Foreign fighters and the case of Chechnya: A critical assessment

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism

Volumn 31, Issue 5, 2008, Pages 412-433

  Moore, Cerwyn ^a   Tumelty, Paul ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

^b DEFENCE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 42449161798     PISSN: 1057610X     EISSN: 15210731     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10576100801993347     Document Type: Article

References (119)

1. Martha Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," Comparative Politics 13(4) (1981), pp. 379-399.
2. New techniques are now being used to remedy this analytical gap in the form of Social Network Analysis. The subject of foreign fighters has spawned a new phenomenon in itself, the cyber-jihadi researcher. See, for example, www.globalterroralert.com, accessed 10 May 2007. The site is run by Evan Kohlmann, the author of Al-Qaida]s Jihad in Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2004), one of the first studies to focus on the foreign fighters phenomenon through the Balkans example.
3. Qualitative research methods such as Content Analysis (CA) can provide one way to develop new research techniques from disciplines such as Communication Studies. See, for example, Mohammed Hafez, "Martyrdom Mythology in Iraq: How Jihadists Frame Suicide Terrorism in Videos and Biographies," Terrorism and Political Violence 19 (2007), pp. 95-115.
4. Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
5. The authors recognize the problems of labelling different actors as terrorists or insurgents. Many of these terms are used interchangeably throughout the article precisely because the argument is theoretical and analytical, and no value should be attached to the usage herein.
6. Because the "second" Chechen war began in 1999 the Putin administration has severely limited uncontrolled access to Chechnya by journalists, allowing only limited snapshots of the resistance. This stands in contrast to the first war and is responsible for much of the myth-making since.
7. Quintan Wiktorowicz, "The New Global Threat: Transnational Salafis and Jihad," Middle East Policy 8(4) (December 2001), pp. 18-38.
8. Among others, see, Mary Kaldor, New and Old War: Organized Violence in a New Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999).
9. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
10. For a detailed history of resistance to Russian imperial interventions in the North Caucasus see, Marie Bennigsen Broxup, ed., The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance Towards the Muslim World (London: Hurst & Co, 1996), pp. 19-194.
11. For more on the relationship between Salafism andWahhabism see Olivier Roy, Globalised Islam: The Search For A New Ummah (London: Hurst & Co, 2004), p. 42.
12. According to Moshe Gammer the groupwas called "Rahmat Allah 'alyhi, Avvalen Rahbare Jangeha-ye Gorila-ye Islam,' Vatan." Moshe Gammer, "Collective Memory and Politics: Remarks on Some Competing Historical Narratives in the Caucasus and Russia and their Use of a 'National Hero'," Caucasian Regional Studies 4(1) (1999). Available at http://poli.vub.ac.be/publi/crs/eng/0401-03.htm0, accessed 10 May, 2006.
13. Tom De Waal and Carlotta Gall, Chechnya: A Small Victorious War (London: Pan Books, 1997).
14. UBL audio address (Waaqiah website in English, 14 February 2003). The website through which the audio addresses were originally disseminated, www.waaqiah.com, is now suspended from the web.
15. Fawaz Gerges, The Far Enemy, Why JihadWent Global (Cambridge:CAmbridge University Press, 2005), pp. 80-81.
16. Galina Yemelianova, Russia and Islam: A Historical Survey (London: Palgrave 2002), p. 176.
17. Although interesting, the recent work of a host of theorists falls into this bracket. These include Mark Kramer, Matthew Evangelista, and Pavel Baev. For instance, see Mark Kramer, "Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency and Terrorism in the North Caucasus: The Military Dimension of the Russian-Chechen Conflict," Europe-Asia Studies 57 (2005), pp. 209-290. Works such as this focus primarily on Russia foreign policy and Russian military counterinsurgency strategy, rather than a detailed analysis of Chechen political violence stemming from biographies of Chechen fighters.
18. See Cerwyn Moore,"Combating Terrorism in Russia and Uzbekistan," Cambridge Review of International Affairs 20(2) (2007), pp. 303-323.
19. For further detail see Moshe Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear (London: Hurst & Co, 2006).
20. Yaacov Ro'I, Islam in the Soviet Union: From World war Two to Perestroika (London: Hurst & Co, 2000).
21. Mayrbek Vachagayev, "Chechen Society Today: Myths and Reality," Central Asia and Caucasus 20(2) (2003): Pp. 1-9
22. See Olivier Roy, The Foreign Policy of the Central Asian Islamic Renaissance Party (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2000).
