Double bombing in Volgograd - a first assessment

The recent double bombing in Volgograd (ex-Stalingrad) represent a definitive escalation in the low-level but constant war which has opposed Wahabi insurgents to not only the Kremlin, but also to all the traditional Muslim authorities in Russia.  Before looking into what these latest attacks could mean for Russia in general and for the upcoming Sochi Olympic games, it would be helpful here to go over some basic fact.

Chechnia:

First, it would be a mistake to assume that any "Islamic" terrorist act committed in Russia would have to involve Chechens.  The reality is that Chechnia has not only been pacified, it is actually peaceful.  The Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov literally pulled-off a miracle when he turned the war-ravaged Chechen "black hole" into a prosperous and *truly* peaceful republic.  The fact that this miracle was either not reported or ridiculed by the Anglo-Zionist pundits, who had all gone on record saying that the Chechen insurgency would never be defeated, makes sense: recognizing it would simply be politically unthinkable.  Still, the fact that the young man who had all the external appearance of an average Chechen thug turned out to be an extremely capable and wise political leader is undeniable and even though no "war on terror" is ever truly "won", it would be fair to say that, at least for the time being, the Chechen terrorist phenomenon has been brought down to almost zero.  Unfortunately, if the future looks really bright for Chechnia, things are infinitely worse in neighboring Dagestan.

Dagestan:

Chechnia and Dagestan are neighbors, but they could hardly be more different.  For one thing, Chechnia is mostly inhabited by Chechens, whereas there is really no such thing as a "Dagestani": more than a dozen different ethnic groups live side by side in Dagestan.  In fact, Dagestan is the most diverse of all the Russian republics where no single group can form a majority.  This aspect is absolutely crucial because the fact that there is no one dominating ethnic group means that there cannot be a "Dagestani Kadyrov".  Second, the Dagestani economy is run by very corrupt elites who fight against each other and each other's clans.  In practical terms this means that the "recipe" used in Chechnia (to give a local Chechen leader a maximal level of autonomy and authority) would be a disaster for Dagestan.  The "solution" for Dagestan does probably involve a very forceful intervention from the Federal Center and a destruction of the current ethnicity-based clan system - not something anybody in the Kremlin would look forward to.

For the time being, however, Dagestan is the hotbed for Wahabi terrorism.  You could say that the Wahabi cancer that first took hold in Chechnia, spread to Dagestan while it was being destroyed in Chechnia.  The extreme poverty of Dagestan, combined with the millions of dollars provided by the Saudis to their allies and agents made it very easy for them to very successfully market their brand of Wahabism in Dagestan and to recruit local agents of influence and terrorists.

The Dagestani terrorists have learned the lessons of Chechnia well, and they are never trying to hold on to any territory or to create some kind of Wahabi statelet in Dagestan:  quite to the contrary, day after day after day, the security forces engage the Dagestani terrorists who each time end up either captured or dead (mostly the latter).  The reason for that is obvious: the Dagestani terrorists are weak and they cannot take on even the local cops.  But they are just strong enough to strap explosives on some young man or woman and send them to blow themselves up on a bus or train station.

Wahabis in the rest of Russia:

It also would be wrong to assume that all Wahabi terrorism in Russia has to come from Dagestan or even the Caucasus.  The Saudi-backed Wahabis are recruiting literally everywhere - from the south of Russia to Saint Petersburg and from Tatarstan to Moscow.  As a result, there are cases of ethnic Russians who are involved in Wahabi terrorist acts.  The bottom line is this: Wahabi terrorism in Russia is not a regional problem or an ethnic problem - it is an ideological problem.  So we should not jump to conclusions here and assume anything about who might be behind the latest attacks.  It literally could be anybody

From Volgograd to Sochi?

Volgograd has been the scene of several terrorist attacks in the recent past and the last two are only the latest in a series of events.  Why Volgograd?

Well, Volgograd is - along with Rostov-on-the-Don and Krasnodar - one of the major cities of southern Russia and it is close enough to Dagestan to make it fairly easy for the Dagestani Wahabis (assuming that they are involved) to organize a terrorist attack in that city.  In fact, Volgograd is pretty much at the same distance from Dagestan as Sochi.  Not a pleasant thought.

Another factor which might have played a role in the terrorist's decision to strike at Volgograd is that most Russian counter-terrorist efforts are currently concentrated in, and around, Sochi.  One of the basic rules of counter terrorism says there are always more targets to protect than resources to protect them.  Even if Volgograd had been put on total lockdown, the terrorist could have chose Astrakhan, Elista, Stavropol or any other city.  My guess is that the local and Federal security are primarily focused on keeping the Olympic infrastructure safe and that, as a result, Volgograd was unusually exposed.

What do we know so far?

Several of you have written to me (by email or the comments section) asking me if I thought that these latest attacks were a result of the recent Saudi threats.  Honestly - I don't know, this is way too early to tell.  The Russians are working fast and Russian media sources report that the suicide-bomber which blew up the railway station yesterday has been identified as Pavel Pechenkin.

Pavel Pechenkin

D. Sokolov and N. Asiialova

As far as I know, this has not been officially confirmed and DNA analyses are still being conducted.  If true, however, this would point to a group of ethnic Russians which would include Dimitri Sokolov, who was recently killed by the security forces, was an ethnic Russian who lived in Dagestan and who joined a terrorist group in the city of Makhachkala.  However, it is interesting to note that his contact with the Wahabi underground did not begin in Dagestan, but in a mosque in Moscow were he had signed up to take lessons of the Arabic language.  Sokolov was the common law husband of Naida Asiialova, a suicide-bomber who blew herself up in a crowded bus in Volgograd in October of this year.  Pechenkin, Sokolov and Asiialova apparently all were part of the same terror cell which, while based in Dagestan, included ethnic Russians.

This group was very well known to the Russian security services and the parents of Sokolov and Pechenkin both made desperate statements to the Russian media begging their sons not to commit any violent acts and to give up a life of terrorism.  While these people definitely had accomplices, Sokolov and Pechenkin were clearly the public image of this group and, as far as I know, there are no more senior figures of this cell on the run from the security services.  As of now, and that is a very preliminary assessment, there are no "Saudi fingerprints" on these attacks.  They appear to be what the Americans call a case of "home grown terror" and, if there is a Saudi link, it is through the massive funding of Wahabi mosques in Russia (and worldwide).

Russian internal options

As H. L. Mencken wrote, "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong".  In this case this simple solution is to shut down all the Wahabi linked mosques in Russia and some simple minded individuals in Russia have already expressed their desire to see that happening.  There are many problems with such a "solution".

1)  That would be simply illegal.  Russia has (finally!) more or less become a country where the rule of law matters or, at least, Russia is on its way to become such a country.  What is certain is that the vast majority of Russians want their country to become a normal, civilized, country where the rule of law is central to the political life.  To shut down mosques would be simply illegal.  On what grounds should they be shut down to begin with?  On "suspicion of Wahabism?".  There is no such crime in Russian law.  For receiving foreign money?  That is not illegal either.  For being linked to terrorist networks?  Yes, that would be illegal, but that is also very hard to prove and there is no way that the FSB or the Investigative Committee could make such charges stick in a court of law against most such mosques.  The bottom line is this: Putin is not a dictator and he cannot act outside the Russian law, nor would he want to.

2) That would be immoral.  I lived for many years literally right next to a big mosque fully financed by the Saudis and, to my knowledge, not only did that mosque never ever have anything to do with terrorism, the people attending that mosque were not even involved in a single case of petty crime.  God knows that I hate the Wahabi ideology with all my mind and heart, but I cannot say that most Wahabis are bad people at all, or that they are linked to terrorism.  They are not and they should not be the scapegoats for the actions of others.  I am fully in favor of the physical destruction of every single Wahabi terrorist on the planet, but as long as they don't take up arms and start murdering and maiming their fellow human beings, the followers of Ibn Taymiyyah and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab should not be made to pay for the actions of others.

3) It would be counter-productive.  The one good thing about leaving such Wahabi-linked mosques free to operate is that that gives the security forces a perfect target to penetrate and keep an eye on.  Shut down these mosques and you will push them into an underground where they might be much harder to infiltrate.  In fact, such Wahabi-linked mosques can even be used as honeypots to attract, identify and arrest homegrown terrorists.

