No Chechen Fighters in Afghanistan

[3rd Herd]

An Associated Press article from February 2007

"KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: An estimated 700 foreign fighters are operating in a key southern Afghan province where Taliban fighters took control of a town earlier this month, the provincial governor said Sunday.

The foreign fighters — from Chechnya, Uzbekistan and Pakistan — are operating in three volatile areas of Helmand province, including Musa Qala, which fighters overran and have controlled since Feb. 1, Gov. Asadullah Wafa said.

He said the government was conducting negotiations with tribal elders to resolve the dispute..................."
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/11/asia/AS-GEN-Afghan-Town-Captured.php

From 2001

Rashid, Ahmed, "Afghanistan: Ending the Policy Quagmire. "Journal of International Affairs, Spring2001, Vol. 54 Issue 2, p395, 16p
http://www.sfu.ca/~burr/Afghanistan/Ahmed~Rashid~(2001).html

"It must be noted that the Taliban are not an exclusively Afghan movement. According to UN officials and Western humanitarian aid workers in the area, non-Afghans make up approximately one-third of the Taliban fighting force, which can grow to some 25,000 men in the summer fighting season but decreases in the winter. They include hundreds of Arab militants from over a dozen Middle Eastern and North African countries fighting under the banner of Osama bin Laden; Central Asians fighting for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU); Uighur militants from China; and a smattering of Kashmiris, Bangladeshis, Iranians and Chechens.(n6) Pakistan, too, joined in the fray and encouraged thousands of students from largely antiShi'a Pakistani madrassas to fight for the Taliban, including several members of Sunni extremist groups who are wanted at home for murdering Shi'as."

"Since the Taliban recognized the breakaway Chechen Republic in January 1999, young Chechens and their families have sought both sanctuary and training in Afghanistan. These developments have encouraged Afghanistan-based foreign militants to fight in Chechnya. In March 2000 Russia gave the first of several warnings to the Taliban that it would bomb alleged Chechen and Uzbek terrorist camps in northern Afghanistan. Furthermore, the Taliban drew the ire of Central Asian republics by broadcasting Russian language radio programs into Central Asia from Herat in western Afghanistan and by publishing inflammatory Islamic literature in six Central Asian languages. In response, the US and Russia set up a bilateral consultative group to counter Taliban-sponsored extremism."

 

[Thorvald]

Next the Post will be telling us the Marines didn't run into any Chechnyians in Fallujah...  :

 

[tomahawk6]

The Chechens are AQ's most reliable/ruthless fighters.

 

[geo]

Considering that the national boundaries of most countries in that area do not coincide with the territorial boundaries of ethnic groups / tribes, it's no surprise that there are so many nationals fighting in Afghanistan.

Is there a Chechen task force operating in Afghanistan - I don't think so
are there many individual chechens operating in Afghanistan? You'd have to be a fool to believe there aren't!

 

[Flip]

are there many individual chechens operating in Afghanistan? You'd have to be a fool to believe there aren't!

Or you simply don't want to concede that there are outside influences
(Other than NATO etc.) on Afghanistan and the ongoing conflict.

"Freedom fighters"don't have the same legitimacy when they come in
from elsewhere.

 

[tomahawk6]

Freedom fighters applied to AQ/Taliban is absurd. Neither group believes in freedom for anyone. This is a religious war for them which is why their repsective governments are glad to be rid of the zealots. Very much like the Crusades were a holy endeavor in the middle ages.

 

[KevinB]

Is there a Chechen task force operating in Afghanistan - I don't think so

Depends what you consider to be a TF? 

  They have some large cells with sophisiticated attacks. 

 

[geo]

Or you simply don't want to concede that there are outside influences
(Other than NATO etc.) on Afghanistan and the ongoing conflict.
"Freedom fighters"don't have the same legitimacy when they come in
from elsewhere.

Face it, AQ had fighters from pert much everywhere on the Globe
Can, US, Aus, UK, ....

 

[George Wallace]

I think that many are in denial if they feel that there are no 'foreign' fighters fighting for the Taliban.  This latest news story statement proves otherwise:

Mullahkhail said one enemy fighter — an Uzbek — was captured during the fighting in the Sorobi district of Paktika and said that the militants from Uzbekistan and Chechnya were fighting under Yuldash.

 

[3rd Herd]

Here we go again:

The Usual Disclaimer:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,514352,00.html
Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban
By David Rohde in Gardez, Afghanistan
October 30, 2007

The growing numbers of foreign fighters in Afghanistan are more violent and extreme than their local allies.

