Islamism - 7

[Husky]

Post 3/3



Archiving all 3 articles in Ramtanu Maitra's series

Rise of Saudi-funded Caucasian Salafist fighters in West Asia - parts I to III



vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3541

vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3542

vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3543



(May be better to read at the links. They would have the formatting intended.)

Rise of Saudi-funded Caucasian Salafist fighters in West Asia - I

by Ramtanu Maitra on 03 Apr 2015 0 Comment





The role of ethnic Caucasian fighters in Syria, and their subsequent contribution in helping the other Islamic State (IS) fighters to secure and control a large swath of Syrian and Iraqi land under Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been documented. A large number of analysts, experts and observers have reported on their superior fighting abilities. Ilya Rogachev, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for New Challenges and Threats, in an interview with the Ekho Moskvy radio station on January 16, said about 800 Caucasian militants were now fighting with the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria.







However, Rogachev claimed that they are not Russian citizens but Kists from Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, a breeding ground of Caucasian Jihadi fighters. He noted that Georgian Kists - ethnic Chechens from the Pankisi Gorge - were “among the most prominent warlords who have already proved themselves in IS.” IS’s military emir in Syria, Omar al-Shishani is from the Pankisi Gorge and a former conscript in the Georgian Army. Rogachev said some news reports have emphasized that al-Shishani, among others, was possibly trained by officers who may have been trained by Americans.







The presence of such a large and well-organized and well-trained group of fighters who have left their homes to fight for the Jihadi cause to establish a Caliphate in the Levant, poses a serious threat to a wider region. In essence, the roving Caucasians, who are different from the Arabs in their looks and converse in a different language, are more like Jihadi-mercenaries on hire for all Salafi-Wahaabi outfits. Beside their role in Syria described here, these Caucasian Jihadis had long been engaged in Afghanistan and Central Asia under the Saudi and the Pakistani guidance.







Both India and China must make note that these Jihad-mercenaries could pose serious security threats in future in India’s Jammu and Kashmir, as well as in Xinjiang province in western China. Central Asian countries have already been victims of this menace but they are too weak and disunited and it is highly unlikely that they will be able to put up a common front in the short or middle-term to decisively defeat this menace.







However, not all these Caucasian fighters are tuned to the same ideology and as a result, quite a few of them have not pledged their allegiance to the IS flag. Some of them have remained loyal to the al-Qaeda-led Jabhat al-Nusrah in Syria. Those Caucasians who have remained loyal to al-Qaeda have also remained loyal to the Caucasus Emirate, whose objective is to help North Caucasus secede from Russia. However, notwithstanding these differences within the Caucasian fighters that have showed up later, they all had earlier combined together to join the campaign that began almost four years ago to dislodge the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Moreover, those who have joined the IS have not turned anti-al-Qaeda, but they claim that the al-Qaeda has become outdated.







All these Caucasian fighters had responded to the clarion call sent out by the anti-Syria, anti-Iran and anti-Russia western nations such as Britain, France and the United States. While Russia diplomatically fought that irregular warfare, China and India, among others expressed their disapproval in the international forums. These Caucasian fighters received funds distributed by the Saudi-Qatari-Kuwaiti governments and wealthy individuals of the Gulf-Sunni Shiekhdoms. These individuals had long been involved actively spreading Salafism and Wahhabism, providing finances to commit violence, whenever necessary. The Caucasian fighters transited into Syria through all those Sunni benefactor-nations, including Turkey.







Like many other Jihadis coming in to Syria from Arabia, Europe and from North Africa’s Maghreb nations, these Caucasians had earlier also received necessary on-the-ground training in irregular warfare. They received such training in Central Asia as well as in Afghanistan and Pakistan. While they were in Syria, much of their arms came in from the West transiting into Syria through mostly Turkey. During their fight against the Kurds led by PKK-linked People’s Protection Units, or YPG, for the control of Kobane, a Syrian town bordering Turkey and considered a plum prize for the IS, these distinctive-looking Caucasian Jihadis, most of whom belonged to a group loyal to Omar al Shishani, a senior military leader in the IS, issued a video that came to establish their ethnic credentials.







