Grant Them Martyrdom, Please, and Swiftly
"Our aim is clear and everyone knows why we are fighting. Our path is toward the caliphate. We will bring back the caliphate, and if God does not make it our fate to restore the caliphate, then we ask him to grant us martyrdom."
Chechen Tarkhan Batirashvili, aka Omar Al-Shishani
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| This image made from undated video posted during the weekend of June 28, 2014 on a social media account frequently used for communications by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows Omar al-Shishani standing next to the group's spokesman among a group of fighters as they declare the elimination of the border between Iraq and Syria. Al-Shishani, one of hundreds of Chechens who have been among the toughest jihadi fighters in Syria, has emerged as the face of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, appearing frequently in its online videos — in contrast to the group's Iraqi leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who remains deep in hiding and has hardly ever been photographed. (AP Photo/militant social media account via AP video) |
"A Chechen comes and has no idea about anything [in the country] and does whatever his leader tells him. Even if his emir tells him to kill a child, he would do it."
Hussein Nasser, spokesman, Islamic Front coalition, Syrian rebels
The Chechens are fierce fighters, that much is well acknowledged. Ask Russia about the Chechens.
They have had ample experience with them over the years. Chechen fighters have been able to mount explosive atrocities within Russia in an expression of their hatred for Russian domination of Chechnya. In 2002 a group of over 40 Chechens held more than 700 hostages at a Moscow theatre, the terrorists demanding an end to Russian presence in Chechnya and full independence.
They threatened to execute all their hostages. Russian troops stormed the building after detonating explosive devices within the theatre. Many of the hostages were casualties of the ending of that siege three days after it began partly due to the deadly gas that was used with the explosives. The failure of Russian authorities to take minimal precautions was cited as the main reason so many hostage casualties ensued with the liberation of the theatre.
Two years later 32 heavily armed, masked men seized Middle School No.One and over one thousand hostages in Beslan, North Ossetia.Most of the hostages represented children from six to sixteen years of age. A two-day standoff replete with gunfire and explosions took place until Russian soldiers raided the building. After a two-hour gunfight 331 civilians, eleven commandos and 31 hostage-takers died. Chechen terrorists like these spectacular types of mass atrocities.
Three Chechens hijacked a Russian aircraft with 174 people on board in 2001 lifting off from Turkey, forcing it to land in Medina, Saudi Arabia. It was left to Saudi commandos to free over 100 hostages. The leader of the hijackers, according to a Russian diplomat posted to Saudi Arabia, was a "highly-trained military officer who appears to know what he is doing." A month later again in Turkey 100 hostages at a luxury hotel were seized by Chechen gunmen in Istanbul.
The Boston bombers were two young Chechen brothers who had immigrated with their family as refugees to the United States and seemingly integrated into the American way of life, attending university in the U.S. Except that in reality, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev repudiated the American way of life, and they did that by cooking up explosives in pressure cookers and detonating them during the Boston Marathon.
Area of the first blast a few minutes after explosion
Chechen fighters have been fighting alongside ethnic Russian-speakers in Ukraine, in a secessionist conflict that has been well primed by the Kremlin. The Chechen fighters migrated to Ukraine to fight as Islamists, their presence having little to do with the Russian Federation in the sense of fighting on behalf of Russia. Russian atrocities against Chechens returned brutality for brutality during the second Chechen war in 2000 when up to 50,000 civilians died and Russia claimed 11,000 casualty figures of their own.
Russian artillery shells militant positions near the village of Duba-Yurt in January 2000
Russian artillery shells militant positions near the village of Duba-Yurt in January 2000
Now, Omar Al-Shishani which is the Arabic nom de guerre of Tarkhan Batirashvili, meaning "Omar the Chechen", appears at the young age of 29, to have been named overall military commander of the Islamic State serving his master, Caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi who assumed control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham at the death of the Iraqi terrorist who once was its leader, Abu Abdul-Rahman Al-Bilawi Al-Anbari, killed in early June in Mosul.
ISIL has most recently declared the border between Syria and Iraq open; the vast geography in the Sunni-majority area of Iraq is now joined with that of Syria in representing the fledgling State of Islam, the caliphate for which Islamists, most notably al-Qaeda has long yearned for. Only in this instance, ISIS, the upstart terrorist Islamist group has upstaged al-Qaeda, which not so long ago disowned it, favouring instead the Nusra Front as its affiliate fighting in Syria.
And now that the Islamic State has been established, young Muslims are flocking to it, responding to the invitation to join, to do their divine duty as devout Muslims, to Allah who bids them through his new emissary, the caliph, to join jihad and distinguish themselves as martyrs for the cause. Acting as ISIS's military commander in Syria, Mr. Shishani evidently is prepared to lead the Islamic State on to a much broader portion of Middle East territory.
According to Alexei Malashenko, with the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office, as an expert in jihadi terrorism, ethnicity is not a major factor in jihadi movements; rather dedication to jihad is. And Chechens have proven themselves immensely dedicated to jihad. Mr. Shishani, he states, "is a fanatic of Islam with war experience, and he obviously has had a strong track record [among fellow fighters]", he concludes.
He leads the al-Qaeda-inspired group "The Army of Emigrants and Partisans", inclusive of a large number of fighters from the former Soviet Union. Mr. Shishani was honoured to pledge his loyalty to Mr. Baghdadi during a meeting organized for that purpose, as reported to Lebanon's Al-Akhbar newspaper. What's next on their immediate agenda? A bloody confrontation between the Islamic State and Al Nusra, for starters, then conflict between it and al-Qaeda before moving forward in their Middle East conquest on their way to conquering the world.
posted by Pieface @ Friday, July 04, 2014
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