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| Caucasus |
| Wahhabi rebels kill 2 Russian cops in Kabardino-Balkaria |
| 2004-08-21 |
| First Chechnya, then Dagesten, then Ingushetia, and now Kabardino-Balkaria. They just don't know when to quit, do they? Two policemen were killed and four wounded in clashes with members of the Wahhabi underground in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in clashes on Wednesday and Thursday, Russian media reported. Some 400 Russian servicemen were deployed to track down the rebels, but as of Friday morning, no rebels had been found. Early on Wednesday, the republic's Interior Ministry was tipped off that a group of armed men were hiding in a forest some 10 kilometers from the regional capital of Nalchik. Local police combing the forest on Wednesday surrounded a group of eight armed men, according to the Interior Ministry. Two police officers were killed and four wounded in the ensuing shootout. Two gunmen were also killed. The Interior Ministry said that it had identified the two slain gunmen, but refused to disclose their names. The remaining gunmen managed to escape. The killed gunmen were ethnic Balkars and Wahhabis, followers of the austere brand of Islam, which ideologically unites the extremist anti-Russian underground networks in the Northern Caucasus, the regional news agency Kavkazsky Uzel reported on Thursday, citing unnamed officials in Kabardino-Balkaria's Interior Ministry. Also on Thursday morning, police attempting to search a suspicious car in the Nalchik suburb of Khasania - a predominately Balkar area - were fired on by the vehicle's passengers. Police later found the car abandoned and riddled with bullets on a Nalchik street. According to the Interior Ministry, 10 kilograms of explosives were found in the car. The ministry stepped up security at all border checkpoints across the republic to search all vehicles. Some 400 Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service (FSB) troops continued to comb the forest around Nalchik on Friday in search of the remaining rebels. A year ago, a similar operation was conducted when security officials launched a crackdown on the leaders of the local Wahhabi cell, who had reportedly participated in the dispatching of Chechen female suicide bombers to Moscow. Two Wahhabi activists were killed and several others arrested during that operation. Wahhabism in the republic has spread predominantly among the Balkars, who constitute about 10 per cent of the population. Unlike their neighbors, the Kabardins, who control most of key government positions in the republic, the Balkars had been deported, along with the Chechens, from their native home to Kazakhstan by Joseph Stalin in 1943. They were allowed to return in 1957, but their integration into the social and political processes in the republic has consistently been obstructed by the Kabardin elite. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |