14 February 2003 00:00
KEYNOTE SPEECH BY MR. SERGEY B.IVANOV, MINISTER OF DEFENSE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION, AT THE 39TH MUNICH CONFERENCE ON SECURITY POLICY, MUNICH, FEBRUARY 8, 2003
Ladies and Gentlemen!
I now address this audience in Munich on the issue of international terrorism for a fourth consecutive year.
Back in the year 2000, I made a point of bringing your attention to what was really going on in Chechnya.
In the year 2001, I tried, to no avail, to show the danger emanating from the Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
Last year I have made an attempt to chart out the major avenues for international cooperation to face a new challenge launched against the whole of the civilized world.
So, what has changed over the year?
The military success gained by the anti-terrorist coalition that brought about the banishment of the Taliban from virtually the whole of the Afghan soil, the accomplishments attained by the all-Afghan grand assembly of the Lloia Jirga have reinforced the policies geared towards the resurrection of an independent and peaceful Afghanistan, ultimately wiping out the terrorist sanctuaries, religious extremists’ safe havens, and drug trafficking rings harbored in its territory.
However, the interim administration headed by Khamid Karzai has so far wielded no appropriate influence in the provinces. Thus far, there is no stage set for the irreversible prevention of the Taliban from making a political comeback. There are renewed attempts to plot and stage acts of terror against the Afghan leadership, with the perpetrators, importantly, being trained and outfitted outside the country.
In this context, a concert of coordinated efforts is required, including those to be exerted internationally, in order to counter Islamic extremism under whatever guise it may assume (say, "The Taliban Movement", "Wahhabism", you name it).
To curb and nip in the bud the drivers conductive to the activism of that Movement is the strategic goal to be pursued in the fight against it. The most important among those drivers both in the Central Asia and elsewhere in the world are acute political conflicts and grave economic problems.
However, battling terrorism with the exclusive reliance upon military force makes sense none too much unless the said fight immediately affects its ideological pillars.
Counter-terrorism would prove far more efficient if and when the ideas nurtured by the masterminds and ideologues behind terrorism could be stripped of their attractivity, the links between the terrorist chapters around the globe could be torn off, with the financial backers shut down, manpower training facilities destroyed, and arms supplies disrupted.
As is known, the territories of a number of the Central Asian States are still harboring the representative offices for the extremist organizations, operating unfettered and unimpeded, under the guise of humanitarian relief, clerical, and any other centers.
For instance, the Pakistan-based Al-Rashid Trust Foundation, set up back in the year 1996 for the purpose of rendering humanitarian relief aid to the Afghan refugees in Pakistan, has subsequently spread its operations further afield covering the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation and Kosovo. The underlying objective as pursued by that Foundation is propagation of the jihad ideology and immediate armed response to any instance of alleged encroachment upon the Muslims.
The Saudi Wahhabi chapters and cells also keep at making quick use of the territories of a number of Middle and Near Eastern States to train up fighters coming from the European, Asian, and African countries.
There is proven linkage between the medresses - Pakistani Islamist schools belonging to the religious parties Jamaat-eh-Islami, Jamiet-uhl-ulemah-i-Islam, and Jamiat-uhl-ulemah-i-Pakistan - to different fighter training centers and camps. Extremist organizations The Voice of Islam, Al-Ribat, Majallah al-Dava, Tajibah, Zarb-i-tajibah, Zarb-i-momin, Dharb-i-momin, Jihad Times keep unhindered printing and proliferating their own publications that effectively brainwash and enlist the volunteers from among the young Muslims for terrorist activities.
The developments in the frontier Northwestern province adjacent to Afghanistan, where the Taliban hold sway, arouse particular anxiety.
The military and political developments in the Central Asia constitute one of the pivotal factors affecting world security as a whole.
Russia is an advocate for forging multi-polar, inherently cooperative supra-regional security arrangements for the Central Asia to be set upon the basis of equitable partnerships of all of the States of the region. Fortifying the prevailing mechanisms currently in place in that area for multilateral interaction and regional security, in the first place – the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, shall foster such arrangements.
Apart from that, pursuant to the Resolution endorsed by the Yerevan Session of the Collective Security Council, the year 2001 saw the raising of the Collective Rapid Deployment Forces (the CRDF) under the Treaty on Collective Security (the CST) in the Central Asian region, with the units contributed by the militaries of the four CIS states (Kazakhstan, the Kirghiz Republic, Tajikistan and Russia). The CRDF are intended to ensure military security of the CST signatory States in the Central Asian region, and among other things to conduct joint counter-terrorist operations. Our intention to augment the CRDF with air power reinforcements redeployed to the Kirghiz territory serves exactly those purposes.
Such a phenomenon as terrorism is in existence not exclusively in the Central Asia alone, but in other regions as well, where one can see variegated manifestations thereof in a variety of forms, and the fight against this evil in each individual State has its own specific national flavor.