A regional threat







According to Joanna Paraszczuk of From Chechnya to Syria, a website that tracks Russian-speaking fighters in Syria, this group is known as the al Aqsa Brigade. The group comprises those fighters who left the Chechen Jaysh al Muhajireen wal Ansar (Muhajireen Army) with Omar al-Shishani, whose real name is Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvilic, after he swore allegiance to the Islamic State.







The Muhajireen Army is a Chechen-led group that considers themselves to be the Syrian branch of the Islamic Caucasus Emirate. The US State Department has added the Muhajireen Army to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations on Sept. 24 2014. (Chechen unit from Islamic State reportedly fighting at Kobane: The Long War Journal: Bill Roggio & Caleb Weiss: October 2, 2014). Roggio and Weiss pointed out that Shishani’s al Aqsa Brigade has often spearheaded the Islamic State’s advance in key areas of Syria. Hence, it was no surprise that this experienced fighting unit was on the front line of the Islamic State’s offensive in Kobane.







Although the media in general club all those Caucasian fighters who have come out of Russia and adjoining countries to fight in Syria as Chechens, many of them have not lived in Chechnya but lived in a landmass that stretches from Russia’s Georgia borders to the Middle Volga region. According to Dr. Theodore Karasik, in his Sep 21, 2014 Azeri Daily article, The Chechen factor in the Islamic State: The immediate threat to the Russian Federation, 3000 or more Russian Federation citizens serve in Islamic State combat forces within the Islamic State. Some of these fighters may be part of the Chechen diaspora from Georgia, Turkey, and Europe.







The now-deceased Emir of the Caucasian Emirate, Dokku Abu Usman Umarov in October 2010 had addressed such intent when he issued a statement: “Today, I want to describe the situation in the world because, even if thousands of kilometers separate us, those mujahedin who are carrying out Jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and many, many other places, they are our brothers, and we today (with them) are insisting on the laws of Allah on this earth.” (The Caucasus Emirate Jihadists: The Security and Strategic Implications: Gordon M. Hahn: Strategic Studies Institute Monograph: Russia’s Homegrown Insurgency: Jihad in the North Caucasus: October 2012)







The Caucasus Emirate (CE) was formed by Dokku Umarov, a veteran of the Second Chechen War (1999) in October 2007 with the likely intent to bring under its umbrella a number of militant groups functioning independently in North Caucasus against Russia. Umarov was the president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI), a militant movement to separate Chechnya from Russia. The formation of the Caucasus Emirate by Umarov occurred at a time when the ChRI was fading and Umarov wanted to get it attached to the international Jihadi movement under virtual control of al-Qaeda. That, however, does not imply that Umarov had handed over control of his outfit to al-Qaeda. Instead, he associated ChRI with al-Qaeda because both were Salafi-Wahhabi preaching militant outfits seeking to set up an Islamic Caliphate and al-Qaeda had both money and the ability to supply fighters to keep the North Caucasian pot boiling. In other words, what we are observing now is reverse migration. It is the Caucasian Emirate / Chechen Republic of Ichkeria fighters who have come out of their hold to provide military support to al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State, to help attain the larger groups’ objectives.







The Levant region, where the IS wants to establish its Caliphate, is a geographical region encompassing the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea from roughly the Isthmus of Suez to the Taurus Mountains, including present-day Israel, Lebanon, western Jordan, the Sinai in Egypt, and that part of Syria defined by the Orontes Valley and the region of Aleppo. Beyond the Levant, nations bordering it also have substantial Muslim populations. In some of those nations, Muslims are majority citizens while in nations like China and India, they are a minority but some of them are involved in disputes with the non-Muslim majority that control those countries’ affairs over seeking autonomy, if not outright secession.







