Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 3-16-CE-20

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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 3-16-CE-20

Since the Islamic State arrived in the North Caucasus, the number of attacks in the region has fallen; the region’s rebels might be disappointed in the new organization and try to revive

the Caucasus Emirate

The arrival of the IS in the North Caucasus, which appeared to pose a serious challenge to Russia, has apparently turned out to be less frightening than expected. If the tactics and concepts of the IS-affiliated rebels in the North Caucasus do not change during the coming spring and summer, the region’s rebels might be disappointed in the new organization and try to revive the Caucasus Emirate.

The fact that the IS took responsibility for the Dagestani militants’ attacks does not mean the Middle Eastern organization actually played a role in it. Like the Caucasus Emirate in the past, the IS will claim responsibility for all attacks in the North Caucasus, regardless of who actually carried them out

The insurgents call their group the Southern Sector of the Velayat Dagestan, which was called the Derbent jamaat after the creation of the Caucasus Emirate.

However, it is too early to say whether the underground movement has adapted to the new situation in Dagestan, where the Islamist underground movement has split into two groups—one made up of followers of the Caucasus Emirate, and a larger one made up of the supporters of the Islamic State.

Since the Islamic State arrived in the North Caucasus, the number of attacks in the region has fallen.

On March 23–24, the Public Council of the North Caucasian Federal District held a conference in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria. The primary purpose of the conference was to work out ways to prevent the spread of religion-based radicalism in the North Caucasus.

The majority of Muslims in the North Caucasus have traditionally been the adherents of Sufism. The Salafist school of Islam, however, has become increasingly popular among the locals.

An expert on the Caucasus, Mamuka Areshidze, said that the report of the Georgian State Security Service as a whole accurately reflects the scope of the terrorism threat and the outflow of extremists to the Islamic State. The expert also confirmed that, as a result of the Georgian security services’ activities, “the majority of the ISIL emissaries on the territory of Georgia were placed under arrest, ran away or ceased their activities.”

The authorities of Ingushetia should be concerned about residents of the republic who are fighting in the Middle East. The number of Ingush militants in the Middle

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

CdW Intelligence to Rent of 9 02/05/2023

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East is much greater than the number of members the Ingush jamaat had during 2004–2010, its heyday. Ingushetia’s authorities are dealing with other problems, such as the confrontation with the Salafists, who provide non-military support to the militants.

IS-Affiliated Rebels in North Caucasus Show Less Strength Than ExpectedPublication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 69April 8, 2016 By: Mairbek Vatchagaev Two terrorist attacks recently took place in Dagestan. On March 29, a police officer was killed in an attack on a Ministry of Interior troop convoy in Novy Khushet, a Makhachkala suburb (see EDM, April 1). The next day, March 30, police attempted to stop a car in the village of Sirtych in Dagestan’s Tabasaran district, and the car blew up. One police officer died in the explosion. A group of militants under the command of Abudtin Khanmagomedov took responsibility for both attacks. Six months earlier, Khanmagomedov pledged allegiance to the so-called “Islamic State” (IS). The authorities suspect Khanmagomedov’s group, also known as Yuzhnaya (Southern), organized the attack on tourists at Derbent’s historical Naryn Kala fortress in December 2015 (Fedpress.ru, April 4).The insurgents call their group the Southern Sector of the Velayat Dagestan, which was called the Derbent jamaat after the creation of the Caucasus Emirate. The Derbent jamaat was among the first groups in Dagestan to side with Rustam Asilderov (a.k.a. Amir Abu Muhammad al-Kadari) when he seceded from the Caucasus Emirate. Asilderov was the rebel amir of Dagestan when he left the Caucasus Emirate and pledged allegiance to the IS’s so-called “caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (Grani.ru, June 25, 2015). The IS leadership in the Middle East was apparently informed about the explosions in southern Dagestan quite quickly (Gazeta.ru, March 31), which suggests the southern jamaat of Dagestan is in charge of keeping the region connected to the outside world.The Russian security services feel the urge to publicize that they have solved crimes and eliminated suspects. However, as is often the case, government officials tend to announce the killing of militants and connect them to recent attacks, whether or not they were actually involved. Thus, it was not surprising that the police detained 23-year-old Nariman Bashirov (a.k.a. Abdulla) the day after the attack on the military convoy. The police said Bashirov was on their wanted list in connection with an attack on police in April 2014. According to the officials, Bashirov was a member of the Derbent jamaat for the past five years (Kavkazsky Uzel, March 31).The group of militants that included Bashirov was reportedly led by Abu Yasir (Gasan Abdullaev). Although the government says Bashirov is only a suspect, it is clear the government will charge him with involvement in the March 29 attack on the convoy. Aside from that attack on the interior ministry vehicles, the police claim to have formidable evidence against Bashirov related to other cases, accusing him of having attacked police in the forest between the villages of Darvag and Ghejukh on April 8, 2014. One police officer was killed and two wounded in that attack. In June 2015, Bashirov reportedly participated in the murder of a school teacher in the village of Jalgan. In September 2015, Bashirov allegedly took part in the murder of Zagidin and Aminat Askerov as well as their guest, Akhadullakh Novruzbekov, in the village of Rubas. The suspect reportedly participated in the killing of border guard Muradali Gajiakhmedov at Derbent’s Naryn Kala fortress on December 30, 2015. The police also suspect Bashirov of murdering 20-year-old Arsen Abasov to steal his car, and so on (Kommersant, March 31).This undoubtedly is not the full list of Bashirov’s crimes, which means that regardless of his participation in the latest terrorist attack, he faces a life sentence. The only strange feature of the story is that the police managed to arrest the suspect without firing a shot:





