by Kirill Semenov
[REGNUM] The terrorist attacks in Dagestan, where synagogues and a church were targeted and Russian Orthodox Church priest Nikolai Kotelnikov was brutally murdered, may have been part of ISIS's global strategy to attack civilians, primarily Christians.
Thus, since the beginning of June in Africa (in the Congo, as well as in Mozambique), numerous terrorist attacks have been carried out against local Catholics and Protestants, when ISIS militants broke into Christian villages and carried out massacres of civilians there, and terrorist information resources such as “ Al-Naba” covered these crimes widely.
After the attacks in Dagestan, the ISIS-Velayat Khorasan* media center Al-Azaim also published a message praising the “Caucasian brothers.” Although ISIS has not directly claimed responsibility, such a statement could serve as evidence of the terrorist organization's involvement.
Attacking churches is also a characteristic feature of the ISIS-Caucasus Velayat terrorists*. This group was disbanded at the end of 2017 by the “central command of ISIS” after almost all of its cells were destroyed by federal forces. Nevertheless, in the future, individual ISIS adherents continued terrorist activity in the North Caucasus.
So, in February 2018, on Forgiveness Sunday, there was an attack on a church in Kizlyar. Then the terrorist Khalil Khalilov killed 5 parishioners and was himself liquidated. ISIS Central Command claimed responsibility for the attack, calling Khalil ad-Dagestani a “soldier of the caliphate.”
But after the terrorist attacks at Crocus City Hall in April of this year, there were signs of a revival of ISIS in the Russian Caucasus. Although the first signals sounded even a little earlier, after a group of six terrorists was eliminated in the Ingush Karabulak. However, at that time no direct connection was established between them and ISIS, or at least such evidence was not voiced.
In April, information appeared that ISIS - Velayat Caucasus (Ingushetia sector) published an audio message about the situation of the group. It indicated that this terrorist organization was becoming stronger, larger and more active and was going to choose a “new emir” (the last one was eliminated in 2021).
On April 22, militants possibly linked to ISIS attacked a police patrol in Karachaevsk in Karachay-Cherkessia, killing two law enforcement officers and wounding a third, and seizing their service weapons.
On April 28, suspected ISIS militants attacked a police post in the village of Mara-Ayagy of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic. The terrorists drove up to the post, threw explosives and opened fire, killing 2 police officers and injuring at least 4 people. All attackers were eliminated.
The current terrorist attacks in Dagestan can serve as confirmation that the group has begun to restore its positions in the Caucasus. And here we need to pay attention to the history and specifics of the Caucasian wing of ISIS and its appearance on Russian territory.
FROM “ICHKERIA” TO “CAUCASUS EMIRATE”
The roots of the emergence of ISIS as a global terrorist project should be sought in the arrival in Iraq of a group of al-Qaeda jihadists from Afghanistan led by Abu Musab Az-Zarqawi, who began to implement his own concept of jihadism, entering into increasing disputes with the leaders of this structure, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. And in the Caucasus, the prologue to the emergence of ISIS in this part of the Russian Federation was the arrival of foreign jihadist fighters in the region, primarily from Arab countries.
The first jihadist to go to Chechnya was Ali Fathi al-Shishani, a veteran of the war against the USSR in Afghanistan, an ethnic Chechen from Jordan. This happened even before the first Chechen war, in 1993. Then Fathi, having arrived in Ichkeria, created a “Salafi Islamic jamaat”, consisting of young indigenous Chechens and some Chechens of Jordanian origin. In essence, this is where the spread of Wahhabism in the most radical version of Salafi jihadism in the Russian Caucasus begins.
After the outbreak of war in December 1994, Ali Fathi played an important role in facilitating the recruitment of Arab fighters from Afghanistan. Among those he personally invited was Samir Salih Abdallah al-Suwailim, better known as Khattab, who soon became the leader of all foreign jihadist fighters in Chechnya. But then it was too early to talk about Ichkeria joining the global jihadist project led by Al-Qaeda*, although there were, of course, connections between them.
Although Khattab denied any contact with bin Laden, stating that "there are no relations between them due to the great distance and difficulties of communication," both sides did maintain dialogue through their representatives in the 1990s and early 2000s years.
There was also correspondence between them, which resulted in a heated discussion about strategy, as Khattab and bin Laden had completely different worldviews, and each tried to convince the other of the superiority of their approaches to “jihad.” It was also characterized by personal rivalry between them, especially due to Khattab's growing authority within the jihadist community.
Bin Laden was obsessed with fighting the "Judeo-Christian alliance" and focused his strategy on attacking the "distant enemy", primarily the US and Israel. Khattab, on the contrary, sought to establish an Islamic system in Chechnya and then use it as a base for violent expansion into the neighboring territories of the Russian North Caucasus. Until his death in 2002, Khattab never threatened the United States.
After Khattab was eliminated, his successor as commander of foreign jihadists in Chechnya was Abu al-Walid al-Ghamdi, just like Khattab, a citizen of Saudi Arabia. Al-Walid's approach to the ideas of "jihad" was even more radical. It was he who began to openly call for the use of suicide bombers and justify the recruitment of women to carry out suicide bombings. Al-Walid was killed by fighters of the Vostok battalion in Chechnya on April 16, 2004.
