By Alex Constantine
Two years before the towers in Manhattan crumbled under the weight of global political corruption, a spate of bombings in Russia left relatives and victims, CNN reported on September 10, 1999, "searching for answers."
At least 90 bodies, including seven children, were dragged from the rubble of a bombed-out apartment building in Moscow. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in a televised speech, said that he suspected terrorism.
if so, he said, "we are facing a cunning, impudent, insidious and bloodthirsty opponent."1
CNN reported: "Russian President Boris Yeltsin declared a day of
mourning on Monday for the victims of Russia's last three
explosions and bombings -
the Moscow blast, the bombing of a shopping center near the Kremlin
and the September fourth car bomb that demolished another apartment
building in Buinaksk, in the southern Russian region of
Dagestan"
By the third week of September, the death toll rose to over 200. Chechen terrorists were behind the bombings, proclaimed Yeltsin, a belief shared by Yuri Luzkhov, the mayor of Moscow.
Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo oversaw the investigation personally, and announced that the Russian government "will consider itself within its rights to use all resources at its disposal to rebuff the aggression."2
None of this added up. Nerve-wracked Russian proletariat were quick to accept the government's explanation that Chechen rebels were responsible for the blasts in Moscow and the Caucasus. But the Asia Times was skeptical: "it is highly unlikely."
No one stood to benefit by the ourbreak of bombing but, well, Yeltsin
In a flat statement of denial, Chechen leader Shamil Basayev stated, "We had nothing to do with the explosion in Moscow. We never kill civilians. This is not our style."
Desperate provisions - anticipating the Patriot Act - were
proposed.
The Duma considered the declaration of a state of emergency. Until
the bombings, the publicopposed such measures steadfastly, but even
Yegor Stroyev, speaker of the Federation Council, had to admit that
he'd opposed emergency measures in the past ... but after the
second Moscow blast there was an obvious "need to consolidate the
legal base for combating the rampage of terrorism and crime."3 A
homeland security office.
There were the usual conspiracy theorists, of course. Viktor Ilyukhin, a Communist leader, dismissed the bombings as provocateur actions: "Political hysteria is being fanned artificially, including by way of explosions to cancel parliamentary and presidential elections through a state of emergency."4
Day by day, the true, sordid details emerged in Versiya, Novaya
Gazeta and UK's Independent to erode Yeltsin's credibility.
It developed that there was more to the bomb plot than the
government had revealed, that its roots lay not in the Russian
satellites but in a meeting of conspirators held at the flat of
Adnan Khashoggi, the Iran-contra ne'er-do-well whose career as an
international entrepeneur, arms dealer and political "fixer" was
launched by the bin Laden family. "It is clear that apartment
explosions in Moscow would not have happened if somebody in the
Russian political elite did not want them," Novaya Gazeta opined on
January 24, 2000.
"One by one, pieces of puzzle were assembled. But there were a few
details not explained. These emerged in January when Zhirinovsky
and Chubais finally broke up. And at the same time, some of the
actual participants began to speak publicly.
In Versiya, there was news of a meeting between [Alexander] Voloshin and [Shamil] Basayev in France." Basayev was the radical Muslim leader who planned the violence in Dagestan.
The meeting that preceded the murders "did not happen in Paris, as some of the newspapers reported later, but at the villa of Adnan Khashoggi, Arabic millionaire, on the Mediterranean."
French intelligence agents monitored the meeting. Details surfaced in the public print. But Adnan Khashoggi denied that he attended the meeting. Its participants - Anton Surikov, "formerly" of Army special forces, and Aleksandr Voloshin, Yeltsin's Chief of Staff - offered no comment.
When reporters questioned Surikov, he claimed that he hadn't
travelled abroad in years, and "especially not to France." This did
not quite square with the public record, however.
A few months earlier, he'd been in Washington, D.C., met with Yuri
Maslukov, Russia's deputy prime minister, and Michel Camdessus,
managing director of the IMF.
Also in spite of his denial, Surikov had also flown to France on a couple of occasions - once in December 1994 and again in the summer of 1999. He departed on June 23 aboard an Aeroflot bound for Paris, returned from Nice on July 21 - nearly a month later.5
A book on the Russian spy agency, Spetzsnaz GRU, written by former intelligence agents, reports that when the rebels entered the "Evil Empire" from Chechnya, the government's forces were "commanded not to enter into battle with them and not to hinder the movement of the rebels."6
I repeat: The government's forces were "commanded not to enter into battle with them and not to hinder the movement of the rebels."
The 1999 bombing campaign punctuated an uneasy period of calm.
From August 1996 through August 1999, Chechnya had been relatively
still. "Hostilities resumed following a bold incursion from
Chechnya into neighboring Dagestan by an 'international' force of
Wahhabis," John Dunlop at the Hoover Institute reports, "whose
titular leaders were the legendary Chechen field commander Shamil
Basaev and the shadowy Arab commander Khattab.
