Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program (Montrep) islam, islamism, and politcs in eurasia report no. 13 April 23, 2009

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  Kathleen Collins, “Kyrgyzstan’s Revolution and U.S. Interests”
  
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  CAUCASUS EMIRATE’S TERRORISM TALLY FOR MARCH 2010
  
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  MOSCOW SUBWAY BOMBINGS – UPDATE
  
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  UPDATE ON MARCH 31 DOUBLE SUICIDE BOMBONG IN DAGESTAN
  
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  APRIL 5^TH SUICIDE BOMB ATTACK IN INGUSHETIA
  
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  MVD ESTIMATES 500 MUJAHEDIN IN NORTH CAUCASUS
  
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  CE UNITED VELAYAT OF KABARDIA, BALKARIA AND KARACHAI AMIR SEIFULLAH’S SUCCESSOR KILLED
  
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  CE’S ‘KAVKAZ TSENTR’ PUBLISHES 2002 MASKHADOV LETTER DECLARING HIS TURN AWAY FRO SECULARISM TO SHARIAH-BASED “COMPLETELY ISLAMIC STATE”
  
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  CE MUJAHEDIN IN BASHKORTOSTAN?
  
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  CE SITE PUBLISHES AWLAKI LETTER
  
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  WEBSITE OF ‘JAMAAT SHARIAT’ OF THE CE’S ‘DAGESTAN VELAYAT’ PUBLISHES ARTICLE CLAIMING U.S. IS A MUSLIM LAND
  

The past two weeks have brought a new revolution to Kyrgyzstan. Although sudden, poorly organized, and not entirely non-violent, the protesters caused the highly corrupt, clannish, and increasingly repressive government of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to fall. The various opposition groups coalesced behind Roza Otunbayeva as the head of an interim government. Ms. Otunbayeva promises a new, democratic constitution and free and fair elections in six months, but she is tenuously in control.

Kathleen Collins is author of Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2006), a prize-winning book. She is an associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. She worked for former minister Roza Otunbayeva as a policy intern in Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1994 and 1995. She has done policy consulting for the National Bureau of Asian Research, the United Nations Development Program, and the United States government. She is currently writing a book on Islamic revival and political Islam in Eurasia (under contract, Cambridge University Press).

In the first quarter (January 1^st and March 31^st) of 2010 there were some 62 jihadi attacks and jihadi-related violent incidents in Russia. March saw some 18 such incidents; the fewest of any month this year. However, a major attack – the March 29^th double suicide bombing on the Moscow subway system – killed 40 and wounded 121 civilians, according to the most recent figures. Overall this year, these incidents and non-violent captures of mujahedin have led to approximately 39 state agents killed and 91 wounded, 49 civilians killed and 143 wounded, and 53 jihadists killed, 4 wounded, and 14 captured in 2010.

Aside from the Moscow subway attack, all violent incidents occurred in Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan with perhaps 1 in Kabardino-Balkaria and Bashkortostan each. Although there were fewer attacks in March than in February, March was much deadlier due to the suicide bombing on the Moscow subway. February was much more violent than January with approximately 17 attacks in January and 27 in February, some 7 state agents killed and 19 wounded in January, but 17 killed and 41 wounded in February. There were some three civilians killed and 1 wounded in January, but 4 killed and 9 wounded in February. There were approximately 12 mujahedin killed and 1 captured in January but 16 killed in February.

Ingushetia continues to lead the CE jihad in 2010 in terms of number of incidents, with some 29 of the 62 attacks/incidents having occurred there. Dagestan has been more deadly and dangerous for state agents with some 20 killed there compared to some 8 in Ingushetia, but Ingushetia has seen nearly as many overall casualties among state agents, with 52 (8 killed and 44 wounded) compared to Dagestan’s 54 (20 killed and 34 wounded). Ingushetia overtook Dagestan in the number of killed mujahedin with 23 compared with 16, respectively.

As of April 1st, there have been five successful suicide bombings in four attacks this year: 1 attack involving 1 bomber in early January in Dagestan, 2 separate but coordinated attacks in the March 29^th Moscow subway bombing, and 2 coordinated suicide bombings in the March 31^st double bombing in Kizlyar, Dagestan. Almost all of the civilians killed and wounded came as a result of these four suicide attacks.

