Last throes of Chechen resistance crushed and Ichkeria lost

It has been reported that large numbers of Russian troops have surrounded Doku Umarov "President of Ichkeria" - the last of the Ichkerian 'Mohicans', and his guerilla band in a forest near the village of Yandi-Katar on the border between Ingushetia and Chechnya.

STOP PRESS 24/11/06 15.50 GMT

Kommersant report today (Friday) that Nikolay Varavin of the Russian Federal Forces’ press services says Doku Umarov, is wounded and has escaped . Ruslan Badalov, head of the Chechen National Salvation Committee, told Kommersant thast the wounded Umarocv had managed to esacept to Ingushetia. ENDS

A “source close to the security structure” of Chechnya said yesterday that the “President of the Ichkeria” had been caught in a gun battle with security forces which has gone on now for three days and that military aviation is heavily bombing the area. All land line and cell phone communication in the area had been cut and helicopters are ever prersent in the air.

The “Chechen Committee for National Salvation” reported that Umarov has been wounded in a village of the Achkoi-Martanovsky District, but managed to escape and that he and his men surrounded by federal forces in a forest near the village of Yandi Kotar located about 30 kilometers from Achkoy-Martan near the border with Ingushetia.

The Chechen jihad is evidently now on it's last legs after Russian security services killed Shamil Basayev, in early July in what Russia's FSB security service chief, Nikolai Patrushev, said was "a special operation". Curiously his death was welcomed both by Putin as "deserved retribution" - especially for the September 2004 attack in the Northn Ossetian town of Beslan kidnapping schoolchildren - and President Bush, Putin's ally in the War on terror said : "If he's in fact the person who ordered the killing of children in Beslan, he deserved it" (BBC) Which must have played well in Peoria.

Since then more organised Chechen fighters have killed or been laying down their weapons and taking advantage of an amnesty program. Over 350 Chechen fighters have surrendered since the amnesty was announced late last summer. On Wednesday 35 of Umarov's cadres, surrendered in Gudermes and given up the fight, and another 28 surrendered today in Gudermes including some holding “high-ranking positions,” .

On August 21st AP reported that Umarov's brother had surrendered to Russian authorities.

That has left Umarov who is isolated and now surrounded. The last leader of the jihad he has been fighting since 1994 and eventually became the southwestern field commander of the Chechen resistance. he4 assumed the Presidency of the Chechen Republic "Ichkeria" this summer when Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev was killed in June by the FSB. Umarov was a notional President and wanted to continue the war against Russia , but has seen his followers fade away and surrender.

What fate awaits those who surrendered is best left unsaid. It will be a Hobbesian future. Short and brutish,