Chechnya is a land dominated by absolute lawlessness. Atrocities have been committed against its citizens by Russian forces and the Islamic fringe, both of which profess to represent their common interests. In recent years, there have been no wars between the two, only proxy wars. Behind the Chechen rebels are Russia and the U.S, mostly through several states it has enormous influence with. Thus the Chechen fight for independence and Moscow’s fight against terrorism were both fabrications, with the continued repression of the Chechen people and the agenda of the international oil barons among the combatants’ top objectives. Indeed, Chechnya’s close proximity to the Caspian Sea places it within a region of great geo-strategic importance to the U.S. & the interests it serves. However, this compilation is about events that have happened down on the ground and media disinformation. The hope is that by examining this compilation the reader will come to a similar conclusion, that the Chechen separatists were a state-sponsored proxy, thus looking for the broader interests being served. Note that the compilation has been extracted from a larger project pertaining to Iran. The ensuing paragraph is where the focus of that project shifts to Chechnya, and where this compilation begins.
Supporting Timmerman’s contention that Mughniyah had helped train the Chechen rebels is columnist Alexander Chancellor, citing the Sunday Telegraph: “…the terrorist responsible for masterminding the Lebanon hostage crisis and killing scores of American servicemen in Beirut has come out of retirement to lend his support to Chechen rebels fighting the Russian assault on Grozny.” [402] 
According to former CIA agent Bob Baer, the Saudis (a charge they deny), also supported the Chechen rebels. “…high-ranking members of the Saudi royal family have been involved in political assassination plots and the training of Chechen rebels with apparent ties to Al Qaeda. … Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz—Saudi Arabia’s “grim sheriff”—who as the longtime overseer of the security forces, is the Saudi official most responsible for working with the FBI and CIA in prosecuting the war on terrorism.” [403] Saudi Arabia’s government-funded support for radical Wahhibism (a known al-Qeada hotbed) has been widely reported, as has the ties between the CIA and Saudi intelligence. Additional evidence linking Mughniyah to the Chechen crisis or to either of the above mentioned agencies never materialized. The following sources implicate the CIA, Pakistan’s ISI and Saudi intelligence with the training of some of the leading Chechen commanders. Bin Laden’s al Qaeda network and Iranian intelligence are also implicated, though like Mughniyah, further mention of Iranian involvement did not surface during the research phase. In Dec. of ’02 B. Raman (former intelligence analyst for the Indian govt.) wrote that the “…foreign mercenaries, many of them got trained by the…(CIA) during the first Afghan war of the 1980s through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)…” [404]
From an article dated Sept. of ’01 and posted on the “Serbian Unity Congress” website, Garland Favorito wrote that according to “…Yosef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Bin Laden attended at least one secret Chechnyan war planning summit with Iranian and Pakistani intelligence officers in Somalia during 1996. One of the leaders of that war, Al Khattab, was actually a Mujahideen commander who fought with Bin Laden against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Both Khattab and Shamil Basayev, the other war leader, were trained and indoctrinated in the CIA sponsored Amir Muawia camp in Afghanistan. Basayev also received training in the Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan where he established relationships with the very highest Pakistani military and intelligence officers.” [405] In that same year (’96), the CIA worked with the ISI to create the Taliban. [406] What’s interesting here is that the ISI (given its close association with the CIA) was collaborating not only with Bin Laden but also Iranian Intelligence. Complex relationships are to be expected on the far side of the world? Perhaps what’s clear is that the U.S, through proxies supports Islamic Jihad, serving a broad range of policy objectives. Sources link Amir Ibn al-Khattab to Zelimkhan Yanderbiyev, who “…was an acting president of the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (1996 – 1997). He was mentioned on a United Nations list of groups and people with suspected links to the al-Qaeda organisation and is said to have had contacts with the Taleban movement in Afghanistan.” [407] From an independent source that focuses on religions, Andrew Mcgregor wrote in Feb. of ’03 that: “Following the death of … al-Khattab last spring, there was speculation as to whether the foreign Islamist mujahidin would continue to play a large role in the Chechen struggle for independence from Russia. Khattab appears to have been replaced by a 35-year-old Saudi, Abu al-Walid. … There are allegations that al-Walid is variously an agent of Saudi intelligence, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Bin-Laden's al-Qaeda.” [408] Mark Franchetti, Moscow bureau chief of the "Sunday Times of London" wrote in Feb. of ’04 that Abd al-Aziz al-Ghamidi, a.k.a. al-Walid, a “…Saudi militant…a follower of the Wahhabi sect… signaled the determination of Chechen extremists to take their war against the Kremlin to Russian soil when he broadcast a statement from the republic last year on Al-Jazeera...” [409]