23. For a detailed survey of this phenomenon, see Galina Yemelianova, "Sufism and Politics in the North Caucasus," Nationalities Papers 29(4) (2001), pp. 661-688.
24. Aleksei Kudriavtsev, "Wahhabism: Religious Extremism in the North Caucasus," Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 3 (2000), pp. 131-137.
25. Cerwyn Moore and Murad al-Shishani, "Chechnya and Jordan: An Unquestioned Relationship," Prague Watchdog. Available at http://www.watchdog.cz/index.php., accessed 10 May 2006. Estimates put the Chechen and Circassian Diaspora in Turkey - 100,000, Jordan - 8,000 Egypt - 5,000, Syria - 3,000, and Iraq - 2,500.
26. Angelo Rasanayagam, Afghanistan: A Modern History (New York: IB Tauris, 2005), p. 103.
27. For a detailed analysis of the differing forms of social organization in the North Caucasus, including jammats, see Anna Zelkina, In Quest For God and Freedom: Sufi Responses to the Russian Advance in the North Caucasus (London: Hurst & Co, 2000). Thanks to Murad-Batal al-Shishani for this insight.
28. Jamaats differ from region to region in the North Caucasus. In some cases, the focal point of a jamaat may revolve around particular individuals such as village elders, or they may be located in certain villages. It is around either of these particular figures (such as village elders, religious figures) or areas that jamaat associations are formed. Equally, although jamaats are more often than not considered as small groups, they may have many thousands of members.
29. Interview with a member of the Jordanian-Chechen community, e-mail message to author, November 2006.
30. "Government Evidentiary Proffer Supporting the Admissibility of Co-conspirator Statements," United States of America v. Enaam M. Arnout, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, No. 02 CR 892, Jan. 6, 2003, p.76.
31. Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 19 March 2005.
32. Al Sharq al-Awsat, 2 May 2002.
33. Ibid.
34. Key commanders included Abu Bakr Aqeedah, the alleged author of the explosives chapter in "The Encyclopaedia of Jihad"; Yaqub al-Ghamidi; Abu Jafar al-Yemeni; Hakim al-Medani. All are now deceased.
35. Al Sharq al-Awsat, 2 May 2002.
36. Al-Watan al-Arabi, 24 March 2000.
37. UBL audio address (Waaqiah website in English, 7 November 2002). The website through which the audio addresses were originally disseminated, www.waaqiah.com, is now suspended from the web. p. 187
38. Estimate by Aslan Maskhadov and his deputy, in RFE/RL Russian Service Available at http://www.rferl.org/newsline/
39. Kudriavtsev, "Wahhabism: Religious Extremism in the North Caucasus," p. 132.
40. Insight from Mayrbek Vachagayev, Maskhadov's former press secretary.
41. As quoted in paper by Valery Tishkov, 'Understanding Violence for Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Chechnya,' p. 47. Cluster of Competence, The Rehabilitation of War-Torn Societies, A Project Coordinated by the Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations. Geneva, January 2001.
42. Dimitri Trenin and AlekseiMaleshenko, Russia's Restless Frontier: The Chechnya Factor in Post-Soviet Russia (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 2004), pp. 93-96.
43. For a detailed account of the role and history of Sufi resistance in Chechnya see, Anna Zelkina, In Quest For God and Freedom: Sufi Responses to the Russian Advance in the North Caucasus (London: Hurst & Co, 2000).
44. For instance, Arbi Barayev organized the al-Jihad-Fisi-Sabililah Special Islamic Regiment, otherwise known as The Islamic Special Purpose Regiment (SPIR), in 1996. Similarly, Salman Raduyev's "Lone Wolf Unit" and other indigenous militia units also became closely associated with the development of Islamic units who were deployed in 1999. It is worth noting that since 2000, a number of additional groups have been formed throughout the North Caucasus, primarily by, or with the aid of, Shamil Basayev.
45. Nida'ul Islam, December-January 1997-98 (Reproduced by Azzam Publications).
46. Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear, 217.
47. See Aqeedah's biography in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 21 September 1999.
48. See Basayev's declaration of an Islamic State in the Russkiy Zhurnal 10 August 1999.
49. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Putin was the first foreign leader to phone President Bush to express his condolences.
