The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Ethnic Russian recruits to insurgency pose new threat before Olympics Posted: 01 Jan 2014 12:57 AM PST Russian news media say the authorities suspect an ethnic-Russian convert to Islam may have been behind one of the two suicide bombings that killed a total of 34 people in the past two days in Volgograd, a southern Russian city. Another convert is suspected of building a bomb used to kill seven people in the same city two months ago. The attacks came half a year after two Chechen brothers who had lived in Dagestan, became the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three Americans, sign that a conflict once seen as remote by the West could have consequences far afield. Security experts say that insurgents have used ethnic Russians to carry out attacks in other parts of Russia, both because of the symbolism of their conversion to radical Islam and because Slavic appearance could help them avoid detection. "This is a new strategy that we have been seeing more often lately. It's a massive problem for law enforcement agencies," said Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia's security services. Pavel Pechyonkin, named by Russian news agencies as a possible suspect in the first of two attacks within 24 hours - a suicide bomb that killed 18 people at Volgograd's railway station on Sunday - was a paramedic from central Russia. An ethnic Russian on his father's side, he converted to Islam, his mother's religion. He left home in 2011 to join insurgents in Dagestan, his parents said earlier this year in a video message posted on the Internet, appealing to their son to lay down arms. In response, Pechyonkin recorded his own video message, saying he was following God's will. "Here Muslims are being killed and kidnapped. Why should we follow those Christian commandments, when Allah urges us to fight those kafirs? Why shouldn't we leave their children orphaned?" he said, wearing a green tunic and skull cap. Authorities believe an ethnic Russian from the Moscow suburbs, Dmitry Sokolov, built a suicide explosive belt detonated by his Dagestani wife in a bus bombing in Volgograd in October, law enforcement sources in Dagestan said. The two met in online Islamist chat rooms. Sokolov was killed by Russian security forces in November, alongside four other militants in a house in Dagestan. Vladimir Putin crushed separatists in Chechnya when he rose to power 14 years ago, but an Islamist insurgency spread to neighbouring Dagestan and remains the deadliest conflict in Europe. Fighters have been recruited into their ranks from as far afield as Canada. Yekaterina Sokirianskaya, a Caucasus expert at International Crisis Group, says many new converts adopt a fundamentalist form of Islam that puts them in conflict with their families and makes them prone to "radicalisation". "They are attractive to insurgents," Sokirianskaya said. "The last attack could have been carried out only by a Slavic man, because security measures were tightened and a woman in a hijab would have been noticed." Heavy security around Sochi means an attack on the Black Sea resort city where the Olympics will be held in February would be difficult, security experts say, but the greatest potential threat is from a suicide bomber. "This is an effective tactic. It requires little preparation and little money, but it is hard to stop," Alexei Filatov, deputy head of the veterans' association of the Alfa anti-terrorism unit. Russian police have launched a security operation, making no secret that they are targeting migrants from Muslim areas. A bomber recruited from another part of Russia, preferably with a Russian-sounding name, would have an easier time reaching a target than one with a Muslim name whose identity documents were issued in Chechnya or Dagestan. More than 120 people have become suicide bombers during Putin's rule, Grigory Shvedov, editor of website Kavkaz-uzel.ru, which tracks the unrest. A harsh crackdown on adherents of the strict Salafist strand of Islam practiced by militants has added fuel to the insurgency, Shvedov and other experts say. "Although brute force is being used in the North Caucasus, they (the authorities) cannot build a wall thick enough to prevent terrorists from slipping out," Shvedov said. Local militant groups in Chechnya, Dagestan and other North Caucasus provinces united in 2007 under the leadership of Doku Umarov, a former Chechen rebel, whose Caucasus Emirate group says it was behind suicide bombings that killed 37 people at a Moscow airport in 2011 and 40 on the Moscow subway in 2010. He urged his fighters in a video posted online in July to use "maximum force" to prevent Putin staging the Olympics. Volgograd, about a day's drive north along a main highway from the Caucasus, is an easier target for militants than Sochi, the site of the Olympics, 700 km away. Sochi, a 145-km long stretch of coastal resorts where Putin himself spends his summer holidays, has had its security beefed up with forces drawn from other cities. It is shielded by impassable mountains on one side and the Black Sea on the other, and can only be approached by air or a heavily guarded coastal road. If they cannot reach Sochi, militants may have calculated instead on the symbolic value of sowing panic in Volgograd, one of the biggest cities in southern Russia with more than 1 million people. The attack subverts its image as a bastion of Russian strength earned through victory in a decisive battle in World War Two, when the city was known as Stalingrad. "A symbol of Russia's tragedy and triumph in World War Two has been singled out by the terrorists because of its status in people's minds," said Dmitry Trenin, the director of the Moscow Carnegie Centre. - Reuters, January 1, 2014. |
