{"id":8270,"date":"2016-04-13T08:48:55","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T08:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/informnapalm.org\/en\/?p=8270"},"modified":"2016-04-13T13:29:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T13:29:14","slug":"defeat-isis-syria-will-open-islamic-front-caucasus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/informnapalm.org\/en\/defeat-isis-syria-will-open-islamic-front-caucasus\/","title":{"rendered":"The defeat of ISIS jihadists in Syria will lead them to the Caucasus"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Russians wage hybrid wars against other states, the war back home shows no signs of stopping. There are fresh reports of terrorist attacks in the Republic of Dagestan. On March 29, gunmen ambushed a police convoy on the Caucasus motorway destroying a Ural truck and an UAZ-Hunter police jeep, killing one policeman (lieutenant Igor Mutsenik) and wounding two more (lieutenant colonel Eugeniy Guva and sergeant major Sergei Popov). Another terrorist attack took place on the following day. Islamic State claimed responsibility for both incidents.\u00a0<\/strong>(Photo:\u00a0 destroyed UAZ police jeep on March 29, 2016).<\/p>\n

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Mujahidin of the Caucasus Emirate group in Syria, 2015<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Salafist armed cells in the North Caucasus have recently gone through the first stage of replacement of their key actors. The Caucasus Emirate (CE) group has finally lost its regional leadership to a more aggressive and better publicized rival, the Islamic State (IS) and specifically to its Caucasus Province. Moscow had played an important role in this transformation of the Salafist armed cells, as\u00a0InformNapalm<\/strong>\u00a0reported earlier.<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2016, IS in Syria found itself under simultaneous attack by the US-led International Counterterrorism Alliance, the Kurds, Bashar Assad\u2019s government forces and Jabhat al-Nusra (Syrian Al-Qaida). The IS has been suffering setbacks on all fronts. The capture of Palmyra by Assad’s government forces on March 27 is set to become a major breakthrough in the fight against IS. The IS units started a retreat towards Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa.<\/p>\n

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Abu Muhammad al-Julani, Emir of Jabhat al-Nusra<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The victory at Palmyra boosted the morale of the Assad\u2019s forces. On April 4 the IS militants were already holding the airport of Deir ez-Zor against Assad’s Syrian Arab Army<\/a>. At the same time, units of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) backed by Turkish artillery pressed IS out of al-Rai city in the north of the Aleppo Governorate.<\/p>\n

Previously, in February, 2016, the Kurds drove IS from the majority of cities in the east of the Aleppo Governorate. In particular, they captured a strategic location at Tell Rifaat.<\/p>\n

Mounting confrontation between Al-Qaida and IS as well as strife between between other Islamist groups (a flare-up between Jabhat al-Nusra and IS, conflicts between Jabhat al-Nusra and \u201c13th division\u201d a predominantly Salafist FSA unit etc.) will result in an outflow of Mujahidin from Syria.<\/p>\n

The setbacks of IS in Syria and Iraq will drive the group leader “khalif” Abu Baqr Al-Baghdadi to seek progress elsewhere.<\/strong>\u00a0More resources will be put into preparation of terrorist attacks on civilian targets in the EU countries. Besides, the IS militant activity will grow in Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan and the North-Caucasians Republics of the Russian Federation.<\/p>\n

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Special forces surrounding a Salafi mosque in Makhachkala, Russian Federation in 2014.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It is vitally important for the IS cells in Russia to win the support of both CE and regular Salafi youth, as a recruiting pool for the armed groups. For this reason, the activity of the IS Caucasus Province in the near future will be solely focused on the “legitimate” military targets (army, police, Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia). For IS, it is a typical and proven early stage tactic to win the support of the broad civilian Muslim population. The indiscriminate terror involving civilian targets will start later. The popularity of IS and swelling of its ranks will be indirectly assisted by the Kremlin through the following factors:<\/p>\n