It is not unlikely that these Caucasian fighters will be made available from time to time by their “spiritual” and financial protectors to stir up violent movements in Afghanistan, Central Asian “stan” nations, China and India. In the majority-Muslim nations, such as those nations situated in Central Asia and in Afghanistan, threats are even greater since it is not unlikely that to become a part of the larger Islamic Caliphate could seem a highly-tempting option to some of their citizens.







The Jihad-fervor of these Caucasian fighters became evident in their continuing participation in the almost-four year old efforts by the Salafist Gulf nations, working hand-in-glove with the champions of democratic world - United States, Britain and France - to bring down the pro-Iran and pro-Russia Bashar al-Assad regime, in the distant land of Syria by engaging themselves in a long-drawn irregular warfare against Damascus and its allies, such as Lebanon. Many of these fighters had ignored the Caucasus Emirate’s diktat not to leave Caucasus fighting for others.







It is also evident that not all of these Caucasian fighters in Syria are steadfast any longer in their earlier goal, which was to dismantle the al-Assad regime. Many have shifted their focus towards establishing the IS Caliphate, defending its existence, expanding it in the future and making it their home. Although it continues to receive funds and arms from Salafist governments and individual allies in the region, these Caucasians are now battling a limited version of western military forces that exist in the region (often in the guise of ‘trainers’), and working towards toppling the Arab fiefs in the region in order to expand the Islamic States’ territory and secure oil and gas fields.







On the other hand, former colonial western nations and its principal ally and muscle, the United States, who had earlier acted as Godfather to these Caucasian Jihadis, continue to remain the major financial beneficiaries of various Sunni Arab fiefdoms in the region led by the House of Saud, House of Khalifa, House of Sabah and House of Thani. Having funded the anti-Syria rebels, many of whom were branded terrorists, to weaken Iran and strengthen the Sunni Arab fiefs to extract more benefits from them, the western powers have now come to realize that the monsters that they had bred and nurtured are going to dismantle the highly-profitable arrangement that they had set up with these fiefs almost seven decades ago.







Moreover, these Arab fiefdoms, in addition to establishing a mutually-beneficial “protection-for-cash” arrangement with these western colonial powers and their trans-Atlantic ally, had also effectively handed over the geopolitical control of the area to their protectors. The area is particularly strategic because it contains a vast amount of oil and gas and leads up to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean - a major trade route to Asia. Colonials consider maintaining geopolitical control over this area would provide them with a huge geostrategic muscle against all other nations, including the emerging ones in Asia and Asia-Pacific.







(To be continued…)



This article appeared in the Jan-Mar 2015 issue of Agni, a Journal of the Forum for Strategic & Security Studies

Rise of Saudi-funded Caucasian Salafist fighters in West Asia - II

by Ramtanu Maitra on 04 Apr 2015 0 Comment





Why were they bred? : Following West’s successful campaign in defeating the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s with the help of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China, and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, Britain and Pakistan, with the tacit approval of the United States, began to weaken Russia to break up the Federation further. The weapon they chose to use in their new venture was the fanatical Sunni Muslims imbued with Salafism and Wahhabism and their pent-up anger over the years against the Godless Soviets aka Russians.







The principal objective of the West, and its Sunni allies, was to unhinge the newly-found and structurally-weak Central Asian nations from the long-established Russian influence. Oil and gas in that area provided the added incentives to this anti-Russia mob, who did not want Russia to emerge in the future becoming a major competitor to their geostrategic control over oil and gas supply to a vast part of the world.







Within Russia, some of the Chechens, Dagestanis, Ossetians and other North Caucasians saw in this external support lent by the British-Saudi-Pakistani trio an opportunity to rev up irregular warfare against Moscow. Since these Caucasian secessionists were eager to seek all kinds of help to undermine Russia, a vastly superior power, they developed links with the British, Saudis and Pakistanis. One of the conduits they used was the Saudi-funded al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden. They picked up arms and the Saudis, Pakistanis and the west moved in to help them. This happened in the 1990s after the now-deceased Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda had set up bases inside Afghanistan and all along the Afghanistan-Pakistan borders.







