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On August 28 Sheikh Said Afandi, acknowledged spiritual leader of the Autonomous Russian Republic of Dagestan, was assassinated. A jihadist female suicide bomber managed to enter his house and detonate an explosive device.

The murder target had been carefully selected. Sheikh Afandi, a seventy-five-year old Sufi Muslim leader, had played the critical role in attempting to bring about reconciliation in Dagestan between jihadist Salafi Sunni Muslims and other factions, many of whom in Dagestan see themselves as followers of Sufi. With no replacement of his moral stature and respect visible, authorities fear possible outbreak of religious war in the tiny Russian autonomous republic.[1]

The police reported that the assassin was an ethnic Russian woman who had converted to Islam and was linked to an Islamic fundamentalist or Salafist insurgency against Russia and regional governments loyal to Moscow in the autonomous republics and across the volatile Muslim-populated North Caucasus region.

Ethnic Muslim populations in this region of Russia and of the former Soviet Union, including Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and into China’s Xinjiang Province, have been the target of various US and NATO intelligence operations since the Cold War era ended in 1990. Washington sees manipulation of Muslim groups as the vehicle to bring uncontrollable chaos to Russia and Central Asia. It’s being carried out by some of the same organizations engaged in creating chaos and destruction inside Syria against the government of Bashar Al-Assad. In a real sense, as Russian security services clearly understand, if they don’t succeed in stopping the Jihadists insurgency in Syria, it will come home to them via the Caucasus.

The latest Salafist murders of Sufi and other moderate Muslim leaders in the Caucasus are apparently part of what is becoming ever clearer as perhaps the most dangerous US intelligence operation ever—playing globally with Muslim fundamentalism.

Previously US and allied intelligence services had played fast and loose with religious organizations or beliefs in one or another country. What makes the present situation particularly dangerous—notably since the decision in Washington to unleash the misnamed Arab Spring upheavals that began in Tunisia late 2010, spreading like a brushfire across the entire Islamic world from Afghanistan across Central Asia to Morocco—is the incalculable wave upon wave of killing, hatreds, destruction of entire cultures that Washington has unleashed in the name of that elusive dream named “democracy.” They do this using alleged Al-Qaeda groups, Saudi Salafists or Wahhabites, or using disciples of Turkey’s Fethullah Gülen Movement to ignite fires of religious hatred within Islam and against other faiths that could take decades to extinguish. It could easily spill over into a new World War.

Fundamentalism comes to Caucasus

Following the dissolution of the USSR, radical Afghanistani Mujahadeen, Islamists from Saudi Arabia, from Turkey, Pakistan and other Islamic countries flooded into the Muslim regions of the former USSR. One of the best-organized of these was the Gülen Movement of Fethullah Gülen, leader of a global network of Islamic schools and reported to be the major policy influence on Turkey’s Erdogan AKP party.

Gülen was quick to establish The International Dagestani-Turkish College in Dagestan. During the chaotic days after the Soviet collapse, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation officially registered and permitted unfettered activity for a variety of Islamic foundations and organizations. These included the League of the Islamic World, the World Muslim Youth Assembly, the reportedly Al-Qaeda friendly Saudi foundation ‘Ibrahim ben Abd al-Aziz al-Ibrahim.’ The blacklist also included Al-Haramein a Saudi foundation reported tied to Al-Qaeda, and IHH, [2] a Turkish organization banned in Germany, that allegedly raised funds for jihadi fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan, and was charged by French intelligence of ties to Al Qaeda.[3] Many of these charities were covers for fundamentalist Salafists with their own special agenda.

As many of the foreign Islamists in Chechnya and Dagestan were found involved in fomenting the regional unrest and civil war, Russian authorities withdrew permission of most to run schools and institutions. Throughout the North Caucasus at the time of the Chechyn war in the late 1990’s, there were more than two dozen Islamic institutes, some 200 madrassas and numerous maktabas (Koranic study schools) present at almost all mosques.

The International Dagestani-Turkish College was one that was forced to close its doors in Dagestan. The College was run by the Fethullah Gülen organization.[4]

At the point of the Russian crackdown on the spread of Salafist teaching inside Russia at the end of the 1990’s, there was an exodus of hundreds of young Dagestani and Chechyn Muslim students to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other places in The Middle east, reportedly to receive training with the Gülen movement and various Saudi-financed organizations, including Salafists. [5] It is believed in Russia that the students trained by Gülen supporters or Saudi and other Salafist fundamentalist centers then were sent back to Dagestan and the North Caucasus to spread their radical strain of Islam.