Russia has now been waging a more-than-8-year-long fight on the hangers-on to global terrorism entrenched in its backyard in the territory of the North Caucasus. Some quarters would seek to picture the ongoing counter-terrorist operation there as «Russian aggression against a miniscule independent State». But there is no need to give a reminder that the Chechen Republic is a constituent entity of the Russian Federation, and therefore we are entitled and obliged to uphold Constitution-mandated order within our own territory, and even more so since the threat of expanding terrorism and sprawling brigandry in Russia is not confined to the territory of Chechnya alone.
The people of Chechnya should decide upon their own fate for themselves, without relegating this right to the arms-bristling thugs. We have no Intent to clench a deal with terrorists. On February 2, 2003 a Russian Television channel telecasted video footage showing terrorists, with A.Maskhadov and Sh.Basayev at their head, going into a huddle to contemplate further action. That powwow meeting saw an introduction to the warlords in attendance of Movsar Barayev who shortly afterwards led a motley pack of terrorists in a massive hostage-taking raid at the Dubrovka theater center in Moscow. There is no making a deal with the freakish people like those - they have to be put on trial or exterminated for the crimes perpetrated. And to those who keep prompting us to resume talks with Maskhadov – well, I can just tell them that it is a thing of the past, we have now seen enough of it. If anyone feels like doing the talking with the terrorists – well, go ahead, talk to mullah Omar.
Now, things start looking up in Chechnya, with the economy being regenerated, the educational institutions rebuilt, health care revamped, preparations for a referendum on the Constitution of the Chechen Republic, previewed on March 23, 2003, well underway, and local elections to be held. That is to say, political settlement is progressing, and exactly that gives rise to ferocious rebel resistance.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation had a great role to play in fighting international terrorism in the Chechen Republic. In the North Caucasus, we compiled an important and rigorous track record in terms of hands-on anti-terrorist fight, with the Defense Ministry having gleaned an experience in terms of drawing plans for special-purpose counter-terrorist operations.
Currently, there is a Ministry of the Interior set up in Chechnya, most of the military commandants there are coming from that very Ministry, and the Defense Ministry special-task units do the job efficiently in the mountainous, virtually unpopulated terrain, in easy teamwork with the Border-guard servicemen.
It would be wrong to think that the Russians are fighting the Chechens in Chechnya. No, it’s far from being so. Out in Chechnya, the citizens of the Russian Federation of various nationalities, including the people of Chechnya proper, are waging a war on gunmen and terrorists of a variety of nationalities. Amongst those terrorists there have also been nationals from around 40 States, including those coming from a number of Arab States, Turkey, even from the United States, and Japan.
Terrorists, arms, ammunition, and the money all make their way to the Chechen Republic from the neighboring States, from Georgia and Azerbajdjan more often than not.
Trust me, any act of terror, any shot or blast in Chechnya have their own price-tags, their own pricing, and we have repeatedly shown that through the mass media outlets. Even amid the hostage crisis in October 2002, the terrorist ringleaders had been engaged in telephone conversations with their accomplices and instigators located not in Chechnya but in Georgia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
Last year I briefed you on what was really going on in the Pankissi Gorge in Georgia. Regrettably, all this is now fully corroborated with relevant documents.
Crime-ridden Chechen rings are still operative in the Georgian territory, now legalized in the cities and making a bid to grab control over Georgian companies engaged in international cargo transportation. They have now managed to seize either ultimate or partial control over a number of such enterprises, which are currently being used for shipment of arms, drugs, and rebels. Apart from that, the Chechens, now on a legalized footing, make hefty investments into gasoline business.
It is under the guise of humanitarian relief missions in the Akhmet district that the Wahhabi ideology is being propagated, mosques and Islamic schools are now built up. A wide-band radio outlet The Independent Ichkeria–Kavkaz, positioned north of the inhabited point of Diklo, is vigorously being made use of for biased public outreach campaigns.
Functionaries of the pro-Chechen associations are operative in Georgia, in particular The Muslim Brethren who are in charge of coordinating the activities pursued by the rebel formations and overseeing procurement from abroad.
Investigations into the acts of terror perpetrated in 2002 in Kaspijsk (the Russian Federation), the theater center hostage standoff in Moscow and the blast in the Building of the Government of the Chechen Republic all go to prove the link of Chechen terrorists to the international terrorist organizations, the Al-Qaeda included.
The fact that Chechen-brand terrorism is part and parcel of the wider Terrorist International is borne out by the recurrent “Chechen trace” now and then surfacing in various countries.
Following the downfall of Kabul in November 2001, the US military spotted an Al-Qaeda back-room laboratory that developed toxic agents. There is also mention of similar toxic agents in the documents impounded just outside Paris in December 2002.