It was the time when the mujahideen groups, who were involved in defeating the Soviet troops in Afghanistan on behalf of the West, were engaged in an internecine warfare trying to seize control of Kabul. None of these mujahideen groups had the firepower or the military skill to do so, nor could they join hands with each other to develop a formidable force because of their internal in-built animosities and little concern about the Afghans in general.







At that point in time, Pakistan, with the help of Saudi cash, actively launched a project with the intent of gaining virtual control over Afghanistan by helping to install a pro-Islamabad government in Afghanistan. While the West gave the Saudi-Pakistani duo the proverbial green light, Saudis poured in money. Deobandi madrassas, that preached a version of orthodox Islam akin to the Wahhabi version propagated by the Saudis, were set up to indoctrinate young Afghans and Pakistanis and to impart them with arms training to make them ready to capture Kabul. That objective was achieved in 1996 with the help of Pakistan soldiers playing a significant role in helping those Wahhabi-indoctrinated military neophytes to march into Kabul. As Pakistani analyst Ahmed Rashid pointed out later, Pakistan’s Deobandi madrassas played a major role in educating the Taliban leadership that captured Kabul in 1996.







But the plan to create Taliban and seize control of Kabul was part of a much larger project that ensured a long and a broader war in the region. Saudis heavily funded the Britain-based Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), an international group of white-robed Salafi preachers whose ties with the terrorists have led to their being banned in many countries, to propagate the Wahhabi-version of Islam in the most-populated areas of Central Asia, such as the Ferghana Valley. Ahmed Rashid pointed out that a major success of this project in Central Asia showed up in the civil war in Tajikistan (1992-97). That was the first testing ground for the reinterpretation of Islam in Central Asia.







Today, Islamic movements such as Hizb ut-Tahrir al Islami and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) pose the greatest threats to the Central Asian regimes and stability in the region. Well armed and well financed, highly motivated, and with extensive support from the wider world of Islamic radicalism and drug smuggling mafias based in Afghanistan, these are pan-Islamic and pan-Central Asian movements. (The Fires of faith in Central Asia: Ahmed Rashid: World Policy Journal, Spring 2001). But proselytizing of the HuT in Central Asia was always a facade. Their wide-ranging presence in the distant parts of Central Asia was meant to indoctrinate and then recruit individuals who were ready and had the skill to adopt violent means in order to establish an Islamic Caliphate in Central Asia - the stated objective of the HuT.







A similar account of events occurring in that region at the time is also available in the book, Serpent’s Tail, penned by Mark Curtis, former Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), widely known as the Chatham House. In his book, Curtis said: “In the early 1990s it was not only Saudi Arabia that bolstered the rise of radical Islamist groups which emerged from the Afghanistan war... Islamabad undertook a new wave of operations by using Pakistani, Afghan and other Sunni jihadists to promote its foreign policy goals both in Kashmir and across Central Asia - a big push the consequences of which are still with us.







“Moreover, Britain armed and trained the Pakistani military at this time while deepening commercial relations. London not only turned a blind eye to the Pakistani push but conducted covert activities of its own, its eyes set on new oil and gas reserves in the Central Asia region. Just as Britain had sponsored Islamic radicals to destabilize the Soviet regime in the past, now Pakistan’s backing of these forces was useful to Britain in countering communist governments that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet empire, and to reduce Russian influence in the region. Islamabad’s surge in Central Asia coincided with a new jihad in Bosnia from 1992, backed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran as well as Britain and the US ... These concurrent episodes constituted a second wave in the development of global terrorism after the first wave in Afghanistan the previous decade.







