"Islamic State" and the Russian Caucasus
The Egyptian Department of Religious Ordinances prepared a report from which it follows that the Islamic State terrorist group (IG) is changing the policy of recruiting new members, shifting the center of gravity of its activities from the Arab world to the Caucasus, to the countries of Central Asia and to Indonesia. According to the Egyptians, it will be relatively easier to recruit supporters to their ranks to the emissaries of the Islamic State, since Muslims in these areas are numerous, relatively little knowledgeable and tend to trust Arab preachers. At the same time, the purpose of the grouping is primarily to ensure the flow of new recruits into its ranks, while "for the expansion of the territorial boundaries of its influence, the IG is still aimed at the Middle East."
Within the framework of the "Islamic State", a propaganda unit has already been created in Russian through social networks. Recently, this structure published a provocative statement that the Russian North Caucasus is part of the “caliphate”, and distributed several videos addressed to the militants who arrived in Iraq and Syria from Russia and its neighboring countries. Thus, the tasks of countering the ideology of the IG, including through social networks, explanatory conversations with the population, improving the system of religious education, are becoming more relevant than ever. Actually, the spiritual administrations of the Muslims of the North Caucasus are doing this - they accept the appropriate fatwas, conduct preventive work, fight, as they can, with radicalism and extremism.
However, some means of "soft impact" is not enough. Now and then there are reports of special operations against the leaders and active participants of the terrorist bandit underground in the North Caucasus. More recently, during a special operation carried out in the Untsukulsky district of Dagestan, the leader of the Imarat Kavkaz, banned in Russia, Magomed Suleymanov (accused, in particular, of organizing the killings of prominent religious figures Muhammad-Haji Abdulgafurov and Said Afandi Chirkey), and the leader of local militants, was killed. Saidov, as well as their two accomplices. The previous leader of the "Emirate" Aliashkh Kebekov, who became the successor to Doku Umarov, in April was destroyed by special forces of the FSB in Buynaksk.
Some Russian media have reacted rather strangely to the liquidation of Magomed Suleymanov, who suggested that his death would lead to a weakening of the positions of the “Emirate of the Caucasus”, and thereby clear up a place for the “Islamic State” and strengthen its position in the North Caucasus, which is even more dangerously. Finding a difference in ideology or in the sabotage and terrorist tactics of the "Emirate of the Caucasus" and the IG is about the same as finding "moderation" in such organizations as the "Dzhebhat al-Nusra" operating in the north of Syria.
Extremist groups operating in the regions of the South of Russia are largely characterized by a characteristic characteristic of Syria (to a lesser extent for Afghanistan and Iraq): the same people, the main people, are hiding behind the masks of successive and flowing "emirates" and "fronts". whose task is to destabilize the "ward" region. Nowadays, the terrorist threat is instrumentalized in such a way that it is increasingly turning into a means of "deterring" Russia, which includes attempts to stifle it economically, including through actions against its potential trade and economic partners, who are ready to invest in the republics of the North Caucasus and representing alternative centers of the West.
The proliferation of military conflict in the Middle East is accompanied by the return of a part of individuals who had previously left Russia to take part in hostilities in Syria and Iraq. This process is noticeably developing in the interests of those who, following the strategy of encircling Russia with conflicts around the perimeter of its borders, grope its vulnerable points in the Caucasus direction, demagogically reproaching Moscow, as the US Department of State does, in insufficiently ostensibly involvement in the fight against the Islamic State.
The war of the coalition put together by the Americans against ISIS is of a strange nature, and there is no end to the oddities. On the one hand, American Drones bombing Syria, and on the other hand, there are reports of close ties between the US military and militants of a terrorist group against which the US seems to be officially at war. For example, "a US Air Force helicopter landed in an area under the control of IS in western Iraq, and, taking on board several of its commanders, flew off in an unknown direction." According to the same data, an American helicopter landed in the Riyadh region, in a mountainous region in the Iraqi province of Salah al-Din, where ISIS troops are based. American helicopters in general often visit areas controlled by the Islamic State. This year, US helicopters have repeatedly landed in the Hawija area southwest of Kirkuk to pick up IS commanders. And this entire area is under the tight control of the American air navigation services, which is clearly indicated by the pictures regularly published on the Internet ...
Interestingly, according to the head of the American intelligence and analytical company STRATFOR George Friedman, the Islamic State is not a “vital issue” for the United States. Indeed, what problems could there be, if we take into account the long-term efforts of the American special services to cultivate international terrorists (see, for example, the work of retired diplomat Michael Springman, in which he traces history clandestine operations in the Middle East, the territory of the former Yugoslavia, North Africa and other regions). The apotheosis of these efforts today can be considered the emergence of the "Islamic state". As acknowledged by the retired head of military intelligence Pentagon Michael T. Flynn, at one time the White House made a "willful decision" to support the jihadists operating in Syria. Back in August, 2012 of the year, that is, a year before everyone started talking about the “Islamic State”, it was known for certain that the Syrian rebels supported by the United States dominated among the disparate militant groups, including the Salafi, Muslim brothers and the territorial Qaida. In the Middle East, tactical alliances of Americans with various rebel (read: terrorist) groups pursue mainly the goal of maximally weakening regional opponents of the United States, such as Syria and Iran.
Today, this tactic of destabilization is spreading to the Russian Caucasus. At the same time, which labels will be attached to one or another terrorist group (the Caucasus Emirate, Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, something else) doesn’t have any meaning. All of them are used to coordinate the situation in a coordinated way through the violation of interfaith peace, undermining the authority of traditional religions, and armed provocations. It is possible that the relevant decisions on this matter have already been taken, just as they, according to the testimony of the former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, were taken with respect to Syria two years before the first flashes of the “Arab spring”.
The colorful conglomerate of anti-Russian forces again probes the strength of Russia's security systems in its “soft underbelly”.
Information