Nalchik raid

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Battle of Nalchik
Part of Second Chechen War

Smoke over Nalchik
Date October 13, 2005
Location Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria (Russia)
Result Russian victory
Combatants
Local and federal security forces Mostly local Islamic militants
Commanders
Ilias Gorchkhanov †
Shamil Basayev
Anzor Astemirov
Musa Mukozhev
Strength
N/A (thousands) 150-300 (possibly 217)
Casualties
at least 35 killed at least 41 killed
Second Chechen War
Bamut – 1st Argun – Urus-Martan – 1st Shali – 1st Grozny – Shali-Argun-Gudermes – Dzhalka – 2nd Shali – Ulus-Kert – Serzhen-Yurt – Galashki – Vedeno – Komsomolskoye – 2nd Argun – 3rd Argun – Zhani-Vedeno – Gudermes – Khankala – Galashki – Nazran – Avtury – 2nd Grozny – Nalchik

The October 2005 Nalchik attack was a raid by a large group of militants on Nalchik (pop. 250,000), in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic (KBR) of southern Russia, on 13 October 2005. A number of buildings associated with the Russian security forces were targeted. More than 100 people, including at least 12 civilians, were reported to have been killed during the ensuing shooting; many were wounded.

The raid was reportedly in response to months of persecution of practising Muslims in the region, including arbitrary detention and torture by law enforcement officials, and wholesale closure of mosques.

Contents

[edit] The attack

[edit] Outbreak of fighting

According to the Russian news source Agentura, fighting began about 9 AM on the morning of October 13,[1] while a statement made by Shamil Basayev on the Kavkaz Center website puts the exact time at 9:14.[2] The initial attack included nine targets:[3]

Soon after, a gun store called Arsenal was robbed and three police stations were attacked as well.

An attack on the KBR MVD directorate on fighting the organized crime, one more target, was prevented by pure chance. Public transport shut down across Nalchik, and sporadic fighting continued across the city until at least noon.[4]

[edit] Public announcements and prolongation of the conflict

At 1:20 pm, the President of Russia's Kabardino-Balkaria republic Arsen Kanokov, announced on Echo of Moscow that several of the attackers been taken alive. He also claimed that all enemy combatants seized so far were members of a radical Islamist group known as Yarmuk.[5] Radio Free Europe speculated that the name of this group may be a reference to a 7th-century battle in which Arab forces defeated a Byzantine army.[6]

At 1:45, according to an FSB source cited by Echo of Moscow, attackers attempted to seize an FSB building but were repelled. A sniper killed one FSB worker and wounded four, and the building was seriously damaged and caught fire.[7]

At 2:30, a group of policemen located in a building surrounded by attackers managed to free themselves.[8] Agentura also reports that at this time the first communications from the attackers were published on the kavkazcenter website.

At 3:00 RIA Novosti announced, quoting Interior Minister Alexander Alexeyevich Chekalin, that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered a full blockade of Nalchik. Chekalin announced that the Interior Ministry, Defense Ministry, and FSB were conducting a joint operation, in which "anyone with weapons in his hands who displays armed opposition, should be subject to liquidation."[9]

By the early afternoon Dmitry Kozak, Vladimir Putin's envoy to the Southern Federal District had arrived in Nalchik from Rostov-na-Donu, and was quoted by Radio Free Europe as saying: The situation is normalizing...At least mass unrest and attacks have been put down. The bandits that today attacked the law enforcement forces have been dispersed. There remain only a few pockets of resistance -- two, to be more precise. Fighting is still going on near the Interior Ministry's third department, where unfortunately people are being held hostage. There is an operation going there at the moment. [But] there are no more threats.[10] However, Radio Free Europe also relayed reports from Russia's ORT state television channel that "heavy gunfire could still be heard near the central market by mid-afternoon" and that "explosions were reported in various neighborhoods of Nalchik."[11]

[edit] Aftermath

Eventually rebel forces broke contact and retreated to the mountains. A few, mostly wounded gunmen, who were cut off by a federal reinforcements, holed up with police and civilian hostages in captured buildings (including a police station and souvenir shop) but were killed by a special forces the following day. According to the Russian officials, no hostages were killed during these final rounds of fighting.

According to MSNBC, on the morning of October 14, attackers fired on a police car in the suburb of Khasanya outside Nalchik, killing two OMON riot police officers. [12] MSNBC also described the conditions in central Nalchik that morning:

"Bloodied corpses still lay in the streets on Friday. One was near the entrance to police station No. 2 and the regional anti-terrorist center, where most of the windows had been blown out and even tramway lines outside had been brought down. Seven more bodies were sprawled across the street, most with horrific head wounds. Heavily armed police poked and kicked at the bodies, presumably those of militants, all clad in tracksuits and running shoes. Outside the local Federal Security Service building, several heavily armed officers picked gingerly through a black backpack that had apparently belonged to a militant, pulling out a candy bar, a bottle of water and a black T-shirt." [13]

By midday on October 14, the head of the regional government Gennady Gubin, told Interfax that “all points of rebel resistance have been suppressed and hostages freed. Now the security forces are conducting a sweep of the city to find rebels who are hiding.” [14] The Russian government had deployed 1,500 regular troops and 500 special forces troops to Nalchik to regain government control of the city.

Following the raid, law enforcement officials detained dozens of people; many of the detainees were reportedly tortured. At least one person was reported to have "disappeared" following the raid. Upon investigation, some of the detainees have been charged under nine articles such as terrorism, murder, armed rebellion, and infringement on the life of police officers. Kommersant reported on October 28, 2006, citing detainees' lawyers, reported that the charges against 13 of them had been dropped because of an amnesty, while the pre-trial detention period for the remaining 56 was extended to April 2007. Another 39 people accused of involvement in the raid remained at large.

