Caucasus Update: Chechen-Ingush Border Conflict; Female Breakdancing Suicide-Bomber in Dagestan; South Azerbaijani Separatism; Is Georgia Supporting Islamism in Russia?

Georgian interior-ministry snipers being transported to the crisis in Lopota Gorge this week

TOP STORY: ABDUCTION AND DEADLY SIEGE AT LOPOTA GORGE
SHINE LIGHT ON ABILITY OF ISLAMISTS TO OPERATE WITHIN GEORGIA

The Republic of Georgia’s ministry of the interior said August 29th that its forces had killed 11 militants in an attempt to free hostages in an anti-terrorist operation near the border with the Russian Federation’s Republic of Dagestan.  The ministry would not give further information, such as the nationality of the gunmen or whether they had crossed into Georgia from Russia; an entire mountain gorge was closed off to reporters and other civilians.  Two Georgian interior-ministry troops and a defense-ministry medic were killed and five other Georgians injured, the ministry said.  The crisis had begun days earlier when five young people from the area had gone missing while hiking near the Russian border.  Police discovered the kidnappers’ hideout and managed to free the five captives.  Brief video footage on television showed suspects with the tell-tale beards of Islamist radicals.  (Later, the Georgian interior ministry said that most of the militants were Dagestani but included some from Russia’s nearby Republic of North Ossetia–Alania.)

Map showing the location of Pankisi Gorge, site of an earlier 2003 battle with Islamists.
Lopota Gorge is to its east, along the Dagestani border.

Who were the culprits? Chechen nationalists operating within Georgia?  This part of Georgia has at times been home to a cell of a Chechen separatist government-in-exile, a member of which, Khizri Aldamov, earlier this year said that the armed group operated in northern Georgia with the support of Georgia’s president, Mikhail Saakashvili, and that Georgia was used as a launching area for terrorist attacks within Russia’s Chechen Republic.  Moreover, Aldamov alleged, the group, known as the Government of Ichkeria (this being an alternate name for Chechnya), whose leader, Akhyad Idigov, lives in France, sought to create a radical Islamist state in northern Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge region, by the Chechen border, to be called Pankisi Jamaat. Saakashvili, for his part, in a televised national address from his vineyard at his home, said, “We, the Georgian state, will not allow turmoil, instability, and violence on the territory of our neighboring country to spill over into Georgia in any form.”

... or Caucasus Emirate operatives who took a wrong turn?  Meanwhile, the Kavkaz Center website of the Caucasus Emirate movement, which seeks to establish a separate Islamic state out of the predominantly-Muslim areas of southwestern Russia and environs (though not out of predominantly-Christian Georgia), described “what really happened” at Pankisi Gorge as a Dagestani detachment of Emirate recruits passing through Georgian territory on their way to an operation within Dagestan, at which point Georgia dispatched troops, parleyed, and then refused to allow the Emirate recruits safe passage back into Dagestan.  The Emirate version of events also denies that hostages were taken.  The statement attributes Georgia’s overly aggressive response to a fear that the presence of Emirate operatives in Georgia will lead to a Russian pretext for another invasion of Georgia, as in the 2008 war over South Ossetia.

Mikheil Saakashvili meeting a survivor of the Lopota Gorge hostilities

NEWS FROM THE REST OF THE NORTH CAUCASUS ...

Chechnya Accuses Ingushetia of Border Encroachment, Asks Moscow to Mediate.  The Chechen Republic and the Republic of Ingushetia, two Russian republics in the war-torn North Caucasus region, are in a new conflict, over territory.  The Chechen government announced August 26th that it was appealing to the Russian Federation to resolve a lingering border-demarcation conflict which the Chechen Republic claims is allowing Ingush encroachments on Chechen territory.  Ramzan Kadyrov, the authoritarian Moscow-appointed president of Chechnya, said, “Whole villages and districts have been seized [by those] taking advantage of the Chechen people’s problems.  ...  These actions are provocative by nature.  The boundary line, which we have never drawn and in which we took no interest, is being pushed inside the Chechen Republic.”  Chechnya and Ingushetia used to be united, within the Russian Federative Soviet Socialist Republic, as the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, until Chechnya’s de facto secession from Russia in 1991 led to the establishment of Ingushetia as a separate republic.