they caught him off guard when he stopped by an auto parts shop. Police officers dragged him out of the shop and put him in the trunk of the police car. Such suspects, who have no chances of escaping life in prison, usually fight to the end because they do not want to end up behind bars. Bashirov’s arrest may help the police uncover the network of militants connected to him, since he was not an ordinary militant. This might put Amir Abu Yasir’s entire group of at risk.The fact that the IS took responsibility for the Dagestani militants’ attacks does not mean the Middle Eastern organization actually played a role in it. Like the Caucasus Emirate in the past, the IS will claim responsibility for all attacks in the North Caucasus, regardless of who actually carried them out (Kavpolit.com, March 30).The IS has no links to the North Caucasus other than via the Internet. Hence, the connection between the North Caucasian militants and the IS will be disrupted as soon as the authorities locate the militants who send reports to the Middle East electronically. So far, IS-affiliated insurgents in the region have launched only sporadic and isolated attacks. They apparently do not have the same vision the Caucasus Emirate had. The arrival of the IS in the North Caucasus, which appeared to pose a serious challenge to Russia, has apparently turned out to be less frightening than expected. If the tactics and concepts of the IS-affiliated rebels in the North Caucasus do not change during the coming spring and summer, the region’s rebels might be disappointed in the new organization and try to revive the Caucasus Emirate.Following the terrorist attacks at the end of March, residents of Dagestan saw several counterterrorist operations. According to the National Antiterrorist Committee, the authorities introduced a counterterrorist operation regime in Kurakh district to try and uncover a rebel cell in the area (Runews24.ru, April 5).The counterterrorist operation regime in Derbent has been in place since March 2, but it has had little success in tracking the rebels down. The police only reported that they found a militant hideout near the village of Zidyan-Kazmalyar. The IS has so far failed to show strength in the North Caucasus. At the same time, the Russian government has not managed to destroy the top IS commanders in the region, which suggests more fighting lies ahead.

Insurgent Violence in Dagestan Continues Despite Rift Between Supporters of Caucasus Emirate and Islamic StatePublication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 64April 1, 2016 By: Mairbek Vatchagaev In the evening of March 29, two trucks from the Provisional Operative Group of the Russian Interior Ministry were blown up at the 831st

kilometer marker of the Kavkaz federal highway. The attack took place near Dagestan’s Uitash airport and the village of Novy Khushet. One police officer was killed and two injured in the explosion (Riadagestan.ru, March 29). Independent sources in Dagestan reported that four servicemen were injured, not two (Chernovik.net, March 29).The bombed vehicles included a Ural truck, designed to carry large groups of people, and a UAZ sport utility vehicle (SUV); the interior ministry convoy was carrying a total of 26 servicemen. Two bombs exploded near the vehicles. The servicemen, who were from Krasnoyarsk, were traveling from Dagestan’s Karabudakhkent district to the city of Kaspiisk (Rosbalt.ru, March 29).Moscow has apparently not abandoned the practice of dispatching police forces from other regions of Russia to the North Caucasus, especially to Chechnya and Dagestan. While the Russian government claims the situation in the North Caucasus is improving, it also continues sending police and military forces to the region to assure stability. The forces





