By Matija Šerić
After the horrific war in Bosnia and Herzegovina ended in late 1995 with an outcome desirable to the United States—one that left Bosnia and Herzegovina an unfinished state and a permanent crisis hotspot—the Americans, as the sole superpower, were able to focus more strongly on other crisis zones. The most important of these areas for the United States in the second half of the 1990s was the Russian Muslim republic of Chechnya, together with regions of the former Soviet Union bordering Russia, Turkey, and Iran.
It was precisely in these areas that the Americans, with the help of their intelligence service, the CIA, sought to influence political and economic processes aimed at weakening the Russian Federation, with the goal of preventing Moscow from regaining the geopolitical power and influence it had during the era of the USSR.
The Enormous Economic Value of the Caspian Basin
During the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, geophysical tests conducted by Halliburton and other major American and British oil companies confirmed the existence of vast reserves of crude oil and natural gas in the Caspian Basin between Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Iran. While the Soviet Union existed, nearly all of these areas were under the control of the Kremlin, but after 1991 many of them came under the sovereignty of newly independent states.
The dispersion of valuable energy resources across a wide area near Russian territory provided the United States with an opportunity to turn Russia’s neighbors against it. Western oil companies such as British Petroleum and Amoco sought to take the lead in a policy of Russia’s energy isolation.
Estimates by Western geophysicists suggested that oil reserves in the Caspian Basin amounted to around 200 billion barrels, a quantity nearly equal to the reserves of Saudi Arabia. The U.S. Department of Energy estimated that the natural gas reserves of the Caspian Basin were comparable to those of North America. The market value of these oil and gas reserves reached trillions of dollars, making it understandable that American policymakers turned their attention toward Eurasia.
The U.S. Energy Strategy in the Caucasus
The U.S.–Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1995 to lobby the Clinton administration for American engagement in the Caspian region, including the Caucasus. The chamber included powerful figures such as Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney, who would later, as Vice President in the administration of George W. Bush, steer the United States toward interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The chamber was led by former Secretary of State and Texas political operator James Baker III. Among its members were also Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and Brent Scowcroft.
What was the issue? The only oil pipeline that transported oil from Baku to the West passed through the Chechen capital, Grozny. With a capacity of 100,000 barrels per day and a length of 146 kilometers, it dated back to the Soviet era. It carried Azerbaijani oil through Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea.
This pipeline represented a major obstacle to the alternative route desired by American and British oil companies, which naturally wanted to avoid transporting oil through Russia.
The Chechen War Gives the U.S. an Opportunity
It is therefore not surprising that the Caucasus and the Chechen War attracted the interest of American leaders. In 1998, President Bill Clinton tasked Richard Morningstar and Matthew Bryza with developing a U.S. energy strategy for the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea.
The idea of the American government was to build pipelines independent of Russia from the Caspian Sea through the southern part of the Caucasus region toward Europe. Bryza and Morningstar played a crucial role in the construction of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, a project supported by the U.S.–Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, which would transport oil from Baku in Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey and the Mediterranean.
Both were closely connected with Dick Cheney and Richard Perle, a former government official and supporter of using mujahideen in the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Cooperation Between the CIA and bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda
Historically, Chechnya had been home to moderate Sufi Muslims who believed religion was a private matter rather than a political category. However, with the support of the CIA, radicalization among Chechens and other Muslims in the surrounding region intensified.
CIA intelligence operatives began operating in Azerbaijan in the early 1990s and later expanded into Dagestan and Chechnya. The CIA helped facilitate the transfer of radical Islamic fundamentalists—mujahideen from Afghanistan—who were under the command and influence of Osama bin Laden, into Chechnya.
These moves expanded Al-Qaeda’s political base into former Soviet territories.
Bin Laden installed his jihadist associate Ibn al-Khattab as the commander, or emir, of the mujahideen in Chechnya. He fought alongside Chechen Islamist insurgent leader Shamil Basayev. Ibn al-Khattab was born in Saudi Arabia and fought with the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s.
According to some reports, he was involved in bringing Islamic fundamentalists into the war in Nagorno-Karabakh and personally participated in the civil war in Tajikistan. He also took part in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina alongside other mujahideen, although relatively little is known about this.
In all these operations, Islamic fundamentalists either had direct support from the CIA or their activities were tolerated by the agency for broader strategic objectives.