Ingush Police-Funeral Bomber Got Wrong Victims, Emirate Admits; 4 More Rebels Killed.  The Caucasus Emirate militants that attacked a funeral in the Russia’s Republic of Ingushetia August 19th (as reported last week in this blog) admitted August 24th that they’d gotten the wrong victims.  Meanwhile, it was reported August 28th that four suspected militants were killed and two arrested in Malgobek, Ingushetia, in the ongoing attempt by security forces to sweep up those complicit in the attack.  In a “clarification” posted on the Emirate website http://hunafa.com, the “Mujahideen Command” for the vilayet (as provinces in the old Ottoman Empire were known) of “Ghalghayche” (i.e. Ingushetia) says the attack, which killed seven, had targeted Mukhazhir Yevloyev, chief of police for Malgobek, whom the Command calls “one of the worst enemies of Allah.”  Indeed, Ingush authorities had said that the policeman, killed the day before, whose funeral was attacked, Ilez Korigov, had been killed precisely in order to lure Yevloyev to the funeral.  However, the entire Malgobek police department was during the funeral busy hunting for Korigov’s assassins’ getaway car, so all the police there were from another detachment.  Meanwhile, the Emirate’s website announced August 28th that three civilians had been killed and at least two kidnapped in a “punitive raid” by Russian forces in Sagopshi, the village in the Malgobek region where the funeral massacre occurred.

Ingushetia’s Caucasus Emirate “Mujahideen Vilayat Command”

DAGESTAN’S BLOODY TUESDAY: 17 DEAD IN SUICIDE-BOMBING, BORDER-POST RAMPAGE, AND ARMORY TAKEOVER

Aminat Sapyrkin, the breakdancing suicide-bomber

1. Female Suicide Bomber Blows Up Sufi Cleric in Dagestan, 6 Others.  First, a female suicide bomber disguised as a pilgrim seeking conversion to Islam killed a Sufi leader and six of his followers, including an 11-year-old boy, as well as herself, on August 28th.  The blast occurred in the village of Cherkei at the home of the leader, Said Atsayev, also known as Sheikh Said Afandi al-Chirkavi, who was 74 years old.  The bomber, identified now as Aminat Saprykina, was an ethnically Russian actress and breakdancer (!) and wife of an Islamist militant who had also been widowed by two successive Islamist militant husbands.  Sufism tends to be a politically moderate form of Islam, and is regarded as heretical by the Wahhabist brand of Sunni Islam followed by most Islamist militants in the North Caucasus.  A member of parliament for the extremist-right-wing Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Yaroslav Nilov, who chairs a committee on religious organizations, blamed foreign enemies of Russia for the attack.

Said Atsayev, assassinated this week

2. Dagestan Border Guard Goes Berserk, Kills 7; Emirate Radicals Claim Responsibility.  On the same day, a border guard in Dagestan shot and killed seven fellow servicemen at a border post “for no apparent reason” and was himself killed by others responding to the incident.  The shooter, one Sgt. Ramzan Aliyev, fired at least 30 rounds at his comrades, who were a visiting unit from the Altai Republic.  Six were injured in the incident.  The Islamist separatist Caucasus Emirate movement claimed on its website that Aliyev, was in fact “a brave martyrdom-seeking infilitrator Mujahid of the Caucasus Emirate ... working as a puppet policeman.”

3. Islamist Rebels Seize Russian Armory in Dagestan, Killing 2 Soldiers.  Then, again on the same day, a group of gunmen took over an Interior Ministry armory in Belidzhi village in Dagestan, killing two soldiers as they opened fire with automatic weapons and injuring three others.  The Caucasus Emirate took credit for this as well, describing the incident thus on their website: “The Caucasian Mujahideen attacked from a forest a gang of Russian special police troops from Siberia which were stationed in the same village of Beliji.  At least 1 Russian invader was killed and 5 others were seriously wounded.”

Caucasus Emirate Appoints New “Emir” for Dagestan Front.  A new “emir” of the “Dagestan Front” was announced August 25th on a website of southwestern Russia’s Islamist separatist Caucasus Emirate movement.  The Emirate uses the bureaucratic language of the old Ottoman Empire in its terrorist campaign to wrest the predominantly-Muslim fringes of the Russian Federation from Moscow’s control, with most of its activity being in the North Caucasus, including especially the Republic of Dagestan.  The appointment, signed by Dokku Abu Usman (a.k.a. Dokku Umarov), so-called Emir of the Caucasus Emirate, designates Abu Muhammed to the post.

