Russia’s Interior Ministry warned Friday that there has been an increase in support for radical Islamist ideologies in the North Caucasus region, especially among youth.
Sergei Chenchik, the head of the District Department of Central Administration of Ministry of Internal Affairs for the North Caucasus Region, said that Russia had “eliminated” more than 3,500 militants in the North Caucasus over the past decade, and detained around 8,000 members of illegal groups.
Chenchik noted that around a third of those arrested were children who were maladjusted socially. He said many of these children were students at Islamic schools and were therefore outside the regular system.
“In Dagestan, there are 332 Islamic educational institutions operating. But only 49 non-state religious educational institutions are actually registered, 39 of which have no license for educational activity,” Interfax quoted Chenchik as saying.
Chenchik said that the problem of radicalisation is particularly acute in Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and other areas of the North Caucasian Federal District, including Stavropol Krai.
Chenchik’s comments testify to Moscow’s ongoing fears about radical Islam and politically-motivated terrorism, particularly emanating from the North Caucasus. They come after six people died and at least 30 were injured when a female suicide bomber, Dagestan native Naida Asiyalova, 30, blew herself up on a Volgograd bus.
Investigators alleged that Asiyalova was the wife of Islamic convert and explosives expert Dmitri Sokolov, also known as Abdul Jabbar, who joined a jihadi group in Dagestan’s capital Makhachkala.
Shortly after the attack, English-language media outlet Russia Today cited Artur Ataev, a senior researcher at the Russian Institute of Strategic Research, who said that the jihadi groups from the North Caucasus — particularly the Caucasus Emirate — pose a threat not just in the region but in other areas of the Russian Federation, including Moscow. Ataev warned that the growth in “politically-motivated terrorism” was also a threat to Russia in the past:
There used to be national terrorism which concentrated on the separatist part of the Russian Federation on the territory of an independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. However, this has now transformed into a religious terrorism carried out by rebels, (Ataev) noted.
“Now we are witnessing an attempt to organize the so-called social or politically motivated terrorism, which has already taken place in the history of Russia in the 19th century, one of the reasons of the fall of the Great Russian Empire.
Ataev hinted that the threat is influenced by forces outside the Russian Federation:
Definitely it can and should be said that the terror resistance is driven into the underground. But there is a potential, unfortunately, for its growth, because it has a too strong ideology of Wahhabism and radicalism. Its roots are too large not only in the Russian Caucasus, but also in Moscow and in the Stavropol Region.
Ataev warned that the threat is all the greater because it is invisible, and therefore law enforcement needs to be vigilant and take “preventative action”.
Today we don’t know terrorists by sight, neither the law enforcements nor the community and the civil society which, in principle, also according to the concept of struggle against terrorism approved in Russia, must carry out preventive anti-terror measures as well.
The narrative of the “hidden threat” of politically-motivated terrorism emanating from the North Caucasus, in dangers that are undetectable until it is too late, is a common thread in other news stories about the region.
On Friday, Vesti FM reported on a “secret women’s madrassa” in Sevastopol Krai: “Naida Asiyalova could have trained in a secret madrassa in Sevastopol” The story has all the ingredients for fear of an enemy within: a “secret” training school for suicide bombers, radical Islamists, an undetectable threat involving women, links to the Middle East as well as to Dagestan, with an added allegation that pornography is involved.
Vesti, citing the FSB security agencym said that the madrassa had been conducted out of a private home in the city, and that it had disseminated extremist propaganda to around 30 women, mostly students at local universities. Also found at the madrassa was “pornographic material” on CDs, featuring the women who studied there, the FSB told Vesti.
Vesti continued:
According to some information, this madrasa could have trained suicide bombers. According to information obtained by the (local) FSB, recently scores of people, about 40 girls, visited the madrassa. About 20 more have already passed the course taught in this madrassa. Some of them went to Dagestan where all traces of them were lost. Their names were registered on = documents found in the madrassa, which was hosted in a private home, but it has not been possible to find them in Dagestan, where they went, even with their names and surnames and some other data. Some of the girls went to the Middle East, along with their husbands, who are also listed as members of the underground gang. There’s no trace of them in the Middle East either, and so far (the authorities) have not managed to establish where they are and what they are up to….
Right now, employees of the Federal Security Service of the regional administration in the Stavropol region are trying to find those girls who went to Dagestan, in order to figure out how serious a threat they now are, what they are up to, what they were trained in the madrassa….
It has not been ruled out, and the staff of the Federal Migration Service are talking about this unofficially, that Naida Asiyalova, who is suspected of blowing up a bus in Volgograd, could have been trained in this or a similar madrassa.
According to the documents, to that were found in the madrassa, we can assume that the girls are practically turned into zombies, trained as bombers. It is possible that those of them who are now in the Russian Federation could pose a serious danger.
