As published by HAGANAH, "an online self-defence force" http://www.simokyfed.com/mt/haganah/archives/000148.php
KAVKAZ CENTER website http://kavkaz.org was down for the first time on October 11, 2002 Quot: "www.kavaz.org, the online voice of Al Qaida's allies in Chechnya, is nowhere to be found this morning. Posted by andrew at October 11, 2002 06:09 AM" Russian website Antiterror.gamma.ru http://antiterror.gamma.ru/kavkazorg.htm published a picture of Kavkaz Center "tomb" with slogans: - "Za Cecnjo bez banditov i teroristov!" (For Chechnya without bandits and terrorists!) - "Down with bandits and terrorists!" But the very same day October 11, 2002 it was back up. http://www.simokyfed.com/mt/haganah/archives/000149.php Quot: "www.kavkaz.org was back online. "Posted by andrew at October 11, 2002 02:40 PM" www.simokyfed.com web site is maintained by The Jewish Federation of Southern Illinois Southeast Missouri, & and Western Kentucky. More about previous attempts to down Kavkaz Center website (1999) could be found at Chechnya-sl Yahoogroup http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chechnya-sl/message/162 ======================================== Here you have some detailes related to Kavkaz Center and its ISP: http://kavkaz.org (Organization) Jan 29, 2002: Owner: Udug, Movladi Address: 10 Bird Lane Orlando, FL 32860, US First Registered: August 10, 2000 Last Updated: January 18, 2002 Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Billing Contact: Udug, Movladi (ZWWPQJQEGI) http://www.checkdomain.com/cgi-bin/checkdomain.pl?domain=%21ZWWPQJQEGI&n ic=n si mailto:salatag@;hotmail.com Udug,Movladi, 10 Bird Lane, Orlando, FL 32860, US +1-9745572730 123 123 1234 Name Servers: CWBOSS.COMBATWORLD.COM 66.92.4.120 NS2.COMBATWORLD.COM 66.92.4.121 Information Source: http://www.checkdomain.com/cgi-bin/checkdomain.pl? Network Solutions ---------------------- Jan 7, 2002: Owner: Udug, Movladi Address: 10 Bird Lane, Orlando, FL 32860, US First Registered: August 10, 2000 Last Updated: November 10, 2001 Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Billing Contact: Udug, Movladi (ZWWPQJQEGI) http://www.checkdomain.com/cgi-bin/checkdomain.pl?domain=%21ZWWPQJQEGI&n ic=n si mailto:dikid25@;DOTEXPRESS.COM 10 Bird Lane, Orlando, FL 32860, US 407-300-0001 407-300-0001 Name Servers: NAMESERVER.CONCENTRIC.NET 207.155.183.72 NAMESERVER1.CONCENTRIC.NET 207.155.183.73 Information Source: http://www.checkdomain.com/cgi-bin/checkdomain.pl? Network Solutions ======================================== Chechnya: Rebels Use Internet In Propaganda War With Russia http://www.hrea.org/lists/huridocs-tech/markup/msg00516.html Subject: huridocs-tech Chechnya: Rebels Use Internet In Propaganda War With Russia From: Debra Guzman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 13:28:00 +0100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Edited/Distributed by HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network ## author : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ## date : 16.05.00 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. ======================================== Internet Insurrection in North Caucasus http://www.hrea.org/lists/huridocs-tech/markup/msg00308.html Subject: huridocs-tech Internet Insurrection in North Caucasus From: Debra Guzman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 09:00:00 +0100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Edited/Distributed by HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network ## author : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ## date : 27.09.99 Internet Insurrection by Joan Beecher Eichrodt Joan Beecher Eichrodt is a historian and a journalist who has spent much time in the North Caucasus over the last decade, including a year in Chechnya ( 1994-1995), on a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Reporting of the Dagestani conflict in both the Russian and foreign media has been much more one-sided -- in most cases, having little sympathy with the insurgents -- than previous reporting on the Chechen war. The army of international journalists, so conspicuous in Chechnya, is absent this time around; the threat of kidnapping has seen to that. Not one of the Dagestani and Russian journalists covering the conflict has been behind rebel lines. Even the most free-thinking media outlets -- including independent news sources on the Internet -- primarily depend on press releases from Russian military headquarters and from official Dagestani sources. Earlier this summer when the guerrillas first launched their offensive, the Dagestani government immediately responded with an all-out media campaign against the invasion, utilizing radio, television, the press, and the Internet. By 10 August, it had established a new website with several mirror sites, including one in the United States, <www.kavkaz.com>. According to the Ministry of Nationalities, Information, and External Relations, which launched the site, its primary purpose is "to provide the broadest possible coverage of events for the benefit of all media." And its motto, according to the Ministry, is "to tell the truth about Dagestan." The message underlying the site's material is that all Dagestanis have united in the face of aggression -- an invasion launched by a horde of Chechen bandits and foreign mercenaries. For the most part the Moscow-based media echo the same line. One source that has regularly provided a different viewpoint -- by depicting the guerrilla action as a Dagestani liberation struggle against the Russians and the notoriously corrupt local government -- is the Chechnya-based "Caucasus Center" -- known as <kavkaz.org>. Like <kavkaz.com>, <kavkaz.org> -- founded earlier this year -- aims to capture Russian and world public opinion. The mastermind behind it, Movladi Udugov, is credited by the Russians themselves with having defeated them in the information war in Chechnya, even before they lost the shooting war. As minister of information for the late Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev, Udugov was tireless in disseminating his side's version of events, always making himself available to Russian and foreign journalists. In 1997, after the war, he ran for the Chechen presidency, as the candidate of his own party, Islamic Order. After losing to Aslan Maskhadov, he served for a while as Maskhadov's foreign minister, although he has long been at odds with the Chechen president. Udugov has devoted himself to the creation of a united Chechen-Dagestani Muslim state, an