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This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: This program underscores key aspects of the highly complex dynamics surrounding the 9/11 attacks and subsequent events.
Once again, we visit the subject of the Earth Island or “World Island” as it is sometimes called. Stretching from the Straits of Gibraltar, all across Europe, most of the Middle East, Eurasia, Russia, China and India, that stretch of land: comprises most of the world’s land mass; contains most of the world’s population and most of the world’s natural resources (including oil and natural gas.) Geopoliticians have long seen controlling that land mass as the key to world domination. The population that occupies the middle of that stretch of geography is largely Muslim.
Utilizing that Muslim population to control the resources of the Earth Island is a strategem that has been in effect in the West for a century.
After reviewing the presence of Chechen fighters in Ukraine, we shift Eastward to examine operations undertaken against China. (We wonder if the recent Russian build up of air force infrastructure in Syria may have something to do with the formerly Syrian-based Chechen fighters with ISIS decamping to Ukraine?
We are now seeing the Uighurs, a Turkophone, Muslim group in the petroleum and natural-resources-rich Xinjiang province of China, receiving support from the Pan-Turkist/fascist National Action Party and its youth wing, the Grey Wolves.
As Russia is being boxed in by renascent Ukrainian fascism in the East and Caucasian Islamist terror in the Caucasus, we must wonder if the NAP/Grey Wolf PR offensive against China and on behalf of the Uighurs is part of an ongoing NATO/U.S./Underground Reich effort against the core of the Earth Island, Russia and China.
Next, the program fleshes out information about the separatist movement in Xinjiang province, China. Note that both Islamist and non-theocratic Pan-Turkist elements are involved in this movement. Elements of the Uighur/Xinjiang separatist movement have strong connections to Muslim Brotherhood-connected terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda.
The broadcast reviews the fact that the Dalai Lama has collaborated with Islamists from among the Uighur population of Xinjiang province of China. (The Uighurs refer to Xinjiang as East or Eastern Turkestan.) With Xinjiang province being rich in petroleum, the Uighurs have had little trouble obtaining support from foreign intelligence services. For additional information about Uighur involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood/Al Qaeda milieu, see FTR#348 as well as FTR#549. It should be noted that we are a long way from dealing with “Buddhists” here!! The Dalai Lama’s milieu is part of a larger Underground Reich “virtual state.” It is also important to bear in mind that the milieu of which the Dalai Lama is a part appears to focus on Central Asia—that part of the “Earth Island” seen by geopoliticians as key to controlling that land mass and, as a consequence, the world. Note that the Uighurs are counted by the Pan-Turkists as among the “outside Turks” to be included in a “Greater Turkestan”.
We reiterate the role that Islamists associated with the Muslim Brotherhood play in the multinational corporate globalization movement. They are working in a fashion that diminishes national control and regulation and accentuates laissez-faire market dynamics. (This was set forth at some length in FTR #862, among other programs.)
Examining the use of two different types of what Peter Levenda termed “weaponized religion,” we highlight Pan-Turkist/Uighur activist Erkin Altepkin’s links to: the Dalai Lama, elements of Western intelligence, the UNPO of Karl Von Habsburg and Islamists/Pan-Turkists associated with Muslim Brotherhood terrorist offshoots.
For those who struggle with understanding the Altepkin/Dalai Lama/fascist association, we review some of our discussion with Peter Levenda about the Dalai Lama, his association with elements of the SS and the Third Reich AFTER the war and his work on behalf of Western intelligence (CIA in particular.) For more about the Dalai Lama’s sinister associations, see FTR #547.)
Noting Altepkin and the Dalai Lama’s links to the UNPO, we review Karl Von Habsburg’s leadership role in that organization. Active in Ukraine as well, Karl Von Habsburg is carrying on the dynastic tradition, with the Austro-Hungarian Empire having established the political template for the OUN/B fascists of Galicia (Western Ukraine.)
With Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamists and Pan-Turkists working with the Dalai Lama, elements of CIA and the Habsburg milieu, we are in a position to see how highly diverse, seemingly contradictory political aggregates are being deployed in concert in what we call “The Earth Island Boogie.”
We conclude by noting that Paula Dobriansky–deeply involved with the OUN/B milieu of her father Lev–ran the Tibet desk for George W. Bush’s State Department (after having been on Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council.)
Program Highlights Include:
- Review of Otto Von Habsburg’s close relationship with Jaroslav Stetsko, OUN/B head of Ukraine’s World War II collaborationist government.
- Analysis of functional operational similarities between Adolph Hitler and the Dalai Lama.
- Review of the development of “weaponized Islam,” in play along with elements of “weaponized Buddhism” in the ongoing “Earth Island Boogie.”
1. Two different types of fascist cadres are operating in tandem in Ukraine–in addition to the OUN/B heirs such as the Pravy Sektor formations, Chechen fighters (almost certainly allied with some element of Muslim Brotherhood) are now fighting alongside them and under the Pravy Sektor administrative command.
The Chechen formations are described as “brothers” of the Islamic State.
The Boston Marathon bombing appears to have been blowback from a covert operation backing jihadists in the Caucasus.
“Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists” by Robert Parry; Consortium News; 7/7/2015.
In a curiously upbeat account, The New York Times reports that Islamic militants have joined with Ukraine’s far-right and neo-Nazi battalions to fight ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. It appears that no combination of violent extremists is too wretched to celebrate as long as they’re killing Russ-kies.
The article by Andrew E. Kramer reports that there are now three Islamic battalions “deployed to the hottest zones,” such as around the port city of Mariupol. One of the battalions is headed by a former Chechen warlord who goes by the name “Muslim,” Kramer wrote, adding:
“The Chechen commands the Sheikh Mansur group, named for an 18th-century Chechen resistance figure. It is subordinate to the nationalist Right Sector, a Ukrainian militia. … Right Sector … formed during last year’s street protests in Kiev from a half-dozen fringe Ukrainian nationalist groups like White Hammer and the Trident of Stepan Bandera.
“Another, the Azov group, is openly neo-Nazi, using the ‘Wolf’s Hook’ symbol associated with the [Nazi] SS. Without addressing the issue of the Nazi symbol, the Chechen said he got along well with the nationalists because, like him, they loved their homeland and hated the Russians.”
As casually as Kramer acknowledges the key front-line role of neo-Nazis and white supremacists fighting for the U.S.-backed Kiev regime, his article does mark an aberration for the Times and the rest of the mainstream U.S. news media, which usually dismiss any mention of this Nazi taint as “Russian propaganda.” . . .
. . . . Now, the Kiev regime has added to those “forces of civilization” — resisting the Russ-kie barbarians — Islamic militants with ties to terrorism. Last September, Marcin Mamon, a reporter for the Intercept, reached a vanguard group of these Islamic fighters in Ukraine through the help of his “contact in Turkey with the Islamic State [who] had told me his ‘brothers’ were in Ukraine, and I could trust them.”
The new Times article avoids delving into the terrorist connections of these Islamist fighters. . . .
2. We present more about the Chechen/Islamic State fighters in Ukraine. Note that, as discussed in FTR #830, the Islamic State appears to be another branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Note, also, that Georgia also was harboring Islamist fighters campaigning against Russia. We highlighted this in FTR #710.
The Daily Beast has a new piece on the Chechen Jihadists fighting in Ukraine after fighting for ISIS and how, with talk of making Right Sector part of the SBU, there’s growing speculation that a Chechen ‘volunteer battalion’ is just a matter of time:
“Chechen Jihadists Join Ukraine’s Fighters” by Anna Nemtsova ; The Daily Beast; 9/04/2015.
Chechen Jihadis Leave Syria, Join the Fight in Ukraine
A battalion of fighters from the Caucasus is deployed on Kiev’s side in the Ukraine war. But their presence may do more harm than good.
Just an hour’s drive from this city under siege, at an old resort on the Azov Sea that’s now a military base, militants from Chechnya—veterans of the jihad in their own lands and, more recently, in Syria—now serve in what’s called the Sheikh Mansur Battalion. Some of them say they have trained, at least, in the Middle East with fighters for the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS.
Among the irregular forces who’ve enlisted in the fight against the Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, few are more controversial or more dangerous to the credibility of the cause they say they want to serve. Russian President Vladimir Putin would love to portray the fighters he supports as crusaders against wild-eyed jihadists rather than the government in Ukraine that wants to integrate the country more closely with Western Europe.
Yet many Ukrainian patriots, desperate to gain an edge in the fight against the Russian-backed forces, are willing to accept the Chechen militants on their side.
Over the past year, dozens of Chechen fighters have come across Ukraine’s border, some legally, some illegally, and connected in Donbas with the Right Sector, a far-right-wing militia. The two groups, with two battalions, have little in common, but they share an enemy and they share this base.
The Daily Beast spoke with the Chechen militants about their possible support for the Islamic State and its affiliate in the Northern Caucasus region of Russia, which is now called the Islamic State Caucasus Emirate and is labeled a terrorist organization by both Russia and the United States.
The Chechen fighters said they were motivated by a chance to fight in Ukraine against the Russians, whom they called “occupiers of our country, Ichkeriya,” another term for Chechnya.
Indeed, they were upset that Ukrainian authorities did not allow more Chechen militants to move to Ukraine from the Middle East and the mountains of the Caucasus. The Sheikh Mansur Battalion, founded in Ukraine in October 2014, “needs re-enforcement,” they said.
The man the Chechens defer to as their “emir,” or leader, is called “Muslim,” a common forename in the Caucasus. He talked about how he personally crossed the Ukrainian border last year: “It took me two days to walk across Ukraine’s border, and the Ukrainian border control shot at me,” he said. He lives on this military base here openly enough but is frustrated that more of his recruits can’t get through. “Three of our guys came here from Syria, 15 more are waiting in Turkey,” he told The Daily Beast. “They want to take my path, join our battalion here right now, but the Ukrainian border patrol is not letting them in.”
Muslim pulled out a piece of paper with a name of another Chechen heading to join the battalion. The handwritten note said that Amayev Khavadzhi was detained on September 4, 2014, in Greece and now could be deported to Russia. (Khayadzhi’s lawyer in Greece told The Daily Beast on the phone that there was a chance that his defendant would be transferred to his family in France instead.)
“Two more of our friends have been detained, and are threatened with deportation to Russia, where they get locked up for life or Kadyrov kills them,” Muslim told The Daily Beast, referring to the pro-Putin strongman of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
The commander pointed at a young bearded militant next to him: “Mansur came here from Syria,” Muslim said. “He used ISIS as a training base to improve his fighting skills.” Mansur stretched out his right hand, which was disfigured, he said, by a bullet wound. Two more bullets were still stuck in his back, he said.
“No photographs,” Mansur shook his head when a journalist tried to take his picture. Not even of his hand, not even from the back: “My religion does not allow that.”
...
Mansur said he did not have to run across the border under a hail of of bullets like Muslim. “We managed to reach an agreement with the Ukrainians,” he said.
The arrival of pro-Ukrainian Chechen fighters from abroad helped relieve some of the immigration problems of Chechens already living in Ukraine, the militants explained.
Kadyrov had sent some of his Chechens to fight on the Russian side of the conflict last year, said Muslim, and as a result “there was a temporary danger that Chechen families might be deported from Ukraine… But as soon as we started coming here last August, no Chechen in Ukraine had reasons to complain.”
Were former fighters coming to Ukraine from Syria because they were disappointed (or appalled) by the ideology of ISIS?
“We have been fighting against Russia for over 400 years; today they [the Russians] blow up and burn our brothers alive, together with children, so here in Ukraine we continue to fight our war,” the commander said. Many in Ukraine remembered the Chechen war of the mid-1990s as a war for independence, which briefly was given, then taken away.