No, the best way to deal with the Saudi financed propaganda and terror is to support anti-Wahabi, traditional, Islamic organizations and religious leaders.  There are plenty of smart and well educated Muslims in Russia, including quite a few well-known imams, who can take the ideological and spiritual fight to the Wahabis and denounce them for what they are.  What the Russian state should do is a) physically protect these people b) listen to them and their assessment of the situation c) explain to the non-Muslim population that these are vital allies in the struggle against Wahabi terrorism.

What if a Saudi trace is found?

That is a big "if"!  But let us assume, for argument's sake, that the Russians do find some kind of Saudi "fingerprints" in these attacks, or in upcoming attacks during the Sochi Olympics, and look at various Russian responses:

1) An overt retaliatory strike on Saudi Arabia:

In purely military terms, this is a no-brainer.  The Russians could strike with bombers, submarine based cruise missiles, ballistic missiles - you name it.  And while the US would express all sorts of outrage, CENTCOM would do nothing about it because the original purpose of CENTCOM was to prevent a Soviet invasion of Iran, not to defend the Saudis against a Russian retaliatory strike.  The problem with this option is that it would be illegal under international law and that is something Russia does not want.  If Russia decided to publicly and officially accuse Saudi Arabia of terrorist attacks against Russia, it would have to go to the UNSC or the International Court of Justice and make the case legally.

2) File an official complaint at the ICJ and try get a UNSC vote to condemn the KSA:

Actually this is a very neat option because it would put the Saudis in a very embarrassing political position.  Depending on the wording of the resolution, the US would either abstain or veto it since, no matter how much problems there have been between the two sides recently, the US and the KSA are still strategic allies.  Still, such an official complaint by Russia against the Saudi regime would put even more egg on the faces of the medieval monkeys in power in Riyadh.  I would personally like that a lot, but this would not be in Putin's style - he prefer a much more low key kind of diplomacy.

3) A covert retaliatory strike on Saudi Arabia:

Also well within the means of the Kremlin not only because it could use Russian capabilities to hit some Saudi prince or two, but because it could easily subcontract that job to an allied force.  The problem with that is even if this would be a retaliatory strike it would still be an act of terrorism.  So far, the only case that I am aware of the Russians assassinating somebody is when they killed the notorious terrorist Ibn al-Khattab: the Russian special services intercepted a letter for Khattab, and laced it with a special poison which would be harmless for anybody except Khattab (a far more effective and sophisticated method than the idiotic accusation that they would use polonium to kill somebody).  In this case, however, the Russians admitted their role and even made more or less official declarations giving the details of the operation.  While this assassination was conducted using covert methods, this was not a true covert operation because the Russians voluntarily admitted that they were behind it.  Khattab was such a piece of scum that nobody sane expressed any problems with it: this was one of those very rare, black and white, slam dunk, case where pretty much everybody agrees that the killed person truly had it coming and that justice was served.  But that is the exception.  All too many so-called "covert operations" are simply a pious euphemism for terrorist (counter-)attacks i.e., something a civilized country should not do.

4) What then?  Aiming at the long term:

In a struggle against terrorism keeping the moral high ground is absolutely vital: you have to do your utmost to deny your enemy the status of "freedom fighter".  To do that, you absolutely must keep your hands as clean as possible and you have to only engage in those actions which, if discovered, would make you look honorable.  Dick Cheney's notion that "now the gloves are off" is just a reflection of his lack of sophistication.  The same thing can be said of the CIA's "plausible deniability".  The result of such self-delusion is that the USA is hated and despised worldwide and there literally isn't a vile, dishonorable or stupid action which anybody would put past the US covert operations community.  Does Russia really want to become the "next villain" (again!)?!

I personally think that it is crucial for a civilized country to have its official, declaratory, public policy in harmony with what it does behind the scenes.  There is nothing inherently wrong with covert operations as long as they are conduced in such a manner as to make those who ordered them look reasonable and honorable if the operation is discovered.  Russia cannot constantly speak of the absolutely crucial role which should be played by international law in international relations and then happily go on violating the basic rules of international law.  For this reason, any use of force (military or covert) by Russia has to be predicated on the following principles:

1)  All other non-violent options have either been already attempted or are impossible to implement.
2) The use of force is proportional to the attack which triggered it.
3) Every effort is made to avoid innocent victims.

Sounds Pollyannaish?  Well, it shouldn't!

Decades of absolutely irresponsible and reckless use of force by the USA, the Israelis, the Europeans and the Soviets have thoroughly desensitized us to the fundamental immorality of violence.  Raised as most of us have been on John Wayne movies and Ronald Reagan presidencies, we have lost the disgust of the civilized man for the ugliness and immorality of violence.  Worse, we are so conditioned by decades of watching CNN special reports from the Pentagon showing the latest "briefing" about some US military intervention that we forget that "shooting from the hip" is a most ineffective way of dealing with a problem.

When dealing with an issue like terrorism, it is always better to plan for the long term.  From that point of view, I would argue that the Saudi regime is a big enough problem to deserve to be considered a inherent national security threat to Russia and that, in turn, means that it should be a Russian national security strategy to achieve regime change in the KSA.   This goal, however, should be pursued only or, at least, mainly, through legal means such as, for example, arming the Iranians and the Syrians who, in turn, will arm Hezbollah.  This goal can also be achieved by isolating Saudi Arabia on the international scene by means of "consultations" with allies and friendly nations.  Furthermore, Russia should seek to expand its role and influence in the Muslim and Arab world in order to counteract the current influence of the Saudis and the other Gulf monarchies.  

In the short term, the Russian public needs to be openly told that terrorism cannot be eradicated, that this is a pipe dream cooked up by dishonest politicians.  But if no nation or government can really eradicate terrorism, one can learn how to live with it.  After all, the actual amount of victims of terrorism is extremely small, far less than, say, road accidents.  The real power of terrorism resides in the psychological effect it has not on its direct victims, but on those who witness it.  As soon as the general public accepts the notion that even if terrorists attack can be brought down to a minimum, some will always remain possible, terrorism will lose its real force.  Terrorism can either be accepted as a fact of life, or a nation can be drawn in an endless spiral of futile counter-terrorist measures which are far more damaging than the terrorism which triggered them.

Does Russia really want to become a terrified and paranoid Fascist state like the USA?  Or does it prefer to accept the fact that terrorism will never be "defeated" and keep on living as best as can be in an always dangerous world?

Russian politicians are already hotly debating whether to cancel the current moratorium on the death penalty: Nikolay Pligin, United Russia MP and head of the Duma’s Constitutional Law committee, declared that "no social groups will be discriminated against, no special activities will be carried out against any specific group – all activities will be conducted solely within the constitutional norms and in accordance with existing laws” while Ramzan Kadyrov urged the parliament to “infinitely increase the penalty for those, who not only commits terrorist acts, but share the ideas of the terrorists, spread their ideology and train them. I’m absolutely sure that we won’t cope with this evil by playing democracy and humanity”.  

Well, at least both agree that the correct place to discuss this issue and decide on what policies to adopt is the Parliament.  I expect that Duma to speak in one voice and give the Kremlin pretty much any law the latter would want, so the real decision will be in Putin's hands.  I am personally confident that his choice will be to abide very strictly to the letter and spirit of Russian national law and international law and that there shall be no Russian over-reaction.

The Saker

PS: Sorry about all the typos, weird sentences and poor grammar - I am writing that under a lot of time pressure (-: yes, I do have a life :-) and I simply don't have the time right now to sit down and proofread this text.  My apologies for that!  The Saker
PPS: most (all?) of the numerous typos and other horrors of the text above have been kindly corrected by S. to whom I owe a big debt of gratitude for all his kind help!

Lack of change we can all believe in

So Obama, having betrayed every promise he ever made, was in a popularity free fall for a looooooong time already.  Then he decided to announce that he would seek a second term.  That did littele to improve his ratings.  Then OBL was "killed" (on Holocaust Day!) while Obama was about to depart for a trip to New York to visit "ground zero".  That did the trick and his popularity jumped right back up. It's all just so all so *perfect*

The scary thing is to imagine what happens if Obama's popularity surge proves short lived.  There is still a long while to go before the elections, and the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is coming up this Fall.  Add to this the promise that 'al-Qaeda' will "retaliate" for the killing of OBL and you would see what this looks outright frightening.