Abu Muhammad, new “emir” for Dagestan

Azerbaijan Takes Over Investigation into Shiite Mosque Massacre in Dagestan.  The Republic of Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said on August 23rd that its embassy in Moscow is taking the lead in investigating an August 18th massacre at a Shiite mosque in Khasavyurt, in the Republic of Dagestan, in southwestern Russia’s North Caucasus region.  In that incident (reported on last week in this blog), it is rumored, but not yet confirmed, that the one fatality and three of the eight injuries were of Azerbaijani citizens.  The majority of Azeris are Shiite, while the radical Salafist terrorists whose violence has been plaguing the North Caucasus for years are mostly Sunni Muslims who view Shi’a Islam as heretical.

Kazakh Accused in Chechen, Russian Assassination Plots Switches Plea after Extradition.  A citizen of Kazakhstan who was extradited on August 25th (after a brief delay reported on in this blog last week) from Ukraine to Russia to face charges of plotting to assassinate President Vladimir Putin has changed his testimony.  Originally, the defendant, Ilya Pyanzin, had confessed, then changing his story and pleading innocence to Ukrainian authorities and shifting the blame onto his accomplice, Adam Osmayev, a Russian citizen from Chechnya.  Now, Pyanzin is fingering Ruslan Madayev, a fellow militant who died in the explosion at the makeshift explosives factory in Odessa, Ukraine, which first led authorities to the plot in February.  Osmayev is still in detention in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.  Ukraine will not extradite him until the European Court of Human Rights hears his case.  The two are also accused of plotting to kill Ramzan Kadyrov, the Moscow-appointed president of the Chechen Republic.

... AND FROM THE SOUTH CAUCASUS

U.S., Azerbaijan Oppose Rohrabacher’s Plan to Split Azeri Region from Iran.  The United States’ Department of State announced this week that it had received the July 26th letter (reported on last week in this blog) from California’s Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (a Republican legislator) recommending that the U.S. help the Azeri-dominated part of northwestern Iran secede and unify with the Republic of Azerbaijan, and that the department had responded.  The spokesman would not elaborate on the reply except to state that “we support the principle of territorial integrity.”  Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry, too, rejected the idea, with a foreign ministry spokesman, Elman Abdullayev, stating, “Despite the historical ties, similar cultural values, and family ties between Azerbaijan and Iran, we support the territorial integrity of Iran.”  But support for Rohrabacher’s letter was voiced by Rahim Humbatov, head of the Azeri community in Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and from 

Donna D’Errico Updates from Noah’s Landing Spot.  Meanwhile, there are updates from Donna D’Errico, the former nude model and Baywatch actress who has now famously left her fast-lane Hollywood lifestyle behind and committed herself to theological passions such as her expedition to the Turkish–Armenian–Iranian–Azerbaijani border region to investigate whatever might remain of Noah’s Ark (as reported on recently in this blog).  On her blog site (http://www.donnaderrico.com/wordpress/), one can find numerous updates and details from her trip, including photos and video-blog entries.

Donna D’Errico interviewing a Kurdish elder and Noah’s Ark researcher in Yenidoğan, in Anatolia

[Related articles: “The Armenian Genocide Debate: Turkey, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Politics of Memory” (April 2012); “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists” (April 2012), featuring a profile of the Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev; “Massachusetts Recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh Republic!” (Aug. 2012); “Separatist Football Update: Carnage at a Dagestan–Netherlands Match ...” etc. (Aug. 2012); “That Creepy Underground Islamic Cult in Tatarstan? Turns Out It Was Just a Split-Level—and the Kids Were Fine” (Aug. 2012).]

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Kurdistan Update: Both Turks & PKK Claim to Control Şemdinli, Zaza MP Abducted, Donna D’Errico and Noah’s Ark

With Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in Syria still circling the drain and Syria’s Kurds still hanging on to their string of liberated towns in the far north of the country, news on what exactly is going on in Turkey is paradoxically harder to come by.  The part of Hakkari province, in the far southeast, where the battle raged for at least two weeks between Kurdish rebels and the military for the town of Şemdinli is still more or less sealed off to the press and outsiders by the government.  Both the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) claim to control the town.  Since there is no more heavy bombardment or movement of matériel being reported, it seems more likely that the Turks control it for now, but the P.K.K. are not down for the count.  They are launching attacks in and around Şemdinli on an almost daily basis, and in Tunceli province, in Anatolia, they abducted a member of Turkey’s parliament under the authorities’ noses, just to show they could.  (The M.P. is a Kurd and an ally and was released within 48 hours.)  Here is all the news this week from Kurdistan ...