“Even after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, Muslim volunteers for jihad continued to flow into Pakistan and Afghanistan. Throughout the early 1990s Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, trained around 20,000 militant volunteers at a special training school north of Peshawar... The school’s founder was Abdul Sayyaf, the pro-Saudi mujahideen leader during the Afghan war, and its funders were mainly Saudi Arabia and Osama Bin Laden. Pakistan’s secret services also continued to run some of the Afghan training camps, and funded training by another mujahideen commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, of militants from the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) groups. It was from this infrastructure of terrorism that the Taliban would soon emerge and which Bin Laden would draw on after arriving back in Afghanistan in 1996...







“During the 1990s, some groups operating in Kashmir with ISI support turned to terrorism in places such as Tajikistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and the Philippines... The Pakistani strategy to ‘recover’ Kashmir was part of a broader campaign to exert influence over the Central Asian Silk Road to China, which would benefit the country economically and enable it to act as a strategic power between Iran and China. It soon involved covert operations in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to Pakistan’s north, and the Russian republic of Chechnya to its west. By 1994, the military under Benazir Bhutto’s government was training hundreds of Chechens, Uzbeks and Tajiks at camps in Afghanistan in techniques of guerilla warfare, the aim being to export Islamist revolution in the region and reduce Russian influence,” Curtis detailed in his book.







Following the US invasion of Afghanistan, the network of Chechens, Uzbeks and Tajiks got disturbed and it began to scatter. Many stayed in Pakistan’s Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) while some others moved out. With the help of Islamist charities, many traveled to the Pankisi Gorge, a mountainous area in northern Georgia. In December 2003, for example, an Azeri military court convicted the leaders of Revival of Islamic Heritage, a Kuwaiti humanitarian organization, for sending Azeri recruits to the Pankisi Gorge on their way to fight in Chechnya.







According to Georgian officials, in early 2002, some sixty Arab computer, communications, and financial specialists, military trainers, chemists, and bomb-makers settled in the gorge. The group used sophisticated satellite and encrypted communications to support both Ibn al-Khattab’s operations in Chechnya and terrorists planning attacks against Western targets. The “Pankisi Arabs” later tried to buy explosives for what Georgian security officials believe was to have been a major attack on US or other Western installations in Russia. (How Chechnya Became a Breeding Ground for Terror: Lorenzo Vidino: Middle East Quarterly: Summer 2005)







(To be concluded…)



This article appeared in the Jan-Mar 2015 issue of Agni, a Journal of the Forum for Strategic & Security Studies

Rise of Saudi-funded Caucasian Salafist fighters in West Asia - III

by Ramtanu Maitra on 05 Apr 2015 1 Comment





Enters Ibn al-Khattab : Then came the direct attack on Russia in the form of intervention in Chechnya by the Saudi-British-Pakistan combo. One of the key figures in this was Ibn al-Khattab, a collaborator of Osama bin Laden. Ibn al-Khattab, whose real name was Samir bin Salakh al-Suwailim, often referred to as Emir Khattab or simply Khattab, is a key player in the Saudi-Pakistan-Britain-led Chechen imbroglio. He had both Western and Islamic education and had appeared in Pakistan in 1987 at the height of the mujahideen-led war against the Soviet troops. In Pakistan, he met some of the key leaders of the Arab “Afghans,” including Sheikh Abdallah Azzam, Sheikh Tamim Adnani, and Osama bin Laden.







Between 1988 and 1993, Khattab participated in all the major operations in the Afghan jihad, including the capture of Jalalabad, Khost, and Kabul. He also spent time expanding his knowledge of Islam and his military skills, while becoming conversant in both Pashto and Russian. (Ibn al-Khattab: the bin Laden of Chechnya: Money Jihad: April 21, 2013)







According to a Money Jihad article, by the early 1990s, Khattab had emerged as one of the most fierce and competent commanders, popular with both the Afghan and the Arab “Afghan” mujahedin. He also became one of bin Laden’s key protégés. Khattab reportedly spent the years between early 1993 and early 1995 commanding a small Arab elite force in support of the Tajik Islamist mujahedin, particularly in the Ferghana Valley. He returned to Afghanistan to train and lead one of the first elite forces to go to Chechnya. Ali Hammad, a senior al Qaeda commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the mid-1990s, knew Khattab as a senior commander under bin Laden and considered him “one of the more important personalities in al-Qaeda.” Ali Hammad confirmed that Khattab went to Chechnya on bin Laden’s orders, and that he and bin Laden personally managed the subsequent flow of jihadist volunteers into the area.