Also - "waterboarding works".  Or, at least, that is what the US regime would want us to believe (they say that it was the mass waterboarding of KSM which yielded the name of the courier which lead the US to OBL).  So to "protect us" all, the TSA will keep on porno-scanning and "enhanced groping", the folks in Gitmo, Bagram and elsewhere will keep on waterboarding, and the NSA/FBI snooping on all our communications.

That is the *lack* of change we can all believe in.

In the meantime Russia is still trying to catch-up with the USA: the Russian government has announced that it is now introducing US-style color-coded "terrorism alert levels" which the US just dump.  *Hopeless* [sigh, rolleyes].

The Saker

Domodedovo suicide bomber named

The Russian magazine "Life News" has obtained the name of the 20 year old suicide bomber who detonated himself inside Moscow's Domodedovo airport.  He is Magomed (Mohamed) Evloev, a resident of Ali-Iurt in Ingushetia.  The Russian FSB has so far neither denied nor confirmed this information.  But if this information is correct, one can only wonder what Vladimir Putin meant when he said this explosion was not linked to the conflict in Chechnia.

Putin: "Blast in Moscow not linked to Chechnia"

Russian Prime Minister Putin has just declared on the NTV television news channel that "according to the preliminary results of the investigation the terrorist act is not linked to the Chechen Republic" (Нынешний террористический акт не имеет отношения, по предварительным данным следствия, к Чеченской республике).

According to Russian sources, the terrorist was, quote, "of a Mediterranean type which would include Arabs", unquote.

More details soon, hopefully.

Blast in Moscow's airport

Dear friends,

I am totally sick with the flu and I don't feel like writing much, but I hear so much nonsense about the blast in Moscow that I want to share some really quick thoughts with you:

1) Don't rush to blame the Chechens for what happened.  Yes, it most definitely *could* be them, but there are *many* other possible explanations including, but not limited to, the following:

a) Western and Zionists interests who might try to push Russia into a more obedient role in the "coalition of the willing"  worldwide

b) Interests - Russian or other - which might try to upset the current dialog between Moscow and the Karzai administration

 c) A false-flag operation by Russian elements interested in creating the conditions for more "security measures" Russia

2) Even if the suicide bombers are ethnic Chechens, we should not rush to any conclusions since, as so often the case with Muslim extremists, it is far from certain that the suicide bombers really knew whose interests they were promoting with their actions.

3) No amount of "security measures" can defeat this type of attacks.  The fact that they occurred does not necessarily indicate a failure of the security services (although it could), and no amount of additional measures can prevent further attacks.

4) The Medvedev administration did take one very bad decision today  - the decision to order the Mayor of Moscow, along with many other officials, to immediately personally visit the site of the blast.  If the terrorists had shown more foresight, they could have prepared a 2nd explosive to detonate when the big politicos would show up.

Still, the Chechen terror hypothesis is not unreasonable and should not be rejected out of hand either.  The Chechen insurgency has been militarily defeated, and it has now been reduced to a terror-capability-level similar to what the IRA had during the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland.  Even though pretty much all the main Chechen insurgency leaders have been killed, and even though the remaining Chechen insurgents are mostly busy fighting over who should be considered the "Emir of the North Caucasian Emirate" (sic), their insurgency still has money and enough resources to switch from insurgency operations to banal terrorism.  In fact, a terrorist attack like the one which occurred today could very much be a Chechen way of "fund raising" from their foreign 'sponsors' by proving that they still can strike in the Russian capital.

Yet, if we follow the age old advice of cui bono, I would not necessarily have the Chechen terrorists on the top of my list (though I might well by tomorrow morning, depending on what I learn overnight)

My 2cts.

The Saker

It is sometimes hard to tell Russia and the USA apart

I have been watching the news out of Moscow over the past 24 hours and they make for a rather depressing viewing indeed. No, I am not referring to the two blasts in the Moscow subway system which, of course, are tragic events, but to the rhetoric of the Russian authorities. Listening to the Russian news, I was wondering if the script had been written in Washington, DC.

President Medvedev immediately declared that the Russian legislation needed to be changed to fight against what many Russians now call 'al-Qaeda in the Caucasus'. What he did not explain, of course, is how exactly the current legislation had anything to do with the fact that terrorists could detonate bombs in Moscow.

Does that not sound familiar to those living in the USA?

And let's remember the past. While I am not accusing the Russian authorities of being behind an 9/11-like 'inside job' (although many questions remain about the 1999 appartment building bombings ), there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the first Chechen war was made possible by elements inside the Kremlin under Eltsin and that it was artificially prolonged by 'deep state' forces in Moscow.

Ever since Putin came to power, the various security services have seen a real bonanza of funding, quite in contrast to the military which has seen dramatic cuts in its financing and even key forces. For example, 3 (three!) Spetsnaz brigades from the GRU have been simply disbanded (the 67th, 12th and 3d) and there were plans of cutting the GRU command in Moscow by 50 (that is fifty!) percent. Even though this last folly has been put on hold, for the time being at least, the combination of these 'reforms' represents no less than a de-facto crippling of one of the most effective parts of the Russian military. There were also equally absurd plans to disband the 106th Guards Airborne Division, arguably the second best airborne division in the Russian military. These plans were also 'frozen', at least for a while. But the trend is clear: Putin and Medvedev are disbanding elite military forces.

While this is going on, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Security Service forces are being superbly financed, they get many brand new, top of the line, training facilities, and their resources are greatly increased. To put it crudely, what the current Russian government wants is cops, not soldiers.

Combine that trend with the US-like response to the latest bombings and the image becomes clear: Russia is also on the slippery path of becoming a police state. There are, of course, some important differences between Russia and the USA and these should not be overlooked.

For one thing, Russia is a 'normal' country, not an empire like the USA. Crucially, Russia does abide by the norms of international law, unlike the USA which considers itself above any such law. Russia does have a truly free press. In contrast, the US press would make Suslov or Goebbels blue with envy. Russia is not under the ironclad control of Zionists (neither Jewish nor Christian). Russian intelligences agencies are not in the business of overthrowing governments worldwide and the Russian military budget is not larger than the combined military defense budget of the rest of the planet which, of course, the US 'defense' budget it. Russia does not have 700+ military bases worldwide and Russia does not have 16 major intelligence' agencies (only 3: FSB, GRU, SVR) and last, but not least, the level of education of the Russian population is higher than in the USA by several orders of magnitude. So the situation in Russia is not quite as ominous as it is in the USA. Still, all the signs are here that the Putin-Medvedev rule has all the signs of being a 'by the cops, for the cops' kind of regime.

Listening to Russian commentators immediately referring to "al-Qaeda in the Caucasus" as being behind the Moscow bombings made me feel very uncomfortable. Its not that I have any reason to doubt that Chechen terrorists are behind these bombings (I am quite aware that that the Chechen insurgents are among the most evil and crazed Wahabi thugs on the planet), but I cannot help but wonder why the 'al-Qaeda' label had to be attached to them. Sure, Doku Umarov, the so-called "First Emir of the Caucasus Emirate", is a murderous thug and the Chechen insurgency has had close contacts with what has become to be known as 'al-Qaeda' for many years. But these Chechens have also had contacts with the US, British, Turkish and Israeli intelligences agencies and yet no Russian commentators speaks of "CIA in the Caucasus"...

In the meanwhile, US and British 'terrorism experts' are on Russian TV pontificating about how 'terrorism is a world-wide global problem' which threatens 'all democratic states' (since when do Yanks and Brits refer to Russia as being 'democratic' again?!).

I just can about see the smiles of satisfaction in the White House.

The Saker

Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah was executed by the FBI

Democracy Now reports:

In Michigan, explosive details have emerged from the long-awaited release of the autopsy report for a Detroit-area Muslim imam slain by the FBI in October. The imam, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, headed a Sunni Muslim group called the Ummah. He was shot dead during an FBI raid shortly after being indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit federal crimes. Local Muslim leaders have questioned if authorities are trying to cover up facts surrounding his death.

The autopsy report was finally released Monday after a lengthy delay. It shows Abdullah died from twenty-one gunshot wounds and was found with his wrists handcuffed behind his back. House Judiciary Chair John Conyers is expected to join a coalition of civil rights and Muslim groups today to call for a Justice Department probe.

Train bombing serious blow to Russian security

by Eric Walberg

The worst terrorist attack to hit Russia in five years, the bombing of the Nevsky Express train last week, was almost certainly by Islamist extremists, and security forces are just not prepared for these less spectacular acts of terrorism, Russian security experts say.

