"Assessment of the Russian strategy to contrast terrorism and jihadist propaganda in the North Caucasus". Janus.net, e-journal of international relations. Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 19-32 (original) (raw)
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Terrorism, violent attacks and political Islam have affected the North Caucasus since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. If in the past the Caucasus Emirate was the leading terrorist organisation in the region, since 2014 the Islamic State gained popularity and established the Vilayat Kavkaz (Caucasus Province) as part of the Caliphate exploiting the local critical socioeconomic condition and promoting the jihadist propaganda in Russian language (i.e. the magazine ‘Istok’) also thanks to the considerable presence of North Caucasian foreign fighters among the ranks of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Although currently the international coalition forces mainly defeated the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, this organisation still jeopardises the North Caucasus often identified as the most volatile and impoverished area of the Russian Federation characterised by ethnic conflicts, the rise of Salafism, stagnation, and corruption. This study aims at stressing that the Russian government has elaborated a strategy mostly based on special military operations and massive investments in tourism and logistics which can exacerbate more the precarious status quo of the region favouring the dissemination of jihadist propaganda because it does not consider the historical, sociocultural, ethnic, and religious background. The region is not exempt to jihadist propaganda and terrorism and, if the Russian government cannot financially and economically support the regional leaders or will not change its approach, terrorism and political Islam could critically influence the North Caucasus posing a dangerous menace to the stability and security of the Russian Federation and entire Eurasia.
IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS), 2018
The North Caucasus Federal District plays a double role as a buffer zone which protects Russia from external attacks in the southern borders and as an economic " bridge " between Europe and Asia directly linked to the Middle East and the Gulf countries. Always described as a volatile, unstable, underdeveloped, and dangerous region, the North Caucasus has attracted political, military, and economic interests of the Arab countries which have tried to influence the local dynamics through a religious and ideological campaign, Muslim and charity NGOs, and financial investments. In this paper, the author would like to underline the importance of the North Caucasus for the Russian Middle East policy and the Russian-Arab World relations dealing with the Arab interests perpetrated in the region to influence the socio-cultural and political environment mainly through religion and business cooperation. Also, this study considers the fact that Russia has several times described the Arab countries " strategy as a threat for the stability of the North Caucasus where the Kremlin has been fighting for decades the rise of insurgency and militant groups linked to the global terrorist network.
Islamic State Propaganda in the North Caucasus
Akhmet Yarlykapov. Islamic State Propaganda in the North Caucasus. In: Hybrid Conflicts and Information Warfare. New Labels, Old Politics. Edited by Ofer Fridman, Vitaly Kabernik, James C. Pearce. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2019. pp.213-223., 2019
The author examines the effectivness of the Islamic State's propaganda in the North Caucasus. Basing his analysis on sociological and anthropological research and surveys, he points to different propaganda methods used by the Islamic State to recruit new fighters and their astonishing level of success.
Terrorism and the North Caucasus: An Overview
The FBI has identified Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev as the prime suspects in the April 15 bombing of the Boston Marathon. Tamerlan was killed in an armed confrontation with police on April 19 and Dzhokhar was arrested later that day following a massive manhunt. The two brothers are ethnic Chechens but resided in the United States for approximately nine years; Dzhokhar is a naturalized U.S. citizen but his brother’s request for citizenship had not yet been granted at the time of his death. The Russian government alleged that the older brother had ties to militant groups in the Caucasus, and authorities are currently examining Tamerlan’s six month trip to Russia in 2012. In this background report, START reviews the modern history of terrorism by groups and individuals operating in and around the North Caucasus as investigators and analysts work to confirm or deny possible ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Islamizing an Insurgency: Considerations on Radicalization in the North Caucasus - Patrick Ambrogio
Journal of Caucasian Studies (JOCAS) / Kafkasya Calışmaları -Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 2019
This article examines the radicalization of the insurgency in Chechnya and the Northeast Caucasus during the conflict of the 1990s and 2000s. In the post-Soviet era, the separatist movement in the region shed its secular and nationalist roots and assumed a more radical and Islamist character. This research analyses whether counterinsurgency tactics employed by Russian forces contributed to the radicalization of the insurgency or if this radicalization was the result of external factors, such as the influence of foreign fighters and their ideologies hat were not native to the North Caucasus region. In the North Caucasus, the Russian Federation employed an enemy-centric approach to counterinsurgency, rather than a population-centric approach common to the United States and other Western countries. This research concludes that the presence of foreign missionaries, fighters, and ideologies were the main catalysts that caused the conflict to become religiously inspired. The internal factionalism of the independence movement also facilitated this process, with certain leaders aligning with foreign, Islamist radicals who promised to support the Chechen cause. While Russia's counterinsurgency tactics did contribute to radicalization and inflicted severe psychological trauma on the population, they were not the ultimate cause of the insurgency's transformation.
Building Stability in the North Caucasus Ways Forward for Russia and the European Union
For most people, the notion of conflict in the North Caucasus—a region within the Russian Federation, as distinct from the independent states of the South Caucasus—is synonymous with Chechnya. In reality, for centuries before the outbreak of the first Chechen war in 1994, this mountainous and economically underdeveloped area had been struggling both with conflict of identity among its local peoples and with the tensions caused by the southward extension of Russian (and later Soviet) sovereign authority. Ethnic, religious and political complexity makes it possible to interpret the region's instability from several viewpoints. Since 2001 in particular, Russia's tactic has been to cast its confrontation with local actors in terms of a struggle against terrorism fed by international and external jihadi influences. Under the banner of anti-terrorism, President Vladimir Putin's drive to solve this and all other local problems through forceful centralization has been pursued with minimal foreign involvement and, often, with all too little outside scrutiny. Even backed with the latest technology, however, and benefiting from both improvements in Russian security coordination and the help of local proxies, Putin's strategy for the North Caucasus manifestly has not worked. Terrorist violence is leaking out into other parts of Russian territory; the absence of real local reconciliation is reflected also in the dubious loyalty of Putin's local henchmen; and the region's underlying economic and social problems are being addressed only belatedly and half-heartedly. The splintering of local Islamic communities and the terrorist methods adopted by certain pro-independence groups are effects as well as causes of a vicious circle of violence. As in Iraq and elsewhere, interpretations that blame everything on incitement by global terrorist movements or, indeed, on some destructive tendency inherent in Islam itself are not only mistaken but dangerously misleading when it comes to considering the way ahead. In this Policy Paper, Neil Melvin—a former head of SIPRI's research programme on Armed Conflicts and Conflict Management—aims to correct such misunderstandings by a careful historical account of the role of the North Caucasus in earlier Russian and Soviet imperial history and of the evolution of the Russian Government's post-Soviet policies. He pays special attention to the Islamic strand in local resistance movements and in local society generally, showing that Russia's Muslims have been divided among themselves almost as sharply as any other element in the North Caucasus community. He ends by presenting recommendations for urgent shifts in policy towards the North Caucasus, aimed at two sets of actors that can perhaps do the most good in the shortest time in this troubled region: the Russian Government and the European Union and its member states. This Policy Paper represents the first output of a larger research project being conducted by SIPRI with support from the Swedish authorities on the connections between Islam, terrorism and conflict in selected non-Arab locations.