Since then the war in the Caucasus has morphed into terrorism, killing about 1,000 civilians, many of them children, in a series of terror attacks. And whatever the common enemy, that poses a serious problem for Kiev if it embraces such fighters.
“The Ukrainian government should be aware that Islamic radicals fight against democracy,” says Varvara Pakhomenko, an expert at the International Crisis Group. “Today they unite with Ukrainian nationalists against Russians, tomorrow they will be fighting against liberals.”
Pakhomenko says something similar happened in Georgia in 2012 when the government there found itself accused of cooperation with Islamic radicals from Europe, Chechnya, and the Pankisi Gorge, an ethnic Chechen region of Georgia.
For international observers covering terrorism in Russia and Caucasus in the past 15 years, the presence of Islamic radicals in Ukraine sounds “disastrous,” monitors from the International Crisis Group told The Daily Beast.
But many ordinary Ukrainians and officials in Mariupol support the idea of retaining more Chechen militia fighters. “They are fearless fighters, ready to die for us, we love them, anybody who would protect us from death,” said Galina Odnorog, a volunteer supplying equipment, water, food, and other items to battalions told The Daily Beast. The previous night Ukrainian forces reported six dead Ukrainian soldiers and over a dozen wounded.
“ISIS, terrorists—anybody is better than our lame leaders,” says local legislative council deputy Alexander Yaroshenko. “I feel more comfortable around Muslim and his guys than with our mayor or governor.”
The Right Sector battalion that cooperates with the Chechen militants is a law unto itself, often out of control, and tending to incorporate anyone it wants into its ranks. In July two people were killed and eight wounded in a gun and grenade battle between police and Right Sector militia in western Ukraine. On Monday, Right Sector militants triggered street battles in the center of Kiev that left three policemen dead and over 130 wounded.
Yet the government in Kiev has been considering the transfer of the Right Sector into a special unit of the SBU, Ukraine’s security service, which has made many people wonder whether the Chechen militia will be joining the government units as well. So far, neither the Right Sector battalion nor the Chechen battalion have been registered with official forces.
In Ukraine, which is losing dozens of soldiers and civilians every week, many things could spin out of control but “it would be unimaginable to allow former or current ISIS fighters to join any government-controlled or –sponsored military unit,” says Paul Quinn-Judge, senior adviser for International Crisis Group in Russia and Ukraine. “It would be politically disastrous for the Poroshenko administration: No Western government in its right mind would accept this, and it would be an enormous propaganda gift for the Kremlin. The Ukrainian government would be better served by publicizing their decisions to turn ISIS vets back at the border.”
The Ukrainian government should be aware that Islamic radicals fight against democracy,” says Varvara Pakhomenko, an expert at the International Crisis Group. “Today they unite with Ukrainian nationalists against Russians, tomorrow they will be fighting against liberals.”
...
The Right Sector battalion that cooperates with the Chechen militants is a law unto itself, often out of control, and tending to incorporate anyone it wants into its ranks. In July two people were killed and eight wounded in a gun and grenade battle between police and Right Sector militia in western Ukraine. On Monday, Right Sector militants triggered street battles in the center of Kiev that left three policemen dead and over 130 wounded.Yet the government in Kiev has been considering the transfer of the Right Sector into a special unit of the SBU, Ukraine’s security service, which has made many people wonder whether the Chechen militia will be joining the government units as well. So far, neither the Right Sector battalion nor the Chechen battalion have been registered with official forces.
3. Once again, we visit the subject of the Earth Island or “World Island” as it is sometimes called. Stretching from the Straits of Gibraltar, all across Europe, most of the Middle East, Eurasia, Russia, China and India, that stretch of land: comprises most of the world’s land mass; contains most of the world’s population and most of the world’s natural resources (including oil and natural gas.) Geopoliticians have long seen controlling that land mass as the key to world domination. The population that occupies the middle of that stretch of geography is largely Muslim.
Utilizing that Muslim population to control the resources of the Earth Island is a strategem that has been in effect in the West for a century.
Now, we are seeing the Uighurs, a Turkophone, Muslim group in the petroleum and natural-resources-rich Xinjiang province of China, receiving support from the Pan-Turkist/fascist National Action Party and its youth wing, the Grey Wolves.
As Russia is being boxed in by renascent Ukrainian fascism in the East and Caucasian Islamist terror in the Caucasus, we must wonder if the NAP/Grey Wolf PR offensive against China and on behalf of the Uighurs is part of an ongoing NATO/U.S./Underground Reich effort against the core of the Earth Island, Russia and China.
Are we seeing an effort at breaking those countries apart? Are the Islamist and Pan-Turkist movements aligning in furthering this goal?
Protests. Burnt flags. Attacks on tourists and restaurants. Rampant racism on social media.
Anti-China sentiment has been reaching new heights in Turkey over the last few weeks, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to make an official state visit to China later this month.
It started at the beginning of July, when a Chinese restaurant in Istanbul was attacked by five men with sticks and stones.
“We do not want a Chinese restaurant here, get out of our town!” the men were heard saying, according to Al-Monitor.
A few days later, a Korean tourist mistaken to be Chinese was attacked by a group of ultra-nationalists in the capital. On the same day in Balikesir, protesters hung an effigy of Mao Zedong. And a few days later, the protests spread again to Istanbul, where Chinese tourists were attacked and harassed, according to CNN.
The protests gathered momentum a few weeks ago, when reports emerged that Uighurs — who share ethnicity and have close cultural ties with Turkish Muslims — who were living in western regions of China had allegedly not been allowed to fast during the holy month of Ramadan. Those allegations have been denied by the Chinese government. Uighurs make up around 45% of the Xinjiang autonomous region of China.
On July 9, a group of about 200 men who are believed to be part of the East Turkestan Solidarity Group attacked the Thai embassy in Istanbul with rocks and wooden planks. The attack followed the repatriation of over 100 Uighurs back to China by the Thai government.
In a recent interview, Devlety Bahceli, chairman of the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) in Turkey, whose members have been accused of assaulting tourists, said they are “sensitive to injustices in China.”
“Our nationalist youth is sensitive to injustices in China. They should have the freedom to exercise their democratic rights. These are young kids. They may have been provoked. Plus, how are you going to differentiate between Korean and Chinese? They both have slanted eyes. Does it really matter?” he said, according to Al-Monitor.
Those racist comments caused uproar in national and international media. And following growing social pressure, Nationalist Action Party members told Al-Monitor that they view all tourists as their guests. The head of the Grey Wolves, the youth wing of the MHP in Istanbul, told the BBC that the attacks took place between protesters and the police — and that no tourists were harmed.
“The safety of every tourist coming to our country is our responsibility. We can’t tolerate any sort of violence,” he said.
Amid the multiplying attacks, the Chinese embassy issued a travel warning to its citizens and told them to avoid going out alone, getting close to protests, or taking pictures of them. The Chinese Philharmonic Orchestra also canceled its August concert in Istanbul, and local police announced it would provide extra security for an exhibition by a Chinese artist. . . . .
4. Next, the program fleshes out information about the separatist movement in Xinjiang province, China. Note that both Islamist and non-theocratic Pan-Turkist elements are involved in this movement.
“China has not been spared. Xinjiang (southern China), has a population that is 55% Uighur (a Turkophone Sunni ethnic group); it has been confronted with Islamist violence since the beginning of the 1990’s. Created in 1955, Xinjiang (which means ‘new territory’) is one of the five autonomous areas of China and is the largest administrative unit of the country. The area is highly strategic at the geopolitical level — Chinese nuclear tests and rocket launches take place on the Lop Nor test grounds — as well as from an economic standpoint, since it abounds in natural wealth (oil, gas, uranium, gold, etc.). Against this backdrop, attacks have proliferated by independence-seeking cliques, all preaching ‘Holy War.’ ”
5. “Some are acting in the name of Turkish identity, while others are fighting in the name of Allah (especially in the southern part of the region). As in the rest of Central Asia, in Xinjiang we are witnessing the rising influence of Wahhabi groups and the increasing proselytism of preachers from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Traditionally allied with popular China, Pakistan is nevertheless trying to extend its influence to this part of China, using the Islamists as it did in Afghanistan. For this reason Beijing closed the road from Karakorum, connecting Xinjiang to Pakistan, between 1992 and 1995. Since 1996, the frequency of the incidents has skyrocketed. In February 1997, riots exploded in Yining (a town of 300,000 inhabitants located to the west of Urumqi, near the Kazakh border). This violence caused ten deaths, according to Chinese authorities, and the Uighurs have counted more than a hundred victims.”
(Idem.)
6. “Every week in 1998 saw a bombing or an attack with automatic weapons. The region’s hotels, airports and railway stations are in a constant state of alert. In April, Chinese authorities in the vicinity of Yining seized 700 cases of ammunition from Kazakhstan. In September, the Secretary of the Xinjiang Communist Party declared that ’19 training camps, in which specialists returning from Afghanistan educate young recruits in the techniques of terrorism, with the assistance of the Taleban,’ were neutralized. In January 1999, 29 activists implicated in the February 1997 riots were arrested. On February 12, violent clashes between the police and groups of Uighur militants wounded several dozen people in Urumqi. Two hundred people were arrested. In early March, 10,000 additional soldiers arrived at Yining to beef up security, while in Beijing, the Uighur Islamist organizations took credit for several bomb attacks.”
(Ibid.; pp. 10–11.)
7. “This Asian test-bed is supporting the emergence of a new type of radicalism. Sunni-ite and ideologically conservative, it is supranational in its recruitment and in its ideology. It does not emanate out of scissions in the great Islamists organizations, but from a radicalization of the Afghan Talebans, from their sanctuaries and their ties with small terrorist and mafia groups, marginalized and radicalized by repression (as in Egypt and Algeria), in a context of economic and financial globalization, as well as from the circulation of militants who have lost their territories. The principal characteristic of these networks (except in Central Asia and Egypt) is that they recruit, establish their bases, and act at the margins of the Arab-Muslim world. In addition to the Egyptians, Pakistanis, Sudanese, Yemenites, and Filipinos, recently there has been a wave of immigration to Great Britain and the United States. Operations take place in Egypt, certainly, in Algeria and Central Asia, but also in the east and the south of Africa, in Yemen, Bangladesh, New York, etc. The favorite ‘holy wars’ are Kashmir, Afghanistan, Chechnya, the Caucasus and, now, China.”
(Ibid.; p. 11.)
8. Note the role that Islamists play in the multinational corporate globalization movement. They are working in a fashion that diminishes national control and regulation and accentuates laissez-faire market dynamics. (“Liberalism” in the context presented here means “free-market” rather than traditional American political liberalism.)
“Taking advantage of economic liberalization, many former chiefs of the ‘holy war’ have now transmuted into businessmen. They make up an ‘Islamo-business’ world that has colonies in various sectors: Islamic financial institutions, Islamic garment industries, humanitarian and benevolent organizations, private schools, and so on. As political scientist Olivier Roy says, ‘Today’s Islamic actors are working for liberalism and against state control.’ They represent a globalization of Islam, deterritorialized, in an approach that has been uncoupled from the Middle East. A striking Westernization of Islamism is taking place or, more precisely, of the traditionally infra-state networks; tribes, Koran schools, etc. are linking up with worldwide networks that function in an extremely modern way and outside the control of any State authority. This evolution results from a history that began long ago...”
(Idem.)