The cause of the crash was identified as a homemade bomb that exploded on the tracks between Moscow and St Petersburg, killing 26, wounding scores and raising fears of a new era of terrorism in Russia. At the attack site, 320km northwest of Moscow, investigators found remnants of the bomb, equivalent to 15 pounds of TNT, that left a crater 1.5m deep. The bomb was apparently planted on the tracks and detonated while the second half of the train was passing. A second, less powerful explosive went off later at the site of the crash.

Russia suffered a wave of attacks in the early part of the decade as Muslim separatists from Chechnya struck trains and public places in Moscow and elsewhere, but there have been no such deadly assaults in recent years.

However, another Nevsky Express train was derailed in 2007 by an explosion, wounding more than two dozen people. Two men from Ingushetia were arrested, and just last month confessed to involvement in that blast. But the main suspect, a former Russian soldier-turned-Islamic-extremist, Pavel Kosolapov, remains at large. This previous blast and the sophistication of the present bombing, which involved two explosions, point to Islamists as the perpetrators. Aleksandr Bobreshov, a senior official of the state railway company, noted, “the second explosion, which occurred some time later, is the so-called double-blast method, carried out by North Caucasus sabotage groups.”

Police issued a sketch of a middle aged “stocky, red-haired man” seen in the vicinity of Friday’s blast, who may be Kosolapov. Kosolapov is believed to have been a close associate of Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev, killed by Russian security forces in 2006, who was the mastermind of several large-scale terrorist attacks, including the tragic 2004 Beslan school siege, which left 330 people dead, mostly children.

The 1990s were a violent and unstable period in Russia, though the only large-scale terrorist attack was during the 1994-96 First Chechen War -- the 1995 Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, which resulted in 200 deaths. It was Basayev’s first major “success” in as much as it led to peace talks with the Yeltsin’s government and resulted in the establishment of a quasi-independent Chechnya.

The next major terrorist acts were the five bombings of mostly Moscow apartment buildings that killed nearly 300 people in September 1999. None of the Chechen field commanders, including Basayev, accepted responsibility for the bombings and Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov denied involvement of his government. However, they coincided with border skirmishes between Chechnya and Dagestan, and evidence that Al-Qaeda and Wahabism were increasingly active in Chechnya. A ground offensive was launched from Dagestan by Russian troops in October which now marks the beginning of what is called the Second Chechen War, on which Vladimir Putin staked his presidency after he was appointed president by Boris Yeltsin in December 1999.

There followed a decade of gruesome war in Chechnya, with tens of thousands dying. There were also several spectacular terrorist attacks which this time Chechen rebels led by Basayev did take responsibility for. Russia’s security forces had to deal with the 2002 siege of a Moscow theatre which resulted in up to 200 deaths and the 2004 Beslan school assault. But Russia suffered no major attack after that, as the Chechen war ground to its supposed end.

Andrei Soldatov, editor of Agentura.ru, criticises Russian counter-terrorist efforts since Beslan, comparing officials to generals preparing for the last war, focussed on averting big attacks like Beslan, instead of preparing for smaller-scale strikes such as the bombings of the Nevsky Express, despite the 2007 warning blast. “We see new modus operandi taking shape, in which tiny cells of terrorists of three to five people plan and execute acts of sabotage,” he says. “But our security forces have militarised this problem, and are not set up to deal with small threats like that.”

Confirming his point, yet another bomb went off Monday in the southern republic of Dagestan, hitting a train travelling from the Siberian city of Tyumen to Baku in Azerbaijan. No one was injured in that blast, but analysts argue it was also by terrorists, who have never stopped operating in Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Chechnya, and warn that more ambitious attacks on Russia will no doubt follow. The northern Caucasus is witnessing a growth of forces that are no longer interested in local nationalism, or separatism, but “see themselves as being at war with Russia. Until lately, the most adventurous Russian Islamists tended to head for Afghanistan, or somewhere else, to wage jihad. Now there are signs that they are going to the Caucasus area, and this bodes very ill,” says Soldatov.

The Kremlin declared “mission accomplished” in Chechnya on 16 April 2009 after a decade and a half of military campaigning, pulling most of its forces out of the tiny republic, and leaving it under the control of local strongman Ramzan Kadyrov. Kremlin leaders argue that the harsh pacification of Chechnya, political crackdown and smarter security operations explain the fact that there has been no major terrorist attack on the Russian heartland since Beslan.

But it remains a fact that the terrorist tragedies in Russia during the past decade coincide with the brutal Second Chechen War, and that President Kadyrov himself is a loose cannon who has assassinated more than one opponent in the past year. Chechnya is also suspected of being a prime transit route for drug smugglers, and the lawlessness and threat to Russia emanating from Chechnya are not lost on other parties, in particular, the US and Israel. This latest incident is a serious blow not only to Putin’s strategy of holding on to Chechnya at all costs, but to overall Russian security.
***
Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/

Top Israeli official openly calls for war crimes in the next Israeli war against Lebanon

Al-Manar TV reports:

Israeli reserve Brigadier General Gabriel Siboni called for striking Lebanon’s infrastructure in case of a new war. In an article published on the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies’ internet site, Siboni said that the “current predicament facing Israel involves two major challenges. The first is how to prevent being dragged into an ongoing dynamic of attrition on the northern border similar to what in recent years developed along the border with the Gaza Strip. The second is determining the IDF’s response to a large scale conflict both in the north and in the Gaza Strip.” Siboni analyzed that both challenges can be overcome by adopting the principle of a “disproportionate strike against the enemy’s weak points as a primary war effort, and operations to disable the enemy’s missile launching capabilities as a secondary war effort.”

PUNISHMENT IS TO DESTROY LITERALLY EVERYTHING

The Israeli Brigadier General writes that with an outbreak of hostilities, “the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy's actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.

The strike must be carried out as quickly as possible, and must prioritize damaging assets over seeking out each and every launcher. Punishment must be aimed at decision makers and the power elite. In Syria, punishment should clearly be aimed at the Syrian military, the Syrian regime, and the Syrian state structure. In Lebanon, attacks should both aim at Hezbollah’s military capabilities and should target economic interests and the centers of civilian power that support the organization. Moreover, the closer the relationship between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, the more the elements of the Lebanese state infrastructure should be targeted.”

Siboni believes that such a response will create a lasting memory among Syrian and Lebanese decision makers, “thereby increasing Israeli deterrence and reducing the likelihood of hostilities against Israel for an extended period. At the same time, it will force Syria, Hezbollah, and Lebanon to commit to lengthy and resource-intensive reconstruction programs.”

RESPONSE SHOULD BE DISPROPORTIONATE

He stressed Israel does not have to be dragged into a war of attrition with Hezbollah. “Israel’s test will be the intensity and quality of its response to incidents on the Lebanese border or terrorist attacks involving Hezbollah in the north or Hamas in the south. In such cases, Israel again will not be able to limit its response to actions whose severity is seemingly proportionate to an isolated incident. Rather, it will have to respond disproportionately in order to make it abundantly clear that the State of Israel will accept no attempt to disrupt the calm currently prevailing along its borders. Israel must be prepared for deterioration and escalation, as well as for a full scale confrontation. Such preparedness is obligatory in order to prevent long term attrition. The Israeli home front must be prepared to be fired upon, possibly with even heavy fire for an extended period, based on the understanding that the IDF is working to reduce the period of fighting to a minimum and to create an effective balance of deterrence.”

“By instilling proper expectations of the IDF response among the civilian population, Israel will be able to improve its readiness and the resilience of its citizens. Still, the IDF’s primary goal must nonetheless be to attain a ceasefire under conditions that will increase Israel's long term deterrence, prevent a war of attrition, and leave the enemy floundering in expensive, long term processes of reconstruction,” Siboni concluded.

Gabriel Siboni joined the research team of the Institute for National Security Studies in early 2006.

He served as a fighter and commander in the Golani Brigade and completed his service as the brigade’s reconnaissance unit commander. Within the scope of his reserve service, he served as senior staff officer of the Golani Brigade, deputy commander of the logistics unit, and chief of staff of an armored division in the north.

