Shootout In Russia

WaPo reported The battle that bloodied the city of Nalchik starting Thursday morning, causing more than 100 deaths, came straight out of the deadly playbook of Chechen rebels whose leaders have sworn to engulf the entire Caucasus region of southern Russia in conflict.

Is this not proof that both groups of Islamoterrorists are aligned with Al Qaeda

But it also sprang from the failures of a corrupt local leadership, whose campaign against Islamic extremism in the Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria alienated and often radicalized religious Muslims, according to human rights groups and experts on the region.

Why are human rights groups worried about alienating Islamic extremists. Every country should oppose Islamic extremists

Many of the 103 fighters reported killed or captured Thursday and early Friday in Nalchik were local men, officials said, not natives of nearby Chechnya. While a decade of separatist warfare there remains a galvanizing cause for young Muslim men across the region, they are just as often pushed toward violence by what they witness in their own impoverished neighborhoods, analysts said. "The local bureaucracy, in my view, is the main source of instability," said Maxim Shevchenko, director of the Center for Strategic Research on Modern Religion and Politics, a Moscow-based organization.

I did a Google Search on the name of that "group" and the only reference I found was this Washington Post article. Could it be possible that it is a fake group set up just to justify what the Islamoterrorists did?

"People are completely alienated from the system." Valery Kokov, who was replaced last month as president of Kabardino-Balkaria, attempted for two years to crush all but an officially sanctioned version of Islam.

I believe that both Shia and Sunni interpretations should be permitted but Wahhabi or other interpretations, that preach hatred and violence should not be tolerated.

Scores of young men have been arrested and tortured, according to human rights groups. Often, the beards that they wore as a sign of Muslim piety were forcibly shaved. The authorities closed 18 mosques, and many others across the republic were allowed to open for only 30 minutes on Fridays, the Muslim Sabbath. Uniformed officials opened the mosques and took the names of everyone who attended service, according to accounts from the republic.

CQ blogged The American media seem reluctant to report this story accurately. The forces who attacked Nalchik are Islamist terrorists, nominally aligned with al-Qaeda -- Mohammed Atta wanted an assignment with them when he got the 9/11 operation -- and Nalchik isn't in Chechnya in any case. In fact, two other provinces separate Nalchik from Chechnya. While Chechens often strike elsewhere in the Russian Caucasus, that has to do with their motivation on Islamist grounds rather than a desire to just free one small province in the region from Russian rule.

The British media don't have any problem reporting the true nature of the terrorists in Nalchik. Even the leftist Guardian leads their story with a complete description of the terrorists the Post and other American newspapers call "rebels" ... Islamists have often staged attacks outside of Chechnya. Their two most well-known operations, the theater in Moscow and the downing of two Russian commercial planes, took place in the heart of Russia. The massacre at Beslan took place in North Ossetia, which is two provinces to the west of Chechnya. Again, this shows the nature of the "insurgency" in the Caucasus -- fueled by Islamists, not by nationalism or a drive for independence based on freedom from the undeniable Muscovite autocracy.

Why do the American media continue to miss this crucial aspect of the story? Could it be that they do not want to show Islamism as a specific threat based on its own nihilism instead of a false perception of it as a rational response to American foreign policy? For those Americans who do not access foreign news services for their information, they may be tempted into cheering for a movement that directly relates to the same people who killed 3,000 of our own citizens.

Michelle Malkin blogged Look how far down you have to read those stories before you are told that it is Islamic radical terrorists wreaking havoc and murdering innocent people, not just plain-vanilla "gunmen" and nondescript "militants" run amok.

Jeff blogged Today, there is a strong Wahhabi influence behind the Muslim terrorists.