50. "Defense Intelligence Report Details Al Qaeda's Plans For Russia, Chechnya And WMD." Available at http://www.judicialwatch.org/cases/102/dia.pdf, accessed 17 May 2007.
51. Renaud Girard, "TCHETCHENIE: Premiers combats à l'ineérieur de Grozny
52. Amir Khattab, soldat de l'internationale de l'islam," Le Figaro, 15 December 1999.
53. Interview with Khattab in Le Figaro, 15 December 1999.
54. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 2 May 2002.
55. Al-Qanah, 20 December 2002.
56. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 2 May 2002.
57. "Slain Arab warlord Khattab's last will urges Muslims to fight 'infidels'," Al-Hayah, 1 May 2002.
58. Al-Hayah, 4 May 2002
59. Al-Hayah, 1 May 2002. Rumors persisted throughout his life that Khattab was either a Jordanian-Chechen, or descendent from a Circassian tribe. A mass migration of Circassians to the Ottoman Empire occurred during the Tsarist era.
60. Mayrbek Vachagayev, who was Maskhadov's private secretary at the time, has confirmed this was the case in "The Chechen Resistance: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," Jamestown Foundation, 2007. Available at http://www.jamestown.org/docs/Vachagaev-14Sep06.pdf, accessed 10 May 2007.
61. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 12 December 2004.
62. Ibid.
63. Al-Hayah, 1 May 2002.
64. Al Sharq Al-Awsat, 12 December 2004.
65. Al Sharq al-Awsat, 9 December 2004 (in Arabic).
66. Al Sharq Al-Awsat, 25 November 2001.
67. Paul Tumelty, "The Rise and Fall of Foreign Fighters in Chechnya," Jamestown Foundation: Terrorism Monitor 4(2) (2006), pp. 8-10.
68. Stewart Bell, The Martyr's Oath: The Apprenticeship of a Homegrown Terrorist (Mississauga: Wiley, 2005), p. 111.
69. The Jihad in Chechnya website, through www.azzam.com, now discontinued, was allegedly run by UK citizen Babar Ahmed, currently facing extradition on charges linked to this. He was also linked to The Voice of the Caucasus website, www.qoqaz.net, which re-emerges periodically on the internet, though is regularly down.
70. This does not mean, however, that these networks were formed of ethnic Chechens. It is also common for those who have fought in a specific theater to incorporate it into their nom de guerre (e.g., Abdullah al-Shishani (Abdullah the Chechen)).
71. Abu Atiya was arrested in Azerbaijan on 12 August 2003 and deported to Jordan, Space TV, Baku, 25 September 2003.
72. BBC Monitoring, Istanbul Anadolu'da Vakit, 7 November 2006.
73. In an interview in December 2003 Abu Walid confirms that "donations that used to reach us from our kinfolk in the Gulf have dropped." Al-Watan al-Arabi, 12 December 2003.
74. Statement posted to the Islamic Dialogue Open Forum, 20 September 2004.
75. See video section of Kavkaz Centre website.
76. The resistance also draws on funding from the North Caucasian Diaspora.
77. See the communiqués of Al-Zarqawi and Abu Hafs on http://www.globalterroralert.com/, accessed 10 May 2007.
78. Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 14 May 2005.
79. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 249.
80. Moscow Vek, No. 22, 12-19 July 2002.
81. Some believe that Russian intelligence, with its large cadre of Arabists and Soviet-era links to terrorist proxies, cannot have failed to notice Al Zawahiri's presence. See "A Russian agent at the right hand of bin Laden?," Terrorism Monitor: Jamestown Foundation 2(1) (15 January 2004). This claim is backed by some commanders within the Chechen resistance, who refuse to deal with the Arabs.
82. See interview with Akhmed Bakayev in Dispatches, Channel 4, 2005.
83. Cairo Rose al-Yusuf, 22 September 2001.
84. Wright, The Looming Tower, pp. 255-261.
85. Murad Al-Shishani and Cerwyn Moore, "From Egyptian Islamic Jihad to Chechnya: A Portrait of Mahmoud Hannawi," in Christopher Heffelfinger, ed., Unmasking Terror: AGlobal Review of Terrorist Activities (Washington: The Jamestown Foundation, 2005), pp. 367-370.
