IS MOSCOW SEEKING TO SUBVERT CHECHEN RESISTANCE?
In a statement posted on October 22 on the Chechen resistance website chechenpress.info, Akhmed Zakayev, the London-based foreign minister of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria (ChRI), claimed that the Russian authorities plan to infiltrate the entourage of ChRI President and resistance leader Doku Umarov and persuade him to declare himself emir of a North Caucasus emirate and to declare war on the entire world in the name of the region’s Muslims. Zakayev suggested that the rationale behind those plans is to give the Kremlin free rein to deploy more forces to the North Caucasus under the pretext of fighting Al-Qaeda in order to deal the death blow to the independent ChRI and to continue its “genocide” of the region’s peoples, “who are ever more actively defending their national and religious rights.” To that extent, Zakayev continued, Umarov’s proclamation of a North Caucasus emirate would serve the same purpose as did the declaration in August 1999 of an independent Islamic state in Daghes
