The focus now moves to Russia and Saudi Arabia’s cooperation to reconstruct Chechnya’s education system with the intent of establishing Wahhabism. To the extent it’s relevant; the following sources also report that “official” support from Riyadh to the rebel resistance was limited. Back to the Q&A with Akhmadov at Jane’s intel: “Question: Is Saudi Arabian money funding the Chechen rebels, and was this money channeled to you via Pakistan and Al-Qaeda, as has been alleged? Akhmadov: Of course, some Saudi contributions have benefited the Chechen rebels. However, the amount was microscopic - no more than US$20,000, as opposed to the millions mentioned, and I have no idea what the channels are.” [539] In Jan. of ’04 Professor Stephen Blank, citing a Russian source, reported: “…Saudi Arabia has agreed to subsidize the reconstruction of Chechnya's education system under Russian rule… Saudi banks will allocate funds to Chechnya on the basis of a Saudi delegation's investigation of local conditions even though previous subsidies to Chechnya have vanished without any accounting. Saudi banks will also discuss joint collaboration with Russian banks for purposes of humanitarian reconstruction and even possible investment in the local petroleum industry." Blank confirms what numerous sources have also reported; “…throughout the war in Chechnya the Russian intelligence services have enjoyed long periods of collaboration with Chechen leaders accused of being terrorists.” [540] Also in Jan. of ’04 from Moscow-based correspondent Bill Gasperini; “In his message to Saudi leaders, President Putin asked them to support his efforts to bring stability to Chechnya and to help finance reconstruction efforts in the war-torn region.” [541]
Lionel Martin, also reporting for the Jamestown Foundation (Oct. of ’04), “Certainly both states also share a common interest in ensuring the safety of their exploration platforms, pipelines, refineries, and other energy infrastructures that are favorite targets of terrorist attacks worldwide. … there are clear signs of possible cooperation among the police, intelligence, and maybe even military forces of both governments. At the same time Saudi Arabia continues to support a substantial expansion of the dissemination of its brand of Islam - Wahhabism, Moscow's stated nemesis in Chechnya - among Russia's Muslim communities. Saudi money goes to build schools and mosques and to send Mullahs to teach at these institutions. Although Russian criticism of Wahhabism has led Riyadh to assume a lower profile, it continues to support these institutions.” [542] The next three sources cited relate to Saudi Arabia & Wahhabism, with mention of Chechnya. In Nov of ’02 Kathryn Jean Lopez conducted a Q&A with neo-con journalist Stephen Schwartz, who stated: “Wahhabism is completely subsidized by the Saudi regime, using oil income. … Wahhabism has…always depended on the armed forces of… Britain, the U.S., and France to secure its domination in the Arabian peninsula, while it violently attacks Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists, as well as traditional Sunnis, Sufis, and Shias, throughout the rest of the world. Thus, the presence of U.S. troops guarding the Saudis did not begin with the Gulf War in 1991. From 1946 to 1962 the U.S. maintained an airbase in Saudi Arabia, and before that the British assisted the Wahhabi-Saudi alliance against the Ottomans. When the Saudis needed to clear the Grand Mosque in Mecca of protestors in 1979, they employed French paratroops to kill Muslims within the walls of the mosque. … Wahhabi infiltration continues in Chechnya, to the detriment of the just struggle of the Chechens against Russian imperialism…” [543]
The premise Schwartz attempts to convey is that the Saudis have abused the goodwill of the west, rather than serving the collective interests of their ruling elite. Sometime after Dec. of ’03 F. Gregory Gause III (Hoover Inst.) released a report contending that the Saudi regime’s role in the growth of al qaeda and Islamic extremism has been exaggerated; and aid to certain Muslim-oriented NGOs was done perhaps “unwittingly.” Gause further contends it’s not in the United States best interest to promote democracy in the country because anti-American sentiment is so high. Nevertheless, there’s interesting insight: “Wahhabism has been the official interpretation of Islam in the Saudi domain since the… twentieth century… If this terror were grounded solely in Wahhabism, it should have manifested itself much earlier and should have prevented the historically close Saudi-American relationship… Wahhabism, as it has developed in Saudi Arabia, is a state ideology, not a revolutionary creed. As retrograde as it might be on social issues, Wahhabism’s official arbiters counsel loyalty to the ruler, not revolution. They accord the ruler wide latitude to conduct foreign affairs. Leading Wahhabi scholars and clerics, for example, publicly gave their seal of approval to both the invitation of American forces to Saudi Arabia in 1990 and the use of Saudi Arabia as a base for the 1991 attack on Iraq…. Saudi diplomatic relations with Russia and India, however, put limits on official support for the Chechen and Kashmiri jihads.” [544] 