86. Communique of the Al Maqrizi Institute for Historical Studies, 17 April 2005.
87. See the testimony of al-Fadl in the United States vs. Usama bin Laden et al., defendants, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, Testimony of prosecution witness Jamal Ahmad Al-Fadl, 2nd sess., February 7, 2001, p. 208.
88. United States of America v. Enaam M. Arnout, No. 02 CR 892, pp. 75-77.
89. Ibid., p. 76.
90. Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire (London: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
91. Karachi Newsline, 1-29 February, 2000.
92. Daymohk, 31 October 2004. According to Basayev, some of the entourage were then poisoned.
93. Valeri Tishkov, Chechnya: Life in aWorn-Torn Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), p. 182.
94. See interview with Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, Vremya Novostey, 17 December 2001.
95. Etefaq-e Eslam, 24 January 2000.
96. Carlotta Gall, "A Nation Challenged: The Prisoners," New York Times 1 January 2002.
97. Brian Glyn Williams, "'From 'Seccessionist Rebels' to 'Al-Qaeda Shock Brigades': Assessing Russia's Efforts to Extend the Post-September 11th War on Terror to Chechnya," Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24(1) (2004), p. 205.
98. For a fuller argument of the role of the Chechen diaspora community, and indeed, the impact of North African foreign fighters alongside linkages with former Communists, see the article by the authors entitled "Unholy Alliances: Analysing Muslims and Communists in Chechnya," Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics (forthcoming, 2000).
99. During his trip to Pakistan in 1994 Shamil Basayev visited Chechen students at the International Islamic University in Islamabad. Gennday Kublitsky, "Basaev Trained His People in Afghanistan," Itar Tass 7 August 1995.
100. Kebedov has denounced his brother's radical views. See Vladimir Bobrovnikov, "Al Azhar and Shar'ia Courts in Twentieth Century Caucasus," Middle Eastern Studies XXXVII(4) (2001), pp. 1-19.
101. Vladimir Bobrovnikov, "Al Azhar and Shar'ia Courts in Twentieth Century Caucasus," Middle Eastern Studies 37(4) (2001), pp. 1-24.
102. Ibid.
103. A Russian-speaking U.S. academic, Jessica Stern, personally met a number of North Caucasian students during a visit to a notorious Pakistani madrassa. See Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: Harper Collins, 2003).
104. Seven Russian Muslims were captured in Afghanistan and transferred to Guantanamo Bay. None were Chechen, although a number were from the other North Caucasus republics, indicating the ongoing processes there. See BBC Monitoring, Russian Channel 1 TV, 24 June 2004.
105. See for example, the interview with Musab, a Chechen in training in Afghanistan, Karachi Newsline, 1-29 February 2000.
106. Jihad in Chechnya, 22 February 2000.
107. Cairo al-Sha'b, 7 March 2000.
108. Al-Hayah, 2 November 1996.
109. Daymohk, 31 October 2004.
110. A study on suicide attacks in Chechnya is forthcoming by the authors.
111. Ibid.
112. Paul Tumelty, "Chechnya: A Strategy for Independence," Jamestown Foundation, 2005. Available at: http://www.jamestown.org/news details.php?news_id=130, accessed 10 May 2007.
113. For a full and detailed account on Chechen suicide attacks, see the report by the authors for the Advanced Research Assessment Group.
114. See, for instance, Cerwyn Moore, "Inter-generational Change and the Integration of Regional Groups in the Chechen Resistance," Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst 9(9) (2007), pp. 9-11. Available at http://www.cacianalyst.org/files/070502Analyst.pdf, accessed 25 July 2007.
115. See the video, extracted from a French section of geocities.com, where Abu Walid meets and passes instructions to the Turkish commanders. Accessed and translated from the Turkish and French, November 2005, and available from the authors on request. The Turkish commander present in 2007, known as Abdullah, appears to continue to co-operate closely with the Arabs.
116. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 31 May 2005.
117. See MEMRI Special Dispatch, "Voices of Al Qaida Leaders from Chechnya and Iraq," 9 January 2004. Available at www.memri.de, accessed 10 May 2007.
118. Wahhabi is a derogatory term used by the Russian authorities for all foreign fighters.
119. David Kilcullen, "Countering Global Insurgency," Journal of Strategic Studies 28(4) (2005), pp. 597-617.