The North Caucasus: Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia

[AdamG]

Initially posted as it's own thread for visibility, a nice writeup on our old buddies the Chechen Muj.

Fighters from Chechnya are one of the forces behind IS’s meteoric rise in Syria. The attraction to jihad is not only ideological but practical.

“The Syrian ‘jihad’ began as a sort of proxy conflict for fighters who could not go home to fight in Chechnya or Dagestan,” says Joanna Paraszczuk, a journalist and blogger who has lived and worked in the Middle East and Russia and has a special interest in researching Russian-speaking foreign fighters in Syria. Many of them, she says, are wanted by security authorities.

http://syriadirect.org/main/36-inter...-islamic-state

Moderator at work: this post was in a stand alone, with 2.4k views then merged into a 2015 thread andf now merged to here (ends).

[davidbfpo]

A long article 'Russia’s Playing a Double Game With Islamic Terror' in The Daily Beast by Michael Weiss; the sub-title is:

Even as America touts its counterterrorism partnerships with Russia, evidence points to the FSB directly feeding Dagestanis to ISIS

Link:http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...c-terror.html?

I have placed the thread here as whilst Moscow features, the Caucasus is the focal point. IRRC allegations have been made before that supposedly legendary Chechen fighters are in the Middle East, Weiss assembles a good case that they are in effect being exported. Note he relies on one study of a village as a test case.

A couple of choice passages:

It may sound paradoxical—helping the enemy of your friend—but the logic is actually straightforward: Better the terrorists go abroad and fight in Syria than blow things up in Russia. Penetrating and co-opting terrorism also has a long, well-attested history in the annals of Chekist tradecraft.

Hence a reported 50% drop in violence in the region.

Not that exporting Islamist fighters, many then aspiring and without extensive experience, is unprecedented - remember Afghanistan? Weiss cites the head of the Jamestown Foundation:

What’s the most significant policy decision we made to bring down the Soviet Union? Us sending foreign fighters into Afghanistan. This is the perfect form of payback. Create a quagmire in Syria, get us bogged down—all the while, offer your cooperation in helping to root out terrorism.

One wonders how the Assad regime and their Iranian allies view this export drive. I expect the Syrians know all too well what is going on and of course Russia still supplies ample ammunition and weapons.

Moderator at work: this post was in a stand alone thread, with 5k views now merged to here (ends).

[davidbfpo]

The Chechens were reported to be going to Afghanistan in this 2007 thread:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=3754

A cautionary note and wise words from Tom Odom.

[davidbfpo]

An Open Democracy article; that starts with:

t’s no secret that young men and women from the North Caucasus are fighting in Iraq and Syria for Islamic State. From Europe, where they lived as refugees, and Egypt and Syria, where they studied in religious institutes, men and women originally from Russia’s North Caucasus have been travelling to join Islamic State (IS) over the past 18 months. But there are also young men and women who have travelled to Iraq and Syria from Chechnya itself. And now these fighters are appearing on YouTube, declaring they will return to their homeland and ‘put things right’. Chechnya’s security services, however, are trying to limit the influence of IS ideology on the republic’s youth, which continues to emigrate under various guises.

Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-rus...te-in-chechnya

[davidbfpo]

A rare report on a village in Dagestan, in summary:

This village used to house one of the North Caucasus’ most dangerous Islamist paramilitary units. With the Russian state nowhere to be seen, Gubden has started policing—and developing—itself.

Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-rus...ice-themselves