Volgograd Bombings: CIA’s Chechen Assets Attack Russia Ahead of Winter Olympics

Kurt Nimmo

Strikes likely precursor to activities that will open up during Olympics in February.

Responsibility for dangerous attacks in the Russian city of Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, is being placed on Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov, who was announced dead by Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov on Dec 18. Like many other phantom terrorists, such as the mercurial Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Umarov has risen from the grave several times.

On Tuesday, the New York Times weighed in. It reported “the attention of the Russian security services is already focused on the republic of Dagestan, which has become the hub of Muslim separatist violence in recent years, and on connections to the insurgent leader, Doku Umarov,” who is, like many other Islamic terrorists, a “mysterious, almost mythical figure who fought in both Chechnya wars, which began nearly two decades ago and have come to symbolize the radicalization of a movement that began as a struggle for independence.”

The New York Time’s tidy encapsulation on the Dagestan conflict, a sideshow in the artificially spawned Chechnya conflict, omits a few pertinent facts. First and foremost, the struggle in the North Caucasus region is part of a larger effort to instigate trouble in Russia’s southern, primarily Muslim republics. “Ethnic Muslim populations in this region of Russia and of the former Soviet Union, including Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and into China’s Xinjiang Province, have been the target of various US and NATO intelligence operations since the Cold War era ended in 1990,” writes F. William Engdahl. “Washington sees manipulation of Muslim groups as the vehicle to bring uncontrollable chaos to Russia and Central Asia. It’s being carried out by some of the same organizations engaged in creating chaos and destruction inside Syria against the government of Bashar Al-Assad.”

According to the official historical narrative, which is often echoed by Russia, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is responsible for spreading often violent Islamic fundamentalism in Chechnya and other republics. “The invasion was a big mistake that opened the hornet’s nest that is terrorism, not only in Afghanistan but in the region as a whole,” said Gen. Boris Gromov, who led the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989.

In fact, this “hornet’s nest” was organized, sponsored and stirred up, as Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted in 1998, by the United States and its partners, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia. “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?” Brzezinski told Le Nouvel Observateur.

It wasn’t, however, the liberation of Eastern Europe that primarily interested the United States. Following the suicide bombing of a bus outside Volgograd in October, President Vladimir Putin said the ongoing terror attacks are part of an effort to undermine Russia proper. “Some political forces use Islam – the radicals within it who are not typical of Russian Muslims – to weaken our state and create conflicts on Russian soil that can then be controlled from abroad,” he said.

In addition to causing trouble for Russia as it prepares to host the Winter Olympics in Sochi, the upsurge of terrorism is designed as a response to Russia’s support of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who tenaciously holds power despite a concerted effort by the United States and its partners, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel, to take him down and install an Islamic puppet regime like the one previously installed in Libya. “Putin and the Russian Government are the strongest and most essential backer of the current Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, and for Russia as well the maintenance of Russia’s only Mediterranean naval base at Syria’s Tartus port is vital strategically,” writes Engdahl.

CIA Runs Umarov and the Chechen Rebels

As we have previously noted, the insurgency in Chechnya was largely a covert CIA initiative. Rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab, who vow to establish a Wahhabist Caucasian Emirate, were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as Michel Chossudovsky notes. Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) played a key role in organizing and training the Chechen rebel army. The ISI also played an instrumental role in supporting the Afghan Mujahideen, a Muslim paramilitary force that would eventually mature under the guiding hand of the CIA et al into the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The British MI6 asset Abu Qatada raised money for the Chechnya jihad and the notorious Finsbury Park mosque imam Abu Hamza al-Masri – an informer for two British security services in London – raised funds for both the jihad in Chechnya and bin Laden’s Darunta camp in Afghanistan.

The CIA also worked to destabilize the Balkans, a fact documented by the media in Europe but largely ignored in the United States. The effort to convert the Balkans into a “safe haven” for fanatical jihadists was aided by the CIA and the Pentagon. In 1993, CIA asset Osama bin Laden reportedly installed his number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to run the organization’s operations in the Balkans.

The Volgograd attacks are likely a precursor to coming events that will unfold during the Olympic games to be held beginning on February 7 in the Black Sea coast city of Sochi. In the West, the establishment media, in the wake of Volgograd attacks, is predicting disaster.

“Security concerns have been entwined with the planning for every Olympiad at least since Munich 1972,” the Los Angeles Times reported on Monday. “The horrific events in Volgograd in recent days are only a reminder that the Sochi Winter Olympics will open some five weeks from now in a frighteningly unstable part of the former Soviet empire.”

The Times neglected to mention the frightening instability in that part of Russia was largely engineered in the West. “Suicide bombers do not explode themselves from excessive emotions or religious fanaticism,” Lyuba Lulko writes for Pravda. “This is always a result of a well-planned operation. There are Western intelligence agencies and money from Saudi Arabia and Qatar that stand behind terrorist groups and gangs operating in Russia… The bombings were conducted to destabilize the situation in the country before the New Year holidays and prior to the Olympic Games in Sochi.”

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