* starroute:
"According to Wikipedia and other sources, the Chechen opposition movement began in 1974 and by 1987 had turned into a well-developed criminal enterprise, using the profits of drug smuggling and arms dealing to finance Chechen separatism. It's not clear to this day whether its real aim is an independent Chechen state or merely continuing regional instability for the sake of criminal profits.
In the late 80's and early 90's, the Chechen Mafia came to dominate organized crime in Russia as well. Allegedly, it forced out earlier, less well-organized groups even in Moscow, and the present so-called "Russian-Israeli Mafia" grew out of that period of Chechen dominance. Berezovsky allegedly had connections with the Chechens before he left academia to set up in business in 1989.
The Chechen mafia currently plays a significant role throughout the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It is active in the heroin trade in Turkey and engages in the illegal sale of radioactive materials. It is also present in the Tri-Border Region of South America.
All of this is starting to suggest to me that what is generally labelled the Russian-Israeli Mafia may have far less to do with Israel (except for using it as a convenient, extradition-free base) than with the Chechens and their Russian oligarch allies.
There are two other major factors in this story. One is Caspian oil and natural gas and the construction of pipelines to bring them to Europe. According to some accounts, both Chechen wars were really about Russian determination to retain control over potential pipeline routes through Chechnya in the face of Western meddling. That would certainly explain the interest of firms like Halliburton in the region -- not to mention the Neocon-dominated "American Committee for Peace in Chechnya," which was agitating against Russia in 1999 during the second Chechen War.
(It may be relevant here that Erinys, the energy infrastructure security firm with which Litvinenko was involved, has recently branched out from Iraq and Nigeria to take an interest in Caspian oil and gas.)
The other significant factor is the possible role of Pakistan's ISI and other Islamic connections. Michel Chossudovsky claims that Basayev and his main followers were trained by ISI in guerrilla warfare in 1994, prior to the first Chechen War. He and other sources also link the Chechens and their control of the heroin trade to the fighting in Bosnia in the early 90's and to the Kosovo Liberation Army in the later 90's.
The question then becomes one of American knowledge of and possible sponsorship of these activities. The CIA, after all, had originally set up those ISI training camps. And Richard Perle and Doug Feith were involved in the 90's with Kosovo and seemlingly also with supplying weapons to the Chechen separatists.
This whole topic also seems to be an area of major disinformation. For example, Chossudovsky cites a claim by Yossef Bodansky that the second Chechen War was planned at a meating in 1997 involving Osama bin Laden and high-level Pakistani and Iranian (!) intelligence agents. Not only is this intrinsically unlikely, but Bodansky himself is an apparent Israeli operative who came over to the US in the late 70's, immediately hooked up with Richard Perle and the other boys at JINSA, and has spent many years trying to portray Iran as being the source of all Islamic terrorism. He also has current ties to Russian-Israeli oligarch and organized crime figure Mikhail Chernoy (aka Michael Cherney.)"
meanwhile, cannon has offered his place to starroute - a great choice! 3 cheers for starroute.
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