Russia uses to keep the North Caucasus under control come from all over the country, including Siberia and the Russian Far East. The government started dispatching Russians from other regions to the North Caucasus on temporary six-month shifts during the second Russian-Chechen war, and has continued to do so ever since. Each unit usually controls a checkpoint or a village and operates without consulting the local police. The authorities in Dagestan complain that the republic has an insufficient number of police officers. In Chechnya, there are 115 servicemen per 10,000 people, which is twice the ratio of police officers to the population compared to Dagestan, where it is 54 per 10,000. The disparity continued even after the government relocated ten provisional departments—an estimated 1,100 servicemen—from Chechnya to Dagestan. Overall, Dagestan hosts 2,000 police officers from other Russian regions, while the republic’s own police forces total about 17,000 people (Expert.ru, November 20, 2012).The regional Federal Security Service (FSB) forces and FSB officers sent from other Russian regions are not included in those figures. The Ministry of Interior troops that provide support for the FSB operations are also excluded from those statistics.The militants who attacked the convoy apparently knew that the targeted servicemen came from Krasnoyarsk. Normally, local police accompany convoys of troops from other regions, but this time, no locals were present (Svopi.ru, March 30).An attack involving the death of just one officer and the wounding of two others would normally not warrant much attention, but this was the first attack on a military convoy in Dagestan in three years. The last time such an incident took place was in 2013, when there were two attacks on convoys in Dagestan, including one targeting an interior ministry convoy on the road between Khasavyurt and Babayurt, on October 24, 2013. Attacks on convoys by the armed Islamist underground movement have become increasingly sporadic. On August 22, 2015, unknown attackers in the village of Novy Khushet called a police officer out of his home and opened fire. The officer was wounded, while a relative who left the house with him was killed (Kavkazsky Uzel, August 22, 2015).The latest attack on the convoy took place near an airport heavily guarded by local police and police forces from other Russian regions. The bomb used was clearly quite powerful, as it practically destroyed the armored UAZ and caused severe damage to the partially armored truck. It probably had the force of dozens of kilograms of TNT. Given the recent suicide bombing in southern Dagestan’s Derbent region on February 15, it appears that the rebels have started striking different parts of the republic. However, it is too early to say whether the underground movement has adapted to the new situation in Dagestan, where the Islamist underground movement has split into two groups—one made up of followers of the Caucasus Emirate, and a larger one made up of the supporters of the Islamic State. Since the Islamic State arrived in the North Caucasus, the number of attacks in the region has fallen. It is unclear how the Islamic State’s representative in the region, Rustam Asildarov (a.k.a. Amir Abu Muhammad Kadarsky), justifies his appointment given his failure to organize any high-profile attacks in the area. Likely, both the Islamic State and the Caucasus Emirate will claim responsibility for the attack on the military convoy, in order to present themselves as a real force that can attack government forces in the republic.In any case, the attack near the airport indicates how tense the situation in Dagestan is and how conflicts along political, ethnic and religious fault lines may intensify. The radical Islamist underground movement, however, remains the primary generator of instability in the republic.

Government and Religious Authorities Disagree on Causes of Radicalization in the “Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of WarCdW Intelligence to Rent of 9 02/05/2023