MOSCOW SUBWAY BOMBINGS - UPDATE

The Caucasus Emirate’s top amir, Doka Abu Usman Umarov, claimed responsibility for the March 29^th Moscow subway suicide bombings that killed 40 and wounded at least 90 in a March 29^th video posted on all the CE’s leading affilitated websites (see, for example, http://hunafa.com/?cat=12). He stated that he personally ordered the attacks, claiming they were “a message to the FSB” but undertaken as revenge for the February 11^th, 2010 killing of civilians, who were out picking scallions, during a shootout between mujahedin and law enforcement in Arshty, Chechnya, which he blamed on the latter. One of the suicide bombers detonated at the Lubyanka subway station, next to the FSB’s headquarters. Umarov promised similar attacks deep inside Russia would continue, warning: “.”⁴ The Emergency Situations Ministry updated the casualty figures for the subway attack on April 4^th, raising the number of injured from 90 to 121.⁵

As noted in IIPER, No. 3 (Gordon M. Hahn, “The Caucasus Emirate’s Return to Suicide Bombing and Mass Terrorism,” IIPER, No. 3, November 30, 2009) Amir of the Vedeno Sector of the CE’s Nokhchicho Velaiyat, Khusein Gakaev announced in summer 2009 that he had prepared 20 suicide bombers.⁶

THE SHAKHIDKI

The last IIPER (No. 12), the March 29^th Moscow subway bombings were carried out by two female suicide bombers from Dagestan, 17-year old Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova, who detonated her explosives at the Park Kultury metro station, and 20-year old Markha Ustarkhanova from Chechnya, who detonated at the Lubyanka station. Abdurakhmanova was the widow of the CE Dagestan Velayat’s amir Al-Bara, born Umalat Magomedov, killed by the security services in a special operation on December 31^st. On April 6th the National AntoTerrorism Committee (NAK) officially identified the second bomber as 27-year old (born 1982) Maryam Magomedova (Sharipova) [the Magomedovs gave all their children the last name of Sharipov(a) in honor of their grandfather] from the Dagestan village of Balakhany. Her parents recognized their daughter from pictures posted on the Internet in which she was wearing the same red scarf they last had seen her in before losing track of her for several days beginning from March 26.⁷ The Russian daily Kommersant reported on April 8^th that Sharipova was married to alleged Al Qa`ida operative ‘Doctor Mohammad’ and after Russian forces killed him on August 30^th 2009 she married the amir of the Derbent Sector of the CE’s ‘Dagestan Velayat’ Magomedali Vagabov. Kommersant also reported that Sharipova’s brothers, Ilyas and Anvar, are wanted fro robbing an armored cash transport vehicle, the funds from which went to the Vagabov.⁸ Days after this report appeared, Itar-Tass reported on April 11^th that security forces were engaged in heavy battle with Vagabov and his forces, suggesting the investigation into the Moscow bombings provided leads to his whereabouts.

Maryam Sharipova was the daughter of two teachers. Her father, Rasul, taught Russian language and literature, and her mother, Patimat, taught biology in the local school in Balakhany, where their daughter studied and for the last four years also worked. Balakhany is a high mountain village of some 500 homes nestled on terraces reaching down into a valley. Maryam graduated from the Dagestan Pedagogical University with a ‘red diploma’ (high honors) and had a higher education in mathematics and psychology. Friends said Maryam had recently begun to wear the khidzhab or head scarf but maintained an interest in cosmetics and fashion. All who saw her in her last days said she was behaving normally. She was last seen in Dagestan on mid-day March 28th by her mother. Shortly after separating Maryam phoned her mother from unfamiliar cell telephone number (Maryam did not own a cell telephone) and told her she was going to visit a friend and would get home on her own later.⁹

Earlier, Russian FSB Chief Aleksandr Bortnikov speculated that the second shakhida might have been Zukhra Tsipinova, the former wife of Anzor Astemirov-Seifullah, the amir of the CE’s United Velayat of Kabardia, Balkaria and Karachai (OVKBK) and qadi or chief judge of the CE’s Shariah Court killed on March 25th. Astemirov and Tsipinova divorced in 2004, but the latter claims she is still harassed by law enforcement officials.¹⁰


UPDATE ON MARCH 31 DOUBLE SUICIDE BOMBONG IN DAGESTAN

As noted in the previous IIPER (No. 12) two days fater the Moscow subway bombings two suicide bombers executed a coordinated double suicide bombing in Kizlyar Dagestan, killing 12 and wounding 27. Of the 12 killed, 9 were reported to be state agents – specifically 9 MVD personnel. Of the 27 wounded, 18 were MVD personnel. The first suicide bomber detonated, and when medical and police arrived a second bomber dressed as a police officer detonated his bomb. One bomber was identified as Daud Dzhabrailov.¹¹ A bomber was also identified as 21-year old Daud Magomedov, who was known to Dagestan law enforcement as an Islamic extremist.¹² It is unclear whether these are one and the same person.