In addition to his work at INSS, Siboni is also a consultant in a wide range of fields, including operational systems and military technology.
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Commentary: I have bolded out the key word "disproportionate" in the article above because it is the single most important one in terms of the laws of war, international humanitarian law and international and customary law. Indeed, the concept of *proportionality* is the linchpin of all the legal instruments applicable in international conflicts. Basically, international law recognizes that conflicts will occur and that any nation has the right to self-defense. Likewise, international law accept the fact that modern warfare will always result in what is politely called 'collateral damage', i.e.: damage to non combattants and the civil society. However, international law clearly and unequivocally states that the response to an aggression and the means used to repel an agressor must be *proportional* to the military necessity. This means that two things are specifically considered as war crimes:

a) using excessive force
b) deliberately engaging non-military targets

History has shown that Israel, truly the world's Ueber-terrorist, couldn't care less about *any* laws, nevermind the laws of war and that its armed forces have always considered the commission of war crimes not only as a tactic, but in fact as a strategy to achieve its objectives. What is unique in the case of Siboni is the arrogant, blatant, openness with which such terrorist methods are advocated. This is hardly a reflection of some newly aquiered spirit of "glasnost" among the racist thugs who run the Israeli high command, rather it is a reflection of the degree of inpunity which the USA has granted its Israeli allies (or, better said, *bosses*).

We see yet again the proof of a basic postulate: racism and terrorism *always* go hand in hand. There is no such thing as a non-terrorist racist ideology or, even less so, a non-terrorist racist state. Israel will remain a terrorist state as long as it clings to its Zionist racist ideology and it would be foolish in the extreme to expect it to abide by any kind of law (international, human rights, etc.) under these circumstances.

Uncle Shmuel grants US citizenship to 16 key terrorist figures

Press TV reports:

The US has granted citizenship to 16 leading members of the blacklisted Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), an Iraqi security official says.

The official told Fars news agency that the MKO members who were given US citizenship were directly engaged in acts of terror against Iranians and the Iraqi people.

According to the security official, the terrorists, who had earlier exited Camp Ashraf, were reportedly transferred to a former Iraqi air force base near the capital, Baghdad.

The US had earlier relocated selected members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization after Iraqi authorities took control of their camp in Diyala province in August. The act was aimed at preventing MKO members from falling into the hands of the Iraqi government.

The Iraqi official said, however, that the US had denied support for a certain number of MKO members in the Camp after accessing their records.

He added that documents, including tapes of MKO espionage acts against the Iranian government, have been delivered from the camp to US military forces in Iraq.

His remarks come as Ali al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi security official, told Fars that there were documents available on the group's cooperation with al-Qaeda and Baath regime in their acts of violence.

He added the US was studying the records of certain MKO members willing to join American troops to select those useful to American forces in their anti-Iran goals.

The MKO, blacklisted by many international bodies, is responsible for many acts of terrorism against Iranian civilians and government officials.

The MKO terrorist group moved to Iraq in 1986, where it enjoyed the support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. He provided the group with arms and military equipment to launch attacks against the Islamic Republic during the Iraq- war with Iran (1980-88).

The group launched operations against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war from Camp Ashraf, their headquarters and training site, and later assisted Saddam in violently suppressing the Iraqi Kurds during the 1991 uprising.

After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the fall of Saddam Hussein, the group is now directly supported by the United States.

Iranian commander survives assassination

Press TV reports: An Iranian navy commander leading a unit that arrested 15 UK sailors in the Persian Gulf last year survives an assassination attempt.

The attack on Colonel Abolqasem Amangah, the commander of the Arvand Rud Navy Base in southern Iran, occurred while he was driving in the eastern Sorkh Hesar district of Tehran on Monday.

Two groups of unidentified assailants, a group on a motorbike and the other in a car, opened fire on the vehicle of the Iranian commander.

Amangah pulled his car over, took shelter, and managed to escape unhurt.

Security forces have launched an investigation into the incident.

On March 2007, the forces under command of Colonel Amangah, arrested 15 British sailors who trespassed on the Iranian territorial waters. The sailors were pardoned by the Iranian government and released later.

Pakistan will extradite US-backed terrorists to Iran

Press TV reports: Pakistan, Iran agree on Jundullah's fate

Tehran says members of the Jundullah terrorist group taken into custody in Pakistan may be extradited to Iran as early as next week.

“We are currently discussing the matter with the Pakistani government and there is a possibility that the terrorists will be turned over to Iran in the coming week,” caretaker Interior Minister, Mehdi Hashemi told reporters on Saturday.

Hashemi added that the two sides had agreed on the fate of the terrorists but had not yet set an exact date for their extradition to Iran.

Jundullah, which operates in Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan and Pakistan's Balochistan, has carried out a number of attacks against high profile Iranian targets, especially government and security officials.

The ABC news reported in 2007 that the terrorist cell has been 'secretly encouraged and advised' by American officials since 2005.

According to American intelligence sources, the US relationship with Jundullah has been arranged so that Washington provides no funding, which would require an official presidential order, to the group. (The money, no doubt, comes from Saudi Arabia and the guns and training from Israel. VS)

Iran stops Russian consulate bombing

According to Press TV: Iran's Intelligence Minister says the Shiraz mosque bombers had plans to target a Russian consulate in the northern part of the country.

Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i (see picture) announced that 15 people had been arrested in connection with the deadly explosion in a mosque in the southern city of Shiraz, adding that all detainees are Iranian nationals.

"Their next target was the Russian consulate general in Rasht. They obviously hoped that the explosion would strain Iran's relations with its neighbors," Mohseni-Eje'i stated.

The Iranian minister said the bombers were apparently trained by sources in the US and had been assured of a safe escape after the attack.

Mohseni-Eje'i ruled out any links between the Shiraz bombers and the Mujahedeen Khalq terrorist organization (MKO).

Iran announced on Tuesday that Britain, Israel and the United States were responsible for the deadly blast in Shiraz which killed 13 Iranians and injured more than 200.

The Iranian judiciary spokesman, Alireza Jamshidi said on Monday that the Islamic Republic may press charges against the United States, Britain and Israel over their involvement in the April 12 bombing.
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Note: Russian news outlets are confirming the story

Israel assasinates Hezbollah leader in Damascus (UPDATED!)

Who really killed Mughniyah - was it only the Mossad?

Imad Mughniyah, a top Hezbollah leader, has been killed in a car bomb yesterday in Damascus. Hezbollah immediately blamed Israel for the assassination. If this is indeed an Israeli operation, and that appears most likely, that is a huge success for Israel who as long considered Mughniyah The epitome of the 'Axis of Evil' and who has blamed numerous terrorists acts on him, including the bombings in Argentina. Even though this specific accusation is demonstratively false, Mughniyah was also accused by the US and Israel of being involved in the 1983 and 1984 bombing of US and French barracks in Beirut, the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and the kidnappings of Westerners (all of which occurred before the creation of Hezbollah in 1985).

Originally a member of Fatah' Force 17, Mughniyah has also been accused of being a member, or at least a collaborator, of many other organizations including even Al-Qaeda (this most exotic theory was proposed by Michel Ledeen). Considering all the propaganda and demonization which the Empire always subjects all its enemies to, it is hard to find out which, if any, of those accusations are true (though Ledeen's theory is so laughable to be self-evidently false).

What is certain is that Mughniyah is a symbol of the early period of Hezbollah, possibly one of the co-founders of the movement and that Mughniyah was held in high esteem not only in Hezbollah, but also among other Lebanse Shia movements. What is equally certain is that having turned Mughniyah into an arch-villain the Israelis have scored a huge PR success in finally killing him. After all the recent SNAFUs, killing Mughniyah will do much to restore the bruised egos of the Israelis. But how much will this affect Hezbollah itself?

It is hard to answer this question because so little is known about Mughniyah's real role in the organization. We know two things: that Mughniyah was a senior member and that he was a highly skilled person. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that his murder will have a significant impact on the movement, at least in the short term.

It is, however, absolutely essential to remember that Hezbollah has a highly complex and decentralized organizational structure with no single center of power, much less so any "key leader" position (click on the picture for a larger image) and that Mughniyah assassination will have very little impact on the organization itself. But what about the morale of its members or the message this sends to its leaders? Will they understand that Israel's message is "behave, or else..." (as a Haaretz commentator seems to think)?

Here is how Hezbollah announced Mughniyah death:

In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

((Of the believers are men who are true to the covenant which they made with Allah: so of them is he who accomplished his vow, and of them is he who yet waits, and they have not changed in the least)) Almighty Allah has spoken the truth.

