Certainly, the Moscow assault is harking back to the Islamic State assault in 2015 on the Bataclan theater in Paris, a killing spree that left 90 lifeless. Friday’s capturing rampage additionally bore similarities to the 2002 Nord Ost theater siege, when a gaggle of Chechen gunmen and ladies occupied a packed theater in jap Moscow and demanded an finish to the Second Chechen Struggle. A bungled rescue by Russian particular forces, utilizing a lethal sleeping gasoline, left extra hostages lifeless than have been killed by the Islamist gunmen.
Many members of the Islamist Chechen separatist group behind the theater assault would later transfer on and enlist with the Islamic State terrorist group, also called ISIS, in Syria. Chechens started arriving in Syria beginning in 2011. They made up the second-largest contingent of the Islamic State’s overseas fighters and their numbers have been additionally disproportionately excessive in al Qaeda’s faction in Syria. Battle-hardened and skilled, a number of Chechens rose to develop into Islamic State commanders, together with Umar Shishani and Salahuddin Shishani, in line with a research by Neil Hauer for the Atlantic Council.
The Russian safety companies estimated 1,700 to three,000 Chechens, joined by different militants from the North Caucasus, went to Syria to struggle. Syria’s reasonable rebels at all times suspected that Russian intelligence businesses have been blissful to encourage them to go, making it straightforward for them to get there by giving them passports, each to do away with them and to disrupt and divide insurgent teams battling Russia’s ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Anti-Assad rebels additionally accused the Syrian authorities of collaborating with Islamic State to weaken them and when it served tactical army functions. Islamic State appeared typically in 2015 and 2016 to leverage Russia’s intervention, urgent offensives towards reasonable insurgent factions as they have been focused by Russian airstrikes.
Palmyra hypothesis
The rebels argued that Damascus and Moscow performed a posh double recreation, utilizing jihadists to behave as fifth columnists, planning for them to successfully sabotage the revolution towards Assad and shade it as extremist. In Could 2015, the convenience with which the Islamic State was capable of seize the traditional metropolis of Palmyra prompted some army observers to invest that Assad and Russia intentionally deserted the location — with its distinctive ruins and irreplaceable historic artifacts and treasures — to achieve Western sympathy.
Average rebels mentioned the collaboration was clear at instances between Russia and the Assad regime and Islamic State. One chief complained to this correspondent in 2015 that “when ISIS tries to storm our positions, the Assad regime and the Russians again them with airstrikes and shelling.” However that marriage of comfort has not helped Russia subsequently with radical Islamists from Chechnya and the North Caucasus, who nonetheless pose a menace to Russia.