[Note: See these earlier articles from this blog on related topics, especially with respect to the Kurds and the Arab Spring: “And Now Civil War ... Could Syria Break Up?” (Nov. 2011), “The Iraq War Is Over, but Is Iraq’s Partition Just Beginning?” (Dec. 2011), “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012” (Dec. 2011); “Get Ready for a Kurdish Spring” (March 28, 2012); “Shifting Alliances in the Kurdish Struggles” (April 1, 2012); “Turkish Delights Hide Ugly History” (April 4, 2012);  “Syria’s Kurds Are Setting Up a Quasi-State—How Long Can It Last?” (July 2012), “Liberation of Syrian Kurdistan Infuriates Turkey, Iraq, and the Free Syrian Army—in Fact, Everyone but Assad” (Aug. 2012), “Turkish Kurdistan Ground War in Progress, Iraq Border Crisis Eases: Kurdistan and Syria Update” (Aug. 2012).]

Turkey, Kurdish Rebels Both Claim Control of Şemdinli after 3-Week Battle.  Both sides in the battle between Turkey’s military and the P.K.K. are claiming victory, for the moment, in the three-week-old battle for the town of Şemdinli, near the borders with Iran and Iraq.  The governor of Hakkari province, which includes Şemdinli, said August 11th that the battle was over.  “As a result of the operations, conducted with determination and rigor,” his statement read, “the terrorist organization P.K.K. was unable to reach its cruel goals and a large number of its members have been rendered ineffective.”  However, the spokesman for the P.K.K.’s People’s Defence Forces (H.P.G.) said that, as of August 11th, Şemdinli, which in Kurdish is called Şemzînan, was in Kurdish control, adding, “Most of the Turkish army bases in the area are under siege and no longer under the control of the Turkish army.  Turkish helicopter and fighter jets have been trying to fly over, but due to H.P.G.’s attacks they have withdrawn from the area.  The Turkish army has failed to end the besiegement.”  It is not clear how much of the town, if any, they do control, but there was plenty of apparent P.K.K. activity reported in the area in the day or so after the governor’s announcement, including gunfire in the direction of village guards but believed to be aimed at the mayor of Derecik, a town near Şemdinli.  The mayor’s house was also attacked that day.  And on August 12th in Yüksekova, also in Hakkari, P.K.K. set up a roadblock on a highway and distributed propaganda, while a nearby fuel tanker vehicle was set afire.  The next day, the P.K.K. attacked an airport construction site in Hakkari, setting fire to trucks and abducting 11 drivers.  On August 17th an explosion at a government office in Şemdinli district injured one policeman.  The same day, landmines in Şemdinli damaged an army convoy, leading to a gunfight but no reported casualties, while  elsewhere in Hakkari province that day a police checkpoint was attacked by unknown assailants with assault rifles.  The fighting in Şemdinli began June 23rd after P.K.K. fighters—including some arriving, according to the Turkish government, from the self-declared allegedly-P.K.K.-allied Western Kurdistan Autonomous Region in northern Syria—tried to take control of the town.  The government said earlier that over 115 P.K.K. fighters had been killed (as reported earlier in this blog).

P.K.K. Abducts, Releases Kurdish Lawmaker and Alevi-Rights Activist in Anatolia.  Kurdish rebels on August 12th kidnapped a Kurdish opposition legislator at a roadblock in Tunceli province, in the Anatolian region in east-central Turkey.  Two others kidnapped with him were freed shortly afterward, but the lawmaker, Hüseyin Aygün, from the Republican People’s Party (C.H.P.), remained unaccounted for until he was released late the following day.  Tunceli’s governor, Mustafa Taskeşen, said that Aygün was kidnapped by the armed separatist P.K.K. under orders from their central command in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region.  Ironically, Aygün is a human-rights lawyer from the Zaza ethnic group, considered part of the Kurdish nation, and he has championed Kurds in torture and forced-evacuation cases and even defied his own opposition party on behalf of the Alevi population, a religious community following an unorthodox strain of Shia Islam.  Alevis, who have their highest concentration in Tunceli province, make up approximately 25% of both the Turkish and Kurdish populations in Turkey—the Kurds themselves being about 20% of Turkey.  Aygün’s advisor, Deniz Tunç, who, along with a journalist, was also kidnapped in the incident but freed mere hours later, told a television interviewer later that Aygün had argued with this abductors in Kurdish for half an hour in order to convince them to free Tunç and the journalist.  The P.K.K. said August 13th that the military operations launched immediately after the abduction in a search for Aygün and his captors were putting Aygün’s life at risk.  Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, lost no time in linking the kidnapping to the emboldenment of Kurds by the establishment of a rebel Kurdish quasi-state in northern Syria last month.