“Khattab arrived in Chechnya in the spring of 1995 with eight veteran Arab ‘Afghan’ commanders, followed by a few dozen combat veterans. He soon became one of the most important commanders in Chechnya, quickly forming a close relationship with Shamil Basayev. One of Basayev’s closest personal friends, Chechnya’s onetime foreign minister Shamil Beno, reported that Basayev underwent a profound change in 1995 under Khattab’s influence. Basayev ‘started moving from freedom for Chechnya to freedom for the whole Arab world,’ Beno said. ‘He changed from a Chechen patriot into an Islamic globalist.’”







Basayev worked closely with both al-Qaeda and Khattab. He trained for his jihad in the Afghansi camps, as he said in July 1995: “I was preparing for war with Russia a long time before the aggression against Chechnya began. Together with fighters from my Abkhazian [separatists within Georgia] battalion, I paid three visits to Afghan mujahedeen camps, where I learned the tactics of guerrilla warfare.” He also threatened China. In July 1998, as acting Prime Minister of Chechnya, he issued a threat to Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, that if China once more referred to Chechnya as part of Russia, Chechnya would launch support actions for the Uighur population in Xinjiang Province to split off as an independent state. (EIR Fact Sheet: Who Is Behind the Drive To Dismember Russia?: EIR Intelligence Team: Dec 19 2014)







Funding the Chechnya terrorism







“But al-Khattab didn’t only receive funds from the Middle East and Al Qaeda. He was the recipient of zakat donations from U.S. Muslims. Benevolence International Foundation, a Saudi-created Islamic charity which relocated to Chicago in 1993, was shut down by the Bush administration after 9/11 for its role in financing jihad in Bosnia and Chechnya. The racketeering trial against BIF’s leader revealed that “[Al-Khattab] did have ties to Saudi Arabia: a fund-raising website listed the Benevolence International Foundation—originally a Saudi-based charity—as a vehicle for contributions.” (Ibn al-Khattab: the bin Laden of Chechnya : Money Jihad: April 21, 2013)







Funds also came through bank accounts of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group), Canadian Islamic Association, and Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), for which Adham Amin Hassoun, a prominent member of the Florida cell in the USA, filed incorporation papers in Florida. The cell pays out thousands of dollars in cheques, some of which were marked “Chechnya”, “Kosovo,” or “for tourism”. (History Commons: October 1993-November 2001: Florida Cell Supports Global Jihad, Is Monitored by FBI)







One other source of Ibn Khattab’s money was Britain where Jihadis and fundraisers working hand-in-glove with British intelligence to finance militants to undo “unfriendly” and geopolitically-important nations for the “benefit” of the West. Russia and its weak southwestern borders, of course, were natural targets in the 1990s. This collaboration between the MI5/MI6 and a brigade of radical Islamists that use Britain as their “safe house” has turned Britain into what the intelligence community calls Londonistan.







Long after the bird flew the nest and the nest was dismantled, news began to trickle out from Britain which showed that Londonistan was indeed raising and funding Khattab. During the eight-year-long (2006-2013) trial of Abu Qatada, a Palestinian-Jordanian whose real name is Omar Othman, it was revealed that when Abu Qatada was questioned in 2001 over his alleged connections to a German cell, police found £170,000 cash in his home, including £805 in an envelope labeled “For the mujahideen in Chechnya”. No charges were brought. (Profile: Abu Qatada: BBC NEWS: Dominic Casciani: June 26 2014). The New York Times pointed out that at the time, Qatada had no money-making job and was living with a wife and four children on government benefits worth $150 a week plus other housing aid.