North CaucasusPublication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 67April 6, 2016 By: Valery Dzutsati On March 23–24, the Public Council of the North Caucasian Federal District held a conference in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria. The primary purpose of the conference was to work out ways to prevent the spread of religion-based radicalism in the North Caucasus. Only officially approved religious leaders were represented at the conference, but the differences between them still were quite evident. Some religious figures even contradicted themselves. For example, the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of Pyatigorsk and Cherkessia, Feofilakt, first said that the way of life in the North Caucasus has always been open to inter-ethnic and inter-faith dialogue. The Russian Orthodox cleric then asserted that globalization was posing dangers to the culture and traditions of the region’s small ethnic group and that certain unnamed foreign forces were using globalization in their own interests (Skfo.gov.ru, March 23). It was unclear how the inherent openness of North Caucasians to other cultures was incompatible with globalization.The North Caucasus is one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the world and, thus, locals have been exposed to cultural diversity for a long time. The leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, however, advance a view that is strikingly similar to the position of the Russian state. Moscow traditionally views foreign influences on its periphery as a threat. And Moscow is especially concerned about the Muslim-majority regions in the North Caucasus, which have increasingly become culturally distinct from the rest of Russia.One particular point of contention among the conference participants was the government’s involvement in religious affairs. The dean of the Department of Eastern Languages and Cultures at Pyatigorsk State Linguistic Institute, Ibragim Ibragimov asked: “Why do young people in Russia choose the path of radicalism even though religion is given a lot of attention, the state helps religious groups, freedom of conscience is implemented? Why do young people end up fighting in the war-torn Middle Eastern countries? Many of our brothers and sisters are fighting in the ranks of terrorists and die there. But what for? Maybe because of their false understanding of religion? I do not want to discuss the sincerity of their intentions, because only the Almighty knows about them. But such a problem exists.” A civil activist from Ingushetia, Movlad-Girey Dzagiev, however, retorted that the core problem is precisely the government’s attempts to control religion. “There are more than 100 tariqas [orders] in Islam, and new teachings also appear. But who is the judge of those developments? The existing religious structures, which are completely fused with the government, judge them. In my opinion, such a merger of the religious and secular authorities is completely unacceptable. Such coalescence undermines the moral foundations of society. Religion must act on its own. Instead, the authorities feed and tame religious movements—and, accordingly, the religious authorities do not criticize any of the government’s actions” (Kavkazskaya Politika, March 27).Some experts have pointed to the government’s support for some religious teachings and its suppression of all others as the cause of destabilization in the North Caucasus. The majority of Muslims in the North Caucasus have traditionally been the adherents of Sufism. The Salafist school of Islam, however, has become increasingly popular among the locals. Part of the reason for the change is that the Sufi religious leaders are often so well connected to the authorities that ordinary Muslims equate them with the government. The Salafists have much less in common with government officials, and thus, many Muslims have started to regard Salafism as morally superior and non-corrupt.Experts often miss yet another side of the issue: why do Muslims who are disappointed





with Sufism switch to Salafism, instead of becoming more secular? While some cases of secularization probably happen from time to time, the rise of Salafism and its increasing political importance indicate that the most active parts of the Muslim community often end up in the Salafist camp. Apparently, secularization is a less attractive option for disappointed Sufi Muslims than Salafism. The reason for this phenomenon may be connected to politics. Secular institutions are in crisis and do not provide adequate avenues for channeling the social and political grievances of disenfranchised young people. Indirect evidence of this is the fact that many of the radical Salafists are, in fact, well-educated and politically active people.Instead of political liberalization, however, Russian activists propose moving in the direction of greater government control over religion. Russian nationalists like Valery Korovin, an activist with the Eurasian Movement and scholar of “conservative research” at Moscow State University, said that the registration of religious groups in Russia is too liberal and should become stricter. Stricter registration laws, according to Korovin, would allow the state to weed out the “wrong” religious organizations (Kavkazskaya Politika, March 27).While discussing the causes of religious radicalization in the North Caucasus, the authorities and official religious leaders carefully avoid the political aspect of the problem, even though it is not hard to see. Although religious radicals use religious rhetoric, they almost always voice political concerns that go beyond religion. It is only logical to suggest that religious radicalization is related to the political issues in the Russian Federation and, in particular, in the North Caucasus, where Moscow and its representatives in the republics severely restrict secular ways of expressing political discontent and promoting political change.

Number of Georgian Citizens Who Leave to Join Islamic State Has Abruptly DroppedPublication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 69April 8, 2016 By: Giorgi MenabdeOn March 29, the deputy head of the Georgian State Security Service, Levan Izoria, briefed a joint session of three parliamentary committees: defense and security, human rights and legal affairs (Civil Georgia, March 29).Normally, the State Security Service’s annual report to the parliament primarily assesses risks connected to Russian activities in Georgia. And this year, the report was titled “The Occupied Territories and Presence of Foreign Military Forces There as the Main Challenge for the State Security Service.” While delivering his remarks last week, however, Izoria also extensively covered the government’s efforts at fighting the terrorist threat—an issue explicitly explored in the report as well. In particular, he addressed the outflow of Georgian citizens from Pankisi Gorge, Kvemo Kartli and Ajaria to the Middle East to fight for the Islamic State (IS) (see EDM, December 1, 2015).Out of a population of 3.6 million, 14 percent of Georgian citizens identified themselves as Muslims during the last census. Chechen-Kists from Pankisi and ethnic-Georgian Ajars are Sunni while the ethnic-Azerbaijani population of the Kvemo Kartli region is Shia (Georgiatoday.ge, March 29).Izoria told legislators that the number of Georgian citizens who go to fight for the IS “rapidly decreased in the period between August 2015, when the State Security Service was separated from the Ministry of Interior, and December 2015,” as compared to the previous year. “As a result of our preventive steps, in the recent period, unlike the previous period, there has actually been no outflow of Georgian citizens” to the Middle East, Izoria