Hüseyin Aygün, back safely

Violence Ongoing Elsewhere in Turkish Kurdistan.  On August 14th, it was reported that P.K.K. rebels attacked two police stations in Antioch, in Hatay province, near the Syrian border, injuring two police officers.  The following day, in Bitlis province, P.K.K. members attacked government offices in Güroymak with rocket-launchers, injuring a police officer.  One of the attackers was reportedly “rendered ineffective,” which is how the Turkish government phrases it when they kill people.  There were also demonstrations in Diyarbakir, the notional capital of Turkish Kurdistan, and other areas for the August 15th anniversary of the P.K.K.’s declaration of war against the Turkish state in 1984.  Police responded with tear gas.  P.K.K. supporters in Gaziantep, very near the border with Syria, threw gasoline bombs at a public market, while elsewhere in Gaziantep province two engineering vehicles were burned.

U.S. Accuses Iran of Being behind Flow of Arms from Syrian Kurds into Turkey.  The United States’ ambassador to the Republic of Turkey, Francis Ricciardone, said this week that the Islamic Republic of Iran was funneling weapons to allies in Syria of the P.K.K. and that these weapons are being used against targets within Turkey.  These claims unite two concerns shared by the closely allied U.S. and Turkey: the fear of Syrian Kurds using their recently declared Western Kurdistan Autonomous Region as a staging ground for the P.K.K. war against the Turkish government, and Iran’s increasingly strident support for the embattled Arab Shiite regime of Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad.

Turkish Bombers Strike Alleged P.K.K. Bases in Northern Iraq.  Turkish aircraft bombed four positions in northern Iraq’s Kandil Mountain region, in the autonomous Kurdistan region, on August 15th, targeting alleged camps of Turkey’s P.K.K.  Parts of the villages of Bermka, Sekanya, Sorgul, and Bukriska were hit in the nighttime strikes.  There were no reports of casualties, but P.K.K. sources say Kurdish farms and orchards were damaged.

6 Car Bombs Kill 7 in Kirkuk; Kurdish Party Office Targeted.  In Kirkuk, in the disputed Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq which lies outside of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government’s official bailiwick, six car bombs exploded on August 16th, two of them targeting a Kurdish political party’s offices during a celebration.  A total of seven people were killed in the Kirkuk bombings that day.

16 Iranians, Including 7 Kurds, “Confess” to Spying for Israel.  Official state television in the Islamic Republic of Iran last week broadcast “confessions” by 16 people, including seven Iranian Kurds, to working for Israel to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.  One of those seven is Maziyar Ibrahimi, a resident of Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region.  The foreign-relations head at the Kurdistan Regional Government (K.R.G.) in Arbil, Iraq, said, “We dismiss all the accusations that suggest we have relations with Israel.  When we asked Iran for evidence, they did not have any and the consul of Iran in Arbil apologized for these accusations.”

Donna D’Errico, injured in her quest for Noah’s Ark

Baywatch Babe’s Ill-Fated Quest for Noah’s Ark Almost Derailed by P.K.K. Fighting.  Last week misfortune plagued an American sex star’s quest for Noah’s Ark atop Turkey’s Mt. Ararat, the legendary mountain said to still harbor remnants of the Old Testament vessel.  Donna D’Errico, formerly of the television series Baywatch and once in 1995 a Playboy Playmate of the Month, fell some distance and injured herself with scratches and bruises while climbing with Kurdish guides last week.  She also communicated electronically to her fans about a brief scare over trouble with the P.K.K. insurgency, writing, on August 10th, “Early this morning I was awakened by one of our Kurdish guides saying that we had to leave the mountain immediately because there was trouble with the PKK and the Turkish Military on the mountain and that we were in serious danger.  I think we should be ok.  But please pray for us.” Mt. Ararat (see map above) is in Turkey’s eastern Kurdistan region (in an area formerly populated also by Armenians, before the Turkish genocide), but part of its slopes are in Iran, and the peak is near the point where those two countries meet Azerbaijan’s separatist Nakhchivan enclave and the Republic of Armenia.  D’Errico, who is 44, arrived safely home August 14th, defending her quest for the Ark by saying, “I know everybody thinks it’s funny and it’s a big joke and people don't believe in it, but I do.”  So far the Ark has not been found, but D’Errico’s Facebook page does include photos of Turkish squat toilets.

Donna D’Errico, modern-day Indiana Jones, with her now-estranged husband,
the former Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Six.
Reportedly, if D’Errico finds Noah’s Ark, she plans to board it two by two ... all by herself.

[You can read more about these and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]