With pride and honor, we announce the martyrdom of a great resistance leader who joined the procession of Islamic Resistance martyrs. After a life full of Jihad, sacrifices and accomplishments lived with a longing to martyrdom, Islamic Resistance leader Hajj Imad Moghniyeh (Hajj Radwan) was assassinated by Israeli criminal hands. The martyr, may his soul rest in peace, had been a target for the Zionists for more than 20 years. Almighty Allah has chosen him to be a martyr on the hands of His Prophet's killers who know that we have a long battle with them and the blood of martyrs especially our leaders has always taken our resistance to a higher and stronger level, just like when our two great leaders, Sheikh Ragheb Harb and Sayyed Abbas Moussawi were martyred.

We pledge to continue the martyr's path until achieving complete victory, God willing.
We offer our sincere condolences to the martyr's family and his brothers in arms and we congratulate all resistance fighters for the Divine legion of honor.

Not only is martyrdom is at the very core of the Shia's ethos, it is also a spiritual reality which was built in Hezbollah's culture from its very foundation. The killing of a senior Hezbollah leader, while always an organization nuisance and a personal tragedy, is always considered as an immense spiritual victory for Hezbollah, it is an event which inspires, emboldens and re-energizes the pious Shia. This might seem incredible or bizarre for somebody educated in the West, but for somebody raised in a religion centered around the concept of martyrdom this is actually rather obvious.

This leaves on unresolved question: how was it possible for the Israelis to successfully plant a car bomb in Damascus, in a brand new neighborhood, in the immediate proximity of several Syrian intelligence buildings and kill a presumable highly protected target. Setting aside all the silly mystique about the "super-skilled Mossad" (which has way more pathetic SNAFUs to its credit than real successes), anyone with a working understanding of what such an operation would entail can immediately see that Mughniyah murder could not have been possible without Syrian complicity, if not more.

The only question left open is how high in the Syrian government the accomplices of Israel are. A rogue operation of some isolated elements of the Syrian Mukhabarat is just not something very credible and it is reasonable to assume that the Assad regime was a crucial accomplice in this operation. Is this really surprising? For all the talk about Syria being a 'state sponsoring terrorism' the Assad regime has been more than willing to provide 'torture services' for the CIA, so why assume that this policy of 'collaboration in the war on terror' would be limited to torturing people?

It will be most interesting to see how this situation will develop, but if indeed Syria is behind the murder of Mughniyah this is a declaration of war on Hezbollah and, possibly, Iran.
-------

UPDATE: (source: Wayne Madsen Report via Free Iraq, via Palestinian Pundit)

A BOMBSHELL!

Wayne Madsen Report (entire) -

"February 13, 2008 -- Bush's strangest Syrian bedfellow: At center of suspicion in Hezbollah leader's car bombing: The head of Syrian military intelligence, Assef Shawkat, is no stranger to working with the CIA. Syria has, since 9/11, served as a host for the torture of "extraordinarily renditioned" prisoners captured by the CIA. Shawkat has been at the center of the CIA's program.

WMR has learned from reliable sources that the car bombing in Damascus of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mugniyah on February 12 was carried out by Shawkat with the active encouragement and support of Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams and Israel's Mossad. WMR has reported in the past that Abrams is the coordinator within the Bush White House of political assassinations, particularly those in the Middle East, and specifically, similar car bombing assassinations in Lebanon. WMR has also previously reported that many of the car bombings in Lebanon were the result of coordination between Israeli, American, and Syrian operatives, including "rogue" Syrians and Lebanese agents in the employ of Shawkat.

Mugniyah was wanted by the United States and Israel for a number of terrorist attacks in the 1980s and 1990s, including the 1983 bombings of the US Embassy and Marine Barracks in Beirut, the 1985 hijacking of an Athens-to-Rome TWA flight in which Navy diver Robert Stethem was murdered, and the kidnapping and murder of Beirut CIA station chief William Buckley in 1984 and Marine Corps Lt. Col. William Higgins in 1988.

Significantly, the Israeli Prime Minister's office has denied any role in Mugniyah's assassination. However, Israeli government and intelligence officials are happy that it occurred.

Mugniyah's car exploded at around 10:30 pm in the up-market Tantheem Kafer Souseh neighborhood of Damascus. WMR has learned that the car bombing of Mugniyah was to be timed with the February 9th birthday of President Ronald Reagan, a gesture by Shawkat to the Americans, but the specially designed Mitsubishi seats containing the bombs were installed late, resulting in the February 12 assassination.

In the Middle East, dates, particularly anniversaries, carry much weight. The assassination of Lebanese Member of Parliament Elie Hobeika on January 24th 2002, coincided with the birthday of Elliott Abrams, the then-National Security Council Middle East director. Hobeika's car bombing assassination in Beirut was also carried out by Shawkat's operatives, according to WMR's Middle East sources. The Hobeika assassination was the first in a series carried out by the CIA and Mossad with the assistance of Shawkat's intelligence operatives in Lebanon.

Shawkat, by delivering the goods on the assassination of America's "Most Wanted" Mugniyah, has ensured that he will now receive the protection of the Bush White House in the current UN investigation of car bombings in Lebanon, most notably that of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri."

For more information on Assef Shawkat see here and here

Hezbollah Didn't Do Argentine Bombing (updated)

Bush's Iran/Argentina Terror Frame-Up

by GARETH PORTER

posted online on January 18, 2008 here: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080204/porter

Research for this article was supported by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute.

Although nukes and Iraq have been the main focus of the Bush Administration's pressure campaign against Iran, US officials also seek to tar Iran as the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. And Team Bush's latest tactic is to play up a thirteen-year-old accusation that Iran was responsible for the notorious Buenos Aires bombing that destroyed the city's Jewish Community Center, known as AMIA, killing eighty-six and injuring 300, in 1994. Unnamed senior Administration officials told the Wall Street Journal January 15 that the bombing in Argentina "serves as a model for how Tehran has used its overseas embassies and relationship with foreign militant groups, in particular Hezbollah, to strike at its enemies."

This propaganda campaign depends heavily on a decision last November by the General Assembly of Interpol, which voted to put five former Iranian officials and a Hezbollah leader on the international police organization's "red list" for allegedly having planned the July 1994 bombing. But the Wall Street Journal reports that it was pressure from the Bush Administration, along with Israeli and Argentine diplomats, that secured the Interpol vote. In fact, the Bush Administration's manipulation of the Argentine bombing case is perfectly in line with its long practice of using distorting and manufactured evidence to build a case against its geopolitical enemies.

After spending several months interviewing officials at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires familiar with the Argentine investigation, the head of the FBI team that assisted it and the most knowledgeable independent Argentine investigator of the case, I found that no real evidence has ever been found to implicate Iran in the bombing. Based on these interviews and the documentary record of the investigation, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the case against Iran over the AMIA bombing has been driven from the beginning by US enmity toward Iran, not by a desire to find the real perpetrators.

A 'Wall of Assumptions'

US policy toward the bombing was skewed from the beginning by a Clinton Administration strategy of isolating Iran, adopted in 1993 as part of an understanding with Israel on peace negotiations with the Palestinians. On the very day of the crime, before anything could have been known about who was responsible, Secretary of State Warren Christopher blamed "those who want to stop the peace process in the Middle East"--an obvious reference to Iran.

William Brencick, then chief of the political section at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires and the primary Embassy contact for the investigation, recalled in an interview with me last June that a "wall of assumptions" guided the US approach to the case. The primary assumptions, Brencick said, were that the explosion was a suicide bombing and that use of a suicide bomb was prima facie evidence of involvement by Hezbollah--and therefore Iran.

But the suicide-bomber thesis quickly encountered serious problems. In the wake of the explosion, the Menem government asked the United States to send a team to assist in the investigation, and two days after the bombing, experts from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms arrived in Buenos Aires along with three FBI agents. According to an interview the head of the team, ATF explosives expert Charles Hunter, gave to a team of independent investigators headed by US journalist Joe Goldman and Argentine investigative journalist Jorge Lanata, as soon as the team arrived the federal police put forward a thesis that a white Renault Trafic van had carried the bomb that destroyed the AMIA.