[edit] Identity and number of attackers

There was an uncertainty about the size of the rebel force. Russian sources put the figure at between 80 and 300, while Basayev claimed that 217 fighters had been involved. Police told the news agency TASS that the attackers had operated in 10 mobile groups, each with a different set of targets.

MSNBC reported [15] several statements made by Deputy Interior Minister Andrei Novikov to reporters in Nalchik. In particular Novikov announced that:

Russian North Caucausus
Russian North Caucausus
  • Ilyas Gorchkhanov had led the attack, and had been killed
  • two-thirds of the militants were local residents
  • there had been at least 100 attackers in all
  • most were 20 to 30 years of age

According to kavkazcenter, the operation had been "carried out by forces of the Kabardino-Balkarian Sector of the CF (Caucasian Front) and associated units from other sectors of the Caucasian Front," with "217 Mujahideen" in all participating. [16]

Asked about who might have been behind the rebel raid on Nalchik, pro-Kremlin prime minister of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov answered that Chechens had nothing to do with it:

"If Chechens had been there, then it wouldn't have ended so quickly. It was their own people there. It was weak guys, which is why it ended quickly — they got the better of them in two hours."

[edit] Claim of responsibility

Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev subsequently claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on Kavkaz Center, in which he claimed to have had “general, operational command” for the attack on government buildings. He denied that his group was involved in the attacks on stores, however.[17] The Nalchik attack came just over a year after the Beslan school hostage crisis, for which Basayev also claimed responsibility. An Ingush militant, Ilias Gorchkhanov, was said to have been one of the attack’s commanders on the ground. [18] Basayev claimed that Russian security forces had been tipped off some five days before the attack, which resulted in increased security in Nalchik, but that despite increased security, the attack was not cancelled. [19]

In April 2006, asked about the upsurge in attacks in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria and whether fighters there coordinate their actions with the Chechen rebels, the top rebel commander Doku Umarov responded:

"We have three fronts [outside Chechnya] - in Kabardino-Balkaria, Ingushetia and Dagestan. Fighters in Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria communicate with the military amir and then through myself. They coordinate all their actions with us. (...) They are ordinary civilians who have risen against arbitrariness toward Muslims in those republics. No matter how hard we try to make them refrain from combat operations, we will not succeed. They are our brothers in faith and therefore we help them - we share our experience and direct them. God willing, we are planning to send our experienced instructors there this year. We will not leave them on their own. It is our duty to help them."

[edit] Casualties

The Russian government and the rebels have published significantly different casualty figures. According to a various Russian officials, up to 91 attackers were killed and 36 captured, while 35 federal servicemen and 12 civilians also died. At 15:40 GMT, CNN reported that 97 people were hospitalized in connection with the attack, according to the Russian Health Ministry.[20]

The initial rebel statement published on Kavkaz Center claimed that about 110 people were killed during the operation. However, Basayev’s later statement claimed that 41 attackers had died along with 140 members of the security forces, and that the Russian forces had killed up to 70 civilians in the city.

According to some observers and local sources, many of the dead classified as terrorists were actually civilians accidentally killed in the crossfire. Despite public protests by family members, the bodies were not released to their families and ultimately buried in umarked graves.

A year later, many relatives were still demanding in vain that authorities return for proper burial the bodies of 92 men allegedly killed during the attacks; a number of families have taken cases to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to petition for the return of bodies. Others report that young men in their families have simply vanished without a trace despite having no proven connection to the raid. [21]

[edit] Alleged connections with international terrorism

On October 20, 2005 Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia Nikolai Shepel, stated that the attack was organized by "International Terrorist Organizations", that also previously organized the Beslan school hostage crisis, raid on Ingushetia, and the attack on Gosnarkocontrol (drug control agency) in Kabardino-Balkaria.[22] The Duma deputy for Chechnya Akhmar Zavgayev also blamed international terrorists for the attack.

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Rasul Kudayev was arrested in Nalchik for allegedly taking part in the preparation of the attack, and participation in the attack itself (taking the road police post in Khasanya suburb of Nalchik). According to same source Rasul Kudayev pretends being at home at the time of the incident, which can be witnessed (according to his brother) by relatives, neighbours, journalists, and his lawyer.[23]

It was reported that the militants may have planned to overrun the city’s airport and use the aircraft there in suicide attacks similar to the September 11 attacks.[24] However, this seems unlikely since the attack was not concentrated at the airport. The target of the airport attack was more likely the army unit stationed there.

[edit] Alleged financing by foreign intelligence agencies and NGOs

The deputy head of the Kabardino-Balkaria Interior Ministry's anti-organized crime department, Albert Sizhazhev, claimed on February 14, 2006 that the attack in Nalchik was financed by foreign intelligence agencies. According to NTV, Sizhazhev said the attack was organized by "ringleaders of the bandit underground of Kabardino-Balkaria" who "had the powerful financial support of foreign special services."

According to ITAR-TASS, the head of the religious affairs department of Kabardino-Balkaria's Ministry of Culture, Dzhambulat Gergokov, claimed that the "bandit underground" in the republic was funded via non-governmental organizations working in Chechnya.

On October 17, 2006 deputy Interior Minister of Russia Arkady Edelev was quoted by RIA Novosti saying about Anzor Astemirov, one of the organizers of the militant attack:

"I will put it straight, that people like [Anzor] Astemirov are linked to the secret services of some countries that are planning blitzkriegs in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and the South Caucasus, and are pursuing a militant escalation on our territory to transfer some of their gunmen from Iraq to Russia."

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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