Abu Qatada’s trial lingered for eight long years. The lengthy trial suggests it was orchestrated to keep him off-limits of the media. He is now living free in Jordan, a monarchy that is intricately interlinked with Britain. Jordan also harbors a large population of Chechens who had migrated decades ago. Some of these Chechens openly express their dual royalty displaying pictures of Chechen rebel leaders next to the Jordanian King. A Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, described Abu Qatada as the “spiritual head of the mujahideen in Britain” and Dominic Casciani tells us UK’s security agencies in their efforts to make sense of the Islamist scene, MI5 “had approached Abu Qatada on more than one occasion to ask for his help in minimizing the threat to the UK.”







On September 18, 2002, the Caspian Studies Program hosted a seminar at the Kennedy School of Government on the topic of Chechen diaspora communities in the Middle East. In this seminar, Wasfi Kailani, an anthropologist at the University of Yarmouk who has studied Jordan’s Chechen communities, answering a question on the Saudi funding of the Chechens said much of the foreign presence in and funding for the Chechen conflict has come from Saudi Arabia. Kailani indicated that Saudi militants have come to Chechnya to participate in what they see as a jihad and Saudi missionaries have come to the region to teach Wahhabi Salafism to Muslims who are embracing Islam after decades of Communist rule in the Soviet Union.







Conclusion







While it is evident that the rise of Islamic State and the threat it poses to the Sunni benefactors of the western colonial powers of yore, and its trans-Atlantic ally, the United States, has created a dilemma among the anti-Russia, anti-Iran cabal that had bred and nurtured these Wahaabi Jihadis. However, it would be premature to assume that the West has any real intent to cut off the snake’s head. It is more likely that the long-term geostrategic benefit that the West envisions it would accrue harboring these Caucasian terrorists will trump making serious efforts to eliminate them. In other words, despite all the revelations and bloodshed, these terrorists have come to stay.







West’s commitment to change Syria from a nation friendly to Russia and Iran to anti-Iran, anti-Russia is deep-rooted. In 2011, in Syria, when President Obama, Prime Minister David Cameron, and President François Hollande joined forces to remove Syria’s elected President Bashar al-Assad from power, and thus deal a body blow to the Russians and Iranians, who acknowledge Assad’s legitimacy, not-so-militant groups within were bolstered by attaching them to well-trained Salafi-Wahhabi terrorists from a number of countries.







While Western countries were quite generous with arms, and worked with the neighboring countries to facilitate entry of arms into Syria, the bulk of the money came from the Salafi-Wahhabi bastions of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. Despite denials issued from Riyadh and Doha to quiet gullible Westerners, the funding of various Sunni groups seeking to establish Salafism and Wahhabism in a number of countries has long been well-documented. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example, who is keen to see Assad, and the Russian influence over Syria, vanish altogether, praised the Saudis and Qataris for financial help lent to the Syrian “rebels,” in a discussion on CNN, in January 2014, “Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar, and for our Qatari friends,” the Senator repeated at the Munich Security Conference in late January. McCain praised Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services and a former ambassador to the United States, for supporting forces fighting Assad in Syria. McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had previously met with Bandar to encourage the Saudis to arm Syrian rebel forces. (ISIS: Saudi-Qatari-Funded Wahhabi Terrorists Worldwide: Ramtanu Maitra: EIR: Aug 29 2014)







(Concluded)



This article appeared in the Jan-Mar 2015 issue of Agni, a Journal of the Forum for Strategic & Security Studies

A comment at that last article at VV

vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3543:

Found your three part article informative. Wondered why all of sudden Libya and Syria became targets. Gadaffi had accepted all the conditions posed by the West. Syria? The Muslim population in the world and India are projected to increase significantly. If not militarily the Muslims will win by "womb" as some one commented.

Anon