9. The broadcast reviews the fact that the Dalai Lama has collaborated with Islamists from among the Uighur population of Xinjiang province of China. (The Uighurs refer to Xinjiang as East or Eastern Turkestan.) With Xinjiang province being rich in petroleum, the Uighurs have had little trouble obtaining support from foreign intelligence services. For additional information about Uighur involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood/Al Qaeda milieu, see FTR#348 as well as FTR#549. It should be noted that we are a long way from dealing with “Buddhists” here!! The Dalai Lama’s milieu is part of a larger Underground Reich “virtual state.” It is also important to bear in mind that the milieu of which the Dalai Lama is a part appears to focus on Central Asia—that part of the “Earth Island” seen by geopoliticians as key to controlling that land mass and, as a consequence, the world. Note that the Uighurs are counted by the Pan-Turkists as among the “outside Turks” to be included in a “Greater Turkestan”.
“India should have reasons to be concerned over the Dalai Lama’s hobnobbing with the pan- Islamic elements in Xinjiang. One cannot avoid suspecting that the influence of these elements must have been behind his participation in a conference organized in Chennai last year by some elements, which have been acting as apologists for Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani military dictator, which was attended by a representative of the Huryiat of J&K and a large number of Pakistanis, some of them retired Pakistani military officers. The Dalai Lama’s set-up subsequently denied or played down some of the controversial remarks attributed to him at the conference. The Government of India should consider conveying to the Dalai Lama its unhappiness and concern over his association with pan-Islamic elements in Xinjiang.”
10. Note that the U.S. has maintained a double standard on Islamist and separatist terrorist organizations. Those perceived as “purely indigenous” are not classified as terrorist, and may be receiving assistance from elements of the intelligence community that are at least nominally American. It is Mr. Emory’s view that this element of the intelligence community is associated with the petroleum industry and, at a more profound level, the Underground Reich. It appears that this same element (or related elements) is at the epicenter of the drug-trafficking milieu within U.S. intelligence. For listeners who might find this difficult to understand, consider the situation vis a vis drug-trafficking. Some elements of U.S. intelligence are complicit in the drug trafficking, while other elements (in conjunction with law enforcement) are sincerely active in opposing it. Not only are the terrorist and drug-trafficking situations analogous, but, again, the drug-trafficking elements are associated with the terrorist elements. As researcher Peter Dale Scott has illustrated in his work [Drugs, Oil and War], the terror/drug element is closely associated with the petroleum industry. This element of the intelligence community may well be part of the “Safari Club” milieu.
More on the Uighur involvement with Al Qaeda:
“10. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Abu Sayyaf of the southern Philippines have been designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations under the US law of 1996, but not the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Party, though all the three are members of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front For Jehad Against the USA and Israel. In initiating action, either for designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization or for action under the UN Security Council Resolution No, 1373 in respect of bank accounts, the US and the European Union have focused essentially on terrorist organizations, which are perceived by them as international in nature or which are seen as posing a threat to their nationals and interests. Terrorist organizations viewed by them as purely indigenous have been excluded. These multiple yardsticks have been used vis- a‑vis China as well as India.”
(Idem.)
11. Note that both the Islamist element of the Uighur independence movement and its more secular Pan-Turkist allies have collaborated with the Dalai Lama.
“7. Uighurs were found fighting with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. We are aware of credible reports that some Uighurs who were trained by al-Qaeda have returned to China. . . .24. The second similarity relates to the external causes of aggravation of the terrorist violence in Xinjiang. Just as in J & K, in Xinjiang too, there are two distinct terrorist/extremist movements- ‑one resorting to violence on ethnic grounds to assert the Uighur ethnic identity against the perceived Han Chinese domination and the other using religious and pan-Islamic arguments to justify violence for the establishment of an independent Islamic State. While the ethnic separatist elements have been the beneficiaries of sympathy and support from the Dalai Lama’s set-up and the Tibetan diaspora abroad, and the US, Taiwanese and Turkish intelligence agencies, the religious fundamentalist elements have been in receipt of support from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)-backed jehadi organizations in Pakistan, the Taliban and bin Laden’s International Islamic Front For Jehad Against the USA and Israel.”
(Idem.)
12. According to the Raman paper, the CIA had close connections to Erkin Alptekin, a member of the board of the Dalai Lama foundation and a functionary of the movement to establish Xinjiang province of China as an independent (Muslim) Uighur state—East Turkestan. It should be noted that Alptekin is an operative of the Pan-Turkist movement, which is distinct from the Islamist element in the Uighur independence movement. The Pan-Turkist movement is discussed at length in AFA#‘s 14 and 21, available from Spitfire.
“25. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the USA had built up a network of contacts with the Uighur separatist elements and some of those, who had in the past worked for the Munich-based Radio Liberty of the CIA such as Erkin Alptekin, chairman of the Europe-based Eastern Turkestani Union and a close Uighur associate of the Dalai Lama, are now in the forefront of the ethnic separatist movement. . . .”
(Idem.)
13. In addition to his background with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty—both closely connected to U.S. intelligence—Erkin Alptekin is a founder and key member of the UNPO, about which we will have more to say below. Alptekin is also on the board of the Dalai Lama Foundation.
Excerpt from the list of the board of the Dalai Lama Foundation.
“ERKIN ALPTEKIN is one of the foremost human rights advocates for the Uighur people of Eastern Turkestan, also known as the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. Mr. Alptekin was employed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1971 to 1994. He is one of the founders of the Unrepresented Nations and People’s Organization (UNPO), and currently serves as its general secretary.”
14. Another board member of the Dalai Lama Foundation is a member of the UNPO.
“MICHAEL VAN WALT currently serves as Executive President of the Peace Action Council, and Legal Advisor to the Office of H.H. The Dalai Lama. From 1991 to 1998 Dr. Van Walt was General Secretary of UNPO, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. Dr. Van Walt holds law degrees from Europe and America, and is currently Adjunct Professor of International Law, Golden Gate University School of Law, San Francisco.”
(Idem.)
15a. With the Dalai Lama and his milieu, we appear to be looking at manifestations of the Underground Reich as a “virtual state”—a state without formal geographical borders. We should also note that Central Asia—the area that is the focal point of the Dalai Lama’s and UNPO’s support for Uighur separatist elements was viewed by geopoliticians as critical for maintaining control of the Earth Island.
“The eldest son and heir of the dynasty is Karl (Karl’s website), who lives in Austria and has served in the Austrian army and was a member of the European Parliament, like his father, from 1996–1999. [Emphasis added.] He has worked hard to keep the family in the public limelight, even hosting a popular television game show. He works quietly to change the Austrian laws of 1919 that forbid the Habsburgs from holding any political office and has often been mentioned as a possible Chancellor of the Austrian Republic. At this time he is the Generaldirektor of the UNPO (Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization). In 1993 Karl married Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza who is well known in European high society.”
15b. Note that, as discussed in FTR #‘s 833, 824, Karl Von Habsburg is active in Ukraine today and his father, Otto Von Habsburg, was very close to Jaroslav Stetsko, having served in a prominent position with Stetsko’s European Freedom Council. The genesis of the militant fascism of Galicia (Western Ukraine) lies with the 1848 Spring of Nations implemented by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
16. Recapping a point of discussion from FTR #842, we further develop the nature of Tibetan Buddhism, certain similarities with Nazi philosophy and occult beliefs, and how this played into the development of the Dalai Lama’s operational links to some truly “interesting” elements.
. . . . Both Hitler and the Dalai Lama were secular rulers of their respective countries. Both had been the spiritual rulers of their respective countries. Both had been the spiritual rulers of their peoples, as well. Both revered the swastika as a symbol of their identity. And both were fighting Communism: Hitler against Russia, and the Dalai Lama against China. And just as Nazi officers were incorporated into the US and British intelligence operations against Russia, so were Tibetan political and military leaders incorporated into American intelligence and paramilitary operations against China. The followers of both Hitler and the Dalai Lama were (and are) moved by ecstatic worship of their leaders and dreams of a paradisiacal future. . . .
. . . . This might have been consonant with an esoteric tradition in Tibet, enshrined in the seminal work of Tibetan Buddhism, the Kalachakra Tantra. In this work, mention is made of the Kalki: a kind of God-King that will storm out of Shambhala (the secret, hidden kingdom in the Himalayas made famous in the film Shangri-La) and put to waste all non-Buddhists, in a jihad worthy the most insane fantasies of frustrated terrorists everywhere. The Dalai Lama is known to be fascinated with the machinery of war, as he himself mentioned during the New York Times interview above-referenced.
It would be a stretch to accuse the Tibetans of the same type of war crimes of which the Nazis have been charged. There is no indication of genocide or “ethnic cleansing” as a result of Tibetan policies, for instance. However, if we subtract genocide from the political inclinations of both the Nazis and Tibetans as represented by the Dalai Lama, we are left with the uneasy feeling that there was much they had in common.Both the Nazis and the Tibetan Buddhists represent religions that are non-Abrahamic in nature. The Nazis embraced a kind of neo-paganism as their spiritual resource, and with it a rejection of the ethical and moral ideals of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
It should be noted, however, that the Kalachakra Tantra–which forms the backbone of the type of Buddhism promulgated by the Dalai Lama–includes similar ideas. there is a patent rejection of non-Buddhist religions and the promise of the appearance of the Kalki: an avatar of Vishnu and the last ruler of the Kali Yuga (the dark age in which we presently live). Kalki was associated with Hitler by Miguel Serrano, and by the Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose, among others. The Kalki would come out of his mythical kingdom of Shambhala at some point in the future and cleanse the world of non-Buddhists in a major, apocalyptic-style conflagration. This seems a trifle inconsistent with the concept of “mercy.” The Dalai Lama is considered to be an incarnation of Akalovitesvara, the Indian God of Mercy and Compassion; perhaps something is lost in the translation.
We do not see the Dalai Lama sitting down and smiling benignly with Communists. We do see him embracing Nazis. One can imagine that the Sea of Compassion that is the Dalai Lama has managed to bestow mercy on even these unrepentant war criminals and fear-mongers, and perhaps that is the lesson he wishes to teach us; but that is not a lesson he has the moral right to teach. . . .
17. Shifting focus from the Middle East to Asia, the Cold war saw the American adaptation of yet another Third Reich manifestation of “weaponized religion.” Having sent an SS expedition to Tibet in 1938, the Third Reich may well have been exploring a potential outpost to be used for their conquest of the “Earth Island,” in addition to indulging their anthropological fantasies about Tibet being the fount of the “Aryan Race.”
One expedition mounted by the SS-Ahnenerbe, and with the specific blessing of Heinrich Himmler, ws the 1938 SS-Tibet Expedition led by Ernst Schafer and including the anthropologist Bruno Beger among the expedition members. While the Dalai Lama was only three years old at the time of this expedition, the Panchen Lama was available to greet the Nazis to the Himalayan kingdom and to provide them with texts (including the 108-volume Tibetan scripture, the Kangjur), animal and plant specimens, and photographic footage to take back with them. In addition, Beger conducted ethnographic and anthropometric research among the Tibetans, measuring their skulls with calipers, for instance. Photographs of this expedition are still extent and examples of it are found in the photographic section of this book, including a famous photo of Beger measuring the skull of a smiling Tibetan maiden. . . .
. . . . by the time the SS-Tibet Expedition arrived back in Germany, the Second World War was just beginning. Bruno Beger–the anthropologist with the calipers–found himself gainfully employed in building an ethnographic museum of the human race, moreover one which would demonstrate the superiority of the Aryan over the Semitic peoples. In order to do this, he needed a representative sampling of human skulls for his collection.
Eighty persons were murdered at Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp to satisfy this requirement.