As noted above and in IIPER, No. 3,¹³ amir of the Vedeno Sector of the CE’s Nokhchicho Velaiyat, Khusein Gakaev announced in summer 2009 that he had prepared 20 suicide bombers. Also, as noted in IIPER, No. 12, Kizlyar, Dagestan is located across the border from Vedeno, Chechnya, and several successful and interdicted suicide bombing attacks apparently organized by Gakaev were implemented with involvement of elements in Kizlyar.¹⁴ Russian terrorism expert and President of Moscow’s Institute of Religion and Politics, Aleksandr Ignatenko confirmed this line of investigation in a report noting that CE Military Committee naib (deputy amir), the Arab Abu Anas Muhannad (born Khaled Yusuf Mokhammad Al-Elitat) is running a suicide bombing camp in Vedeno and produced the perpetratiors of the March Moscow subway suicide bombings. According to Ignatenko, the first Saudi Wahhabbi to bring the technology of suicide bombings to the Caucasus was Abu Katada Al-Makki who returned to Saudi Arabia and led Al Qa`ida in Saudi Arabia until 2003 when he was killed. Al-Makki was replaced in the Caucasus by AQ’s Khattab (killed in 2004), who was replaced by Abu Walid (killed in 2005), who was replaced by Muhannad, who is assisted by Sudanese jihadi mercenary Yasir. Both were nearly killed in a special operation two weeks before the Moscow bombings, according to Ignatenko. According to Moskovskii komsomolets, citing the London Arab-language paper Al-Shark al-Ausat, Muhannad was born in the early 1970s in one of the Arab states, most likely the United Arab Emirates, but Russian security services think he is Jordanian. He has fought in the Caucasus since 1996 when he arrived along with Khattab. In 2006 he emerged as a leading amir and led the battalion of foreign jihadists. It is thought that most of the funds coming from the Middle East and other foreign Islamic sources are sent to the CE through Muhannad.¹⁵ Muhannad ran a major fund-raising campaign for the North Caucasus jihadists on Arab-language websites in summer 2007 on the eve of the CE’s declaration.¹⁶

As noted in many earlier IIPERs, the now deceased Said Abu Saad Buryatskii, who was a main recruiter if not amir of the Riyadus Salikhin Martyrs Battalion, was recruited by Muhannad. Therefore, there are several interpretations of the structure of the channels through which suicide bombers were recruited and prepared. Muhannad could be coordinating the training of recruits gathered through two or three channels one once under Buryatskii in Ingushetia, another under Gakaev in Vedeno, and perhaps a third in Dagestan. Thus, it appears likely that while the Moscow and Dagestan suicide attacks of late March have common Dagestani origins, they bombers could have been recruited, prepared and deployed through different channels

On April 5th the sixth suicide bomber in the fifth suicide attack of 2010 detonated his bomb at the entrance of the MVD city (GOVD) headquarters in Karabulak, Ingushetia, killing two GOVD militia men and wounding two more. The male suicide bomber tried to enter the GOVD building but was stopped whereupon he detonated his bomb at the entrance. Minutes later a second bomb detonated remotely in a car parked next to the station. This explosion wounded an official of the prosecutor’s office.¹⁷

On March 26^th, Russia’s MVD Troops Commander, Army General Nikolai Rogozhkin estimated that there are as many as 500 mujahedin fighting on the territory of the North Caucasus. Two years earlier his estmate was 400-500 fighters. He said they are confronted by 23,000 MVD troops and 1,000 Chechens in two separate MVD battalions. MVD first deputy minister Arkadii Yedelev estimated there were 500 fighting in Chechnya alone in January 2009, while Ramzan Kadyrov has insisted there are fewer than 100 mujahedin.¹⁸ The Ce site Kavkaz tsentr quoted him as saying that it is impossible to exactly how many and that the majority range from age 25 to 28.¹⁹

On March 31st, security forces killed an alleged mujahed in Kabardino-Balkaria’s capitol of Nalchik identified as Anzor Astemirov-Seifullah’s successor as the amir of the United Velayat of Kabardia, Balkaria and Karachai (OVKBK). However, his name was not released, but it was reported that he was born in 1970 and had been Seifullah’s naib (deputy) for finances.²⁰

