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Chechnya Weekly from the Jamestown Foundation On April 18, Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, charged that European institutions have been inefficient in defending civil liberties in Russia despite the countless monitoring bodies that have been set up solely for this purpose and cited Chechnya as the prime example of this problem. According to the Associated Press, Roth told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg, France, that while the council can order Russia to amend its laws to prevent human rights abuses, it has no efficient follow-up mechanism to enforce sanctions on Moscow in the case of continuing violations. “The clearest example is the Council of Europe’s striking failure to respond effectively to the continuing, pervasive impunity for grave human rights violations in Russia's Chechnya,” he said. “The problem cannot be chalked up to a lack of information about conditions on the ground. A range of Co...

Chechnya Weekly from the Jamestown Foundation Dokka Umarov’s recent appointment of Supyan Abdullaev as the rebel vice-president highlights an increasing political shift within the Chechen insurgency whereby the secular wing is now accelerating its efforts to restore its broken ties with the radical wing of the separatist movement previously led by Shamil Basaev. Abdullaev, who is the main Chechen Salafi ideologist and was Shamil Basaev’s close ally and financial director (see his profile in Chechnya Weekly, March 29) has reemerged on the scene in Chechnya and is becoming a new figure within the separatist movement.