After the war, Beger was denazified. While he was convicted of the murder of more than eighty individuals for the express purpose of building his skull collection, he never served a day in prison. In fact, he remained a close friend of the Dalai Lama all his life, just as his old SS colleague Heinrich Harrer. . . .
18. After China occupied Tibet, that country’s leader–the Dalai Lama–became yet another ally in the Cold War. The CIA pursued alliance with the Dalai Lama’s forces, apparently employing SS officer Heinrich Harrer as an agent. (Harrer was the Dalai Lama’s tutor and close personal friend.)
Thus we have the strange tableau of an SS man and committed Nazi in Lhasa, at the same time that his friend, the Dalai Lama, is officially in contact with the US government concerning the Chinese situation. What did Heinrich Harrer know of these negotiations? How much did the Dalai Lama himself know at this time? Even more to the point, was American intelligence–in the form of the CIA and the State Department–aware of Harrer’s presence in Lhasa and the influence he had over the king?
Harrer would remain a close friend and ally of the Dalai Lama for the rest of his life. As a Nazi and a member of the SS as well as of the SA (the Sturm Abteilung or Storm Troopers), Harrer would have been a devoted anti-communist, and would have seen in the struggles of the Tibetan people against Chinese Communism an echo of his ow country’s fight against the Soviet Union. Harrer, as someone with a demonstrated and intimate knowledge of the landscape, culture, languages, and environment of northern India and Tibet would have been an excellent choice for American intelligence as an asset to run operations against the Chinese. After all, the CIA had hired the Gehlen Organization at the end of World War Two to run ops against the Russians from eastern Europe. Reinhard Gehlen was a Nazi intelligence officer who bartered his way to freedom from prosecution by offering his services (and those of hundreds of his close personal friends in the SS, Gestapo, and SD) as an anti-communist fighter against the Soviets. It would have made perfect sense to hire Nazis who had experience of Asia in the fight against Chinese-style Communism.
In fact, as Thomas Laird reveals: “Only during the past ten years, State Department documents have been declassified that show Harrer may have been involved with several covert operations for the Americans after he left Tibet. . . .”
19a. Note that Paula Dobriansky was in charge of the Tibet desk for George W. Bush.
“Undersecretary for Democracy and Global Affairs”; U.S. Department of State: Archive.
The Office of the Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs, headed by Dr. Paula J. Dobriansky, coordinates U.S. foreign relations on a variety of global issues, including democracy, human rights, and labor; environment, oceans, health and science; population, refugees, and migration; women’s issues; and trafficking in persons and avian and pandemic influenza.
Since her appointment in 2001, Under Secretary Dobriansky has also served concurrently as the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues. In this capacity, she is the U.S. government’s point person on Tibet policy matters, including: support for dialogue between the Chinese and the Dalai Lama or his representatives; promotion of human rights in Tibet; and efforts to preserve Tibet’s unique cultural, religious and linguistic identity.
. . . . Many surviving OUN‑B members fled to Western Europe and the United States – occasionally with CIA help – where they quietly forged political alliances with right-wing elements. “You have to understand, we are an underground organization. We have spent years quietly penetrating positions of influence,” one member told journalist Russ Bellant, who documented the group’s resurgence in the United States in his 1988 book, “Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party.”In Washington, the OUN‑B reconstituted under the banner of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), an umbrella organization comprised of “complete OUN‑B fronts,” according to Bellant. By the mid-1980’s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members, with the group’s chairman Lev Dobriansky, serving as ambassador to the Bahamas, and his daughter, Paula, sitting on the National Security Council. Reagan personally welcomed Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7000 Jews in Lviv, into the White House in 1983.
“Your struggle is our struggle,” Reagan told the former Nazi collaborator. “Your dream is our dream.” . . .
Uncle Sam and Il Duce
It’s the largest terrorist attack in Russia in decades. Days after Russia’s presidential election. With dozens dead and over a hundred more wounded and the concert hall up in flames, the attack on a concert hall in Moscow was an unmitigated spectacular success from a terror standpoint.
And while ISIS has already claimed responsibility, without proof, and the attackers seemingly having escaped, we’re seeing a murkier narrative develop as Russia still grapples with assigning responsibility. The murkiness starts with the fact that the US embassy in Moscow issued a warning about exactly this kind of attack just two weeks ago. The warning came hours after the FSB reported thwarting an ISIS plot targeting a Moscow synagogue. A disturbingly prescient warning that explicitly identified concert halls as likely targets in upcoming attacks: “The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours.”
As we’re going to see, that warning did not go down well with the Kremlin. On Tuesday, three days before the attack, Vladimir Putin gave a speech where he called the US warning “provocative,” saying “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
So those are the facts on the ground that is leading to speculation inside Russia that the US was ultimately behind the attacks. But then we get this pretty interesting coincidental admission, or retraction, that was published in the Washington Post on the morning of March 22, hours before the attack: Ilya Ponomarev, the former Russian lawmaker how now resides in Kyiv leading the Russian resistance group, the Freedom for Russia Legion, was interview for a column entitle “How Russians are joining the fight against Putin.” And while Ponomarev suggests that his movement has around 25,000 sympathizers still living inside Russia, he actually retracted one of the biggest claims of attribution he’s made to date. That would be the claims that his group was involved with the August 2022 assassination of Daria Dugina. Now, all of a sudden, Ponomarev retracted that claim in this interview published just hours before the attack. Keep in mind that an attack on a concert hall that indiscriminately targets civilians may not be ‘on brand’ for the kind of resistance movement image Ponomarev is trying to cultivate inside Russia. That’s part of what makes the timing of his retracted attribution so interesting. It hints at foreknowledge.
So we have a brazen and wildly successful terror attack with ISIS already claiming responsibility but not providing any proof and the attackers seemingly escaped with no way to identify them. An attack the US warned about two weeks ago. Warnings that Putin described as provocative blackmail just three days ago. And just hours before the attack, the leader of one of the leading Russian resistance units inside Ukraine withdrew his attribution of the assassination of Daria Dugina. It’s a remarkable turn of events.
Is this all just a coincidence? Perhaps. ISIS doesn’t exactly need a new motive to launch attacks in Russia after the devastating blows Russia landed against ISIS’s ambitions in Syria. But as we’ve also seen, the conflict in Ukraine isn’t without its own jihadist dimension. Volunteers with jihadist ties, in particular from Chechnya, have been a presence inside Ukraine for years now. This is also a good time to recall how the Freedom for Russia Legion envisions breaking Russia up into dozens of ethnic statelets, a goal that groups like ISIS would undoubtedly relish. So while it remains to be seen what will ultimately be learned about who was responsible for the attack on the Moscow concert, it’s looking like the ultimate attribution for the attack is only going to get murkier:
“Video footage from the site of the attack, the Crocus City Hall concert venue, shows the vast complex, which is home to both the music hall and a shopping center, on fire with smoke billowing into the air. State-run RIA Novosti reported the armed individuals “opened fire with automatic weapons” and “threw a grenade or an incendiary bomb, which started a fire.” They then “allegedly fled in a white Renault car,” the news agency said.”
ISIS has already claimed responsibility. And yet, with the gunmen having gotten away, warnings about exactly this kind of attack from the US embassy two weeks ago and, just three days ago, Putin explicitly described the US embassy warnings as actions resembling blackmail, we have all the elements needed for aggressive speculation about who was ultimately behind the attack:
At the same time, it does appear that ISIS was indeed likely behind the attack given that the US embassy warning a couple of weeks ago came hours after Russian authorities foiled an ISIS attack on a synagogue in Moscow. It was hours after that foiled attack on a synagogue when the US embassy issued a warning about imminent plans that could include large gatherings and concerts. So there is strong evidence that ISIS really was behind this attack, but the US was also somewhat prescient about an attack on a concert hall. Which, again, is a recipe for speculation that this is somehow a Western-directed attack on Russia:
““The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours,” the embassy said on its website.”
A warning about imminent attacks on concerts. The US clearly had intelligence that something like the attack that just transpired was in the works. A warning that came hours after the FSB reported foiling an ISIS plot against a Moscow synagogue:
So with that remarkably prescient warning from the US just a couple of weeks ago in mind, note another remarkable statement that was published in the Washington Post on the morning of March 22, hours before the attack: In a piece by column Jim Geraghty about the Freedom of Russia Legion anti-Kremlin resistance unit operating in Ukraine led by former Russian lawmaker Ilya Ponomarev, Ponomarev actually backtracked on previous attribution claims that Freedom of Russia Legion was responsible for the 2022 Moscow bombing of Alexander Dugin’s daughter, Daria Dugina. So hours before this spectacular ISIS attack in Moscow, we have an interview published where the leader of the group that previously claimed responsibility for the 2022 car bombing assassination in Moscow withdrew those claims:
“Ponomarev — contradicting past comments, apparently — told me that he and the Freedom of Russia Legion were not involved in the 2022 car bombing in Moscow that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of ultranationalist writer and Putin favorite, Alexander Dugin.”
It’s a remarkable coincidence: hours before the ISIS attack on Moscow, a retraction of Freedom of Russia Legion’s prior attribution claims for the assassination of Daria Dugina is issued by Ilya Ponomarev in the Washington Post. And in the same interview, he alludes to a force of perhaps 25,000 sympathizers with his movement operating inside Russia:
This is, again, a good time to recall how Ponomarev isn’t just an advocate of overthrowing Putin. He wants to break Russia up into ethnic statelets. A goal ISIS would obviously share.
But shared goals don’t necessarily mean shared operations. And, again, it’s not like Ponomarev’s movement is necessarily interested in the kind of indiscriminate civilian attacks like what just transpired. The attack on the concert hall and the assassination of Daria Dugina are both forms of political terrorism but very different in terms of message sent to the Russian society. Was Ponomarev possibly aware of the looming attack and hoping to put some distance between his group and ISIS with this published retraction? At the same time, whether or not the Russian resistance forces do have active ties to groups like ISIS today, there’s nothing stopping them from developing those ties and it’s not hard to imagine the temptation to do so growing given the success in executing the attack and seemingly getting away with it. That’s all part of what it’s going to be grimly interesting to see how the investigation into this attack plays out and who Moscow eventually fingers as being the organizing culprit. Will Russia ultimately blame ISIS? The US? Ukraine? Or, perhaps most likely, some sort of ‘All of the Above’ conclusion.
@Pterrafractyl–
Excellent work!
Some information about the RDK, one of the forces involved in this concatenation–it is a spin-off of the Azov Battalion and, furthermore, is the direct successor to the Vlassov forces that were part of the Gehlen Organization, as was/is the OUN/B.
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/18/scott-ritter-the-cia-the-russian-fascists-who-fight-russia/
” . . . . After the SMO began, ethnic Russians who had served since 2014 within the ranks of the neo-Nazi, Ukrainian nationalist, paramilitary organization known as the Azov Regiment organized themselves into a separate organization known as the Russian Volunteer Corps, or RDK.
The RDK modeled itself after the Russian Liberation Army, an entity organized, trained, and equipped by the Nazi Germans during World War Two which was comprised of Russian prisoners of war.
Russians today often refer to the RDK members as “Vlassovites,” after Russian General Andrei Vlasov, who was captured by the Germans and later defected to their cause.