Abu Hafs al-Urduni, who replaced al-Walid, was a Jordanian and finally brought foreign Salafi jihadists in the Caucasus into the service of al-Qaeda, and its most radical wing led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who became the “founder” of ISIS.
In particular, Abu Hafs was mentioned in the report of US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN Security Council back in 2003. He was stated to be part of an alleged international network led by al-Zarqawi, from which ISIS emerged.
On November 26, 2006, Abu Hafs al-Urduni was killed in a shootout with Russian special forces in Khasavyurt. And the last commander of the “Arab Muhajirs” in Chechnya was Melfi al-Hussaini al-Harbi, known as Muhannad, who replaced al-Urduni.
Mukhannad began his activities in the Caucasus in 1999 in the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia, populated mainly by ethnic Chechens - Kists. Muhannad lectured on the history of Islam, actively introducing the ideology of Wahabism in the region and preaching the principles of Salafi jihadism. In which, it should be noted, he succeeded, since subsequently many people from this gorge became significant figures among foreign jihadists in Syria and, above all, in the structures of ISIS.
In October 2006, the head of the separatist entity “Ichkeria” (CRI), Doku Umarov, appointed Mukhannad as one of the three deputies of Magomet “Magas” Yevloev, who headed the Ingush sector of the separatists.
After Umarov in September 2007 proclaimed the formation of a new militant organization in the North Caucasus called the Caucasus Emirate in place of the ChRI, Mukhannad was declared his naib, or deputy. This was evidence of the strengthening of the position of Salafi jihadists in the Caucasus, who have become the mainstream of Chechen separatists.
This also emphasizes the role of Muhannad himself, who gained much more influence on the decision-making of the Imarat than his predecessors during the times of Ichkeria. On April 21, 2011, Ramzan Kadyrov told reporters about the destruction of Mukhannad as a result of a special operation that took place on the same day in the Chechen Republic.
FROM “CAUCASUS EMIRATE” TO “ISIS – CAUCASUS VELAYAT”
The Caucasus Emirate tried to distance itself from international terrorist networks, declaring itself as an independent center of world “jihadism,” although it was not against receiving help from the same Al-Qaeda and accepting its emissaries.
But after the liquidation of Doku Umarov, starting in November 2014, the leaders of the so-called. The “jamaats” of the “Caucasus Emirate”, one after another, began to swear allegiance to ISIS (which, since 2013, has been able to carry out widespread expansion in Syria and Iraq) and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
First, the so-called “Chechen jamaat”, whose leaders swore allegiance to ISIS, their example was followed by Dagestan “jamaats”. And then they were joined by the Ingush, whose leader, although he did not directly swear allegiance to Al-Baghdadi, nevertheless declared support for ISIS. Ultimately, the then head of the Caucasus Emirate, Abu Muhammad (Aliashab Kebekov), found himself isolated and was soon eliminated by Russian security forces.
Thus, the regionalist jihadist project in the Caucasus was replaced by a global jihadist project under the banner of ISIS.
“Central” ISIS announced the creation of the group “ISIS - Velayat Kakaz” on June 23, 2015 and appointed its leader Rustam Asildarov. Thus, ISIS-Caucasus has become part of a wider terrorist network.
This could largely be due to funding issues, since, on the one hand, Western curators were losing interest in the Imaratu, and, on the other, Al-Qaeda, which had previously supported Caucasian terrorists, was plunging into an increasingly deeper crisis.
The participation of jihadists from the Caucasus in the Syrian conflict and their joining the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq created a connection between the “caliphate” and Caucasian militants, including financial ones. This predetermined the flight of field commanders from the Caucasus Emirate to the banners of ISIS. Moreover, many of them understood that their time in the Caucasus had expired, and if they did not try to leave it, finding something to do in other branches of ISIS, they would soon be liquidated by federal forces.
On December 4, 2016, Russian intelligence services reported that they had killed Asildarov and four of his accomplices during a raid in Makhachkala. Aslan Batyukaev became the new leader of ISIS in the North Caucasus.
However, after his appointment in 2017, he was forced to leave the Russian Caucasus to save his life, hiding abroad. At the same time, ISIS - Caucasus Velayat was apparently dissolved by the ISIS Central Command as having ceased to exist. Although terrorist attacks on behalf of ISIS continued in the Caucasus, they were carried out either by lone terrorists or by autonomous cells not associated with the central command.
But at the very beginning of 2021, an attempt was made to restore ISIS - Caucasus Velayat. Then Batyukaev returned to Russia. This attempt seemed unsuccessful, since he was killed along with his group of five militants as a result of a special operation by the forces of the police regiment. A. A. Kadyrov on the outskirts of the village of Katyr-Yurt.
However, it is possible that this was not the only group that penetrated the territory of the Russian Federation, and it was from that time that ISIS sleeper cells that were activated in Dagestan began to be restored in the Russian Caucasus. It also cannot be ruled out that the current terrorist activity in the Russian southern regions is supported by “third forces” with which Russia is waging war in Ukraine.
Actually, the unexpected appearance of Batyukaev in the Russian Caucasus at the beginning of 2021 after his disappearance could have been supervised by external actors who were already trying to restore the terrorist network in order to open a second front if necessary. And this moment has come.
Related:
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Dagestan: 2024-06-25 American researchers note the connection between militants in Dagestan and IS
Dagestan: 2024-06-25 Veterans of special services called the attack of militants in Dagestan a failure of the security forces
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