Largely out of sight of the mainstream media, militant
Jihadist groups continue to seek to create a caliphate in the Caucasus, in
south-west Russia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. The al-Qaeda-affiliated
Caucasus Emirate group was officially formed in 2007, originating from the
Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and Caucasus Front organisations, and also
includes the Vilayat Dagestan (Dagestan Governorate) of the Islamic State.
Today, the group is made up of a small group of militants in
Dagestan, loyal to Abu Usman Gimrinsky (also
known as Magomed Suleymanov), who took over as emir in April after the death of
Ali Abu Muhammad al-Dagestani (Aliaskhab Alibulatovich Kebekov).
Gordon Hahn, advisory board member at the US-based Geostrategic
Forecasting Corp., said recently: “The Caucasus Emirate has been greatly
weakened, with a decline beginning in 2012 first due to the emigration of
fighters and potential recruits to Syria and Iraq,” and those remaining have
yet to accept the Islamic State’s (IS) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – who Abu Usman
frequently calls an ‘imposter’ – as their Caliph.
By 2014, the number of attacks carried out by the Caucasus
Emirate had fallen to less than 25-33% of the number attained at its peak in
2010-11.
“This year, Caucasus Emirate emirs representing an
overwhelming majority of the mujahedin defected to IS/Daesh and recently the
latter accepted them into its fold as the Vilayat Kavkaz (Caucasus Welayat or
Governate) of the Islamic State (CWIS) with its leader being the former emir of
the Caucasus Emirate’s most powerful network, the Dagestan Vilayat, Abu
Muhammad Kadarsky (Rustam Asildarov),” Hahn said.
Danger in numbers
Therefore, it is now this unified CWIS that poses the greatest
threat in the region, but while Russia, having defeated Islamist groups in the
latter of the Chechen wars, is well aware of this, it appears, publicly at
least, to have done little more than ban selected Islamic literature and adopt minor
punitive measures to prevent the spread of jihadism.
These steps, according to Mairbek Vatchagaev, Co-editor in
chief of the Caucasus Survey and Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation, are
misguided. “Russia perceives
the jihadists in the North Caucasus as some
group that manipulated from abroad. It is naïve and even criminal to do so,” he
said. He added that these do not take into account
people’s longing for a feeling of inclusion, and by ostracising Islam as a
whole, more young people are pushed towards jihadism.
Hahn said that he expects that the formation of the CWIS
will lead to a rise in the number of suicide attacks in the Caucasus
in the next year. “Moreover, whatever is left of the original Caucasus Emirate may
seek to one-up the CWIS and radicalise its tactics, returning to the use of
female suicide bombers and more attacks on civilians.”
He added: “It remains to be seen what if any new measures
are being undertaken by the Kremlin, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAK)
and FSB to counter this likely growing IS/Daesh threat, which has just emerged
in the last few months and weeks. It cannot be excluded that Moscow will
attempt to strengthen counter-terrorism co-operation with the West, given their
common interest and the Kremlin’s ability on occasion to compartmentalise as
demonstrated in its role in the questionable and risky, albeit, Iran nuclear
agreement despite the ongoing conflict over Ukraine.”
Missing the point
While the spread of jihadism in the Caucasus is by and large
overlooked by most mainstream media channels, Vatchagaev said he believes that many
of the analysts who do cover the North Caucasus “assume that the Islamic State
will be presented in the region by those who return from Syria and Iraq.”
He argued that this is not the case. “No one is coming back.
Those who have been in the North Caucasus have themselves become part of the
system created by al-Baghdadi in the Middle East,” adding that Moscow must
accept that the Islamic State has a cell in Russia in the form of the CWIS, the
threat of which should not be underestimated. “Islamic State does not have any
public framework restrictions in achieving its goals, and is therefore far more
dangerous than the former Caucasus Emirate.”
In Russia,
the largest concentrations of Muslims are in the northern Caucasus, Tatarstan,
Bashkiria and Moscow, while Islam has a
significant influence in the Volga region
thanks to radical Uzbek and Kazakh groups. Tatars are also involved in such
movements, in an effort to realise the unity of the Turkic world.
It is though, not just Russia that should be concerned
about the spread of Islamic extremism. “I suspect that the other post-Soviet
state to be most affected by the Caucasus Emirate and CWIS threats is Azerbaijan, where the Caucasus Emirate already
has undertaken attempted attacks, as in the 2012 Eurovision plot to attack Baku,” said Hahn. CWIS
emir Abu Muhammad was a leading figure in the Dagestan Vilayat, which organised
the plot.
Influencing an area that stretched from the Azov Sea
near the Russian border with Ukraine,
down to Abkhazia in western Georgia,
and the country’s Pankisi Gorge, and from Artezian, south of Astrakhan
down to the border with Azerbaijan,
the reach of the Caucasus jihadists was
sizeable even before the formation of the Islamic State-aligned CWIS. With
competition between it and the Caucasus Emirate likely to be fierce, the
countries neighbouring jihadist ‘territory’ in the Caucasus
must take more dramatic steps to prevent any further spread.