Hunter quickly identified major discrepancies between the car-bomb thesis and the blast pattern recorded in photos. He wrote a report two weeks later noting that in the wake of the bombing, merchandise in a store immediately to the right of the AMIA was tightly packed against its front windows and merchandise in another shop had been blown out onto the street--suggesting that the blast came from inside rather than outside. Hunter also said he did not understand how the building across the street could still be standing if the bomb had exploded in front of the AMIA, as suggested by the car-bomb thesis.

The lack of eyewitness evidence supporting the thesis was just as striking. Of some 200 witnesses on the scene, only one claimed to have seen a white Renault Trafic. Several testified they were looking at the spot where the Trafic should have been when the explosion occurred and saw nothing. Nicolasa Romero, the wife of a Buenos Aires policeman, was that lone witness. She said she saw a white Renault Trafic approach the corner where she was standing with her sister and her 4-year-old son. But Romero's sister testified that the vehicle that passed them was not a white Trafic but rather a black-and-yellow taxi. Other witnesses reported seeing a black-and-yellow taxi seconds before the explosion.

Argentine prosecutors argued that pieces of a white Trafic imbedded in the flesh of many of the victims of the explosion proved their case for a suicide bomb. But that evidence was discredited by Gabriel Levinas, a researcher for AMIA's own legal team. Levinas is a member of a leading Jewish family in Buenos Aires who had published a human rights magazine during the dictatorship (his uncle's car was used to kidnap war criminal Adolf Eichmann and spirit him off to Israel for trial in 1961.)

He discovered that the manufacturer of the white Trafic had been sent fragments of the vehicle recovered by the police for analysis and had found that none of the pieces had ever been put under high temperature. That meant that these car fragments could not have come from the particular white Trafic that police had identified as the suicide bomb car--since that vehicle was known to have once caught fire before having been recycled and repaired.

Yet despite the lack of eyewitness testimony and the weakness of the forensic evidence, the State Department publicly embraced the suicide-bomb story in 1994 and 1995.

The Problem of Motive

Independent investigators have also long puzzled over why Iran would have carried out an action against Argentine Jews while its Hezbollah allies were embroiled in armed struggle with the Israeli military in Lebanon. In their 2006 indictment of several Iranian nationals in the bombing, Argentine prosecutors argued that Iran planned the AMIA attack because Carlos Menem's administration had abruptly canceled two contracts for the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran.

But the indictment actually provides excerpts from key documents that undermine that conclusion. According to a February 10, 1992, cable from Argentina's ambassador in Iran, the director of the American Department of Iran's foreign ministry had "emphasized the need to reach a solution to the problem [of nuclear technology transfer] that would avoid damage to other contracts." Iran thus clearly signaled its hope of finding a negotiated solution that could reactivate the suspended contracts and maintain other deals with Argentina as well.

On March 17, 1992, a bomb blast destroyed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires--an incident for which the Argentine prosecutors also held Iran responsible. The indictment, however, quotes a top official of INVAP, an Argentine nuclear firm that dominated the National Commission on Atomic Energy, as saying that during 1992 there were "contacts" between INVAP and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran "in the expectation that the decision of the national government would be revised, allowing the tasks in the contracts to be resumed." The same official confirmed that negotiations surrounding the two canceled projects continued from 1993 to 1995--before and after the AMIA explosion. Those revelations suggest that the Iranian attitude toward Argentina at the time of the bombing was exactly the opposite of the one claimed in the indictment.

The Hezbollah motive for involvement in the AMIA bombing, according to the indictment, was revenge against the Israeli bombing of a Hezbollah training camp in the Bekaa Valley in early 1994 and the Israeli kidnapping of Shiite leader Mustapha Dirani in May. That theory fails to explain, however, why Hezbollah would choose to retaliate against Jews in Argentina. It was already at war with the Israeli forces in Lebanon, where the group was employing suicide bomb attacks in an effort to pressure Israel to end its occupation. Hezbollah had a second easy retaliatory option available, which was to launch Katyusha rockets across the border into Israeli territory.

That is exactly what Hezbollah did to retaliate for the Israeli killing of some 100 Lebanese civilians in the town of Qana in 1996. That episode inspired greater anger toward Israel among Hezbollah militants than any other event in the 1990s, according to Boston University Hezbollah specialist Augustus Richard Norton. If Hezbollah responded to this Israeli provocation with Katyusha rockets on Israeli territory, it hardly makes sense that it would have responded to a lesser Israeli offense by designing an ambitious international attack on Argentine Jews with no connection to the Israeli occupation.

The Frame-up

The keystone of the Argentine case was Carlos Alberto Telleldin, a used-car salesman with a record of shady dealings with both criminals and the police--and a Shiite last name. On July 10, 1994, Telleldin sold the white Trafic the police claimed was the suicide car to a man he described as having a Central American accent. Nine days after the bombing Telleldin was arrested on suspicion of being an accomplice to the crime.

The police claimed they were led to Telleldin by the serial number on the van's engine block, which was found in the rubble. But it would have been a remarkable lapse for the organizers of what was otherwise a very professional bombing to have left intact such a visible identification mark, one that any car thief knows how to erase. That should have been a clue that the attack was likely not orchestrated by Hezbollah, whose bomb experts were well-known by US intelligence analysts to have been clever enough, in blowing up the American Embassy in Beirut in 1983, to avoid leaving behind any forensic evidence that would lead back to them. It should also have raised questions about whether that evidence was planted by the police themselves.

It is now clear that the Menem government's real purpose in arresting Telleldin was to get him to finger those they wanted to blame for the bombing. In January 1995, Telleldin was visited by retired army Capt. Hector Pedro Vergez, a part-time agent for SIDE, the Argentine intelligence agency, who offered him $1 million and his freedom if he would identify one of five Lebanese nationals detained in Paraguay in September 2004--men the CIA said might be Hezbollah militants--as the person to whom he had sold the van. After Telleldin refused to go along with the scheme, an Argentine judge found that there was no evidence on which to detain the alleged militants.

The Buenos Aires court, which threw out the case against Telleldin in 2004, determined that a federal judge, Luisa Riva Aramayo, met with Telleldin in 1995 to discuss another possibility--paying him to testify that he had sold the van to several high-ranking figures in the Buenos Aires provincial police who were allies of Menem's political rival, Eduardo Duhalde. In July 1996, Judge Juan Jose Galeano, who was overseeing the investigation, offered Telleldin $400,000 to implicate those police officers as accomplices in the bombing. (A videotape made secretly by SIDE agents and aired on television in April 1997 showed Galeano negotiating the bribe.) A month after making the offer to Telleldin, Galeano charged three senior Buenos Aires police officials with having involvement in the bombing, based on Telleldin's testimony.

"The Whole Iran Thing Seemed Kind of Flimsy"

In an interview last May James Cheek, Clinton's Ambassador to Argentina at the time of the bombing, told me, "To my knowledge, there was never any real evidence [of Iranian responsibility]. They never came up with anything." The hottest lead in the case, he recalled, was an Iranian defector named Manoucher Moatamer, who "supposedly had all this information." But Moatamer turned out to be only a dissatisfied low-ranking official without the knowledge of government decision-making that he had claimed. "We finally decided that he wasn't credible," Cheek recalled. Ron Goddard, then deputy chief of the US Mission in Buenos Aires, confirmed Cheek's account. He recalled that investigators found nothing linking Iran to the bombing. "The whole Iran thing seemed kind of flimsy," Goddard said.

James Bernazzani, then the head of the FBI's Hezbollah office, was directed in October 1997 to assemble a team of specialists to go to Buenos Aires and put the AMIA case to rest. Bernazzani, now head of the agency's New Orleans office, recalled in a November 2006 interview how he arrived to find that the Argentine investigation of the AMIA bombing had found no real evidence of Iranian or Hezbollah involvement. The only clues suggesting an Iranian link to the bombing at that time, according to Bernazzani, were a surveillance tape of Iranian cultural attache Mohsen Rabbani shopping for a white Trafic van and an analysis of telephone calls made in the weeks before the bombing.

Shortly after the bombing, the biggest Buenos Aires daily newspaper, Clarin, published a story, leaked to it by Judge Galeano, that Argentine intelligence had taped Rabbani shopping for a white Trafic "months" before the bombing. A summary of the warrants for the arrest of Rabbani and six other Iranians in 2006 continued to refer to "indisputable documents" proving that Rabbani had visited car dealers to look for a van like the one allegedly used in the bombing. In fact, the intelligence report on the surveillance of Rabbani submitted to Galeano ten days after the bombing shows that the day Rabbani looked at a car dealer's white Trafic was May 1, 1993--fifteen months before the bombing and long before Argentine prosecutors have claimed Iran decided to target AMIA.

