article by Anna Politkovskaya about the deteriorating situation in Ingushetia, including Soviet-style censorship of the local mass media. She found that the media do not publish one word about kidnappings and other extra-judicial punishments. A... MORE

Kadyrov And Gazprom Settle Dispute

The dispute between the Kadryov administration and Gazprom, Russia’s powerful natural gas monopoly, has finally been settled, according to an April 14 article by Aleseik Grivach in Vremya novostei. Kadyrov and Gazprom head Aleksei Miller signed a five-year cooperation agreement on April 13 covering such... MORE

Briefs

--REBELS ARMS THEMSELVES An April 15 report by Umalt Dudayev for the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (website www.iwpr.net ) shed light on the use of cheap, homemade but nevertheless highly deadly weapons by the rebel guerrillas in Chechnya. Dudayev concluded that “even... MORE

Russian Security Agency Reportedly Targeting Widows

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB; the renamed KGB) appears now to be using a new, stunningly self-defeating tactic to try to forestall possible terrorist attacks: kidnapping widows of Chechen men already killed by those same agencies. A handful of such widows have become suicide bombers,... MORE

Claims That Maskhadov Will Surrender: Wishful Thinking?

By encouraging reports that Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya's underground separatist president, is about to surrender, the administration of Akhmad Kadyrov has seriously raised the stakes in its campaign to prove that peace is at hand. If Maskhadov is still at large a month from now, with... MORE

Video Images Suggest Russian Atrocities In Chechnya

Federal forces first betrayed, then tortured and murdered separatist guerrillas in the Urus-Martan district southwest of Grozny after the guerrillas surrendered some four years ago in response to an offer of amnesty. That is the conclusion drawn by Anna Politkovskaya of Novaya gazeta from what... MORE

Rights Groups Highlight Worsening Conditions For Civilians

Rather than exhibiting "normalization," the situation for peaceful civilians in Chechnya is actually deteriorating, according to a joint statement released on April 7 by four human rights groups--three of them western and one Russian. The groups are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Medical Foundation... MORE

Trial Of Russian Agents Begins In Qatar

On April 11 began the long awaited trial of two Russian intelligence agents charged with murdering a Chechen extremist in Qatar. According to QNA, the Persian Gulf sheikhdom's state controlled news agency, both of the defendants pleaded not guilty to the major charge of murder--though... MORE