Russia steels for return of hundreds of jihadists drawn to fight for Isil
Dagestan’s young terror recruits may continue their war on home soil
LAST December, Amir received a message from a local number he did not recognise. It said: “Your son has become a martyr.”
It was news he had been dreading for months, since his son unexpectedly vanished from the family home in Russia’s north Caucasus republic of Dagestan.
“I don’t even know where he got a passport,” said Amir, did not give his real name for security reasons. “He called from Turkey to say he would be studying for a while and would not be in touch. That’s the last time we spoke to him.”
In fact, the young man had travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), following in the footsteps of hundreds, if not thousands, of others from this corner of Russia.
The area’s position as a key supplier of foreign fighters to the terrorist group was highlighted last month when three former Soviet citizens, including two Russians, blew themselves up in a coordinated suicide attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, killing 45 people.
The attackers did not include Amir’s son – who, his family now believe, may still be alive in Iraq. But at least one bomber, 24-year-old Vadim Osmanov, was from the same region of southern Dagestan.
No one knows how many Russian and former Soviet citizens have joined Isil. The anti-terrorist centre of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose grouping of former Soviet countries, has put the figure at 5,000. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said last October that 7,000 Russian and former Soviet citizens had joined the jihadists.
But independent experts say it is almost impossible to come by accurate figures – particularly as many Russian speakers have joined rival outfits such as al-Nusra, which was formerly aligned with al-Qaeda.
Isil’s command structure is notoriously opaque, but experts believe it fields at least three exclusively Russian-speaking “Caucasian” battalions of about 150 men each. They are said to be predominantly based in Mosul, Isil’s stronghold in Iraq, enjoying a degree of privileged autonomy.
“They have a reputation for being pretty fearless fighters, which is why they move quite quickly up the hierarchy,” said Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya, an expert on the North Caucasus with the International Crisis group.
The fighters include some of the most notorious figures in Isil, such as Omar Shishani (born Tarkhan Batirashvili), 30, an ethnic Chechen from Georgia, who was described as Isil’s “minister of defence” and was killed in battle earlier this month.
Anatoly Zemlyanka, a Siberian-born “Jihadi John”, gained infamy when he beheaded a fellow Russian citizen in an execution video released last December.
The attack on Istanbul airport is believed to have been co-ordinated by Akhmed “One-handed” Chatayev, a 36-year-old from Chechnya who, like Shishani, is considered a commander.
Rising from the Caspian coastal plane to the towering Caucasus Mountains on the border with Azerbaijan, Dagestan feels more Middle Eastern than European. The major cities of Makhachaka-tivities la and Derbent are dotted with mosques rather than churches. Many, though by no means all, women wear the hijab, and alcohol is available, though discreetly so.
Throughout the 2000s, jihadists loyal to a the “Caucasus Emirate” launched attacks across Russia’s north Caucasus republics. As recently as 2011, they were behind suicide bombings in Moscow.
But as the war in Syria intensified, Isil recruiters started luring potential recruits away from the Caucasus Emirate – demoralised by a ruthless Russian crackdown – to fight “five-star jihad” in the Middle East.
Now, as Isil loses ground in the Middle East, the potential return of local fighters is worrying the Russian government. Russian security forces carry out “special operations” in Dagestan’s rural areas almost weekly and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, has said that his agency is monitoring 220 individuals identified as potential suicide bombers.
“We have documentary confirmation that leaders of groups sheltering in a number of Middle Eastern countries are planning to continue their terrorist acwho and to try to give new impetus to the North Caucasus insurgency,” he said.
Experts point to a myriad of reasons for the continuing radicalisation of Dagestan youth, including unemployment, failing public services, and the brutality of Russian counter-insurgency forces.
Officials blame the growing influence of Salafi preachers, a conservative branch of Islam that has emerged as a rival to the region’s traditional Sufi faith.
Abdurakhim Hadji Magomedov, a Salafi imam in Novosasitli, a conservative village in Dagestan, said he was horrified by violence and would advise no one to even think about going to fight, either in Syria or “in the forest” in Russia.
But he said the crackdown had been counter-productive. “Those who are not Sufi, they call Wahabists,” he said. “And since very few Sufis have gone to fight, it allows them to say that all Wahabists are terrorists.”
Instead, he points to deeper historical roots. “Dagestan did not voluntarily become part of Russia. Russia is an empire, and Dagestan is a colony,” he said.