As for the training and instruction base for the international chemical terrorists, it is now a well-known destination – the Pankissi Gorge in Georgia. Down there, makeshift ricin laboratories have been found. The recently captured chemical terrorists apprehended in France and the United Kingdom had been undergoing training in there.
Employment of ricin can also be traced back to Chechnya. Quite recently, in the course of a special-task operation in the Gudermes district, there has been weeded out a bunch of fighters directly subordinate to A.Maskhadov. The search on one of the terrorists gunned down produced a do-it-yourself guidance sheet on how to make improvised poisons, including ricin.
In April 2002, a slain warlord had sulema and arsenic on him – those are lethal poisons, with a handout instruction on how to use it, attached. Similar poisons in large quantities have also been excavated at the settlement of Batchi-Yurt (the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation), concealed in a cache.
Thus, international terrorism is bracing itself up for a brand-new terrorist warfare – by way of making use of weapons of mass destruction.
Ricin is unlikely to be classified as a weapon belonging thereto, but we are not sure that terrorists would stop short at this poison alone, and would not lay their hands on some other, ever more horrendous, means of destruction.
Regrettably enough, we encounter instances of inadequate understanding by our partners of the issue bearing upon the fight against international terrorism in the territory of the Russian Federation. In particular, it transpires in the attitudes on the part of a number of States towards the terrorist organizations operating in the North Caucasus. Russia expects of its partners understanding and assistance to ensure that the terrorist organizations perpetrating bloody crimes at home would be blacklisted as banned terrorist organizations.
The use of “double standards” in counter-terrorism can unseat the very idea of burgeoning international cooperation in that sphere. To feel confidence in the partners inside the anti-terrorist coalition, we should give up our timeserving political benefits. Neither should religious or national sympathies and sentiments stand in our way. For no serious military-to-military cooperation or security agency contacts would work out with the approach like that.
The so-called “Representative Office of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria”, with the inhabitants of Munich Avtorkhanov and Abumuslimov posing as “proxies personally authorized by the President of Chechnya”, as well as “The German-Caucasian Society” and the German-based “Society for the Defense of the Oppressed Peoples”, are still in existence and continue with their vigorous operations in the territory of Germany.
Last year a human-interest story was shown on the German NTV news channel featuring an interview with a certain Subar Magomedova who introduced herself as a “political refugee” from the city of Grozny, now residing at Stuttgart. In the interview she admitted to having personally shot dead four Russian servicemen in Chechnya.
I cannot even imagine what the response of the German authorities and public would be if a person guilty of the murder of a German police officer or a Bundeswehr soldier were going on record on a Russian television channel and remained at large, going scot-free. The Russian authorities do not ignore so grave a crime.
Still, some slight misperception notwithstanding, a progress made towards a better cooperation against terrorism is visible, is there. We came to better understanding of each other. Over the past year, our cooperation has yielded the first tangible fruits. What I hereby mean is the anti-terrorist cooperation enjoyed by Russia – both bilaterally and multilaterally – primarily, in conjunction with such international players as the UN, NATO, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (or SCO), EU, and the CIS.
It was within the framework of the NATO-Russia Council, at the informal defense ministerial, that we agreed to address in future the issue of how to go about the territories which formally fall under the jurisdiction of a certain state but are not controlled by it, and whereupon there inadvertently emerges breeding ground spawning extremists and terrorists.
The fight against international terrorism is going to be an uphill battle, neither an easy ride nor a short-lived one. Which is why we should be up in arms to fight off emerging challenges.
To date, we all should give ourselves a thought as to how important it is to keep the unity of the anti-terrorist coalition intact, to maintain the momentum gained in nascent cooperation. Otherwise, our concerted action would prove to be rather inefficient.
How should we proceed further on to efficiently counter the threat posed by terrorism? That is the issue of concern to all of us.
One can only tackle a problem if and when there is a clear understanding of the very essence thereof, the goals to be sought are clear-cut, and the tasks to be addressed in the process are well articulated. However, to be sure, it is not always that this happens to be so. And counter-terrorism is another instance for that.
It has been for some years now that the UN has been in deliberations over the India-proposed draft comprehensive convention on combating terrorism, that shall introduce a legal definition of what terrorism is. And it is highly regrettable that there is no common ground inside the UN on this issue. In the absence of an unambiguous definition of terrorism, terrorist groupies are enabled to maneuver about and dodge responsibility with impunity. If we are unable to agree upon reconciled uniform approaches towards the issue of terrorism, misunderstanding and misperception are bound to arise.
Nonetheless, the approach to fighting terrorism and, consequently, towards terrorists proper, should be identical in all of the States – that is, either extradition or trial in the State of arrest if there are obstacles to extradition, or extermination.
There is still a long way to go to vanquish international terrorism. But this challenge can only be taken on jointly, through concert efforts. Russia takes its own piece of action making a weighty contribution to the fight against international terrorism, and is poised for the broadest cooperation possible with the other States in that sphere.
Thank you for your time!
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