On the 5^th anniversary of the death of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria president Aslan Maskhadov, the CE-affiliated website ‘Kavkaz tsentr’ published the transcript, audiotape and videotape of a September 2002 letter from Maskhadov to the site’s then and present manager, the exiled former field commander, and longtime ChRI/CE jihadist ideologist Movladi Udugov. The letter urges Udugov to support Maskhadov’s decision to throw his lot in with the Salafi jihadist elements within the ChRI taken at the July 2002 Madzhlisul Shura. That meeting was attended by Maskhadov, Shamil Basaev and all the top Chechen and foreign amirs in order to regroup the ChRI after its forces route on the traditional battlefeield at the hands of Russian forces in the second post-Soviet Russo-Chechen War. The Shura decided to institutionalize the jihadization of the movement by vetting all decisions taken by the Shura or Maskhadov for their consistency with Shariah law as interpreted by the Shura’s Shariah Court and Fatwa Committee headed by Abdul Khalim Sadullaev, who, moreover, was designated Maskhadov’s successor in the event of his death.²¹

In the letter transcription Maskhadov describes all the personnel and institutional changes made by the Shura at the summer meeting jihadizing the ChRI’s constitution, leadership structure, and ideology, including the creation of the Shariah Court and Fatwah Committee, and pleads to Udugov: “No matter what happens, even if the land will be burned by blue flame, I am confident that I will be able to go the path in accordance with Shariah, Allah Willing. Therefore everyone should accept Shariah. I understand that this is very difficult, but I will go ahead, and the only thing which you should be concerned is whether you can go along with me to the end and catch up with me in establishing Shariah.” Maskhadov closes, declaring: “Today, whoever is with us, be he a Chechen or Arab, we will create with all of them a completely Islamic State.”²²

Most Western analyses of the period conclude that Maskhadov fiercely resisted the jihadization of the ChRI and rejected the mass terrorist attacks targeting civilians that became commonplace tactic deployed by the ChRI’s top field commander Shamil Basaev and his Al Qa`ida sidekick Khattab beginning with the October 2002 Dubrovka theatre hostage-taking in Moscow and continued through out Maskhadov’s reign. Some have argued that Maskahdov was playing a double game, using but more and more accommodating the global jihadists and their local Salafi converts like Basaev while trying to portray to the outside world, in particular the West, that he rejected their tactics. ²³

The letter suggests that the latter interpretation is closer to reality and that internally he was at least portraying himself as a convinced convert to Salafi jihadism. In this way, he would have made a greater contribution, no matter how wittingly or unwittingly, in the jihadization of the ChRI. The letter even opens up the possibility of the veracity of a more shocking interpretation that Maskhadov was actually converted to Salafi Islamism and acquiesced in the global jihad’s terrorist tactics and that his claims of rejecting jihadi tactics were the façade.

CE MUJAHEDIN IN BASHKORTOSTAN?

In late March reports emerged from Bashkortostan of a battle between a group of alleged mujahedin and law enforcement units in the town of Oktyabrskii not far from the republic’s border with Tatarstan. According to the reports, on March 23 a group of armed men attacked a food store. The attack wounded two seriously, and the attackers managed to get away. The Bashkortostan MVD announced it was mounting an operation to capture four “armed criminals”: Bashir Allautdinovich Pliev (born 1966, from Ingushetia), Nail’ Mullanurovich Akhmetgareev (born 1985, from Oktyabrskii), Oleg Raisovich Shaikhulov (born 1986, from Oktyabrskii), and Aleksandr Sergeevich Yashin (born 1983, from Belebei).²⁴ The liberal Svobodnaya pressa site claimed local residents were reporting a battle with a group of 14-16 fighters, not the four and six in the first reports, against which the authorities threw tanks, armored personnel carriers and some 500 FSB and MVD troops.²⁵

Later, the Bashkortostan MVD called the group an underground Islamic extremist cell. The attack on the store was characterized as an attempt to acquire funds to help finance the North Caucasus mujahedin, and the group was said to be planning a terrorist suicide bombing to be carried out in Bashkortostan. Two of the group’s members were said to have been captured on March 26^th, and a third, Yashin, got into a shootout with police from which he escaped. He was later caught in a hospital where, according to police, he was planning to stage a hostage-taking. Yashin allegedly possessed a grenade and was seriously wounded by security forces. The group’s residence turned up radical Islamist literature, ammunition, explosives, documents from foreign countries, and blank passports. Two of the original eight arrested were allegedly on the federal wanted list, and a new name was released – 37-year old Belebei resident, Vladimir Turaev, who remains on the loose.²⁶

