Russia, ISIS & Chechens

quote:

---

The Chechens are ISIL’s shock troops. Shishani’s Chechens lead the siege of Kobane because ISIL recognizes that their violence and zealotry are force multipliers. The Chechens defeated the Syrian army at Raqqa, cracked the Iraqi army at Mosul and are smashing the People’s Protection Unit, the Kurdish army in Kobane.

The Chechens have no home to return to and fight with a ferocity that is unmatched in the region. Shishani, who converted to Islam and whose mother was an ethnic Chechen, is celebrated in his home village for his exploits in Syria and Iraq. Dozens of young men from the region have followed him to ISIL, and the increasing popularity of ISIL worries both Georgian leaders and the Kremlin. Everyone is correctly frightened of the Chechens, especially the minorities whom ISIL is determined to destroy, starting with the Kurds.

There is little evidence that several hundred U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria have in any significant way constrained the Chechens. The U.S. is learning what the Russians already know: that the only way to defeat the Chechens is what was done in Grozny — city-leveling urban combat.

---

quote:

---

The true reason the Kremlin maintains alliances with Iran and Syria is to bolster the wedge of Shia power in the region for fear of the Chechens and their Islamist militant allies sweeping all the way from the Persian Gulf into Central Asia.

Moscow will not relent in its alliance with Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria because its options are to fight the Chechens and ISIL in the Middle East or fight them in Russia. Militant veterans from Syria and Iraq are said to have started to infiltrate back into Russia, and the Kremlin is primed for trouble.

---