Vlasov recruited Russian prisoners of war into what was known as the Russian Liberation Army, which eventually consisted of two divisions comprising some 30,000 troops. Most of Vlasov’s “army” were either killed in combat, or taken prisoner by the Soviet Union, where they were treated as traitors and punished accordingly (the enlisted sentenced to lengthy terms in the Gulag, and the leaders hung.) The RDK was able to attract several hundred former Azov fighters and new recruits into its ranks. . . .”
https://spitfirelist.com/news/the-secret-treaty-of-fort-hunt/
” . . . . Gehlen became chief of the Third Reich’s Foreign Armies East (FHO), on April 1, 1942. He was thus responsible for Germany’s military intelligence operations throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. His FHO was connected in this role with a number of secret fascist organizations in the countries to Germany’s east. These included Stepan Bandera’s “B Faction” of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN/B),15 Romania’s Iron Guard,16 the Ustachis of Yugoslavia,17 the Vanagis of Latvia18 and, after the summer of 1942, “Vlassov’s Army,“19 the band of defectors from Soviet Communism marching behind former Red hero General Andrey Vlassov. Later on in the war, Gehlen placed one of his top men in control of Foreign Armies West, which broadened his power; and then after Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was purged and his Abwehr intelligence service cannibalized by the SS, Gehlen became in effect Nazi Germany’s over-all top intelligence chief. . . .”
This on top of numerous indications that ISIS is actually manipulated by the CIA.
Best,
Dave
@Dave: We’ve received quite a few updates over the past 24 hours and let’s just say suspicions of Ukrainian involvement in the attack haven’t exactly subsided. For starters, Russia appears to have arrested the four gunmen, along with a number of other figures presumably suspected of their involvement. The arrests came after we got reports that Russian police were issuing descriptions of the gunmen as “young men, Slavs, above average height, and possibly used fake beards and mustaches.” Vladimir Putin held a press conference where he stated that the gunmen were not only apprehended while trying to escape to Ukraine through a “window” prepared for them on the Ukrainian side of the border. Russian media has also released an interrogation video of one of the alleged gunmen, who appears to be from Tajikistan. The man claimed he was approached by an unidentified assistant to an Islamic preacher via a messaging app and paid to take part in the raid. A jihadist mercenary?
Interestingly, the US is insisting that ISIS‑K was solely responsible and that Ukraine played no role at all in the attack. It’s not clear how the US would know this but given that the US warned about an ISIS attack on concert halls two weeks ago it’s pretty clear that the US would have, at a minimum, been aware of the unfolding plot. And yet, it’s hard not to notice how these alleged ISIS gunman weren’t sporting suicide vests and clearly didn’t engage in a planned suicide attack. They planned on getting away. Not even a single symbolic suicide bomber. Has ISIS ever operated like that before?
But then there’s the remarkable coincidences around the anti-Putin Russian forces operating out of Ukraine. As we saw, Ilya Ponomarev, the leader of the Freedom for Russia group, had an interview published in the Washington Post on Friday morning, hours before the attack, where he seemingly retracted his group’s prior claims of responsibility for the August 2022 Moscow car bombing assassination of Darya Dugina. As we’re going to see, that interview wasn’t the only press interaction Ponomarev’s Freedom for Russia group had in the day before the concert hall attack. Alexei Baranovsky, the spokesperson for the Freedom of Russia legion, was one of the leaders of three anti-Putin Russian groups that held a joint press conference in Kyiv on March 21 to discuss their ongoing military operations inside Russia. Joining Baranovksy was Denys Kapustin, the head of neo-Nazi Russian Volunteer Corp (RVC/RDK), along with the head of the Siberia Battalion. The three shared how their military operations in Kursk and Belgorod was continuing. This was one day before the attacks, so when we hear assertions from the Kremlin about the gunmen utilizing a “window” being organized from Ukraine to escape, it’s important to keep in mind all three of these groups were conducting military operations inside Russia at the time. Operations that had previously reached as far as Moscow in the case of the Dugina car bombing.
Finally, it’s worth taking a look back in the November 7, 2023, Washington Post op-ed where Ilya Ponomarev made his initial claims his group having worked closely with Ukrainian intelligence in the assassination of Dugina. Because he claims a lot more than just that in the piece. Ponomarev describes how he views a coup overthrowing Putin as the only possible option for ending the conflict in Ukraine and how he is leading a group that is already working on a new post-Putin Russian constitution. Keep in mind that Ponomarev’s Freedom for Russia has a goal of breaking Russia up into a large number of ethnic statelets, so when we’re talking about a post-Putin constitution for Russia, it’s eventually going to be many separate constitutions. Ponomoarev claims in the interview that, while the US is very opposed to his coup plans, Ukrainian military intelligence is supportive. As Ignatius warns in the piece, the worse the situation gets for Ukraine on the battlefield, the more traction ideas like coup plots are going to get. Keep in mind this was all months before Putin was an overwhelming reelection at the same time conditions on the group grew even worse for Ukraine.
So with Russian authorities having seemingly apprehended the gunmen, it’s possible we’re going to see this plot unravel sooner rather than later. It’s going to be grimly interesting to see what sort of evidence Russia has of a broader international plot. Will the suspect list grow longer than Ukraine? We’ll see, but a plot to destabilize Russia through mass casualty terror attacks is the kind of plot that can create a lot of unintended fallout, figurative and literal:
“Putin said authorities detained a total of 11 people in the attack, which also wounded more than 100. He called it “a bloody, barbaric terrorist act” and said Russian authorities captured the four suspects as they were trying to escape to Ukraine through a “window” prepared for them on the Ukrainian side of the border.”
The gunmen appear to have been apprehended...trying to escape to Ukraine. And they had Ukrainian help, according to Russian authorities. Gunmen who appear to be of Tajik origin, with an interrogation video of one of the gunmen indicating that he had been approached by an Islamic preacher on a messaging app and paid to take part in the raid. Does ISIS pay its terrorists? This seems like an oddly arranged terror attack:
And yet, we have US intelligence officials insisting that, yet, this is an attack exclusively by ISIS. “There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever,” according to US officials. Which suggests the US already has pretty good intelligence on the ISIS plot. But, again, don’t forget that these gunmen were demonstrably NOT on a suicide mission as we would expect with ISIS militants. They were trying to get away. Whether or not there is indeed ISIS involvement in the attack, this doesn’t seem like a typical ISIS plot:
So what more do we know about the gunmen? Well, as Meduza.io reported, the police bulletin that was circulated immediately after the attack describing the gunmen as they were getting away described them as “young men, Slavs, above average height, and possibly used fake beards and mustaches.” Could a group of Tajiks pass as Slavic? It seems possible. Either way, they definitely don’t appear to be Middle Eastern based on the available evidence:
“The sources told the paper that police officers tonight started receiving search bulletins stating that the terrorists are “young men, Slavs, above average height, and possibly used fake beards and mustaches.””
Keep in mind that a Slavic description could easily cover ethnic Russian, Chechen, or Ukrainian fighters, and addition to Tajik. Which is especially interesting given that groups like the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), the Siberia Battalion, and Ilya Ponomarev’s Freedom of Russia legion were talking to the press on March 21, one day before the concert hall attack, about how their military operations inside Russia the Kursk and Belgorod were ongoing. And while they insisted their operations were being conducted independently from Ukraine, they also pointed out that they had Ukrainian assistance:
““The operation, even right now, is continuing. We will talk about our losses after it’s conclusion,” Denis Kapustin, leader of one of the groups, the right-wing Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), told a press conference in response to a question about the unit’s losses.”
Yes, Denis Kapustin, the neo-Nazi leader of the RVC, held a press conference in Kyiv to discuss their continuing operations inside Russia. But Kapustin wasn’t alone addressing reporters. He was joined by representatives of Ilya Ponomarev’s Freedom of Russia legion and the Siberia Battalion. It was a joint press conference where all three groups described how they were getting assistance from Ukraine in their cross-border operations while still acting independently:
And note the whitewashing of Kapustin’s neo-Nazi status. The ADL calls him a neo-Nazi but he calls himself a conservative traditionalist. Who is to say what he really is? That’s how it’s delivered to the reader:
And that press conference was held one day before the concert hall attack. And hours before the publication of that interview of Ilya Ponomarev in the Washington Post where he retracts his claims of Freedom of Russia’s role in the assassination of Daria Dugina. So it’s worth taking a look at the original Washington Post op-ed piece by David Ignatius from back in November where Ponomarev made those attribution claims in the first place. Because as we’re going to see, Ponomarev wasn’t mincing words about his plans to overthrow Putin in a coup. The way he described it, overthrowing Putin is the only viable option and he’s already helping to a lead a group, a Congress of People’s Deputies, based on out Poland that’s working on a post-Putin Russian constitution. Interestingly, while Ponomarev insists the US is very opposed to his coup plans, Ukrainian military intelligence is supportive. And as Ignatius warns, the more Ukraine gets bogged down in a war of attrition it can’t possibly win, the more attention these ‘unconventional’ ideas are going to get:
“But given the stalemate that has developed in Ukraine — bluntly described last week by Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Kyiv’s commander in chief, in an essay in the Economist — unconventional ideas such as Ponomarev’s will get attention. Ukraine and its allies are searching for ways to break out of the bloody deadlock without a negotiated deal that would concede territory to Russia.”
Unconventional ideas such as a Ilya Ponomarev’s coup plot scheme are going to get more and more attention the more it looks like Ukraine can’t win on the battlefield. That was the message David Ignatius was delivering in this Washington Post op-ed piece back in November, where Ponomarev was openly describing his coup ambitions. He’s even helps run the Congress People’s Deputies, a Russian shadow parliament run out of Poland that is working on developing a whole new Russian constitution. As Ponomarev argues, toppling Putin is the only realistic option. And once again, he hints at Ukrainian backing for his goals. The US is apparently not so keen on the coup plot plans. But with Ukraine behind it, and the US behind Ukraine’s actions, it’s not hard to see how the US could easily end up assisting in this plot too, even if only indirectly. But, of course, direct involvement would be met with complete denials. Plotting a coup against a nuclear power is a pretty big deal, after all:
s
And then we get to the claims that were mysteriously revoked hours before the concert hall attack. Claims that his group was working closely with Ukrainian intelligence on the Moscow assassination of Darya Dugina:
Bold claims about an attack that reached all the way to Moscow that were mysterious retracted the morning of the Moscow concert hall attack. And retracted at around the same time Ponomarev’s group was engaged in public relations with the Western press about their continuing military operations inside Russia. Did any of those operations extend all the way to Moscow? Some sort of jihadist extraction operation, by chance? Or rather, a jihadist-for-hire mercenary extraction operation, as the case may be.
Was it an ISIS attack? Or some sort of Ukrainian state-backed provocation? With Russia gripped by both mourning and speculation over what happened and who was behind it, the investigation into the Moscow concert hall attack is still in its early stages. But core facts are emerging. It does appear to be an attack carried out by ISIS, which has not only posted photos of the four attackers but even posted bodycam footage of the attacks on ISIS-affiliated Telegram channels. And the gunmen do appear to have been attempting to flee to Ukraine, having been apprehended near the Ukrainian border. This was an ISIS attack with a Ukrainian escape plan.
Now, as we’ve seen, the US has been surprisingly adamant about this being an ISIS-only attack with no Ukrainian element. It’s an assertion that is all the more eyebrow-raising given the US’s warnings about imminent ISIS concert hall attacks in Russia two weeks ago. So it appears we are in store for a series of finger-pointing and, potentially, an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and a further degradation in Russian-Western relations. From a terrorism perspective — shifting political dynamics through mass murder — this operation is already turning into a wild success for anyone who may have wanted to see an escalation of the conflict between Russia and the West. Because, for whatever reason, ISIS crafted a plot with a major Ukrainian angle. A plot Western intelligence knew about well in advance. Instead of the normal ISIS suicide bombers, these gunmen fled to Ukraine, turning a major terror attack into a potential international crisis. What are we looking at here?