Afghan police officers working a highway checkpoint near here noticed something odd recently about a passenger in a red pickup truck. Though covered head to toe in a burqa, the traditional veil worn by Afghan women, she was unusually tall. When the police asked her questions, she refused to answer.

When the veil was eventually removed, the police found not a woman at all, but Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes. Inside the truck was 1,000 pounds of explosives.

Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.

The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.

They are also helping to change the face of the Taliban from a movement of hard-line Afghan religious students into a loose network that now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers.

Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.

Their growing numbers point to the worsening problem of lawlessness in Pakistan's tribal areas, which they use as a base to train alongside militants from Al Qaeda who have carried out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe, according to Western diplomats.

"We've seen an unprecedented level of reports of foreign-fighter involvement," said Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. "They'll threaten people if they don't provide meals and support."

In interviews in southern and eastern Afghanistan, local officials and village elders also reported having seen more foreigners fighting alongside the Taliban than in any year since the American-led invasion in 2001.
In Afghanistan, the foreigners serve as mid-level commanders, and train and finance local fighters, according to Western analysts. In Pakistan's tribal areas, they train suicide bombers, create roadside-bomb factories and have vastly increased the number of high-quality Taliban fund-raising and recruiting videos posted online.
Gauging the exact number of Taliban and foreign fighters in Afghanistan is difficult, Western officials and analysts say. At any given time, the Taliban can field up to 10,000 fighters, they said, but only 2,000 to 3,000 are highly motivated, full-time insurgents.

The rest are part-time fighters, young Afghan men who have been alienated by government corruption, who are angry at civilian deaths caused by American bombing raids, or who are simply in search of cash, they said. Five to 10 percent of full-time insurgents - roughly 100 to 300 combatants -- are believed to be foreigners.

Western diplomats say recent offers from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to negotiate with the Taliban are an effort to split local Taliban moderates and Afghans who might be brought back into the fold from the foreign extremists.

But that effort may face an increasing challenge as foreigners replace dozens of midlevel and senior Taliban who, Western officials say, have been killed by NATO and American forces.

At the same time, Western officials said the reliance on foreigners showed that the Taliban are running out of midlevel Afghan commanders. "That's a sure-fire sign of desperation," General Champoux said.

Seth Jones, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, was less sanguine, however, calling the arrival of more foreigners a dangerous development. The tactics the foreigners have introduced, he said, are increasing Afghan and Western casualty rates.
"They play an incredibly important part in the insurgency," Mr. Jones said. "They act as a force multiplier in improving their ability to kill Afghan and NATO forces."

Western officials said the foreigners are also increasingly financing younger Taliban leaders in Pakistan's tribal areas who have closer ties to Al Qaeda, like Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed. The influence of older, more traditional Taliban leaders based in Quetta, Pakistan, is diminishing.

"We see more and more resources going to their fellow travelers," said Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United Nations in Afghanistan. "The new Taliban commanders are younger and younger."

In the southern provinces of Oruzgan, Kandahar and Helmand, Afghan villagers recently described two distinct groups of Taliban fighters. They said "local Taliban" allowed some development projects. But "foreign Taliban" -- usually from Pakistan -- threatened to kill anyone who cooperated with the Afghan government or foreign aid groups.

Hanif Atmar, the Afghan education minister, said threats from foreign Taliban have closed 40 percent of the schools in southern Afghanistan. He said many local Taliban oppose the practice, but foreign Taliban use brutality and cash to their benefit.

"That makes our situation terribly complicated," Mr. Atmar said. "Because they bring resources with them, their agenda takes precedence."

Large groups of Pakistani militants operate in southern Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials. In the east, more Arab and Uzbek fighters are present.

Mr. Bataloff, the Russian arrested in a burqa, insists he is a religious student who traveled to Pakistan last year to learn more about his new faith. In an hourlong interview in an Afghan jail in Kabul, he said his interest in Islam blossomed three years ago when he was living in Siberia.

"First, I heard from TV, radio and newspapers about Islam," he said in Russian. "I found Islam had a lot of good things, especially that Islam respects all prophets, including Jesus."

But he declined to describe many details of his trip and grew angry when asked about his personal background. "Homicide and suicide is not allowed in any religion," he said, when asked about the allegations against him. "Why are you asking me these questions?"

Mr. Bataloff said he grew up in Siberia, but would not identify his hometown or region. He said he could not remember the names of the Pakistanis he met or the two Afghan men who drove the pickup truck.

