According to the Georgian press (Azaval Dasavali), the Saudi services Al Mukhabarat Al A'amah they would be behind the attempt to reorganize the Jihad in the south of Russia. The project would go through Riyadh funding to the self-proclaimed Emirate of the Caucasus, a virtual entity born in the 2007, two years before Russian President Putin declared the Second Chechen War officially closed and won.
The Emirate, as proclaimed by the rebel leader Umarov killed by the Russian services in the 2013, encloses on paper all the republics of the Caucasus inside the Russian Federation (Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Stavropol Territory and Circassia), spreading as far as Azerbaijan and part of Georgia.
The political goal would be the secession from Russia and the regional establishment of a state regulated on the Sharia.
Among the leaders of the Jihad contacted by the Saudis there would be Aslan Byutukayev and Muharram Saidov, among the few survivors of the vast clean-up operation carried out by Russian services in the last decade.
La Jihad in the Caucasus, therefore, is it still alive?
The question is legitimate if we think of the impressive list of Islamist leaders killed in combat or in "parallel operations". The latest additions to the special list are Ali Abu Muhammad al-Daghestani, Magomed Suleimanov and Kamil Saidov, all eliminated in the 2015.
In the list, whose compilation began in the first decade of the new millennium, many gentlemen devoted to international terrorism of Sunni Islamic origin appear: Chechen independence president Maskhadov, the leaders of the separatist guerrillas Shamil Basayev and Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev; Islamist leaders Abdulkhadzhiev, Vakha Arsanov, Turpla Atgieriev, Akhmed Avtorkhanov, Arbi Barayev, Moysar Barayev, Rizyan Chitgov, Lecha Dudayev, Suleiman Elmurzayev, Ruslan Gelayev, Lecha Islamov, Aslambek Ismailov, Isa Muskiyev, Abu Movsayev and Salman Raduyev.
To these are added the "foreign" leaders: in addition to the Saudi Al-Khattab, known for having founded the International Islamic Brigade and due to the presence in the war in Bosnia in the 90 years, to date Mulsim Atayev, Ilias Gorchkhanov, Rappani Khalilov, Abdul Madhzid, Rasul Makasharipov, Al-Urduni and Al Walid are killed.
We are talking about military and political leaders, with proven fighting skills and special charismatic gifts.
Why is it that despite the falcidia, the Caucasus seems ready to explode again?
It should be clarified.
Among the undoubted results developed by the Putin management in the last 16 years there is certainly the stabilization of the riotous southern region. Stabilization, not pacification, of course: talking about pacification in the Caucasus is in itself an oxymoron.
With the Second Chechen War, Moscow managed to reintegrate the territories that fell between the 1996 and the 1999 within the Federation when the First World War gave birth to the de facto independent Republic of Chechnya (with the name of Ickeria).
Three major goals have been achieved:
- as indicated above, all the main fundamentalist guerrilla leaders have been eliminated;
- in Grozny a pro-Russian government has established itself for years, whose controversial leader Ramzan Kadyrov, is part of the Kremlin's trust ring;
- the separatist movements of the neighboring republics have been strongly weakened.
Had it been for internal reasons, it is not therefore risky to suppose that starting from the 2009 the natural rebelliousness of the Caucasian regions could be considered limited to acts of insubordination and cases of physiological rebellion for a land with an Islamic majority and boiling since the time of the tsars. In other words, the North Caucasus would undoubtedly have remained Russian, but with the unsolvable questions of instability connected to it. Acts of terrorism in Russia and armed rebellions included.
The problem is that despite the defeat on the ground, Islamic fundamentalism continues to receive support from the outside. On an undoubtedly fertile social basis, the continued creation of new leadership and generous financial support favor the new development of cancer, only apparently eradicated.
Who's behind it? Even to say the Saudi Wahhabi ideology is the driving force of the Sunni jihad since the times of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and has animated the extremist ideologies of Al Qaeda first and then of the Taliban. On these historical data, it is not surprising for the news coming from Georgia.
The geopolitical protagonism of Riad in the area that unites the Maghreb to the Central Asian region is not a mystery to anyone. We have been talking about this for a year. However, the reopening of the "Caucasus front" could have important repercussions on relations between Russia and the West.
(photo: ВCРФ-AMN)