By 2005 the situation in the Caucasus was so influenced by this Salafist intervention that the Chechen Salafist, Doku Umarov, cited by the UN Security Council for links to Al-Qaeda,[6] unilaterally declared creation of what he called the Caucasus Emirate, announcing he planned to establish an Islamic state under Sharia law encompassing the entire North Caucasus region including Dagestan. He modestly proclaimed himself Emir of the Caucasus Emirate.

It might seem like a conspiracy theory and i might look too anti-salafi but when you look at the chechen war there are some interesting observations.
The chechens are mostly naqshibandi and qadiriya and the independence movement was secular and tribal, as in based on their clans.
This was very effective in the first years of the war, but improvement in the training and better tactics and strategy of the russians cannot fully explain why the movement crashed so quickly.
The time of the crash of the movement and the defeat is closely linked to the increase in salafi influence .
With charecters like khattab and other and money flowing in from outside the chechen "criminal netwroks" they were responsible for allot of showy spectacles but not any major attacks or defeat on the russians while the non-salafi units continued to remain effective even during the near total domination of the country by a flood of russian troops.
infact you might not hear it on the news but in the mountains there is still a war going on by the chechen clans even now, they never stopped.
The russians will shoot any western reporters on the spot so we have to rely on translated chechen internet sites.
but salafi groups have been wiped out and are not putting up a fight, save for a suicide bombing once in a while.
The arrival of the salafis also led to disunity in the chechen armed groups, and severe infighting.

This could be an isolated case but something similiar happened in Kashmir.
The local kashmirs are more effective than salafi volunteers, they keep dying off too quickly and the indians are afraid of the locals more than the volunteers coming from pakistan and afghanistan.
The paksitanis have started to adapt to the situation and are discouraging volunteers from fighting in kashmir, not because of western pressure to fight terrorism but because they are more of a hinderance than a help. infact they are weeding out allot of the unfit volunteers and requiring long period of acclimatization and training before they are introduced across the border.

The message is clear, if you are fighting a long war of independence against a powerful foe, stay away from salafis,.
or do what the ISI does and weed out the unfit ones, for exaple from 100 volunteers they would only allow about 2 or 3 and only after further training and aclimitization to the harsh environment will they let you fight.

gurey,

From what I read Amiir Khatab AUN was a very effective commander and put great fear into the hearts of the Russians. I remember seeing a video where he himself lead his troops into an ambush on a huge Russian convey and almost completely destroying all of them.

As a matter of fact he was such a deadly commander that the Russians had to bribe one of his soldiers to poison him.
Can you tell us more about the current Chechen president Kadyrov and why he switched sides a la Sheikh Dalxiis.

if you follow the chechen war, you would see that other chechen groups caused far more damage than the likes of khattab.
Khattab just provided more video evidence to attract more fighters.
the problem is you cannot be sure of the quality of your fighters or their loyalty.
Khattab group were full of agents, so anyone could have poisend him.

Gurey, have you noticed that where ever salafi jihadi's come into a region they always attack the framework that is present and try to kill off the leaders of the people. Of course, if you want to establish yourself then it makes sense to get rid of the home grown leaders so you can take their place. This is evident in Somalia where ever al shabab took over or right before they took over a place there is a rise in the deaths of the leaders like the imams, tribal leaders, local leaders. Salafi jihadis at the same time who came into Afghanistan in the 80's-90's were absolutely useless and were not effective fighters, the same can be said about Iraq, the salafi jihadis with their suicide bombings and killings did more harm to muslims than the enemy. The only useful thing about them is their capital but usually the locals get tired of them. Now in Syria the same problem is happening, salafi jihadis are coming in and there is conflicts with them and the native forces. Just like Iraq where the local mujahideen started attacking salafi jihadis now in syria they learned quick and are dealing with them now.

I think there are strong correlation wherever salafi jihadis have come into a conflict a few things can be noted

1. Killing of heads of native forces
2. Rise in the death of muslim civilians

Anybody wacthed that youtube video from Saudi Arabia where a Syrian Salafi auctions off his son in a mosque as suicid bomber and he fecthed 1 million , and later he blew himself in Syria?