So to help explore the question of whether or not we’re looking at an ISIS plot based out of Ukraine, it’s worth taking a look back at a fascinating 2019 piece in the Telegraph about a piece of history that could be very relevant for the unfolding terror investigation. Because it turns out Ukraine has been transformed into a kind of ISIS safehouse in recent years, seemingly with the knowledge of the Ukrainian state. For example, in November 2019, Al Bara Shishani, then ISIS’s deputy minister of war, seemingly returned from the dead when he appeared in a Kyiv court room. It turns out he had been living in Kyiv for years and had even been coordinating terror attacks from there. And he wasn’t the only ISIS leader to do so, according to experts. Instead, Ukrainian authorities seemed to have a kind of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ relationship with ISIS’s leaders, who were in need of a new safehaven following the fall of the ISIS caliphate.
It also turns out Shishani has an interesting personal history with terror groups that could play a role in his informal relationship with the Ukrainian state: he hails from the Pankisi gorge area of Georgia, which is populated by clans with deep ties to Chechnya. So the ISIS deputy minister of war who was living in secret in Kyiv for years was from Georgia. This is a good time to recall the deep ties between the Georgian Legion, the Ukrainian far right, and the potential pivotal role the Georgian Legion may have played in orchestrating the Maidan sniper attacks. In other words, we already know there’s a special relationship between the post-Maidan Ukrainian government and the Georgian Legion.
Did that special relationship play a role in Shishani’s special treatment? Perhaps, although it’s not like such history is necessary to potentially explain Kyiv’s ties to jihadists. Ukraine has been opening its arms to jihadists willing to fight Russia for years now.
And as experts also warned back in 2019, while the jihadists living comfortably in Ukraine have no incentive to stage attacks against their hosts, that may change should that host begin a crackdown. That’s also potentially part of this story. Because at this point, it appears there maybe be a much larger ISIS presence operating inside Ukraine. A friendly operation for now. But that’s not necessarily going to remain the case.
Ok, first, here’s a report that lays out one of core facts of the investigation to emerge so far: despite the lack of any suicide bombings, it really does appear to be an ISIS operation, with ISIS posting photos of the gunmen as proof:
This was indeed an ISIS attack. That much is clear after not just the release of this photo of the four gunmen but also the release of bodycam footage on ISIS-affiliated Telegram channels. But that doesn’t preclude the scenario the Russian government is alleging about assistance by the Ukrainian state. After all, they do appear to have been apprehended along the border with Ukraine and this attack coincided with Ukrainian-backed cross-border military operations by three Russian resistance groups. And that’s why we should probably expect Russian’s accusations against Ukraine to include accusations of coordination with ISIS:
““Special services and law enforcement agencies in the Bryansk region, near the border with Ukraine, detained four suspects from among those who committed a terrorist attack in the Crocus City Hall concert hall,” the Committee said.”
The gunmen were reportedly captured in the Bryansk region near the border with Ukraine. That would, the minimum, suggest they were planning on escaping into Ukraine and had a plan for what to do once they were inside Ukraine. We don’t what exactly the Russian government meant by a “window” being prepared for them to escape across the Ukrainian border, but keep in mind that such a window could be an active or passive effort. In other words, removing a Ukrainian troop presence would be one example, but then there’s also the questions of what those three Ukrainian-backed Russian groups engaged in cross-border military operations may have been doing with respect to this terror operation. But also note that it’s not just the Russian government that was involved the capture of the gunmen. Belarusian forces took part in the operation too:
We also got more information on the apparent admissions by the gunmen. One claims they returned to Russia from Turkey earlier this month. Another claims he was offered $5,000. So we have this juxtaposition of this seemingly being an ISIS attack but the apparent the attackers didn’t necessarily have ISIS-league levels of commitment to the jihadist cause. Again, it wasn’t an ISIS suicide attack. They planned on escaping to Ukraine. And apparently they were paid. It’s an odd ISIS attack in that respect and yet ISIS appears to have evidence of its involvement:
So what are we looking at here? Is this is a ‘normal’ ISIS attack or something messier? To get a better idea of the Ukrainian terror nexus that we appear to be looking at, here’s an article from November 2019 about how Ukraine became the unlikely home for ISIS’s then-fleeing leadership. And as we’re going to see, while the presence of ISIS leaders — like Georgian Chechen Al Bara Shishani — in Ukraine was a complete secret to many who knew them and thought they were dead, it doesn’t appear to have been a secret to Ukraine’s security services. Instead, what remains a secret is why these terror leaders have been receiving such quietly hospitable treatment. This was the state of affairs in 2019. What are the odds the situation hasn’t gotten worse:
“As details emerged about his miraculous resurrection – how he dodged what had been reported as a fatal air strike in Syria, then used a fake passport to travel to Turkey and Ukraine, where he would live untroubled for two years – a number of questions came begging about Kiev’s capacity and willingness to deal with terrorists taking shelter within.”
Two years of living in Ukraine when seemingly everyone thought he was dead. Until he turned up in a Kiev courtroom. It was quite a magic trick for ISIS commander Al Bara Shishani. He even managed to coordinate ISIS operations from Kiev, according to the SBU:
And note how the part of Georgia Shishani hails from, the Panikis gorge region, has deep ties to Chechen clans. It’s worth keeping in mind the long-standing ties between the Georgian Legion, the Ukrainian far right, and the potential pivotal role the Georgian Legion may have played in orchestrating the Maidan sniper attacks. The point being that there is reason to believe there exists a special relationship between the Ukrainian government and the Georgian Legion. Might that special relationship extend to these Georgian jihadists?
So what do we know about how Shishani managed to elude capture in Ukraine for years? Well, to help explain that, we have the related story of the escape of Akhmed Chatayev, a one-armed and one-legged boy from the Pankisi gorge who reportedly played a key role in converting Shishani to ISIS. Chatayev was later accused of roles in coordinating suicide attacks and eventually blew himself up in 2017 in Tbilisi during a police raid. And it turns out Chatayev was only in Georgia in the first place thanks to the fact that he was allowed to return to Georgia from Ukraine in 2013 despite an Interpol wanted notice. Moscow wanted Chatayev detained but that never happened. Keep in mind that the President of Ukraine in 2013 was Viktor Yanukovych, the supposed Putin stooge who also happened to be running the secret “Hapsburg Group” lobbying campaign in 2013 to get Ukraine allowed into a trade association agreement with the European Union. Also keep in mind that Amnesty International was opposed to Chatayev’s extradition. So when we see the blame for Chatayev’s return to Georgjia in 2013 blamed on Kiev’s then minister of the interior Yuriy Lutsenko, it’s important to keep in mind that Ukraine was in middle of a secret campaign to woo the West during this period:
And then we get to the other anectdote that was seemingly pin the blame for Ukraine’s lack of enforcement against the terrorists living in its midst on then-Prosecutor Generate Yuriy Lutsenko: then US-ambassador George Kent accuses Lutsenko of unmasking an undercover anti-corruption agent in 2017 who was investigating the fake passport business. Keep in mind Lutsenko was appointed to that post by Ukraine’s president, who was at that point Petro Poroshenko. But according to the US amabassador’s narrative, we should just assume the culpability for the disruption of anti-corruption operations ends at Lutsenko:
And as experts warned at the time, Shishani isn’t the only terror leader operating out of Ukraine. And Ukrainian authorities don’t seem to have a problem with this arrangement. Ukraine has become a kind of terror leadership safehouse:
Finally, note this ominous warning that could become very relevant for the current situation: while Ukraine doesn’t have anything to worry about from these terrorists as long as Ukraine remains a safehouse for them, that could change should Ukraine begin cracking down on its notorious guests. Which is all the more reason was shouldn’t expect a serious change to the status quo:
And that ominous warning brings us to the current situation. Evidence is pointing towards ISIS operating against Russia out of Ukraine. So far, Ukraine and the West are vehemently denying this is the case. But time will tell how this investigation unfolds. It’s not hard to imagine Russian posting evidence of ongoing ISIS networks inside Ukraine. If that happens, what then? Will Ukraine actually arrest and extradite its notorious guests and risk reprisals? We’ll see, but keep in mind that if Ukraine ends up attempting to arrest the rest of the ISIS networks operating inside the country, there’s an obvious escape plan: escape into Russia for more attacks. Escape into the EU to plot future attacks, perhaps with a forged passport. And just attack in Ukrainian state in defiance. It’s going to be grimly interesting to see which path these inconvenient secret guests ultimately follow.
With the investigation into the Moscow concert hall attack still underway, and the Kremlin continuing to level accusations of Western involvement in the attack, it’s worth taking a look back at some remarkable history involving ISIS operatives in Ukraine. As we saw, by 2019, Ukraine was found to be operating as a kind of safehouse for ISIS leaders forced to flee from their collapsed caliphate. But the presence of ISIS affiliates in Ukraine appears to have started well before that.
As the following July 2015 NY Times article describes, there were at least three Islamic battalions operating in Ukraine at that time. Two of them, the Dzhokhar Dudayev and Sheikh Mansur battalions, are primarily comprised of Chechen fighters. The third was mostly Crimean Tartars.
Both of these Chechen units have ISIS ties. For example, French authorities arrested two members of the Sheikh Mansur battalion in early 2015 over accusations of being ISIS members. And as we’re going to see, a reporter for the Intercept was granted an interview with the founder of the Dzhokhar Dudyev battalion, Isa Munayev, after the reporter got in contact with one of Munayev’s “brothers” in Turkey. This “brother” was an ISIS member. Keep in mind that the Sheikh Mansur battalion is an offshoot of the Dzhokhar Dudyev battalion.
And as we should expect, the Ukrainian government was well aware of these battalions operating inside the country. Munayev reportedly had an agreement at the highest levels of Ukrainian government, although nothing was ever written down. But some sort of agreement must have been in place. That’s clear from the way Munayev managed to recruit his deputy commander, Adam Osmayev, in the spring of 2014, when Osmayev was broken out of a Ukrainian prison by Munayev and a group of men. When the group was interdicted by Ukrainian special forces they were somehow allowed to go free after a dramatic standoff. Months later, Osmayev’s sentence was deemed adequately served by an Odessa court. And, of course, we know there had to be some sort of informal Ukrainian government agreement to host these battalions since the Sheikh Mansur battalion was allowed to operate under the subordination of Right Sector. Isa Munayev was killed in early 2015, with Osmayev taking over. That’s the status as of 2015.
Ihor Kolomoisky, the oligarch patron of Azov, made donation to the battalion that included an armored car. That’s at least what we know about.
So what happened to these battalions since? Well, both appear to be still active. At least that’s what we can infer based on reports from the fall of 2022 and early 2023 that describe both the Sheikh Mansur and Dzhokhar Dudyev battalions as still active. In fact, Osmayev is still leading the Dzhokhar Dudyev battalion. Given that Right Sector is now formally incorporated into the Ukraine military, it’s unclear where Sheikh Mansur battalion fits in the new formalized military hierarchy.
So that’s all key context to keep in mind as the investigation into the Moscow concert hall attacks continue to play out. Ukraine’s quiet relationship with ISIS affiliates didn’t start in 2019. It’s been festering for over a decade:
“In Ukraine, the Dzhokhar Dudayev and Sheikh Mansur units are mostly Chechen, but they include Muslims from other former Soviet areas, such as Uzbeks and Balkars. The third unit, Crimea, is predominantly Crimean Tatar. There is no indication of any United States involvement with the groups.
