Gulf News

Chechnya tackles Daesh propaganda

AS SMUGGLING AND OIL BUSINESSES FALTER, TERRORISTS ARE DEPENDING ON EVER-INCREASING TAXES AND TOLLS, ALIENATING THE MASSES Stories abound of Daesh putting loyal members in positions they are not qualified for. The head of medical services in one town is

- By Ben Hubbard

Authoritie­s in Russia’s predominan­tly Muslim republic of Chechnya have organised classes to stave off Daesh recruitmen­t. Thousands of Russian Muslims have joined Daesh in Syria, and some have taken senior positions.

Militancy has engulfed Russia’s North Caucasus, Dagestan in particular, following two separatist wars in neighbouri­ng Chechnya. While nearly 1,000 people are believed to have left Dagestan from Syria, the number of Chechen recruits is far lower.

Chechnya’s authoritar­ian leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, said last month that less than 500 Chechens are believed to have joined Daesh and that about 200 of them have already been killed.

To counter Daesh propaganda, Islamic clerics and government officials are holding meetings with high school and university students on how to avoid Daesh recruitmen­t, explaining that the group distorts the true meaning of the Quran.

Djamalulai­l SaidKhamza­t, deputy head of Chechen parliament’s internatio­nal relations committee, said young people from poorer families are more susceptibl­e to Daesh recruitmen­t and get lured by its propaganda videos posted online.

After the Syrian government stopped paying him, a technician who had spent two decades pumping the country’s oil received an enticing offer: do the same work for the terrorists of Daesh — starting at three times the salary.

He was soon helping to fill tanker trucks with crude oil to fund Daesh. But frequent executions of those suspected of spying and deadly air strikes by government jets made life hard, and he grew angry that the country’s resources were financing the terrorists while schools and hospitals were being shut down.

“We thought they wanted to get rid of the regime, but they turned out to be thieves,” the technician said after fleeing to this city in southern Turkey.

Daesh claims to be more than a militant group, selling itself as a government for the world’s Muslims that provides a range of services in the territory it controls.

But that statehood project is now in distress, perhaps more so than at any other time since Daesh began seizing territory in Iraq and Syria, according to a range of interviews with people who have recently fled. Under pressure from air strikes by several countries, and new ground offensives by Kurdish and Shiite militias, the terrorists are beginning to show the strain.

Citizens squeezed

Some fighters have taken pay cuts, while others have quit and slipped away. Important services have been failing because of poor maintenanc­e. And as its smuggling and oil businesses have faltered, Daesh has fallen back on ever-increasing taxes and tolls imposed on its squeezed citizens.

Those stresses could opportunit­ies for group’s many enemies, provide the but they do not point to its imminent collapse.

Ground forces ready to fight Daesh in its stronghold­s in Syria and Iraq are still lacking. And the group is adapting, keeping its internatio­nal profile high by launching foreign attacks like those that brought down a Russian airliner in Egypt and paralysed Paris. It is also investing in new affiliates in countries like Libya, where it faces little resistance.

But the promise of statehood on land it controls in Syria and Iraq remains the main factor distinguis­hing it from Al Qaida and a powerful draw for recruits from around the world.

That call to join Daesh is still going out, and having an effect, on social media and within terror circles. But its promises ring increasing­ly hollow as residents living in Daesh-controlled areas flee deprivatio­n, an intensifyi­ng barrage of air strikes and an organisati­on that many Muslims say has acted more like an organised-crime ring than their defender.

Even some residents who chose to stay when the terrorists took over are now paying smugglers to get them around checkpoint­s designed to keep them in.

“So many people are migrating,” said a teacher from the Syrian city of Deir Al Zor who fled to Turkey last month. “Daesh wants to build a new society, but they’ll end up all alone.”

When the schools run by the Syrian government closed, the teacher said she set up an informal one and kept it going when the terrorists arrived. That meant buying the baggy black gowns they forced women to wear in public and finding ways to entertain her students without music or art, both of which were forbidden.

