ARAB PRESENCE ON WANE?

In an article entitled “The Arabs Are Coming to an End in Chechnya,” which appeared in the July 25 issue of Gazeta.ru, journalist Aleksandr Godin wrote that, according to Colonel Il’ya Shabalkin, “thirty Arabs were destroyed over the past two weeks” in Chechnya. Over the past half-year, according to military sources, some 100 Arabs have been killed in the republic, leaving perhaps some 200 left. “An indirect confirmation of the weakening of the position of the Arabs in Chechnya,” Gazeta.ru went on to observe, “has been the reunification of Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil’ Basaev. In this way, the conflict in Chechnya, which had been presented earlier as one between Russia and an Ichkeria supported by Arabs, is more and more turning into a so-called internal Chechen dialogue: The Chechen Kadyrov, who is loyal to the Kremlin, against the separatist Chechen Maskhadov.”