”
There were at least Islamist battalions operating in Ukrainian in 2015: the Dzokhar Dudayev battalion, the Sheik Mansur Battalion, and the Crimea Battalion. And as we can see with the Sheikh Mansur group, it subordinate to Right Sector, which was at that point not net formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military. And as we saw back in September of 2015, two months after the publication of this article, Right Sector actually engaged in a gun and grenade battle with Kiev police in July of that year. So the same month the NY Times was reporting on the incorporation of these Islamist battalions, including one subordinate to Right Sector, Right Sector was itself engage in street battles with the police:
It’s also rather notable that this 2015 piece didn’t attempt to whitewash the Nazi nature of Right Sector and Azov. At the same time, when we see the assertion that groups like Azov were explicitly not being trained the US military, keep in mind that we got reports indicating the exact opposite situation just months before this article. In other words, there was still some whitewashing in this piece:
Now, regarding the contacts between these Chechen battalions and the Ukrainian government, note how one of the leaders of these battalions, Isa Munayev, apparently received informal approval of senior members of the Ukrainian government, although with nothing written down. So when it comes to the Ukrainian government’s potential interactions with Chechen Islamists, it appears to have been a informal arrangement orchestrated at the highest levels:
And that brings us to the following massive red flag about this informal arrangement between the Ukrainian state and Chechen jihadists: French authorities detained two members of the Sheikh Mansur battalion earlier in 2015 on accusations of belonging to ISIS:
And as the following February 2015 piece in The Intercept warned at the time, the concerns about ISIS ties to these battalions shouldn’t be limited to the Sheikh Mansur battalion, itself an offshoot of the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion. It turns out the reporter managed to secure an interview with the leader of the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion, Isa Munayev, after first getting in contact with one of Munayev’s “brothers” who assured the reported that Munayev could be trusted. This “brother” was an Islamic State contact living in Turkey.
As the report also makes clear, Munayev’s battalion hasn’t exactly been operating quietly in Ukraine. In fact, Munayev’s deputy commander, Adam Osmayev, was broken out of a Ukrainian prison in the spring of 2014 by Munayev and a group of men. When the group was interdicted by Ukrainian special forces they were somehow allowed to go free after a dramatic standoff. Months later, Osmayev’s sentence was deemed adequately served by an Odessa court. Also, it appears that Ihor Kolomoisky, the oligarch patron of Azov, made donation to the battalion that included an armored car.
So when we read in the about NY Times piece about how Munayev had received informal approval from senior members of the Ukrainian government, it’s worth keeping in mind that this informal approval included approving of Munayev’s armed jail break of his deputy commander. It’s that kind of a informal relationship:
” IN SEPTEMBER OF 2014, I found myself standing on a narrow, potholed street in Kiev, east of the Dnieper River, in an area known as the Left Bank. I didn’t even know, at that point, whom I was meeting. I knew only that Khalid, my contact in Turkey with the Islamic State, had told me his “brothers” were in Ukraine, and I could trust them.”
This piece, written in February 2015, three months before the about NY Times piece, starts off with the reporter getting an invitation from an Islamic State contact in Turkey to meet with one of the contact’s “brothers” in Ukraine. They then travel to Ukraine to meet Isa Munayev, founder of the Dzokhar Dudayev battalion. And the same figure who, according to the NY Times piece, has an informal agreement with the Ukrainian government at the highest levels. So, as we saw above, the French authorities accused two members of the Sheik Mansur battalion — which broke off from the Dhokhar Dudayev battalion — of ISIS ties in early 2015. And here we have another journalist getting put in contact with the founder of the Dhokhar Dudayev battalion via one of his Islamic State “brothers”:
So when did the Chechens reach their informal arrangement with the Ukrainian government? Well, it appears to have been in place by the spring of 2014. At least that’s how it appeared based on the recounting of how Adam Osmayev, the deputy commander of the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion, was broken out of prison by Munayev and someone allowed to go free after a dramatic standoff with special forces at a militia checkpoint. And in the fall of 2014, an Odessa court ruled that Osamyev had fulfilled enough of his sentence to be set free. Osmayev and Munayev then returned to Kiev to start the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion:
We’re also told that Munayev had met with representatives of the SBU from time to time. Which is presumably how the informal arrangement with the Ukrainian government is managed. So we have SBU contacts with the ISIS affiliated leaders of Chechen battalions. This was 2015. What do those contacts look like in 2024?
And it appears these battalions have had informal arrangements with more than just senior Ukrainian government officials. Ihor Kolomoisky, a key patron of multiple volunteer battalions, including the Azov battalion. Munayev’s fighters were receiving gifts from Kolomoisky too. Like an armored car:
Also note how the Sheikh Mansour battalion, which broke off from the Dudayev battalion, is based close to Mariupol, the longtime headquarters of Azov. So while the Sheik Mansour battalion was technically subordinate to Right Sector, it undoubtedly had extensive Azov contacts from that area:
Also note that while the Dzokhar Dudayev and Sheik Mansour battalion are primary comprised of Chechen fighters, they weren’t exclusively Chechen. A number of Ukrainians serve in the battalion:
And that was the state of affair in 2015. What about now? Are the units still in operation? And what about the fact that groups like Right Sector have now been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military? And how many Ukrainians are there serving in these units today? These are some of the questions that now linger over the investigation into the Moscow concert hall attack by a group of ISIS-recruited gunmen who managed to almost escape into Ukraine. So it’s worth noting that we can at least answer the very basic question as to whether or not these battalions are still in operation. The answer is yes. For example, here’s a September 2022 NPR report describing the Sheikh Mansur Battalion as one of at least two Chechen battalions operating in Ukraine:
“Today, Mansur is the deputy commander of the Sheikh Mansur Battalion (no relation), one of at least two all-Chechen battalions fighting in Ukraine against Russia. These Chechens are among the 20,000 foreign fighters that the Ukrainian government estimated to have joined its forces as of early March, near the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
So the Sheikh Mansur Battalion was operating as of September of 2022, and is presumably still active to this day. How about the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion? Yep, it’s still active. And as the following Jan 2023 piece notes, it’s still being led by Adam Osmaev, the same person broken out of a Ukrainian prison in the spring of 2014 by Isa Munayev:
“The Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion is one of those fighting with Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s Ukrainian forces, as they have since Russia first invaded eastern Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. Named after the first post-Soviet president of independent Chechnya, known as the Republic of Ichkeria, it was created as a “peacekeeping battalion – so rest in peace, Russians,” says Tor.”
The death of Isa Munayev didn’t mark the end of the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion. It’s still in operation and still under the command of Munayev’s deputy Adam Asmaev, who was broken out of a Ukrainian prison in 2014 and allowed to get away:
Does Adam Osmayev have the same ISIS “brothers” as Isa Munayev? We don’t know but it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t. Again, don’t forget that Ukraine’s ISIS presence appears to have increased since the fall of the caliphate. That’s how the country became a kind of ISIS safehouse by 2019. There were a lot of red flags about ISIS ties already by 2015, almost a decade ago. Red flags that are presumably a lot bigger and bloodier today.
Following up on the remarkable story of Omar Al-Shishani, the Georgian-Chechen ISIS leader who surprised the world back in 2019 when he appeared in a Kiev courtroom following an arrest by Ukraine’s SBU in a joint operation with the CIA after having been thought to have died in 2016, here’s a set of articles that take a closer look at Shishani’s alleged death.
Or, alleged deaths, as the case may be. Yes, it turns out Al-Shishani was first declared dead in March of 2016 following a targeted US airstrike as part of a campaign targeting ISIS leaders. It was the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that informed the world that Al-Shishani died in a Raqqa hospital. The claims were backed by the US-led coalition forces and an anonymous Iraqi intelligence officer. The one group denying Shishani was killed, or even wounded, was the ISIS-affiliated Aamaq news agency citing an unnamed source.
Then, in July of 2016, the US announced an update: Shishani did indeed surive the March attack, but he had just been struck again in a new targeted US attack. Interestingly, while the US did not confirm his death this time, it was ISIS doing the confirming. That’s all part of the amazement around his sudden appearance in Ukraine three years later and learning that he had been living in Kyiv, and even coordinating ISIS attacks, during his time there.
But that’s not the only remarkable part of Shishani’s background. It also turns out he was trained by US special forces from 2006–2010 while he was a member of Georgian military. In fact, he was considered a star pupil and when the 2008 conflict with Russia broke out he became a star soldier. But, in 2010, Shishani was arrested for illegally possessing weapons and sentenced to 15 months in prison.
Upon his release from prison in 2012 at the end of his sentence, Shishani fled to Syria through Turkey. Of course, 2012 also happens to be the year the now infamous declassified August 2012 DIA document predicting, and welcoming, the rise of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria as part of the Western-backed regime change operation. In other words, Shishani’s decision to travel to Syria — and take large numbers of fighters with him — was presumably also welcomed by the West. Very quietly welcomed.
It’s a remarkable personal arc: he get’s elite training by US special forces. Then he spends 15 months in a Georgian prison over illegal weapons, only to travel to Syria in 2012 upon his release and join the jihadist rebel groups. He manages to become one of the leading ISIS military commanders, only to be fake killed twice in 2016. He then manages to set up shop in Kyiv, where he reportedly coordinated ISIS attacks, only to be revealed to the world in 2019 when he shows up in Kyiv courtroom after being arrested in a joint SBU/CIA operation. What role he may have played in the Ukrainian civil war before his arrest remains unclear, but given the presence of multiple Chechen battalions with ISIS ties fighting on behalf of Ukraine, it’s not hard to imagine he may have been assisting the Ukrainian war effort in one way or another as the price of his residency. At this point so little is know about what exactly brought about his arrest that we can only speculate. But boy is there a lot to speculate about.
Oh, and get this: his wikipedia page, as of today, list him as having died in July 2016. Someone didn’t get the memo.
Ok, first, here’s a look at a 2015 Business Insider piece covering how, before Omar al-Shishani was an ISIS commander, he was the star pupil of a US special forces Georgian training program. And then the star soldier during the 2008 Georgian conflict:
“These military successes are not simply the result of any innate military capabilities. Instead, Shishani spent years conducting military campaigns against the Russians, first as a Chechen rebel and then as a soldier in the Georgian military. During Shishani’s four years in the military, from 2006 to 2010, his unit received some degree of training from American special forces units.”
It’s quite a background for a leading ISIS commander: Omar al-Shishani received US special forces training from 2006 to 2010. Training deployed during the brief war between Russia and George in 2008. Shishani’s skills were so valued by his US instructors that, according on one anonymous Georgian defense official, “the only reason he didn’t go to Iraq to fight alongside America was that we needed his skills here in Georgia”:
And note where Shishani fled to immediately after his release from prison in 2012: Syria, where he would basically be working in concert with Western regime change goals:
And as we’ve seen, there’s no questions as to whether or not the US was welcoming the growing jihadist presence in Syria in 2012 and the possibility of something like the ISIS caliphate emerging there. That was the expressed wishes revealed in a declassified August 2012 DIA document that welcomed the prospect of a “Salafist principality” emerging jin Eastern Syria and taking down the Assad regime:
“A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.”
Yes, it’s quite an uncanny prediction. The kind of uncanny prediction that serves as reminder that the cynical utilization of Islamic radical movements to achieve Western-backed goals is, at this point, historically undeniable. It’s how the world operations. If a terrorist “Salafist principality” will help take down a targeted regime, that’s fine. At least fine for now:
So, at least as of 2012, Shishani was more or less operating in concert with US foreign policy goals in Syria. Until he seemingly wasn’t, which brings us to his alleged death. Or rather, deaths. The first claims arrived in March of 2016 after a US airstrike targeting Shishani was declared a success. Shishani had been wounded and later died in a Raqqa hospital, according to reports from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. These claims were further corroborated by the US-led coalition forces and an anonymous Iraqi intelligence officer. The one group denying Shishani was killed, or even wounded, was the ISIS-affiliated Aamaq news agency citing an unnamed source:
“Some 1,500 battle-hardened fighters from the Caucasus region joined IS because of al-Shishani, al-Hashimi said.”
