Chechnya and the Osama link

THE links between Chechen rebels and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda go back to the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist-training camps of Afghanistan.

For the Chechen rebels, this was more a marriage of convenience than a meeting of religious soulmates.

After Russian troops poured into Chechnya in 1994 to crush the anarchic republic, Chechen fighters put up a furious resistance in the streets of Grozny, killing hundreds of Russian troops in vicious house-to-house fighting.

After the bloody rebuff, the Russians re-grouped and used artillery barrages to flatten the city. The attack caused massive casualties, but eventually enabled the Russians to take the city. The fighters retreated to the countryside to wage a low-level guerrilla war that is still going on today.

With the Russians in control of Grozny, and few allies in neighbouring Caucuses republics, the Chechens had to turn overseas to find help in their struggle.

The Chechen resistance now splintered, with nationalist, Islamic radical and criminal groups dispersing around the world. Those with an Islamic tinge soon found a haven in the Middle East, getting a warm welcome in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.

To Osama bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalists, the struggle of the Chechens had a resonance with their fight against the "godless" Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The Saudi Islamic charities that were implicated in the funding of al-Qaeda rallied to the Chechens and started to fund their exiled political parties and military groups.

When bin Laden was thrown out of Sudan in 1998 and de-camped to Afghanistan, the Chechen exiles soon followed. Hundreds of Chechen fighters were given refuge in the al-Qaeda camps, undergoing military training and Islamic indoctrination.

The camps became a "university of terrorism" for disgruntled Muslims from all over the former Soviet Union. The Chechens met like-minded fighters from Georgia and Uzbekistan, who were waging their own campaigns against Moscow’s troops.

The Chechens modified their tactics, striking at the heart of the Russian state rather than taking on Moscow’s military in Chechnya itself.

The skills needed to launch urban terrorist strikes were very different from those needed to fight Russian troops in the back streets of Grozny.

The Russian FSB intelligence service had watched with great concern the gathering of disgruntled Islamic fighters. Trying to neutralise the threat, they began backing the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance during the late 1990s, with little success. Russia was an enthusiastic supporter of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of 11 September.

While the Chechens received training and support from al-Qaeda, the degree to which bin Laden and his operatives have directly participated in terrorist events inside Russia is less clear.

The Chechen rebels are notoriously fractious and tribal chiefs have far more influence than Islamic ideology. Members of al-Qaeda have been spotted in the Caucausus, but it seems unlikely that they have any command authority over the Chechens.

As one observer commented: "The Chechens have died in their tens of thousands to avoid taking orders from Moscow, so they are unlikely to take orders from anyone else."