He said he decided to go to a predominantly Muslim country last fall to study Islam and learn about "the morals, the customs, the ethics and the literature." He flew alone from Russia to Iran, he said, and met a Russian-speaking "guide" in the airport.

After spending 10 days in Iran, he crossed into Pakistan and traveled to North Waziristan, a remote tribal area that is a longtime Taliban and Qaeda stronghold. There, he spent a year living and studying in a small mosque in Mir Ali.

Pakistani security officials say the Islamic Jihad Union, a terrorist group led by militants from Uzbekistan, operates a training camp in Mir Ali.
[In mid-October, in some of the heaviest fighting in four years, the Pakistani military said 50 foreign fighters were among 200 militants reported killed in three days of clashes around Mir Ali. The dead foreigners were said to include mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks, as well as some Arabs, the army said.]

Some of the suspects arrested in a failed bombing plot in Germany in September received training in the tribal areas, according to German officials. Several men involved in the July 2005 London transit bombings and a failed August 2006 London airliner plot did as well.

Mr. Bataloff said he met no foreign militants in his 10 months in the tribal areas. But American military officials said he had told interrogators that he had attended a terrorist training camp in North Waziristan. He said local militants forced him to go to the camp and taught him how to fire an AK-47 assault rifle, the officials said.

"I didn't have any specific teacher," he said, when asked about Pakistanis he met there. "There were local people who knew the Koran."

A second foreign prisoner produced by Afghan officials identified himself as Muhammad Kuzeubaev, a 23-year-old from Temirtau, Kazakhstan. Afghan officials said he was a bombmaker arrested in September in Badakhshan Province in northern Afghanistan.

In an interview, Mr. Kuzeubaev, who also spoke fluent Russian, said he was visiting Afghanistan as a tourist. "I was close to the border," he said. "I thought I would go explore the country."

In Badakhshan, he said, two Afghan men abducted him and demanded he join Al Qaeda. He agreed to do so fearing he would be killed, he said. That night, the men showed him parts of a suicide vest and promised to take him to Pakistan for training.

"They showed me the explosives, the vest and grenade," said Mr. Kuzeubaev. "The next day, they brought some kind of weapons."

Two days later, Afghan police officers surrounded the house and arrested him, he said. Afghan interrogators beat him, chained him to a wall and prevented him from sleeping for four days, he said.

"They are saying, 'You are the man who was making the vests,' " said Mr. Kuzeubaev. "But the ammunition and other explosives were not mine."

 

[geo]

cross dressing terrorists....  what'll they think of next!

 

[rz350]

I can see Chechen's going to A'stan. They seem very dedicated to their cause. (they seem willing to risk capture and horrific treatment by the spooks of the FSB and MVD, and to face down an opponent who really gives no quarter or care about collateral damage) I just hope that Eastern bloc and Western doctrine are different enough that what they learned fighting the XX motor rifle division doesn't help them too much against RCR, and that fighting RCR doesn't teach them how to fight the XX Motor Rifle. (Since I want see this bloody Whabbist/Islamist insurgency crushed worldwide)

 

[TCBF]

The Rooskies landed in Kabul in Dec 1979.  Almost 28 years ago.  Say 25 years of difference 1982 to 2007. The difference is the same as 1918 to 1943.  Would you have liked a bunch of guys with 1918 experience - frozen in time - telling you how to fight in 1943?

Nope.  But that's what happened to the bad guys.  They thought they were back in 1983.

Suckers.

The difference in equipment and techniques between the Soviet invasion and now are simply amazing.  Revolutionary, even.  The Russians would have wept for such a capability.  You wonder why so many TB leaders are foreign?  The smart locals will now wait us out and the stupid ones are almost all dead, or will be.

In 2002, they sent a friendly warlord and his bodyguards to tour the surv suite of my Coyote.  He took a good look at what my daycam and thermal could see.  When he realized what he saw really meant, the smile on his face could only be described as FERAL (I admired the man and still do).

You see, he knew what the new reality was, and he knew his enemies didn't.  It was - and is - as simple as that. 

Slow to adapt - criminally slow, from a military leadership perspective - our enemies sacrificed the cream of their local crop.  For nothing.  Sheer bloody incompetence. 

You see, good at killing and good at dying does not always mean good at winning.