idea Maskhadov has explicitly rejected. At present, Udugov is the vice chairman of a public organization called the Congress of Peoples of Ichkeria and Dagestan (recently renamed the Mejlis of Muslims of Chechnya and Dagestan), which was formed to promote this goal of unification. Shamil Basayev is the chairman. This group not only united the leaders of the uprising in Dagestan, but served as the organizational force behind it. In a telephone interview with Transitions Online, Udugov pointed out that even though <kavkaz.org> is often referred to as "Udugov's site," it is really owned by a group of young programmers in Grozny. "I help them out with some money -- it doesn't take much money to run a website -- and I supply them with analytical reports, from my research institute [the Grozny-based Institute of Strategic Research]. They have two old computers, and no support staff. ... And their local correspondents in Dagestan are volunteers; they don't charge anything for their services. It's basically a shoestring operation." LETTING OFF STEAM Few people have Internet access in Dagestan, fewer still in Chechnya, which lacks even the most elementary telephone system. But more and more Russian citizens are turning to the Internet to get their news. According to recent estimates from the <a>Regional Public Center of Internet Technologies</a> < http://inter.net.ru/13/41.html>, about 1.5 million people -- just under 50 percent of them in the immediate Moscow area -- have Internet access, and the number has been growing exponentially. By 12 September, <kavkaz.org> had become one of the most popular Internet sites in Russia, taking 21st place in the Rambler search engine's list of Russia's top 100 Internet sites, which is ranked by the number of hits. The Dagestani government's site came in as number 357. The site's success can be attributed, in part, to the fact that it has been the only alternate source of information on events in Dagestan. The news items are generally brief: for the most part, merely reprints -- without commentary -- of press releases from the Islamic Government of Dagestan, and statements from various leaders. A further attraction is a new section -- Yeltsingate -- which reprints press articles about the Russian governing elite's reported financial misdeeds. It also seems likely that many visitors come to the site simply to vent. After all, the kind of people who are connected to the Internet in Russia are not likely to be won over by language such as this excerpt from the site: <i>For 140 years Islamic Dagestan has been occupied by the Russian kafir. For 140 years Islamic Dagestan has been ruled by the law of Satan and his servants. ... We want victory or Paradise! And, God willing, we will free Dagestan from the kafirs! ... Drive the Russian aggressors and their hangers-on out of your villages and cities. Establish the Shariat of Allah, and perhaps you will be saved.</i> (From Shamil Basayev's "Address to the Muslims of Dagestan," 15 August 1999): Or such as this: <i>Our dead are in Paradise. Your dead are in Hell.</i> (Basayev statement, 9/7/99) The political cartoons displayed on the site won't appeal to the average Russian websurfer either, most particularly the one showing Russian soldiers speared -- as on a shishkebab skewer -- on a Caucasian dagger. The site has helped fuel an outburst of Chechenophobia, serving to evaporate any guilt Russians may have felt about being the aggressors in the Chechen war. Now that Chechens are viewed as the aggressors, advocates of the total extermination of the Chechen people have been prolifically posting in every Russian chatroom available -- including the one on <kavkaz.org> itself. "OUR BRAVE HACKERS" Outraged at what was beginning to look like another Udugov propaganda coup, hackers have vowed to wipe out his site. For about a week, beginning on 30 August, it looked as if they might have succeeded. On the left of the page the hackers posted a picture of the poet Mikhail Lermontov -- who fought in the Caucasus War over 150 years ago -- holding a Kalashnikov, and with the legend "Misha was here!" next to his head. Then, to the right of the page: "This site has been closed down at the request of Russian citizens. This is what will happen to all websites of terrorists and murderers!" Russian state television gleefully congratulated "our brave hackers" for their derring-do. It is not clear whether the deed was indeed done by independent hackers, or by operatives of Russian intelligence. But within a week, "Misha" disappeared. Udugov's site was registered in the United States earlier this year by Albert Digaev, a computer science student, who then placed it on a server in California, where he has a website of his own. By a ruse, someone, evidently located in Chelyabinsk, Russia, obtained the password to the site, and had the traffic diverted to another server, also in the United States. At that point, Digaev says, the "Misha" page was substituted for the <kavkaz.org> home page. After the ruse was discovered, traffic was simply redirected to the original server, and the site was up again. Udugov's site may be facing a more sophisticated enemy. According to a 9 September BBC report, Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Rushaylo announced that he had given the FBI more information about the alleged "Chechen-Bin Laden Connection." He then went on to say that the FBI, in return, offered its help in combating the rebels in Dagestan, including assistance with "eliminating Internet sites set up by the rebels." Then, on 13 September, following the two explosions that destroyed Moscow apartment buildings and caused over 200 deaths, Digaev received an e-mail from the company operating his server in California. It informed him that the company was canceling the <kavkaz.org> account because of escalating complaints about the site. The complaints alleged that "the content includes terrorist propaganda, and discriminatory/hate material." Digaev has since moved <kavkaz.org> to one free server, temporarily; then to a second; and now is moving it to a third. The reasons are still unclear as to whether the disruptions are due to technical glitches, or outside intervention. But <kavkaz.org> has disappeared from the Rambler ratings, and Udugov's chances of winning the information war this time around are beginning to look fairly dim. ==================== Mario Profaca Mario's Cyberspace Station The Global Intelligence News Portal http://mprofaca.cro.net/ Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