asserted (Georgiatoday.ge, March 29).The deputy head of the Georgian State Security Service added that amendments to the Criminal Code, which were passed by the parliament in January 2015, on the recommendation of the interior ministry, helped the agency to stop the recruitment of militants. The amendments significantly increased penalties for individuals who join “illegal armed groups” abroad as well as individuals who recruit them on Georgian territory and help them to travel to Syria and Iraq (RFI, January 17, 2015).Levan Izoria told the deputies that “during the reporting period, the security services prevented 40 attempts by Georgian citizens to leave the country to join extremist groups.” He also stated that the authorities blocked entry to 1,014 foreigners intent on spreading radicalism and seeking to recruit new militants in Georgia. At the same time, the official admitted that “there are up to 50 Georgian citizens in Syria and Iraq,” fighting for extremist organizations. Nonetheless, the State Security Service’s March 2016 report says that Georgian government agencies “have information on those individuals and will prosecute them according to the existing laws, should they return to Georgia.” The report points out that “although Georgia is not among the countries with a high risk of terrorist attacks, challenges remain, including the challenge of radicalization.” Moreover, the Islamic State group has made some recruitment inroads in certain parts of the country (Civil Georgia, March 29).The report emphasizes the “decisive” importance of cooperation with foreign intelligence services, including the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the United Kingdom’s MI6 and the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). This cooperation has allowed Tbilisi to compile comprehensive lists of potential terrorist threats to “both Georgia and the international community,” Izoria said (Georgiatoday.ge, March 29).Probably in part thanks to such information sharing, the US carried out a successful attack, at the beginning of March, against the jihadist group led in Syria by one of the most notorious militant commanders from the Pankisi Gorge, Omar al-Shishani (Tarkhan Batirashvili). Many observers regard Omar al-Shishani as one of the most influential IS commanders. The militant’s father, Timur Batirashvili, who lives in the village of Birkiani, in Pankisi Gorge, says that his son was not killed in the US attack but was seriously wounded (RFE/RL, March 10).An expert on the Caucasus, Mamuka Areshidze, said that the report of the Georgian State Security Service as a whole accurately reflects the scope of the terrorism threat and the outflow of extremists to the Islamic State. However, according to the expert, Ajaria is under increased risk now. “A year ago, I was certain about the source of the largest flow of recruits from Georgia to ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant—another common name for the IS group] being in Pankisi Gorge, where the Chechen-Kists live. However, the situation is changing. According to information I have, ISIL’s recruiters are quite active in Ajaria. Hence, we should pay attention to that region of our country,” Areshidze said (Author’s interview, April 1).The expert also confirmed that, as a result of the Georgian security services’ activities, “the majority of the ISIL emissaries on the territory of Georgia were placed under arrest, ran away or ceased their activities.” But the risk has not disappeared, he warned. And Georgian extremists looking to join the IS simply seek alternate routes. One new option has been to fly from Tbilisi to Kyiv to Istanbul because the direct flight from Tbilisi to Istanbul has become too difficult. Some Georgian Azerbaijanis from Kvemo Kartli first travel to Turkish Cyprus and then attempt to reach Syria or Iraq from there, he explained (Author’s interview, April 1).Nino Burchaladze, a journalist with the weekly magazine Kviris Palitra who closely





follows developments in the Pankisi Gorge, noted in an April 1 interview with this author, “I cannot say that the number of Georgian citizens who have gone to fight for ISIL in the past six months equals zero. However, the security services have actually sealed the border with Turkey, where they established serious screening procedures for individuals who come under suspicion.” Still, the journalist said she would not exclude the possibility that Georgian citizens still go to Syria and Iraq “via third countries where they pretend to travel for work-related purposes.”Burchaladze thinks that the Islamic State’s latest military setbacks in the Middle East also decreased the number of willing recruits among the Georgian citizens. “The US, Russia, and Syrian and Iraqi armies, along with the Kurdish armed groups, all attack ISIL,” she said. “Hence, young radical Muslims who live in Georgia do not see ISIL in a romantic light as they did before” (Author’s interview, April 1).Thus, effectively stopping the outflow of jihadist recruits from Georgia and other countries will require more than just efforts by the security services. A comprehensive strategy, if Burchaladze is correct, will apparently also depend on continued military strikes against IS forces on the ground in Syria and Iraq.

