For Mubariz Ahmadoghlu, Chairman of the Political Innovations and Technologies Center, there are double standards in the fight against international terrorists. Ahmadoghlu says that the Muslim world has often announced that Islam is a peaceful religion, "but the West ignored this. Among the people who wanted to solve the problem by means of arms were also terrorists.
Khattab was a result of that era," Ahmadoghlu said. These are more than academic considerations for Azerbaijanis, whose relations with Armenia and with Iran remain tense. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia signed a pact on April 30 to reinforce regional defenses against terrorism. Yet Azerbaijanis often sympathize with yearnings for freedom. For ordinary Bakuvians, then, feelings about Khattab can be mixed too — and it seems hard to find someone who will call him a terrorist, despite his record of insurrections and attacks.
One city resident, year-old Tarana, says that Khattab surprised her. For Tarana it's difficult to decide if he was bad or good. But Khattab was fighting against armed people. So, I don't think that he was a terrorist.
Log in. Remember Me. Forgot password? Khattab himself had travelled to Chechnya with a handful of associates in , having made the decision to take part in the conflict following a request by Sheik Fathi, a Jordanian Chechen militant who had travelled to the North Caucasus in the early s. Others, although not necessarily fighters, also travelled to the region around the same time as Khattab. His vision of radical Islam was shaped by this experience. Reports suggest he was born in the Saudi town of Qassim, and after arriving in Chechnya in , he quickly established contact with Sheikh Fathi, Khattab and Chechens sympathetic to his view of radical Islam.
However they, alongside al-Saif, were also connected by their shared conceptualisation of a strand of Wahhabism that stemmed from their background in towns and tribal areas of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. In total approximately eighty foreign fighters took part in hostilities in the first Russo-Chechen war, although these figures fluctuated as other conflicts in parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa drew funds and jihadi volunteers.
Rather than a source of radicalisation then, the role played by Arab volunteers up until the end of the first war was peripheral, focusing upon organising networks and undertaking small scale military operations. In fact, they played a minor role shaping the Islamic dimension of the first war. Of course, the interwar years are crucial when considering the influx of Arab combatants to the North Caucasus. Under the guidance of Khattab, Sheikh Fathi and al-Saif, finances, fighters and a new doctrine of political Islam began to emerge.
As a result, dozens if not hundreds of foreign fighters travelled to the region, often to train in camps, but also to develop their knowledge of radical Islam.
Nevertheless, in the period between and , the disassociation of the Qadiriyya tariqa from what may be called the moderate Chechen leadership linked to Aslan Maskhadov provided an important shift which created divisions within the ruling groups after Alongside this, confrontations occurred between Maskhadov, his allies, and a number of increasingly militant Chechen field commanders and ideologists such as Shamil Basayev, Movladi Udugov and Salman Raduyev.
Reports suggest that around foreign fighters have been involved in both wars. While this points to a significant increase in foreign fighters in the period after , in comparison with the figure of eighty in the first conflict, it should be remembered that a considerable number of these may actually come from the Chechen Diaspora community. Moreover, a good number of these fighters arrived in the inter-war period, as Khattab, al-Saif and local Chechens aligned their radical beliefs with an emerging Salafi movement.
It was in this period from that Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, Movladi Udugov and Shamil Basayev helped to shape the role of the Arab Mujahideen, recognising their importance as financiers, fighters and ideologues. Thus, rather than radicalisation, the presence of the Arab mujahideen, the way in which it was hosted by elements of the Chechen separatist movement, and its own increasing power illustrate a far more complicated picture - one that has shaped foreign influence and the Chechen separatist movement in a dynamic and changing way.
The death of Abu Hafs in Khasavyurt in neighbouring Dagestan seems to indicate the success of pro-Kremlin forces in isolating and eliminating foreign fighters in so-called "special operations". Nevertheless, Abu Hafs was but one in a succession of figures that pro-Kremlin forces had targeted and "liquidated" over the last five years. By late Russian forces had started to bolster their military control of Chechnya, offering support to pro-Kremlin Chechen groups associated with the Qadiriyya tariqa.
Amongst other things, the pro-Kremlin Chechen groups loyal to Akhmed Kadyrov were used to supply information on the networks through which foreign fighters travelled to the North Caucasus. This process was, however, part of a long-term attempt to garner operational intelligence on foreign affiliates linked to Chechen separatists, while a more targeted campaign was initiated in to isolate and eliminate Arab fighters.
By Russian forces had killed Khattab, and by they were focusing on the remaining command structure of the Arab mujahideen associated with Khattab. Throughout and pro-Kremlin Chechen groups and Russian special services continued their campaign dismantling the embedded logistical structure organised by Sheikh Fathi, Khattab and al-Saif, allegedly developing a long-term intelligence drive through links in Central Asia to break the Arab network of foreign fighters, financiers and ideologues.
At around the same time, Russian prosecutors banned groups and offshoots linked to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, such as the Islamic Jihad Group. He did not visit the Kingdom in the past 14 years except two times, the last one in He was gravely wounded four times and the most serious of them was when he set foot on a land mine. He was the lone survivor when his truck exploded, it was reported.
Mansour explained how Samir got the idea of going to Chechnya after watching a news broadcast on the Afghan TV. They shouted Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Samir felt curious about the jihad going on in Chechnya and decided to go there. But he did not know how to go there and the map he bought did not show Chechnya.
So he set out to Baku in Azerbaijan which is close to Chechnya. While he was making inquiries about how to reach Chechnya, he received a letter from Fathi Abu Sayyaf, a Chechen of Jordanian origin describing about the land of which he wrote, "a man who enters it is lost and one who gets out of it is like a reborn. His proficiency in Arabic, Russian, English, and Pashtu helped him mix with all kinds of people.
In his travels he also met with Shamil Basayev. It was about this time that he met an old Chechen woman who stressed the need for jihad against the Russians. She told him confidently: "We want them to quit our land so that we can return to Islam. Suwailam said his brother had sobbed until "his beard became wet with his tears" when he spoke to the woman, and that the meeting had been a turning point in his life. He also stressed the need for treating civilians gently and not doing any harm to them.
Samir had been seeking martyrdom for the past 14 years, Mansour said. He failed to achieve it in Afghanistan, then he sought it in Tajikistan. He was again disappointed, so went to Chechnya where finally Allah granted it to him, the brother said with pride.
0コメント