In the absence of any concrete evidence, SIDE turned to "link analysis" of telephone records to make a circumstantial case for Iranian guilt. The SIDE analysts argued that a series of telephone calls made between July 1 and July 18, 1994, to a mobile phone in the Brazilian border city of Foz de Iguazu must have been made by the "operational group" for the bombing--and that a call allegedly made on a cellphone belonging to Rabbani could be connected to this same group. The FBI's Bernazzani told me he was appalled by SIDE's use of link analysis to establish responsibility. "It can be very dangerous," he told me. "Using that analysis, you could link my telephone to bin Laden's." Bernazzani said the conclusions reached by the Argentine investigators were merely "speculation" and said that neither he nor officials in Washington had taken it seriously as evidence pointing to Iran.

Then, in 2000, one more defector surfaced with a new tale of Iranian responsibility. Abdolghassem Mesbahi, who claimed he was once the third-ranking man in Iran's intelligence services, told Galeano the decision to bomb the AMIA had been made at a meeting of senior Iranian officials, including President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, on August 14, 1993. But Mesbahi was soon discredited. Bernazzani told me American intelligence officials believed that by 2000, Mesbahi had long since lost his access to Iranian intelligence, that he was "poor, even broke" and ready to "provide testimony to any country on any case involving Iran."

A Questionable Informant

Bernazzani admitted to me that until 2003, the case against Iran was merely "circumstantial." But he claimed a breakthrough came that year, with the identification of the alleged suicide bomber as Ibrahim Hussein Berro, a Lebanese Hezbollah militant, who, according to a Lebanese radio broadcast, was killed in a military operation against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon in September 1984, two months after the AMIA bombing. "We are satisfied that we have identified the bomber based on the totality of the data streams," Bernazzani told me, citing "a combination of physical and witness evidence." But the Berro identification, too, was marked by evidence of fabrication and manipulation.

The official story is that Berro's name was passed on to SIDE and the CIA by a Lebanese informant in June 2001. The informant claimed he had befriended a former Hezbollah chauffeur and assistant to top Hezbollah leaders named Abu Mohamad Yassin, who told him that a Hezbollah militant named "Brru" was the suicide bomber. That story is suspicious on several counts, the most obvious being that intelligence agencies almost never reveal the name, or even the former position, of an actual informant.

The September 2003 court testimony of Patricio Pfinnen, the SIDE official in charge of the AMIA bombing investigation until he was fired in January 2002, casts serious doubt on the informant's credibility. Pfinnen testified that when he and his colleagues went back to the informant with more questions, "something went wrong with the information, or they were lying to us." Pfinnen said his team ultimately discarded the Berro theory because the sources in Lebanon had "failed and were not certain." He concluded, "I have my doubts about [Berro] being the person who was immolated."

After Pfinnen was fired in a power struggle within the intelligence agency, SIDE named Berro as the suicide bomber in a secret report. In March 2003, just after that report was completed, Ha'aretz reported that the Mossad had not only identified the bomber as Berro but possessed a transcript of Berro's farewell telephone call to Lebanon before the bombing, during which he told his parents that he was going to "join" his brother, who had been killed in a suicide bombing in Lebanon. When the 2006 indictment was released, however, it became clear that no evidence of such a call existed.

In September 2004, a Buenos Aires court acquitted Telleldin and the police officials who had been jailed years earlier, and in August 2005 Judge Galeano was impeached and removed from office. But Galeano's successors, prosecutors Alberto Nisman and Marcelo Martinez Burgos, pressed on, hoping to convince the world that they could identify Berro as the bomber. They visited Detroit, Michigan, where they interviewed two brothers of Berro and obtained photos of Berro from them. They then turned to the only witness who claimed she had seen the white Trafic at the scene of the crime--Nicolasa Romero.

In November 2005, Nisman and Burgos announced that Romero had identified Berro from the Detroit photos as the same person she had seen just before the bombing. Romero, on the other hand, said she "could not be completely certain" that Berro was the man at the scene. In court testimony, in fact, she had said she had not recognized Berro from the first set of set of four photographs she had been shown or even from a second set. She finally saw some "similarity in the face" in one of the Berro photographs, but only after she was shown a police sketch based on her description after the bombing.

Bernazzani told me that the FBI team in Buenos Aires had discovered DNA evidence that was assumed to have come from the suicide bomber in an evidence locker, and Nisman took a DNA sample from one of Berro's brothers during his visit in September 2005. "I would assume, though I don't know, that once we got the brother's DNA, they compared them," he said. But Nisman claimed to a reporter in 2006 that samples had been contaminated. Significantly, the Argentine indictment of the Iranians makes no mention of the DNA evidence.

Despite a case against Iran that lacked credible forensic or eyewitness evidence and relied heavily on dubious intelligence and a discredited defector's testimony, Nisman and Burgos drafted their indictment against six former Iranian officials in 2006. However, the government of Néstor Kirchner displayed doubts about going forward with a legal case. According to the Forward newspaper, when American Jewish groups pressed Kirchner's wife, Christina, about the indictments at a UN General Assembly in New York in September 2006, she indicated that there was no firm date for any further judicial action against Iran. Yet the indictment was released the following month.

Both the main lawyer representing the AMIA, Miguel Bronfman, and Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, who later issued the arrest warrants for the Iranians, told the BBC last May that pressure from Washington was instrumental in the sudden decision to issue the indictments the following month. Corral indicated that he had no doubt that the Argentine authorities had been urged to "join in international attempts to isolate the regime in Tehran."

A senior White House official just called the AMIA case a "very clear definition of what Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism means." In fact, the US insistence on pinning that crime on Iran in order to isolate the Tehran regime, even though it had no evidence to support that accusation, is a perfect definition of cynical creation of an accusation in the service of power interests.
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Listen to the interview of Gareth Porter with Scott Horton for Antiwar Radio here: http://dissentradio.com/radio/08_01_21_porter.mp3

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Commentary: I would like to add a few words here to all that Gareth Porter has written and said. Argentina, a country I know very well, is one of the few countries in the world were real, genuine, Nazis lived. There has always been a large German colony in Argentina and, after World War II many Nazis were welcomed as refugees by Juan Peron who had many personal friends amongst them.

These Nazis had a great deal of influence on the right wing politics of Argentina and one could even purchase reprint copies of the Völkischer Beobachter in the subway of Buenos-Aires.

Argentina also used to be one of the countries with the highest percentage of Jew anywhere in the world, most of them concentrated in the capital Buenos-Aires. Many of them were very active in Argentinian politics including quite a few in the various Marxist guerilla movements such as "Montoneros", the "Tupamaros" or the infamous "ERP" (People's Revolutionary Army). Jews were also active in the unions, the student movements and the left-wing press. As a result, the Nazi-influenced right wing political parties absolutely hated the Jews and their propaganda constantly spoke of defending the 'Raza Criolla' (the 'real' Argentinians) against the 'Judeo-Masonic conspiracy' to destroy the country.

The Argentinian military used to be heavily infiltrated by such right-wing anti-Jewish elements and after the end of the military rule and the coming to power of Raul Alfonsin many blamed "the Jews" for all that had happened.

There was never any doubt in my mind that the Argentinian bombings were the result of a local, home-grown, anti-Jewish terrorist group, possibly liked with the elite "Carapintadas" commandos of the armed forces. As Gareth Porter mentions it in his interview with Scott Horton, these were the people who had motive and opportunity and, most importantly, the means to cover it all up.

The Israelis, who always had a strong network of agents in Argentina, could not have been unaware of all this. What they, and the Americans, did is blame it all on Hezbollah and Iran for political propaganda purposes. Under such circumstances it is not unreasonable to assume that the US and Israel might have had prior knowledge of what was about to happen. That would explain the quasi-instantaneous finger pointing at Iran and Hezbollah without any signs pointing in that direction (even indirectly).

Lastly, the Argentinian judicial system is corrupt beyond belief and heavily penetrated by pro-Israeli elements. To get some politically motivated indictments would have been just about the easiest thing for the Israelis or the CIA.

Thanks to Gareth Porter, one of the biggest propaganda myths against Hezbollah and Iran is finally biting the dust.