huridocs-tech Chechnya: Rebels Use Internet In Propaganda War With Russia

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## author     : karim_aoua@yahoo.com
## date       : 16.05.00
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Chechnya: Rebels Use Internet In Propaganda War With
Russians By Askold Krushelnycky

Chechen separatist rebels fighting against Russian army
forces possess weapons far inferior to those of their foes.
But as RFE/RL correspondent Askold Krushelnycky reports, in
their propaganda war with the Russians, Chechen fighters
have been using a very sophisticated weapon -- the Internet.

Prague, 11 May 2000 (RFE/RL) -- Last Sunday (May 7), Russian
forces sought to cast doubt on claims by Chechen rebels that
they had shot down a Russian SU-24 jet fighter bomber. But
when a picture of Chechen fighters holding parts of the
plane's wreckage appeared on the rebels' Internet website,
the Russians were forced to admit the claim was probably
true. The rebel website -- kavkaz.org -- had proved its
effectiveness again.

It might seem odd that bedraggled partisans moving among
mountain hideouts in a country desolated by war would use
computers and sophisticated Internet technology to
communicate with the world. But the Chechens are actually
not the first such insurgents to use the Internet. In 1994,
previously unknown rebels calling themselves Zapatistas in
the Chiapas region of Mexico used the web -- in conjunction
with some dramatic attacks against government forces -- to
tell an international audience about their struggle and
their aims.

The mastermind behind the kavkaz.org website is Movladi
Udugov. During the 1994 to 1996 war between Russian forces
and Chechen rebels, he was Chechen information minister and
was credited by some Russians with defeating them in the
propaganda war by working closely with foreign journalists
covering the conflict.

When Aslan Maskhadov was elected Chechen president in 1997,
Udugov served briefly as his foreign minister but later fell
out with him. He then became a prominent member of an
organization that wants to impose Islamic rule on a single
entity unifying Chechnya and Daghestan.

It was Udugov's idea to launch the website last summer,
before the Russians imposed an information blockade. When
the Russians attacked Chechnya last autumn, they tried to
seal off the republic from the outside world. The Russians
were able to jam radio and television broadcasts, but
interfering with the Internet -- which can be reached
anywhere in the world -- is a much more difficult matter.

The site is particularly important during the current fight
against the Russians, because unlike in the earlier
conflict, this time there are far fewer foreign journalists
able to report from the Chechen side.

Because the Chechen site is primarily designed to influence
foreigners, it appears in Russian, English and a handful of
other languages -- although not in Chechen. Journalists,
government officials, area experts and others around the
world interested in finding out about the war use the
Chechen website, which offers news, interviews with Chechen
leaders, fighters and civilians. Photographs published on
the site are often used to back up Chechen claims,
displaying images of the dead on both sides as well as of
Russian prisoners.

A London-based specialist on the Caucasus, Anna Matveeva,
says that the website does not have a mass following but is
used by many influential news media and by specialists such
as herself.

"Well, of course, it's propaganda -- but what Russian
newspapers write is also propaganda. But [the website] is
[of] reasonable quality."

Michael Randall -- a Chechnya expert at Britain's Institute
for War and Peace Reporting -- says that although kavkaz.org
is prone to exaggeration, its information is usually rooted
in fact. He says the site has played an important role in
keeping the Chechen situation in public view, by focusing on
issues like the abuse of Chechen civilian and military
prisoners held by the Russians.

Randall says the site is more forthcoming about where the
actual fighting is going on than are the Russians:

"You can look at it and use it as a geographical pointer
towards where the fighting is going on at the moment. The
Russians say much less about where fighting is breaking out,
and the Chechens say more. So it gives you the ability to
pinpoint where the battle is going on. But you have to take
the casualty figures with a pinch of salt because obviously
the whole emphasis of their propaganda campaign is to
exaggerate the figures."

The Russians have tried to have kavkaz.org shut down. But
tracking down exactly where the website is composed and put
onto a server -- the conduit for accessing the Internet --
is not easy.

Last fall, just before the Russian attack on Chechnya, the
Russians launched a diplomatic offensive to have the site
removed from a U.S. server. That server removed kavkaz.org,
saying it contained terrorist propaganda and hate material.

The site has since moved among several other servers and now
seems safely entrenched. But Russian computer hackers have
managed to break into the site and alter it on at least two
occasions.

Possibly the most serious attack on the site is coming from
Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov himself. His
representative in Washington, Lyoma Usmanov, says that
Maskhadov believes that kavkaz.org erroneously identifies
all Chechen guerrillas as fighters in a holy war -- or jihad
-- aimed to bring about strict Islamic rule in Chechnya.
There has even been some speculation that the website is
funded by Saudi Arabians or by Osama bin Laden, the Saudi
dissident who is widely accused of supporting international
terrorism.

The promotion of jihad, Usmanov says, plays into the hands
of the Russians, who have sought to portray their campaign
in Chechnya as directed against Muslim fundamentalists:

"Kavkaz.org and Udugov do not represent Chechen interests at
all. The method of kavkaz.org about any event in Chechnya is
that they report it as a struggle between Islamic rebels,
mujaheddin, and Russians maybe somehow, one can see, against
Christians. We cannot accept it."

But for now, as the Russians are still not allowing most
independent journalists into Chechnya, the kavkaz.org
website is likely to remain a key source of information on
the war.




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