Once this became obvious, their handlers turned the Media loose on us.  "71 Dead!" they scream.  Come on, 71 dead?  What was that at Dieppe, a landing craft load?  Really, 71 dead is maybe three years of canoeing accidents in Canada.  H_ll, Robert Pickton may have killed more Canadians than the TB has so far.  No, the REAL issue for The Left is the grotesque number of 'brave anti-globalist' TB/AQ guys who are deserting the planet for paradise.

Might not be enough left to savage the West if this keeps up.

Which is the point.  The left doesn't want us out of the box to save our lives.  It wants us out of the box to save the enemy.

They may need them in the future.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Seems even the locals in Helmand aren't happy with the "foreign" Taliban - shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions, Section 29, of the Copyright Act.

Foreign Taleban Rile Helmand Residents
Afghans in the troubled province say many of the insurgents are not Pashtuns but incomers from other countries who behave in a high-handed and aggressive way towards local civilians.
Trainees, Institute for War and Peace Research report ARR No. 271, 30 Oct 07
Article link - permalink (.pdf)

HELMAND - Abdujalil is still angry at the rough treatment the Taleban meted out to him while he was on way home to the Khaneshin district from the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

“I went to the city on business, said Abdujalil (not his real name). “I was stopped by the Taleban on the way back. They searched me, accused me of spying, and then took me to their base. They asked me a lot of questions and said I was a spy for the government. They warned me that they’d kill me if I ever came to Lashkar Gah again.”

The young man insists his captors were foreigners rather than Afghans, as were most of the insurgent fighters at the Taleban base where they took him.

“Many of them were [Pakistani] Punjabis,” he said. “The rest were from somewhere else. I wouldn’t be so angry if they had been Afghan, but now foreigners are playing with us.”

Once at the insurgents’ base, he said, he was lucky enough to run into a local member of the Taleban who knew him and helped secure his release.

The presence of foreign fighters is an explosive issue in war-ravaged Helmand, where fierce battles between the insurgents and the international forces take place almost continuously, and suicide attacks occur on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Most residents agree that security is their biggest problem.

People in Helmand claim much of the trouble stems not from Afghan Taleban, but from insurgents trained in Pakistan who flow in through the porous border. Religious schools and training centres in Pakistani cities such as Quetta and Peshawar turn out suicide bombers and jihadi fighters who then come to Afghanistan to cause mischief.

The issue has soured the already tense relationship between Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan. Presidents Hamed Karzai and Pervez Musharraf have traded accusations in public, with the Afghan president condemning his Pakistani counterpart for failing to crack down on the extremists, and Musharraf in turn alleging that Karzai is turning a blind eye to problems in his own country.

Iran has also come in for its share of criticism, most recently for allegedly supplying arms to the Taleban. Now Helmand residents say that fighters from the Sistan-Balochistan province of southeast Iran, bordering on Afghanistan, are infiltrating the province. The Balochi people are Sunni Muslims, unlike the Shia majority in Iran.

Afghans are convinced that Tehran is deliberately helping to destabilise the situation with a view towards keeping the international forces pinned down, and hence unable to mount an attack on Iran as the nuclear dispute escalates.

In Helmand, people say foreign rather than Afghan militants predominate in those parts of the province that are under Taleban control.

The districts that border Pakistan – Garmseer and Deshu, as well as adjoining Khaneshin, are now overrun with foreign Taleban who often outnumber the local insurgents, say locals.

People living in these areas claim they are badly mistreated by these outsiders, who include Pakistanis, Chechens, Uzbeks and Balochis.

Residents who have to travel into Afghan government-controlled areas on business say they face many difficulties on their way back home. The foreign Taleban, stop them and accuse them of spying for the government. Many claim they have been detained for days until their relatives can come up with the money to buy their release.

“All the power lies with the foreign Taleban, and they can carry out any act of cruelty they like against residents of this district,” said 25-year-old Rahmatullah, from Khaneshin.

“There is a limited number of Pashtun Taleban here in Khaneshin. Mostly they’re Punjabi or Balochi, and they treat the local people very badly. If anyone goes to Lashkar Gah, they seize him the day after he comes back. They take him to their base, accuse him of spying, and then beat him. They may take money as a fine and then release him.”

Faced with risk, many people are trying to avoid contact with the foreign militants.

“My brother has been at home for about six months now,” said Rahmatullah. “He doesn't go out of the house. If he did, God knows what would happen to him."

A Taleban commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that foreign fighters were in the area.

“They come for the sacred purpose of jihad,” he said. “They fight according to Sharia law. No foreign fighter can serve as a Taleban commander.”

