Saudis said to be financing insurgency in Dagestan

MOSCOW [MENL] -- Islamic fighters who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, financed by Saudi Arabia, play a major role in the current insurgency in the Russian autonomous republic of Dagestan, officials said.

The officials said the insurgency is being financed by Saudi elements as part of a drive to spread their brand of Islam throughout the former Soviet Union as well as in the Arab world. The insurgents have called for an Islamic state in Dagestan.

"Our ministries and agencies officially claim that the main financing comes from Saudi Arabia," said Gen. Aslambek Aslakhanov, head of the Association of the Law Enforcement Bodies of the Russian Federation. "The spread of Wahabism has been going on for a long time. An attempt to spread it to all the Arab states has been underway for a long time. Now it is becoming revitalized because it has found fertile soil in the post-Soviet state."

Officials said the rebellion is being led by Wahabis, a devout Islamic sect based in Saudi Arabia. They said Wahabism began to spread in 1990 when the former Soviet Union allowed citizens to travel abroad and study in Saudi and Islamic universities.

Islamic militants claim to have taken over several villages and are battling Russian troops near the border with breakaway Chechnya.

Aslakhanov told a news conference on Tuesday that Moscow should use Israel's experience in battling Islamic terrorism. But he added that Israel never faced the Wahabis. "Israel, of course, has wonderful experience which can be used by the special services to combat concrete terrorists who are known," the general said. "They can track them down anywhere on earth and deliver them wherever is necessary and put them on trial. It has such experience."

"For Israel, Wahabism has never posed any threat," he added. "It deals with a somewhat different threat, the terrorist acts committed by Hamas and other terrorist organizations."

At another news conference, Mukhu Gumbatovich Aliyev, chairman of the People's Assembly of Dagestan said Arab and Islamic guerrillas based in Chechnya have taken over the rebellion in Dagestan. He said more than 80 percent of the combatants in the rebellion are foreigners.

"They are foreigners from all over the world," Aliyev said. "Just name them. There are Chechens and Tajiks, as well as Afghans. There are also Arabs, quite a few of them."

Chechnya and Dagestan are neighbors and in 1878 they joined in an uprising against Russia. More than 30 ethnic groups live in Dagestan. About 80,000 Chechens live along the Chechnya-Dagestan border, while the number of refugees exceeded 100,000.

"What is happening in Dagestan now is the doing of fighters and religious figures who have come from all over the world," Aliyev said. "From a nest of criminals it is slowly developing into a center of aggression in the North Caucasus, real aggression."

Western diplomats in Moscow said they have received what they termed as persistent reports of former Afghan fighters playing a leading role in the Dagestan uprising.

Aliyev said the insurgents have had little success so far. He said Dagestan authorities will try to seize the huge amount of illegal weapons in the republic.

Russian officials said the insurgents have deployed anti-aircraft missiles and perhaps jets.