North Caucasus Insurgency Quieting Down: What Now?
By many measures, the Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus of Russia has quieted down for years. The 2014 Winter Sochi Olympics gave testament to the way Russia had gone in subduing its restless provinces since the early 1990s. The death toll of the conflict has decreased for the last four years, but the rise of Islamic State has poses new threats for Russia. There are over a thousand Russian nationals fighting in Syria and Iraq. Many are from the North Caucasus’ republics, and several Caucasus Emirate commanders have pledged allegiance to IS in recent months, signaling that the organization could be expanding into Russia too. While the days of the old insurgency might be past, the threat of a new Islamist insurgency under a new banner is potent.
The Chechen capital of Grozny was rocked by a terrorist attack in December which claimed 24 lives. The North Caucasus Emirate group took responsibility for the attack and vowed to do more. Ramzan Kadyrov, the President of the Republic of Chechnya, retaliated by expanding the list of punishment for terrorism to include relatives of insurgents. The attack caused Chechnya’s death toll in 2014 to rise above 2013 levels, making it the only North Caucasus Republic that saw an increase in deaths over last year. However, although the death toll is similar, it is significant that the North Caucasus Emirate was able to launch an attack inside Grozny. The city was decimated and turned to dust during the two Chechen Wars and rehabilitated as a sign of Russia’s victory. Thus, while it is true that the rate of terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus has been falling, the active groups still have the capacity to launch destabilizing attacks in city centers.
More importantly, however, is the rise of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (and now Libya as well). The global ambitions of this group and its meteoric rise to prominence has extended its reach far beyond its current territory, leading many Islamic terrorist groups to pledge allegiance to it. This has hit the Caucasus Emirate group too - 6 commanders have switched allegiances from their leader Aliaskhab Kebekov to IS. It is unknown how many Caucasus Emirate fighters have pledged allegiance to IS, but analysts have remarked that overall, the new direction could lower violence in the region for a longer term. This would be due to an increased number of fighters going to Syria and Iraq – the battlefronts of Islamic State – which would considerably depopulate Russia of insurgents. However, as years of fighting go by, the fighters would gain combat skills that the Russian counterterrorism operation must then face. The other possibility is that an allegiance with Islamic State will increase the funding of terrorism in the North Caucasus and cause more attacks to destabilize Russia – Bashar Al-Assad’s largest supporter.
The present climate has led the Director of Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) to declare that cooperation with Washington over terrorism is necessary. He expanded to say that sharing intelligence was possible so as to coordinate efforts against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Russia and the United States have supported each other against Islamic terrorism for years, but Russo-American relations have hit a low since the Ukraine crisis, and their disagreements over the future of Syria have led to their estranged positions despite common goals. The battle against Islamic extremism will last longer than the current war in the Middle East, and collaboration among world powers will be essential to successfully combating it. The North Caucasus insurgency has considerably tapered off, but the shadow of extremism and war remains long.