In September of 1999, there occurred the notorious terror bombings
of large apartment complexes in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buinaksk
which served to infuriate the Russian populace in a manner similar
to the American public's reaction to the events of 11 September2001
in the States.
On 23 September, Moscow once again commenced the bombing of Chechnya, and the second Russo-Chechen war of the past decade was on again.7
Alexander Voloshin, who attended the meeting at Khashoggi's
villa, is a singular political figure in Russia, outspoken in his
support of the United States.
In temperament, he is comparable to an American Cold Warrior, an Al
Haig or Don Rumsfeld.
On October 23, 2003, the Guardian reported that Putin's chief of
staff was at the center of "a furious row" between Moscow and Kiev
"after he reportedly suggested Russia might bomb Ukraine if it did
not back down in a diplomatic tiff over a small island between the
two former Soviet states.
Alexander Voloshin, the head of the president's administration,
made the remarks while he was briefing Ukrainian journalists at the
Kremlin. The row is over 100 metres of sand."8
In the end, however, Voloshin was forced out of government not for his ties to the meeting at Khashoggi's villa, or to terrorists, but to Big Oil:
---Pakistan Daily Times November 1, 2004
MOSCOW: Moscow press reported Wednesday that Kremlin's powerful
chief of staff had resigned in protest of the arrest of a top oil
tycoon in a widening political scandal on the eve of Russian
parliamentary elections.
The Vedomosti Business Daily said that President Vladimir Putin had
accepted Alexander Voloshin's resignation on Monday night after
meeting for several hours with top Kremlin officials.
The press reported that Voloshin had handed in his resignation on Saturday only hours after Russia's richest man, Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was grabbed by secret service men at gunpoint in a Siberian airport. He was fllown to Moscow for questioning.
Voloshin, 47, is seen as one of the last figures in the Kremlin
to have hung on from the era of Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin,
and a leader of an administration clique known as "The Family."
This clutch battled the hawkish "Siloviki" camp of former secret
service agents who emerged in Putin's court.
He was seen as a strong supporter of big business, and an
instrumental Kremlin aide who managed to skilfully mediate between
the various administration factions and parliament lawmakers on key
economic reform issues.
His potential resignation had been rumoured in Moscow for months as The Family - which supported big businesses, including Yukos - was being squeezed out by the "Siloviki" clan.
--- Western investors said that Voloshin's resignation - if officially confirmed - would mark an escalation of political instability on the eve of the December 7 parliamentary elections.
"Assuming Voloshin's departure is confirmed today, this will
only underline the seriousness of the political crisis resulting
from Putin's decision to deal with the political problem of
Khodorkovsky using KGB methods," the United Financial Group wrote
in a research note.
The investment house noted that Voloshin "seems to have made
himself indispensable to Putin as a discreet but effective
administrator with a good grasp of the reform policy agenda and
adept at arbitrating between competing interests."
Besides heading Putin's administration, Voloshin for the past four years has also served as chairman of the board of the United Energy System electrical monopoly that has been struggling to undertake reforms for the past four years.
But the United Financial Group predicted that Putin would probably try to seek a balance within his administration and was unlikely to give the post to any of the top members of the secret service Kremlin factions.
Voloshin became deputy head of Yeltsin's administration in 1998
and chief of staff the following year.
He was attributed with drafting economic portions of Yeltsin's
speeches.
Putin kept Voloshin on his post when he took the presidency
following Yeltsin's abrupt resignation on December 31, 1999.9
-----
NOTES 1) Jill Dougherty, "At least 90 dead in Moscow apartment
blast," CNN report, September 10, 1999.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9909/10/russia.explosion.03/
2) STRATFOR.COM, "Who gains from the Moscow apartment
bombings?"
Asia Times, September 14, 1999.
http://www.atimes.com/c-asia/AI15Ag01.html
3) Ibid.
4) Dougherty.
5) Boris Kagarlitsky, "We Donít Talk To Terrorists. But We Help
Them?"
Novaya Gazeta, [translation by Olga Kryazheva, research intern,
Center for Defense Information, Washington DC], January 24,
2000.
http://geocities.com/chechenistan/conspiracy.html
6) John B. Dunlop, "The Second Russo-Chechen War Two Years On,"
Presentation at U.S. and World Affairs Seminar, Hoover Institution,
October 17, 2001.
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:nGpCwJsA3z0J:www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1233969/posts+Voloshin+and+khashoggi
7) Ibid.
8) Nick Paton Walsh, "Russian official condemned for joke about
bombing Ukraine," Guardian, October 23, 2003.
http://www.rusnet.nl/news/2003/10/23/currentaffairs04.shtml
9) http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp page=story_30-10-2003_pg4_1