The Role of Saudi Arabia
The government of Saudi Arabia, in coordination with the United States, provided substantial financial assistance to al-Khattab’s war in Chechnya against Russia through his organization, the International Islamic Brigade.
In the Caucasus Mountains, this brigade consisted of about 1,500 jihadists recruited from Chechnya, Dagestan, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim regions.
From the mid-1990s onward, Osama bin Laden financed radical Chechen rebel leaders such as Basayev and al-Khattab with several million dollars per month, which effectively marginalized the influence of moderate Chechen insurgents.
Saudi state institutions—both official and unofficial—publicly supported the war in Chechnya and declared the resistance of some Chechens to Russian authority a legitimate act and a holy war, or jihad. Private Saudi donors also sent funds to al-Khattab and his Chechen allies. Jihadists wounded in combat were treated in Saudi hospitals.
Former FBI agent Ali Soufan stated:
“The United States in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya was on the Muslim side. Moreover, Muslim forces were supplied with weapons, money, equipment and all necessary resources.”
CIA aircraft transported Afghan and other mujahideen to the Caucasus, from where they were smuggled across the Georgian border into Chechnya. Another training and equipment base for Chechen militants was located in Turkey, which was also a NATO member.
During this period, Saudi intelligence services and the CIA cooperated closely in the instrumentalization of bin Laden’s mujahideen and other Islamist militants.
The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan Pipeline (BTC)
As early as 1991, during negotiations between the American oil company Chevron and the government of Kazakhstan, leading representatives of American and British oil companies addressed the leaders of Central Asia.
U.S. President George H. W. Bush actively supported the plans of American oil companies regarding the exploitation and control of oil resources in the Caspian region and the construction of pipelines that would transport Caspian oil and gas to the West bypassing Russia.
That same year, Heinie Aderholt, Richard Secord, and Ed Dearborn—veterans of American covert operations in Laos and Nicaragua—arrived in the Azerbaijani capital Baku under the cover of the oil company MEGA Oil.
Bush supported the idea of constructing a pipeline that would transport oil from Azerbaijan across the Caucasus to Turkey. The pipeline would be under informal but real American control.
Aircraft belonging to MEGA Oil allegedly transported jihadists to the Caucasus to create terror, violence, and chaos along the route of the Russian pipeline in Chechnya and Dagestan, thereby facilitating the construction of the BTC pipeline.
The BTC pipeline, running from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, was finally completed in 2006.
The Role of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Afghan (later Taliban-aligned) political and military leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar still cooperated with Osama bin Laden at the time and mobilized Afghan mercenaries to fight against Russia in Chechnya and against Armenian forces in Azerbaijan.
Hekmatyar also used his networks to traffic Afghan heroin to neighboring countries and Western markets with the knowledge of U.S. authorities. The drug was smuggled through Baku into Chechnya, Russia, and North America.
Baku became a major transit hub for Afghan heroin linked to the Chechen mafia.
Active U.S. Involvement in the Anti-Russian Jihad
American intelligence services remained deeply involved in the Chechen conflicts until Al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.
According to Yossef Bodansky, then director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the United States actively engaged in “another anti-Russian jihad, intending to support and strengthen the most poisonous anti-Western Islamist forces.”
Bodansky revealed that U.S. government officials attended a meeting in Azerbaijan in December 1999 where special programs for training and equipping mujahideen from the Caucasus, South Asia, and Central Asia were discussed.
They also agreed on assistance from private American security companies as well as support from Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia for Chechen fighters and foreign Islamists. The plan included provoking unrest and new long-term conflicts in the spring of 2000.
According to Bodansky, Washington believed that jihad in the Caucasus would prevent Russia from using the region’s oil routes because of the violence.
The Success of the BTC Pipeline
The most intense fighting in Chechnya ended in the spring of 2000 after major Russian military operations. Russia achieved a costly military victory.
The exact number of people killed or missing in the Chechen wars—conflicts allegedly fueled by CIA involvement—remains unknown, but estimates range between 25,000 and 50,000 deaths, mostly civilians.
Russia lost more than 14,000 soldiers in the First Chechen War and about 7,000 soldiers in the Second Chechen War.
The jihad in Chechnya ultimately failed. However, the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline project succeeded, bypassing Russia and transporting Caspian oil to Europe.
