Russia Joins US & Israel In Defining Terrorism; With Implications For Arabs & Iran.

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MOSCOW - After three attacks in 10 days which killed more than 450 Russians, President Vladimir Putin's government has agreed for its Federal Security Office (FSB, ex-KGB) to co-operate with Israel's intelligence agency Mossad in tracking down Al-Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups in Chechnya and other Muslim areas in the Caucasus. By implication, this means Russia has joined the US and Israel in defining terrorism.

Moscow has discovered that groups affiliated to Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda were behind all the suicide attacks against Russians since 2002. It has become convinced that, while the cause among Chechnya's Islamists remains focused on their struggle for independence, the non-Chechen fighters are turning a local effort into part of the global jihad against non-Muslims. The Chechen rebel forces include other Caucasian Islamists.

A highly-placed APS source says that, as a result, President Putin ordered his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov - who happened to be visiting Israel as part of a tour scheduled before these attacks - to sign an agreement with his Israeli counterpart to increase intelligence co-ordination. With an elaborate accord to be finalised soon between the FSB and the Mossad, the deal came after a terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, in which more than 335 children and adults were killed on Sept. 3. As the Jewish state was always looking for international friends on the issue of terrorism, its officials were pleased to hear Lavrov call for "a united front in the battle against terrorism" (see overleaf, and a Russian who's who in this week's APS Review).

During the Sept. 1-3 Beslan siege, Russian officials found 10 Arabs and an African among the hostage-takers, indicating a direct role by foreign Islamic militants. Terrorism experts say the most significant link between the armed group that seized the school and global jihad was the ferocity and speed of the hostage-takers' actions.

Although Arab militants have been active in the Caucasus for more than a decade, their presence is far less significant in numerical terms than the role of local fighters. Events like 9/11 and the school siege are textbook Al-Qaeda attacks. Their main objective is to kill the largest numbers of non-Muslims possible. And the Beslan hostage-takers had the latest Russian-made weapons obtained from corrupt Russian military officers.

The seizure of the school was a development from the seizure of the Moscow theatre in October 2002 - an improvement on past operations. This means Russian casualties of the next operations could be more massive; and women figured prominently among the 32-strong Beslan hostage-takers.

Three main Chechen Islamist groups following the Wahhabi line and affiliated to Al-Qaeda have been operating in the region since the 1990s: the International Islamic Brigade (IIB), the Special Purpose Islamic Brigade, and the Riyadus Salikin Reconnaissance Brigade. They work together and independently. According to the FSB, the Beslan siege was masterminded by Abu Omar As-Seif, an IIB operative and a Wahhabi Arab financier. The FSB has identified the group's leader in Beslan as Magomed Evloev, a close associate of Shamil Basayev, a Chechen Islamist warlord.

Aside from the occasional benefits of historical ties established during the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan between some Chechen Islamists and Arab fighters, it is extremely difficult to establish the exact contours of responsibility for the school siege. But what is certain is that the Caucasus is a highly unstable region, easily to be exploited by Al-Qaeda.

In recent months, radical Islamist Chechen leaders such as Basayev, along with Bin Laden, have been clear about wanting to "set Russia on fire". By 1999, when Basayev invaded Russian territory in Dagestan - prompting a second war in Chechnya - it had become clear that Wahhabi radicals dominated the Chechen rebel groups. A radical element - spurred by would-be religious leaders who travelled to Saudi Arabia to learn about the Salafi strain of Wahhabi Islam - had begun to develop in the late 1990s.