In June of ’03, from the U.S. Senate judiciary committee: “The Saudi money is spent according to a carefully designed plan to enhance Wahhabi influence and control at the expense of mainstream Muslims. In Muslim countries, much of the aid goes to fund religious madrasas that teach little more than hatred of the infidels, while producing barely literate Jihadi cadres. … The Saudis also directly support terrorist activities in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Chechnya, Bosnia and…most of the large Saudi foundations have been implicated in such involvement. It needs to be emphasized here that contrary to Saudi claims that charities such as Al Haramain, the World Muslim League (WML), the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) are independent and non-governmental, there is conclusive evidence from Saudi sources that they are tightly controlled by the government and more often than not run by government officials.” [545] Note, according to various sources (BBC is cited here) the head of WAMY is a relative of Osama Bin Laden. “…Abdullah Bin Laden, president and treasurer of WAMY. This is the sleepy Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia where almost every home displays the Stars and Stripes. … at 3411 Silver Maple Place, we located the former home of Abdullah and another brother, Omar, also an FBI suspect. It's conveniently close to WAMY.” [546] The last incident to be examined involving Chechen separatists and Saudi Arabia is the hijacking of a passenger airliner in March of ’01, enroute to Moscow from Istanbul, Turkey. Reportedly, permission was granted to land the plane at the Medina airport in Saudi Arabia. The hijackers were separatists demanding a resolution to the Chechen conflict. From CNN: “Aftayva Fariza, a representative of the breakaway Chechen Republic in Amman, Jordan, identified the hijackers as Aslambik Artsayev, the former Chechen interior minister, and his brother Sufian.” [547]
From Freepers: “It appeared that she [Fariza] might have been referring to Aslanbek Arsayev, who in 1998 was security chief for Aslan Maskhadov, then president of Chechnya.” [548] From the Emergency Response & Research Institute (ERRI): “Breakaway Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov's spokesman repeated denials that pro-independence rebels were involved in the hijacking. Former Chechen minister for state security Aslanbek Arsayev, who fought the Russians in the first 1994-96 Chechen war and was wounded, was one of the three hijackers. The other two were his brother Supian Arsayev and Supian's son.” [549] The emphasis here is that another individual who had held a prominent position within Maskhadov’s cabinet was involved in the type of criminal activity that he repeatedly denounced. The examination of the Chechen resistance concludes with a number of articles linking Russian Intelligence to terrorism and the fate of a few dissenters who made the connection to prolonging the Chechen war. From the previously cited compilation at HRVC: “Many terrorist acts have been planned and realized by those criminal gangs or by those who had once direct connections with the Russian secret services. … explosions in 1996 in Moscow's subway…and in the apartment-buildings - two in Moscow and one in the southern city of Volgodonsk - in 1999…Still after several years any evidence linking Chechen terrorism to the bombings is lacking. … Russian authorities… used the explosions as…reason…to sustain the military intervention in the breakaway republic. … the exiled tycoon Boris Berezovskii has claimed publicly that the FSB actually organized the bombings in order to create a pretext to invade Chechnya. General Alexander Lebed, one of the author's of the Khasavyurt agreements, which led to termination of the first war, made similar statements. The former Prime Minister Evgenij Primakov declared that "the rebels use exclusively Russian arms" [550]
From the Jamestown Foundation: “Was the April 17 [03] murder of the prominent Russian reformist legislator, Sergei Yushenkov, connected with his opposition to the Putin administration's war on Chechnya? … It is agreed by almost all observers that the murder could not have been connected with Yushenkov's personal life or business dealings. … A retired colonel, Yushenkov had special credibility as an anti-war leader. … he took a particular interest in the 1999 apartment house bombings that the Kremlin used to stir up anti-Chechen passions on the eve of the second invasion. Yushenkov pushed for a Duma resolution demanding a full investigation of the bombings, and worked with survivors and relatives who believed that the bombings were really the work of the