The commander did, however, acknowledge that there were incidents of abuse.

“These things can happen, especially in the areas like Khaneshin and Deshu that border Pakistan,” he said. “People should tell us so that we can combat such atrocious actions. We will not allow people to run wild. We have a system, and we will question anyone who’s accused of bad behaviour.”

But on the ground, this system of control does not seem to be working.

“The Afghan Taleban treat us nicely, and we like them,” said Momo Khan, 35, a resident of Deshu district. “But these Punjabis and Balochis are very bad. They take our money, they beat us, and they put us in their jails.”

The situation has resulted in the Deshu district being all but cut off from normal life, he said. “When businessmen, merchants, even well-diggers come to us and offer their services, they are caught by these foreign Taleban and charged with spying for NATO or the Afghan government,” said Momo Khan. “They face the death penalty.”

There have been several well-publicised extrajudicial executions in Taleban-dominated areas, including the beheading of Kabul-based translator Ajmal Naqshbandi in Nad Ali in April and the recent hanging of a 15-year-old in Greshk. Reports of multiple public hangings have filtered in from Musa Qala, Sangin, Greshk and other districts, although security problems and the difficulty of reaching remote areas make it impossible to verify this information.

According to Momo Khan, it is the foreign fighters who are responsible for most of the arbitrary violence.

“There are very few Afghan Taleban in our district,” he said. “I would do anything for them, because whatever may happen, they are Afghans.”

While the bulk of the foreign presence may be in the southern part of Helmand province, there are fighters finding their way to other districts.

Musa Qala, in Helmand’s north, has been under the white Taleban flag since February, and for several months enjoyed a respite from the fighting and crime that has ravaged much of the rest of the province. During the summer, many residents were expressing satisfaction with the Taleban administration, saying that the security it brought more than made up for the restrictions it imposed.

But increasingly, northerly districts like Musa Qala are being infiltrated by foreign Taleban, say residents of these areas.

The top Afghan army commander in Helmand, Brigadier-General Ghulam Mohammad Ghori, has told the Associated Press news agency that there are foreign fighters were in Musa Qala, and may be obstructing peace negotiations between local tribal chiefs and the Afghan government.

“We have begun negotiating with tribal leaders to take over Musa Qala from the Taleban,” he said in the AP interview. "The tribal leaders are also worried about these Taleban, because the foreign fighters - Arabs, Chechens, Balochis and Uzbeks - are in Musa Qala."

IWPR is implementing a journalism training and reporting project in Helmand. This article is by one of the trainees, whose name has been withheld for security reasons.

 

[DesertVengeance]

i know the 06 rotos ran into chechnyans a couple times.  One friend said it was the worst fire fight of the tour.  He knew something was up when he started recieving aimed single shots in the fight.  He said it was kind of a shock when you're used to fighting spray and pray and all of a sudden they're putting down effective fire and using tactics not to mention advancing into the fight.  Apparently they found a body that day and a russian in the unit made the call (he was russian til fairly recently and came from that area).  Turns out int came back some months later confirming it.

Doesn't surprise me at all... perfect landscape for them to conduct their favoured tactics and a much more open battlefield than the largely FIBUA nature of Iraq.

 

[geo]

Regardless....
It is a wonderful thing when the imported "help" is pissing off the local population to no end.

Just another motivator to turn the locals & persuade them to report insurgent activity to the ANA

 

[TCBF]

- Hearts and minds can work both ways. 

- Ultimately, people will side with whoever they think will WIN.  The first indicator of that is whoever controls the village at night.  That means there is at least one local fighter.  Even if he is alone for long periods, he will use that time to establish who the biggest obstacles are in the village.  'Revolutionary Justice' - meted out the next time other fighters return to join him at night - then dissuades further obstacles.

 

[KevinB]

i know the 06 rotos ran into chechnyans a couple times.   One friend said it was the worst fire fight of the tour.  He knew something was up when he started recieving aimed single shots in the fight.  He said it was kind of a shock when you're used to fighting spray and pray and all of a sudden they're putting down effective fire and using tactics not to mention advancing into the fight.  Apparently they found a body that day and a russian in the unit made the call (he was russian til fairly recently and came from that area).  Turns out int came back some months later confirming it.

Doesn't surprise me at all... perfect landscape for them to conduct their favoured tactics and a much more open battlefield than the largely FIBUA nature of Iraq.

Iraq

Afghanistan