Moscow Puts $10M Bounty On Chechen Warlords; Will Hit Terrorists Anywhere.

Russia on Sept. 8 offered a Rbs300m ($10.3m) bounty for two Chechen warlords and warned it might launch pre-emptive strikes on suspected terrorist bases abroad after the Beslan school siege. "We will carry out all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world", said military Chief of Staff Gen Yuri Baluevsky, in the latest escalation of Russian warnings to foreign powers that Moscow sees as harbouring Chechen rebels.

The federal security service (FSB) opened telephone hotlines in Moscow and Chechnya, offering a reward for anyone providing information that led to the "neutralisation" of Islamist warlord Shamil Basaev and Aslan Maskhadov, the former Chechen president who it claims organised the Sept. 1-3 Beslan siege.

The warnings came as thousands demonstrated in North Ossetia, the Russian republic where the siege took place. They called for the resignation of Alexander Dzasokhov, the republic's president, whom they accused of failing to make sufficient efforts to prevent the deaths. Dzasokhov said he would fire his government but made no mention of his own future.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sept. 7 used Soviet-style accusations of "double standards" as he expressed "regret" that, in spite of "irrefutable facts", the US and the UK had granted asylum respectively to Ilyas Akhmadov and Akhmed Zakaev, two Chechens in Maskhadov's former government. He pledged to seek their extradition.

In 2000, President Putin warned of pre-emptive strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov in 2002 hinted at attacks against Georgia, which Russia accused of harbouring Chechen fighters. No such action has since taken place. But in June 2004 two Russians were imprisoned in Qatar, which found them guilty of assassinating Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, another Chechen rebel leader, on Moscow's orders.

Zakaev, who has denied involvement in the Beslan siege, on Sept. 8 said he feared Russia might now try to assassinate Chechens in Europe.

Fyodor Lukanov, editor of the magazine Russian Foreign Affairs, said: "This Soviet-style rhetoric is just rhetoric, but this is really a very critical point in Russia's relations with the west. The authorities believe that if Europe especially does not understand that it is impossible to talk to people who attack children, there is a total misunderstanding".

The Arab Reaction: The Beslan carnage sparked an unusual round of self-criticism and introspection in the Arab world. On Sept. 9, The New York Times (NYT) quoted Abdel Rahman Al-Rashed, general manager of the widely watched Al-Arabiya satellite TV station, as saying: "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims".

The NYT said this was "one of the most striking" of Arab commentaries on the Beslan carnage. In fact, Rashed made the comment in an article published on Sept. 8 in the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. Rashed said it was "shameful and degrading" that not only were the Beslan terrorists Muslims, but also the murderers of Nepalese workers in Iraq, the attackers of residential towers in Riyadh and Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia, the women believed to have blown up two Russian airplanes last month and Osama Bin Laden. "The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim", he wrote, adding: "What a pathetic record. What an abominable 'achievement'. Does this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?"

Rashed cited Shaikh Yusuf Al-Qardawi, an Sunni Egyptian religious leader who broadcasts an influential programme on Al-Jazeera TV and who has issued a fatwa calling for the killing of US and foreign "occupiers" in Iraq, military or civilian. "Let us contemplate the incident of this religious shaikh allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians", Rashed wrote. "How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?"

Rashed said in the past, leftists and nationalists in the Arab world were considered a "menace" for their adoption of violence and the mosque was a "haven" of "peace and reconciliation" by contrast. "Then came the Neo-Muslims", he said, adding: "An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry".

The NYT also highlighted a comment by a columnist for the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Siyassa, Faisal al-Qina'i, took aim at the Sunni shaikh, writing "it is saddening to read and hear from those who are supposed to be Muslim theologians, like Yusuf Al-Qardawi and others of his kind who, instead of defending true Islam, encourage these cruel actions and permit decapitation, hostage-taking and murder".

Beirut's Daily Star said while most Arabs "identified strongly and willingly" with Palestinian or Lebanese guerrillas fighting Israeli occupation, "all of us today are dehumanized and brutalized by the images of Arabs kidnapping and beheading foreign hostages". Calling for a global strategy to reduce terror, he traced what he called "this ugly trek" in the Arab world to "the homegrown sense of indignity, humiliation, denial and degradation that has increasingly plagued many of our young men and women".

The Palestinian columnist Hassan Al-Batal wrote in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, Al Ayyam, that the "day of horror in the school" should be designated an international day for the condemnation of terrorism. In Egypt, the semi-official Al-Ahram called the events "an ugly crime against humanity".

In Saudi Arabia, newspapers tightly controlled by the government, which finds itself under attack from Wahhabi militants, were more scathing. Under the headline "Butchers in the Name of Allah", the government daily Okaz said "the propagandists of jihad succeeded in the span of a few years in distorting the image of Islam. They turned today's Islam into something having to do with decapitations, the slashing of throats, abducting innocent civilians and exploding people".

In Jordan, Muslim religious figures meeting with Religious Affairs Minister Ahmad Heleil issued a statement on Sept. 8 saying: "This terrorist act contradicts the principles of our true Muslim religion and its noble values".

Writing in the Jordanian daily Al Dustour, columnist Bater Wardam noted the propensity in the Arab world to "place responsibility for the crimes of Arab and Muslim terrorist organisations on the Mossad, the Zionists and the American intelligence, but we all know that this is not the case". He added: "They came from our midst", writing of those who had kidnapped and murdered civilians in Iraq, blown up commuter trains in Spain, turned airliners into bombs on 9/11 and shot the children in Ossetia. "They are Arabs and Muslims who pray, fast, grow beards, demand the wearing of veils, and call for the defence of Islamic causes. Therefore we must all raise our voices, disown them and oppose all these crimes".