FSB.” [551] Moscow News: “Unidentified assailants gunned down a former top Russian intelligence official in Moscow on Sunday. … Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer granted political asylum in Great Britain, said that Trofimov had been killed because of what he referred to as “big politics”. “I do not believe that General Trofimov’s murder was linked to his business activities,” Litvinenko said contesting one of the leads currently being examined by the police. … Litvinenko who knew Trofimov personally…recalled that Trofimov “was opposed to the war in Chechnya, although of course he did not make any public statements on the issue; and he also objected to Putin’s appointment to the post of the FSB chief in the late 1990s.” [552] Emil Danielyan (armenialiberty.org) also cites Litvinenko: “Russia has angrily rejected allegations by a former senior officer of its FSB security service that it had a hand in the October 1999 seizure of the Armenian parliament that left eight officials dead. … Litvinenko…claimed that Moscow orchestrated the parliament killings through its GRU military intelligence with the aim of scuttling a peace deal on Nagorno-Karabakh.” [553] 
These next two sources imply that the Unites States was complicit in covering up Russian atrocities and that despite Vladimir Putin’s criminal background; he was the favored choice of the U.S. in his bid for the presidency. From an institute associated with Boston University that focuses on conflict-prone societies, particularly the former Soviet Bloc, is an analytical review dated June of ’01. “In testimony to Congress last week, a senior state department official, acting special advisor for the NIS John Beyrle, spoke of Russia's "culture of impunity" … When Chechen Foreign Minister Ilyas Akhmadov met with Beyrle in March, he asked the US government to make public satellite photography of evidence of Russian atrocities in Chechnya, including mass graves and detention camps. … In the past, the US has used its satellite photography to expose atrocities committed in Serbia and Iraq but has hesitated to apply the same standard to Russia.” [554] Author and University of Pennsylvania Professor Edward S. Herman wrote in Sept. of ’00: “As the appointed heir of Yeltsin and a "reformer" (in the special Western meaning--favoring market openings and privatization at whatever social cost) he was approved by the United States and its allies. The fact that he was a former KGB operative and had achieved his popularity by killing many more Chechen civilians than Milosevic did Albanians in Kosovo was therefore irrelevant.” [555]
Conclusion: The countries, agencies, organizations and groups assisting to prop the Chechen resistance is as broad and unlikely a collaboration as one would expect to find. Russia, the United States, Georgia, Saudi Arabia (NGOs), al Qaeda and Pakistan’s ISI were all involved to varying degrees. Of course, the U.S. has enormous influence over Saudi Arabia & Georgia. The CIA created al Qaeda and has very close ties to Pakistani intelligence. Clearly, Moscow has acted contrary to it’s own economic stability and national security interests. Through 2004 the makeup of the Chechen separatist movement was often characterized in the media as having two distinct factions, the nationalists and Wahhabi fundamentalists. The determination here is that any distinction that there may have been is hardly relevant given the fact that Chechen commanders, particularly those identified as extremists, were FSB operatives. Criminal warlords within Aslan Maskhadov’s ranks were also working with the Russians. Furthermore, the fact that the nationalists were receiving weapons from Russia and aligned with the extremists on common interests, a proxy of Russian Intelligence, greatly compromises the integrity of their stated goal of gaining independence from Russia. Ilyas Akhmadov (Maskhadov’s foreign minister), who has proven to be extremely well connected in Washington, was once in Shamil Basayev’s ranks. His clan, the Akhmadov brothers, is profoundly implicated in the kidnapping & slave trade and according to the BBC, narcotics trafficking. The U.S. would seem to have no other reason to grant Akhmadov asylum other than the fact that he has been their operative for some time. The following is a quote from Matthew Raphael Johnson. “It will be a cold day when the kept partisans of American academia take on the connections of the CIA, the Islamicists in Chechnya, Bosnia and Kosovo with international drug smuggling, forced prostitution and gun running. These, in turn are connected with big oil and American military interference in Central Asia and the Caucuses.” [556] Indeed, while the United States direct involvement can plausibly be denied, their client states and rogue proxies collaborating with Russia are deeply implicated in manifesting as well as discrediting the Chechen separatist movement.
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