Ingushetia’s Authorities Face Double Threat of Militants Returning From Syria and Salafis at HomePublication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 68April 7, 2016 By: Mairbek Vatchagaev From the outside, the situation in Ingushetia appears deceptively quiet. But in reality, the republic is not nearly as peaceful as, for example, Adygea, where, despite tensions, no open conflict takes place. Public confrontations are common in Ingushetia, on the other hand. Also, the Islamist underground movement in the republic could still be reinvigorated. On March 19, the Ingushetian branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced the lifting of the counterterrorist operation regime that had been in effect in the republic since 2014. The FSB said the special regime was being lifted because of the absence of a terrorist threat in Ingushetia’s towns and villages. Is this a complete victory for the FSB? Not really. And realizing this, Ingushetian authorities warned the republic’s residents that “the counterterrorist operation regime is still in place in the forested mountainous areas of Nazran, Sunzha and Malgobek districts because there is information about movements of militants in those areas. Until a special announcement, temporary restrictions and counterterrorist measures will be in place” (Mk.ru, March 20).Some areas of Nazran and Sunzha districts can be described as forested mountains but nothing even remotely resembling mountains exists in Ingushetia’s Malgobek district, which is in the northern part of the republic. Ingushetia consists only of four districts and, according to the government’s announcement, the regime of heightened security continues in three of them because of the information about “movements of militants.” Thus, the public statements of officials about lifting the counterterrorist regime in Ingushetia should be seen as little more than a PR campaign for the Russian media.The activities of Ingushetia’s Sharia jamaat were substantially undercut back in 2010, when the Russian security services managed to capture its leader, Amir Magas. His trial took place in the city of Rostov-on-Don because the authorities were afraid to hold it in Ingushetia. Magas was sentenced to two life terms in prison (Regnum, July 9, 2015).One of the last Ingush rebel amirs eliminated by the Russian security services was Beslan Makhauri, who was killed on October 31, 2015 (Interfax.ru, October 31, 2015). Shortly before his death, Makhauri managed to swear an oath of allegiance to the so-called caliph of the Islamic State (IS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Makhauri’s oath made the territory of





Ingushetia part of the IS “Caliphate.” Some members of the Caucasus Emirate in Ingushetia did not agree to join the IS and made this known to the public via the Sharia jamaat’s website (Hunafa.com, September 5, 2015). Those who control that website are still hoping the Caucasus Emirate’s followers will prevail in Ingushetia. The website, however, posts Islamic texts instead of news of what happening in the republic.Since 2015, Ingushetia’s leadership has had to deal with a new headache—IS recruits who have tried to travel to Syria to join the militants. During Ingushetian Governor Yunus-Bek Yevkurov’s last meeting with relatives of those who left the republic for Syria, officials said that 200 Ingush were fighting in Syria. The authorities said that they determined the exact location of 99 Ingush militants and were looking for the rest (YouTube, March 3).Multiple arrests of people who went to Syria and returned to the North Caucasus indicate that the situation in the republic is far from normal. The authorities have recently launched a criminal investigation against a 22-year-old resident of the republic who went to Syria in July 2013 and fought alongside the Islamic State. The authorities charged the suspect with participation in an armed formation in a foreign country. The penalty for that crime is five to ten years in prison, but if the suspect voluntarily ends his participation in the armed group and gives up his weapons, the charges against him may be dropped (Kavkazsky Uzel, March 28). In Ingushetia, the authorities detain returnees from Syria practically every week, according to news reports from the republic.The authorities of Ingushetia should be concerned about residents of the republic who are fighting in the Middle East. The number of Ingush militants in the Middle East is much greater than the number of members the Ingush jamaat had during 2004–2010, its heyday. Even during the Ingush jamaat’s best days, it numbered only several dozen people. Hence, the 200 Ingush militants fighting in Syria pose a serious challenge to the government of Ingushetia against the backdrop of the slow stabilization process in the republic since 2010. The actual number of Ingushetians fighting in Syria may be even higher than officially announced.Ingushetia’s authorities are dealing with other problems, such as the confrontation with the Salafists, who provide non-military support to the militants. The leaders of the local Salafists, Isa Tsechoev and Khamzat Chumakov, have gained such great influence in the society that the government cannot afford to stop them from preaching or shut down their mosque, which thousands of Muslims attend every Friday. The Salafist mosque and the militants returning from Syria are the two main points of concern for the republican authorities. The authorities and the security services realize that the Salafists in Ingushetia are strong and influential. The republic is still in transition, however; and the next year or two will be crucial for the future of Ingushetia. By then, it will become clear whether the Salafists and the government will clash with each other or reach an agreement.




Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 3-16-CE-20

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