| World’s biggest fish market is moving away from its old ways and site Posted: 01 Jan 2014 12:29 AM PST As most of Tokyo sleeps, men in rubber boots haggle over tuna in the cavernous halls of Tsukiji market. The clang of a bell around 5:30 am kicks off the action at the world's biggest fish emporium. Traders flash hand signs and bellow out prices as they buy and sell what will soon end up on plates in the Japanese capital and beyond. Fins are lopped off to expose the red flesh among rows and rows of the hulking tuna carcasses, which are moved around the market by wooden cart. In all, about US$18 million (RM59 million) worth of fish, seafood and vegetables, over 2,900 tons, change hands each day at the market. "Do you see how we use hand signs?" asks one bidder, seconds after another man violently rings the bell and starts yelling out bids. "This is how people used to trade stocks in the old days." Major stock markets have shifted to computer trading while Tokyo mushroomed into one of the world's biggest cities over the decades, but little has changed in the way business is done at Tsukiji since its opening in 1935. Now, almost 80 years later, the city plans to move the market to a new location and give the popular tourist draw what advocates say is a badly-need technological update. Not everyone is happy about the move away from prime-real estate in the centre of the teeming metropolis. Relocating the market and building to a modern facility about 40% larger with state-of-the-art refrigeration will cost upwards of US$3.8 billion (RM12.4 billion). The move, scheduled for 2016, has been marred by revelations of heavy soil contamination at the site, formerly a gas plant, about 2.3 kilometres away. That has saddled Tokyo with more than half a billion dollars in cleanup costs at the less-than-central location. It is unclear what will happen to the current site beyond building a new road linking downtown with some 2020 Olympic Games venues. Hiroyasu Ito, chairman of the Seafood Wholesalers' Association, insists the move is crucial for Tsukiji to handle demands for freshness. "Railroad freight cars used to roll into the market and unload fish and goods right here," he says, pointing to a large picture in his office that gives a birds-eye view of Tsukiji's layout. We don't use the rail cars anymore. Now refrigerated trucks drive around instead." Key to ensuring perishable goods stay fresh is a so-called cold chain which maintains produce at a consistent temperature until consumers buy it, something the market is ill-equipped to do, Ito says. "Customers want fresh seafood so that they can eat it raw, which puts pressure on us. Delivery people have had to come up with high-tech cooling methods," he says. "We have managed to keep the fish cold in high-quality foam coolers, but we're pushing the limit. Tsukiji is outdated. "In the new facility, we plan to shut out air from the outside and keep the fish section at a steady temperature." The move to a scrubbed-clean market farther away from downtown is not popular with some shoppers. "The messy and crowded scenes at Tsukiji are what makes the place attractive," said out-of-town visitor Tetsuya Kojima, who added that he was unlikely to visit the new site. Some of the old guard are not about to leave quietly either. Union member Makoto Nakazawa, a leader in the fight to stop Tsukiji's move, lashes out at what he sees as profit trumping all else. "Tokyo wants to move the market to satisfy the greed of real-estate interests here. I cannot think of another reason," says Nakazawa, who has organised small demonstrations in protest. The 40 hectares of land earmarked for the new market is soaked with toxic chemicals, the legacy of its previous life as a gas plant. Opponents have filed lawsuits over the city's purchase of the land without requiring Tokyo Gas to clean up its former site. That means taxpayers will shoulder the hefty 58.6 billion yen (RM1.8 billion) cleanup. The bill could still grow. Labour and materials prices are shooting up with contractors in short supply as they focus on quake-tsunami disaster reconstruction projects and building for the Olympics in seven years. Still, the municipal government says it is pushing ahead with plans to uproot Tsukiji and erect the new market by March 2016, about a year later than previously scheduled. "We are aware of a number of difficulties," says Masataka Shimura, a Tokyo official leading the new market project. "But we're still planning to do the move as scheduled." - AFP, January 1, 2014. |
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