Sometimes, they with soap, she said.

But she gave up, she said, after some activists were rounded up and executed, worried that her turn would come next.

Even as their cruelty has driven residents away, the terrorists have long recognised and acted on the need for skilled profession­als to build statelike institutio­ns.

The caliphate “is in more need than ever before for experts,

sculpted profession­als and specialist­s who can help contribute to strengthen­ing its structure and tending to the needs of their Muslim brothers,” read an appeal last year in the group’s English-language magazine, Dabiq.

Tax system

But that call has come up short, leaving the terrorists struggling to find people able to run oil equipment, fix electricit­y networks and provide medical care, former residents say.

“They don’t have profession­als, so they have to pay people to do things,” said a pharmacist from eastern Syria.

Stories abound of Daesh putting loyal members in positions they are not qualified for. The head of medical services in one town is a former constructi­on worker, residents said. The boss at an oilfield was a date merchant, according to a former employee.

In Raqqa, the National Hospital featured in a propaganda video about health services in the caliphate is all but closed because so many doctors have fled, according to an aid worker with relatives in the city. And a ban on male doctors’ treating female patients left women in one town with no doctors at all, according to the pharmacist. The terrorists tried to fill the gap by employing midwives.

Also driving people out is an onerous tax system carried out in the name of zakat, or Islamic alms. The terrorists collect, among other taxes, a yearly share of every harvest and herd of livestock, and make shopkeeper­s pay a share of their inventory. Infraction­s like failing to wear proper clothing lead to fines equal to 1 gram of gold, payable in local currency.

Fleeing has become increasing­ly difficult, as the terrorists try to keep people in.

Unable to get permission to leave, Naef Al Asaad, 55, paid a smuggler $150 per person to get 10 members of his family from the Daesh-held town of Shadadi to the Turkish border. On the way, one person stepped on a landmine, causing a blast that killed Al Asaad’s daughter, her husband, two of their children and one other relative, he said.

“Daesh would not let us leave,” Al Asaad said. “They said, ‘You are going to the infidels.’”

The group still terrifies those who have lived under it, and many who have sought refuge in southern Turkey fear that Daesh agents there will target them for criticisin­g the group. They spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Even some who had much to gain from the terrorists’ rule had little interest in staying.

The former oil technician said he had earned $150 per month from the Syrian government before his salary was cut in March. Daesh then hired him to work in the same oilfield, he said, first paying him $450 per month, then $675.

In demand

He said they paid him well because they had few others who could do his job. They even caught him smoking at work once — a punishable offence for the terrorists — but let him off with a warning.

But it bothered him that his children had no school to attend, and he worried that he could be forced to work in Iraq. So he paid a smuggler to get him, his wife and their three children to Turkey. They recently arrived in Greece by boat, hoping to continue to Germany.

Another technician who worked in a natural gasfield said he and his colleagues kept working when the terrorists seized their plant, carrying out orders their boss received from Daesh.

“Our job was to open this and connect that,” he said. “Who is in charge? We don’t ask.”

But the plant had been damaged in the war, and instead of producing refined gas products like they used to, they sent a much smaller amount of unrefined gas to the Syrian government. He did not know what the terrorists received in return.

Like many, he said that the terrorists’ promises of statehood had failed to materialis­e.

“Public support is important, and they don’t have it,” he said. “People heard good words from them but didn’t see anything good come out of it.”

 ?? AP ?? Under strain An undated image of fighters linked to Daesh marching in Raqqa in Syria. Under pressure from air strikes by several countries, and new ground offensives by Kurdish and Shiite militias, the terrorists are beginning to show the strain.
AP Under strain An undated image of fighters linked to Daesh marching in Raqqa in Syria. Under pressure from air strikes by several countries, and new ground offensives by Kurdish and Shiite militias, the terrorists are beginning to show the strain.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Arab Emirates