March 01, 2003

U.S. blacklists Islamic groups

The United States has placed three Chechen rebel groups on its blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations, linking them to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and freezing any assets they may have on U.S. territory, the State Department said yesterday.
     Russia has been urging the United States to designate the groups — the Islamic International Brigade, the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment and the Riyadus-Salikhin Battalion — as terrorists for more than a year. It cited various violent acts they have committed, including the hostage-taking at Moscow's Dubrovka Theater in October, in which 129 persons died.

 But Washington dismissed suggestions that the move rewards Moscow at a time when its vote on the U.N. Security Council is badly needed in support of a war in Iraq. U.S. officials insisted that they had blacklisted the groups because they "threatened the safety of U.S. citizens and U.S. national security or foreign policy interests."
     
"We recognize that there are terrorist elements among those fighting Russian forces in Chechnya," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. "At the same time, we do not consider all Chechen fighters to be terrorists."
[...]

U.S. officials said the three groups did not exactly match the ones Russia wanted to see blacklisted. Riyadus-Salikhin, Arabic for Fields of the Righteous, was not known until the theater attack and drew its members from the two other organizations, they said.
     
The officials identified Shamil Basayev* as a key rebel, whom they described as the leader of Riyadus-Salikhin and former commander of the International Islamic Brigade. 
[...]
The United States, which repeatedly criticized Russia's campaign against Chechnya for abusing human rights, has softened its stance since September 11, viewing the conflict as part of the global fight against terrorism. Mr. Boucher said the matter has also been taken up by the United Nations.
     "Because these three groups are linked to al Qaeda, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, China and Spain have requested today that the United Nations 1267 Sanctions Committee include the groups on its consolidated list," he said.
     The spokesman said France has indicated it will join the designation, which would be the first time all five permanent members of the Security Council have joined in submitting names to the sanctions committee.

Hmmm...France, eh?
Gosh, Chechnya's a lot closer to Paris than it is to New York, isn't it?
The time to put the spotlight on these Chechen IslamoFascists is long overdue, but thank God it's done now.
If you can weed the Arabian Mujjahaddin from the native Chechen freedom fighters, this will be helpful as I believe that Al Queda and other radical Islamist groups have moved their "hideouts" and training ops to Chechnya from the no-longer-friendly Afghanistan and perhaps even Pakistan.
I believe that there's another nest of Islamist terrorists training in the "Three Borders" area of Latin America, but that is for another day.
And while this move by the U.S. may not secure Russia's vote in the UNSC, it can't hurt and our gripe about their treatment of the Chechen "rebels" was a big obstacle to get out of the way.
Onwards!
And good work by Powell and his minions at Foggy Bottom.

* Shamil Basayev is the uncle of the guy that led the Moscow theatre siege by "terrorist scum"[Putin] last October.
Needless to say, "payback" is probably his middle name!