Pro-Chechen activists are increasingly going underground to secretly funnel money to fighters in Chechnya as post-Sept. 11 government crackdowns and Russian pressure choke off what was once a flow of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Russian republic, say Chechens and experts familiar with the money trail. The financial squeeze comes as Chechen rebels rely more on such dramatic low-cost terror attacks as the Russian school hostage-taking and suicide bombings with militants so starved of cash that they cannot afford to keep heavily armed forces in Chechnya. "Limited resources mean more terrorism," said Michael Radu, a terrorism expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. "Terrorism is cheaper than guerrilla warfare and it has a more dramatic impact. You don't need heavy weapons to kidnap children."
The money flow has fallen sharply from its peak in the 1990s to an estimated several hundred thousand dollars a year now, Chechen activists and terrorism experts said. Wealthy Chechen businessmen and Islamic and pro-Chechen charities in the Persian Gulf, Jordan, Turkey, Europe and the United States once accounted for most of the hundreds of millions of dollars in fund-raising. It was mostly done through a far-flung Chechen diaspora, and Islamic charities often using murky and secret transactions that experts say were difficult to track. Now, the money is smuggled into Chechnya largely by private businessmen traveling through Azerbaijan, the Chechen activists and experts said. |