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| A Chechen soldier in the streets of Grozny |
A Mujahedeen speaks: 'Why I fought at Grozny'
ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNNItalia) -- His name is Mustafa. He is 35 years old and of Albanian origin. He is one of many Mujahedeen who have fought the "holy war" in Chechnya against the Russians.
"I lost my leg in Chechnya, which we call Chechenistan," Mustafa says. "When people ask me what happened to me, I say that I was in an automobile accident." Mustafa shows the stub. His leg was blown away when he stepped on a land mine last November as he was defending Grozny from the assault by the Russian army.
Mustafa now lives in Tarlabasi, a neighborhood in Istanbul crowded with the many refugees who flock to Turkey from all over the Islamic world. Mustafa had warned me over the telephone not to bring a camera; he does not want to be recognized by his neighbors, and especially not by the Russian mafia. He believes that everyone who has fought in Chechnya ends up getting caught, sooner or later, by the Russians.
His story is typical of the men who in recent months have come from all corners of the world to help their Chechen brothers. Here is the interview he granted us:
Q. What does the Russian mafia have to do with the war in Chechnya?
A. People seem to think that the heroin trade is controlled by the Kurdish mafia, but this is not what I have seen. The Russians also traffic in heroin. They bring it here to Turkey and then sell it in Europe. Even Russian women do it, the ones who supposedly come here to do other business, with their huge suitcases loaded with junk. Heroin even passes through Chechnya, which is a geographically strategic region and acts as a bridge between Europe and Asia.
Q. Did you also fight in Kosovo?
A. No, I really wanted to, but at the time I had no way to get to the front.
Q. Why did you go to Chechnya?
A. According to Islam, a person who can sleep while people next to him are hungry cannot consider himself a true Muslim. The Chechens converted to Islam during the period of the Ottoman Empire and for centuries protected our eastern borders from the Orthodox [Christians]. Today it is they who are in trouble. The Russians are torturing them with this war of aggression.
So the responsibility to help them now falls on us. I understood this one day many months ago while I was watching the news. Suddenly, after seeing those images of the war, I decided to go to Chechnya as a volunteer. The next day I talked about it with a Turkish friend of mine, a former Gray Wolf. He belongs to the ultra-nationalist branch of that movement, known as Nizami Alem, or "Universal Order." I put myself in their hands.
Do you know about the myth of the gray wolf? It is the heroic wolf that shows the Turkish people the road out of Asia, leading them to their new homeland, Europe. In the same way we will lead the Caucasian people to freedom. A few days after my encounter with the Nizami Alem nationalists, they took me to a training camp here in Turkey, where they taught us to use weapons. Then I went to the front.
Q. Were the trainers officers from the Turkish army?
A. I don't know. What I do know is that there were many ex-military men among them from the Turkish armed forces, who are close to the Nationalist movement, and maybe one or two agents from the Turkish secret service.
Q. Did you meet other foreign Mujahedeen there?
A. Yes. On the front lines there were people from all over the Muslim world. I saw Iranians, Afghanis and Bosnians.
Q. Do Turks see a parallel between the Kurds and the Chechens?
A. No. I don't even think the Kurds are a nation. They're what is left of the old Turkoman tribe who lost their identity through contact with the Arabs. The PKK is a bunch of terrorists who kill their own people.
Q. And what do you think of Italians?
A. I don't like the solidarity the Italian Communists show for the PKK. And do you know where the land mine that blew off my leg came from? Italy!
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