In the following days three more alleged members of the group were captured, bringing the total to eleven. On March 29^th Bashir Pliev was captured in neighboring Orenburg Oblast. Bashkir authorities identified Pliev as an ethinic Ingush from Ingushetia and as the group’s leader, known among the North Caucasus mujahedin as Amir Bashkirskii.²⁷ Svobodnaya pressa reported that Pliev was the “namesake” of one of Shamil Basaev’s “lackeys” and as deputy chief of Ingushetia’s Minister of Internal Affairs personal security detail became in 2002 a “traitor in epaulettes” (oboroten v pogonakh) and an informer for Basaev. Pliev was twide declared dead; once as a result of the September 2004 Beslan school hortage siege and again in 2005 after a special operation against mujahedin in Ingushetia. According to Ingushetia’s MVD chief, Pliev was not among the mujahedin at Beslan but had been idenitified as killed there by his relatives so law enforcement would cease searching for him.²⁸ Days later, another Ingushetia native and alleged member of the group, Magomed Gatiev, was also arrested in Orenburg.²⁹ Thus, there appears to be an Ingushetia connection to this group. One report cited an FSB source claiming that Pliev was once an instructor in the Bashkir MVD. This was immediately denied by the Bashkir MVD.³⁰ Ingushetia’s MVD stated that Pliev was not on its list of wanted mujahedin.³¹

The Russian daily Komsomolskaya pravda, citing law enforcement sources, reported the group was tied to the so-called Uighur-Bulgar Jamaat (UBJ) fighting with the Taliban and Al Qa`ida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.³² The group appears to be a Tatar-dominated group and adheres to the ideology of resettleing in order to fight the infidel (at-Takfir Val Khidzhra).

Last year several alleged operatives from the UBJ were arrested in Bashkortostan for allegedly planning terrorist attacks in the republic. They went on trial in April 2009 pursuant to their arrest the previous August after a shootout with Bashkir police in Salavat, Bashkortostan. According to Bashkir authorities, the UBJ was founded by Pavel Dorokhov, a native of Bashkiria’s Baimak district, who was trained in al-Qaeda and Taliban camps.³³ Dorokhov was killed when he allegedly offered resistance during a search of his residence. His colleague, Rustem Zainagutdinov was sentenced to 15 years for planning to blow up a barrier separating a water supply tank and an ammonia tank, attack a traffic police post and seize weapons, and seize the Salavat city’s FSB building.³⁴ The UBJ may or may not be one and the same organization as the ethnic Tatar ‘Bulgar Jamaat’ currently fighting in Afghanistan. The Bulgar Jamaat’s website ‘Tawba.info’ carries occasional reports on operations it has carried out in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region and also calls for jihad against Russia.³⁵

The CE’s Kavkaz tsentr site noted that the Idel-Ural region, which comprises Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and even neighboring regions, many of which have large Tatar and Bashkir minorities, “is a Moslem country between river Volga and the Ural mountains and includes Russian provinces of Tatarstan and Bashkiria.”³⁶ It should be recalled that the CE maintains Volga and Urals fronts.

THE CE AND THE GLOBAL JIHADI SOCIAL MOVEMENT
CE SITE PUBLISHES AWLAKI LETTER

The website of the CE’s United Velayat of Kabardia, Balkaria and Karachai (OVKBK) ‘Islamdin.com’ carried an article on April 1^st by the Yemen-based American jihadist Imam Anwar al-Awlaki titled “The Call to Jihad” (“Prizyv k Dzhikhadu”). Awlaki is likely a key Al Qa`ida recruiter and has been tied to the Fort Hood, Texas shootings, the 2009 Christmas bombing, and two of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. The article is a rhetorical attack on America and a call for American Muslims to fulfill their obligation to go to jihad, arguing that the U.S. is “evil”, and the government will soon turn on and intern America’s Muslims. Awlaki also says the U.S. government is covering up the fact that the attack by Niddal Hassan at the Fort Hood military base was an organized attack. In the discussion that followed the article, several commentators equated the U.S. and Russia as enemies of Islam and “monsters.”³⁷ This is not the first time CE sites have carried statements by Awlaki.

The website of the ‘Jamaat Shariat’ in the CE’s ‘Dagestan Velayat’ published an article by one Saifullakh abu Mukhammad asserting the myth of Dzhadzhal which claims that the Egyptian pharaohs sent sailors who ‘discovered’ America.³⁸ The article appears designed to somehow justify a Muslim claim on the U.S. as an Islamic lande where establishment of a Shariah law state would be historically legitimate.

Islam, Islamism and politics in Eurasia report (IIPER) is a project of the Monterey Terrorism and Research and Education Program (MonTREP) at the Monterey Institute for International Studies (MIIS), Monterey, California. It focuses on all politically-relevant issues involving or bearing on Islam and ethnic Muslim communities in Russia and Eurasia writ large. All issues of IIPER can be found at www.miis.edu/academics/researchcenters/terrorism/research/Hahn/IIPER.