Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The Black Widow riddle


By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

".....Not by accident, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is using almost the same words as when elected president in March 2000: "The Chechens, we will throw them down the toilet". He has just ordered his intelligence services to "sweep the sewers" to find the terrorists. The best and the brightest Russian political scientists seem to agree that the suicide bombings will help Putin to turbo-charge repression all across the Caucasus, not only in Chechnya but also in Ingushetia and Dagestan.

The issue is becoming pressing: On Wednesday, at least nine people, including a regional police official, were killed by two bombs in the restive republic of Dagestan. The BBC reported that a car bomb went off outside the offices of the local Interior Ministry and the FSB (Federal Security Service, the former KGB security) agency in the town of Kizlyar. This was followed by a second bomb soon after in the same street.

For de la Grange, "He [Putin] has two years ahead of him to show off as the country's strongman, the one who will save the population from terrorism - a sine qua non condition to reclaim his position as president. So the attacks could have been orchestrated, or facilitated, by the FSB and Putin himself. There have been troubled alliances before between Chechen rebels, Islamists and the FSB. Anyway we look at it, the crime in Moscow profits most of all Putin and the FSB."

So did the Black Widows end up working for Russian intelligence? And what if these Black Widows were nothing but ... ghosts? "

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