In pictures: Al Qaeda in the Caucasus

well, it was good for a few laughs!

i am sure putin was pleased to see this – all that confusion and conflation and unsubstantiated claims and unverifiable images and the best; the complete erasure of the history and origin of the chechnyan conflict and its replacement by a calming, comforting narrative about islamic fanaticism and derangement. nice. saves a lot of domestic propaganda funding :)

oh how must tolstoy weep :)

i am reminded of how so many authoritarian, brutalizing leaderships across the globe have rushed to embrace the ‘war against terror’ and conflate their local wars, their discontented subjects, their regional oppressions into variations on ‘the long war’. macedonia went so far as to murder local immigrants just to ‘impress’ the americans, creating in effect what must be a method copied by many nations across the globe. read here in case you missed it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3674533.stm

this is just the case that was caught. human rights groups in pakistan are documenting similar actions in pakistan, that ally at the forefront against ‘terrorists’ – with no one asking how someone is declared or determined a ‘terrorist’ other than to show acts of resistance(peaceful, non violent, intellectual, violent, military etc. all counts). the pakistanis have done it repeatedly, resulting in thousands of citizens who have been accused and renditioned.

and now this little group with their rather amateurish attempt to erase the chechnyan struggle and reduce it to merely another ‘al-qaeda’ front. conflating islam with terrorism, or piety (prayers on caps, prayer beads, beards – like wearing a cross or a yarmulka) with fanaticism can confuse the mind and compell it to arrive at conclusions that are self-confirming and illogical.

i think of so many other authoritarian governments across the globe undulging in similar practices i.e. veiling their local/domestic struggles for representation, liberation, autonomy, rights, etc. with the rhetoric of 'al qaeda' and 'the war against terror' -  think kazakstan, uzbekistan, afghanistan, india (in kashmir), pakistan (in balochistan, NWFP), thailand (in southern thailand), philippines (in mindanao), china (in xinjiang), jordan, egypt, israel (in west bank/gaza), and so many more.

‘the long war’, ‘the axis of evil’, ‘the war against terror’ – these phrases hide truths, because they erase complexities and subtleties. they erase history, culture, diversity, and worse, humanity.

the brutalization of chechnya, the mass murder its citizens, the dismissal of their culture as ‘backward’ or ‘barbaric’, the continued colonization of their lands and clearly a genocidal attempt to erase the chechnyan society are all well documented truths. they can’t be erased because of a ‘the long war’ narrative that spreads fear in our minds, and callousness, inhumanity, brutality and a lust for blood in our hearts. it is estimated that nearly 250,000 chechnyan civilians have been killed in what has been described as ‘a real war’. and this only since 1994.

history.

memory.

in our sophisticated propaganda infused world, only these two things offer us a means to avoid becoming automatons and retaining those essential human needs (at least since the enlightenment); the need to question, to understand, and the need to never take power (religious or political) at its word.

asim

The intro to the pictures doesn’t purport to be a ‘complete history of the Chechenyan conflict’. Interested in further substantiation of your points Asim: what are the unsubstantiated claims? Happy to see you dispute any specific point so we can learn something from you.

damon;

you are right that the intro does not purport to offer a ‘complete history’

but it does play a trick that makes the entire history fit into the ‘the long war’ framework i.e. it explicitly revises that history into the framework of the ‘war against terror’

for example referring to chechnyan resistance to russia/soviet union/russia as a ‘jihad’ is intentionally meant to confuse the issue into our modern islamophobic frameworks. there is a decision to use the word
‘jihad’ for what has been, as tolstoy well documented, a resistance to russian colonialism and control. to refer to their struggle as a ‘jihad’ simply moves it into a framework of our current obsessions and
attempts to close our thinking.

statements like ‘Chechnya served as one of the first battlegrounds outside of Afghanistan for al Qaeda in the early 1990s’ – this is specious at best. thousands indeed go to chechnya to fight in support of a people being
brutalized by the soviet/russian war machine, but how is that different from those who went to fight in the spanish civil war and joined the International Brigade? i wanted to go to chechnya – and i was at columbia university at that time!

as people, as humans we are moved to action in support of the weak, regardless of where they may be.
in the face of civilian brutalities, by a murderous, militarily
superior power, people are moved and risk their lives to fight against it. in muslims countries around the world in hundreds of thousands of mosques and tv/radio/internet channels around the world, people heard about the horrors of chechnya. to claim that this was ‘al qaeda’ that sent people there is sheer nonsense and i would love someone to show me evidence that these were ‘alqaeda’ fighters. they were more likely ordinary muslims/civilians/human beings from around the world moved to anger by the constant news of the tens of thousands being killed in cold blood by the russians while the world looked away and gave pious speeches about human rights elsewhere.

hey, so many photographers went there too and argued in support of the chechnyans.

again, this is a construction taking one phenomenon and without evidence making it into something that fits our ‘terrorism’ narrative

later they say that ‘al qaeda’ radicalized the leadership. i find that quite ludicrous especially if you have any knowledge of what happened in places like grozny.

could it not be that it was because all of chechnya was brutalized? could it not be that life there, where hundreds of thousands were dead, or hungry, or living like dogs in the
carcasses of cities that did not even have the basics for human existence, was what radicalized them? could it be that the chechnyans fighters were simply driven to madness because of the madness of their lives at the wrong end of russians massive and indiscriminate war machine?

stanley greene’s book ‘Open Wound’ captures some of what it was like to be in chechnya during the 2 russian campaigns there. about as much as photographs can do and that is not much, but still, something.

i am just saying; its too simple, too comic book. that is all. its too convenient and leaves more unsaid than said. and all the while attempting to change its ‘color’ and fit it into the ‘axis of evil’ or ‘war against
islamo-fascism’ or whatever other phrase is in fashion at the moment.

i appreciate the link though – its important to know what is out there and how things are being propagated.

asim

Apparently, Al-Queda was only classified as an international ‘network’, because doing so gave the FBI the opportunity to prosecute the 1993 World Trade Center bombers under RICO conspiracy laws.

Many journalists have established that ‘Al-Queda’ is more of a label of convenience – rather like ‘War on Terror’ – used by disparate groups, with disparate (and sometimes competing) agendas, in various countries.

The mainstream James Bond-esque idea that some pan-national force called ‘Al-Queda’ exists, is largely bogus.

Just because Islamic extremist groups exist internationally doesn’t establish that there are connections between them, or that they are all guided Fu-Manchu style, by some
bearded bloke sitting in a cave. Osama Bin Laden isn’t even listed by the FBI as a 9/11 suspect.

It seems being labelled by all and sundry as the mastermind behind the biggest mass murder in US history, isn’t worth a mention.

Defining Al Queda as an international terror network increases, not lessens the problem. If you’re some disaffected youth reading Salafi/Wahabi extremist propaganda in your flat, you’re more likely to go and blow something up, under the impression that you’re a one-man-army for some ‘Islamic International Brigade’,
when the truth is you’re not much different to Mark David Chapman or Andrew Cunanan.

I was not sure about this, so did not include it in my earlier comments. But i went and pulled out my copy of Anna Politkovskaya’s stunning book about Russia under Putin and found the appropriate quotes.
Anna Politkovskaya was, if you don’t already know, a woman who’s life work was reporting on the situation in the caucases, and in particular in chechnya. She was awarded many foreign prizes for her work.

In 2003 she received the first “Lettre Ulysses Award” for best reportage as well as the Hermann Kesten Medal.

In 2004 she was given the Olaf Palme Prize, and one year later the Prize for Freedom and Future of the Press. In Russia she was awarded the Prize of the Journalists Union in 2001.

In her native country, however, she also faced threats and intimidation. Yet she refused to have a bodyguard in the same way she refused to go into exile.

In 2004 she was the victim of a poisoning attempt.

On October 7, 2006 she was shot by an unknown gunman in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment block. The documents used for her last article have gone missing.

Ok, now you know who she is. And how serious she was. And what a model of reportage and journalism she ought to be for all of us who call ourselves photojournalists.

She ends her book “Putin’s Russia” with this statement directed towards both deceptive political groups and society: “They always say only ‘Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda’. A cursed slogan.
It is the easiest thing to say, the answer with which to brush aside every new bloody tragedy. It is also the most primitive, with which one can lull the consciousness of a society,
one which dreams of being lulled.”

asim