It wasn’t just Shishani. He brought a small army of battle hardened fighters with him. And while we’ve been told that he didn’t join ISIS until 2015, Shishani and his fighters were clearly fighting along side ISIS well before that:
Flash forward to his apparent death in 2016, and we find multiple sources seemingly confirming Al-Shishani’s death: the the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the US coalition, and anonymous Iraqi intelligence official all confirmed he was dead. It was only the ISIS-affiliated Aamaq news agency that cited an anonymous source not only denying Shishani was killed but that he was wounded at all. This was apparently a targeted US airstrike:
That was the state of affairs in March of 2016. Months later, in July of 2016, we got another update: The US admitted Al-Shishani survived the March attack and the target of a new attack. And while the US couldn’t confirm this time that Al-Shishani was killed, it was ISIS this time who made the announcement that, yes, Shishani was indeed dead:
“Cook said he was “not able to confirm” that Shishani was killed this time, although on Wednesday Isis announced through its propaganda agency that Shishani was dead.”
Was Shishani ever wounded at all in either of these attacks? That’s unclear, but keep in mind one of the other huge questions looming over his time in Kyiv: did he play any role in what was then Ukraine’s civil war? After all, as we saw, Ukraine has been utilizing battalions stocked with Chechen fighters with ISIS ties from nearly the start of the civil war. So, at a minimum, it’s easy to imagine he was at least in contact with those battalions.
It’s going to be interesting to see if he ever ends up getting released from prison again. And, of course, how many more times he ends up dying.
Here’s a followup and a correction regarding that mysterious story of the Chechen ISIS leader, Al-Bara Shishani, who shocked the world when he showed up in a Kyiv courtroom in November of 2019 following a joint operation with the CIA after having been thought to have died in 2016. As we’ve seen, part of what the discovery that he was still alive and living in Kiev so intriguing is the fact that Ukraine has allowed multiple Chechen-based ‘volunteer’ units to fight on its behalf despite clear ties to groups like ISIS.
First, here’s the correction: a previous comment was mixing up Al-Bara Shishani with Omar Al-Shishani. Al-Bara Shishani was, in fact, Omar Shishani’s deputy. Omar Shishani was indeed killed in July of 2016, after previously being declared dead in an airstrike earlier that year. As we’re going to see, Al-Bara Shishani was thought to have been killed in an airstrike in 2017. So it appears both Omar and Al-Bara Shishani have a track record of rising from the dead.
And that correction brings us to a fascinating report in the Kyiv Independent from December 2021 about the discovery of a new ISIS cell operating in Kyiv. A cell operating under the direction of “one of the leaders of the Islamic State, who was detained by the SBU and extradited to Georgia in May 2020,” according to the SBU. And while that Islamic State leader wasn’t named, it was pretty obviously Al-Bara Shishani given that he was extradited from Ukraine to Georgia in May of 2020.
As we’re also going to see in that report, former SBU’s Deputy Head Viktor Yagun told media outlet Zaborona in 2020, that hundreds of Islamic State associates may reside in Ukraine. Which is particularly interesting given the observations by Aleks Korenkov, who leads the International Research Center for Security Problems. According to Korenkov, the Islamic State cell was atypical from most cells in that it lacked the IS paraphernalia like IS flags or recruitment literature, raising the question as to whether or not they were operating more like a criminal gang than a terrorist cell. But Korenkov goes on to note who hidden IS cells could serve a particularly valuable purpose for the group in that they allow valuable foreign fighters with battlefield experience to survive and fight another day. As Korenkov put it, the “value of such hidden centers of IS in European countries is not money, and not even recruitment. It is the preservation of human resources. The war in Syria has shown that experienced foreign volunteers are important to the success of organizations such as the Islamic State. Their experience is invaluable… (and) it is important for the organization to keep these people even after their military defeat.” It’s a key part of the context of the murky relationship between the Ukrainian government and ISIS: Ukraine’s apparent safehaven status for ISIS came at an incredibly opportune time for keeping the group operational going forward.
But let’s not forget about one of the other extremely remarkable details in this story: Al-Bara Shishani was the first deputy Omar al-Shishani, who had four years of US special forces training from 2006–2010 before getting sent to prison on illegal weapons possession charges where he was radicalized. It was upon his release in 2012 that Omar al-Shishani traveled to Syria to eventually become ISIS’s Minister of War. The fact that it was his deputy who showed up surprisingly alive in Kyiv in 2019 makes this story all the more fascinating.
But as we’re going to see in the following April 2019 report in Eurasianet, there’s another very interesting part of Omar al-Shishani’s past and conversion to jihadist radicalism: his 2010 jailing for the possession of illegal weapons appears to have been, by all accounts, wildly trump up charges and shocking given that he had been a super star soldier in the then-failed Georgian war with Russia. And until his jailing, which was seen as a deep betrayal, Omar al-Shishani hadn’t been been a radical jihadist. He in fact grew up in a highly tolerant interfaith household — a Sufi father and Christian mother — and maintained that tolerance while serving in the Georgian army and receiving US special forces training. The trumped up charges for this super star soldier and subsequent 3 year prison sentence changed him. And then, 16 months into his sentence, he’s given early release and goes off to Syria to fight the Assad regime. That’s the story presented in the following report that includes interviews with his first cousin, Temur Tsatiashvili, who grew up with his cousin in Georgia’s Pankisi gorge and witness how the predominantly tolerant traditional Sufism of the area was supplanted by Saudi-financed Salafist preachers and fights during the first Chechen war in the 90s.
But his cousin isn’t the only one interviewed. There’s also a former high-ranking intelligence official in the Georgian Interior Ministry, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the issue. According to this official, Omar al-Shishani “was dismissed from the army for some health problems, but I don’t know whether it was really health problems or they started to distrust him.” Then, in September 2010, this super star arrested on what many consider rigged charges and emerges from prison two years later to become a super star jihadist in the Western/Gulf-backed jihadist fueled regime-change campaign. And it’s his deputy who shows up in 2019 in Kyiv courtroom secret running an ISIS cell, only to be deported in 2020 to Georgia, where he apparently continued to direct the Kyiv cell from his Georgian prison? That’s quite a turn of events. The kind of turn that suggests these Georgian-Chechen jihadists have value to more than just ISIS:
“It was during the time of the first Chechen war, raging across the border in Russia in the early and mid 1990s, that this ethnically mixed world of religious toleration began to fall apart. As foreign fighters, often from the Middle East and financed by Saudi religious organizations, came to fight, they brought with them their interpretation of Islam, generally called Salafism, a puritanical strand with roots in Saudi Arabia. “It was in 1995 or ‘96 when the, shall we say, changes began in Islam. Various teachers came, and a new stage of Islamization started, a new current,” Temur says.”
You can’t understand the origins of the contemporary Pankisi gorge without recognizing the profound impact of the flow of jihadist from the Middle East during the first Chechen war close to three decades ago. It was then that the traditional tolerant Sufism that prevailed in the area was supplanted by radical Saudi-financed Salafism. It’s the Pankisi gorge version of a the same story seen across the Sunni world in recent decades. That’s the story we’re hearing from Temur Tsatiashvili, first cousin of legendary fighter Tarkhan Batirashvili, aka Abu Omar al-Shishani aka Omar the Chechen. Temur and Tarkhan both grew up in a tolerant society populated by interfaith households like Tarkhan’s own home. Until it changed.
Interestingly, though, it’s not just Temur sharing this history. An unnamed former high-ranking Georgian intelligence was also willing to share this history, on a condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. Why the high level of sensitivity?
It also sounds like Tarkhan wasn’t personally impacted by the radicalization taking place in his community despite having worked as a teenager as a mountain guide helping Chechens cross the border. By 2008, he was working for army intelligence doing reconnaissance. This would, of course, overlap with the 2006–2010 period when he was reportedly being trained by US special forces. As we saw, his skills were so valued by his US trainers that, according on one anonymous Georgian defense official, “the only reason he didn’t go to Iraq to fight alongside America was that we needed his skills here in Georgia”. Tarkhan/Al-Shishani’s radicalization was yet to come:
And then we get to the apparent explanation for Tarkhan/Al-Shishani’s conversion into a jihadist: In September 2010, he was arrested on what everyone appears to view as trump-up charges of illegal weapons possession. This is following the disastrous conclusion of the Georgian war and the elevation of the ruthless Bacho Akhalaia as minister of defense. It’s almost as if the Georgian state was trying to ‘get rid of a problem’. And yet it’s not at all clear why Tarkhan/Al-Shishani would have been targeted like this because, by all accounts, it was his arrest and imprisonment that resulted in his jihadist radicalization. We don’t know what the motive was for this treatment of a former star soldier. It’s as if he was turned into a jihadist by the Georgian state. But for whatever reason, he was imprisoned and then released after 16 months and allowed to travel to Syria:
Finally, note how radical strains of Islam remain stronger than ever and appear to have basically permanently supplanted the Sufism of decades past. It really was a wildly successful cultural conquest, thanks in large part to war and an endless flood of foreign-supporter radical preachers and fighters. With future consequences from this radicalization undoubtedly yet to come:
And that troubling observation from 2019 about radical Islam being stronger than ever in the Pankisi gorge brings us to the following December 2021 report in the Kyiv Independent about another Islamic State bust. This time it was an active ISIS cell operating in Kyiv. Interestingly, while there’s no indication they were planning a terrorist act, the lack of ISIS materials has some experts speculating that this could be effectively a criminal gang of former ISIS fighters. On the other hand, as experts warn, the lack of ISIS materials suggest we could be looking at what amounts to an attempt to keep valuable foreign fighters with battlefield experience alive and ready to fight another day. But it’s the apparent commander of this Kyiv cell that is the most intriguing because, according to the SBU, the cell was being directed by Tsezar Tokhosashvili aka Al-Bara Shishani. That’s despite the fact that he was extradited by Kyiv to Georgia — where he had been sentenced to prison in absentia — back in May of 2020:
“The cell was directed by “one of the leaders of the Islamic State, who was detained by the SBU and extradited to Georgia in May 2020,” the statement said.”
The Georgian government wasn’t being clear on the identity of “one of the leaders of the Islamic State, who was detained by the SBU and extradited to Georgia in May 2020,” but it’s not hard to infer that ISIS leader’s identity. There was only one ISIS leader extradited to Georgia in May of 2020, after all: Tsezar Takhosashvili aka Al-bara Shishani. It’s not a mystery. The mystery at this point is how is it that Tokhosashvili was apparently still directing the group from a Georgian prison:
And then we get to disturbing reminders about how the Ukrainian state doesn’t appear to really view ISIS as a threat worth focusing on. Reminders that include the 2020 admission by former SBU Deputy Head Viktor Yagun about how hundreds of Islamic State associates may reside in Ukraine:
And while a lack of ISIS materials had some experts questioning whether or not this was effectively a criminal gang, there’s another possibility: this was an attempt to keep valuable experienced foreign jihadists alive to fight for ISIS another day:
What kind of ISIS safehaven role is Kyiv still playing today? It’s hard to imagine the war that broke out in 2022 made the Ukrainian government more focused on anti-terror operations. Just as it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t relish the opportunity to see some battle hardened ISIS fighters launch attacks against Russian forces or Russia itself.
And that’s all part of why questions about a possible Ukrainian role in the ISIS‑K concert hall attacks should include questions about whether or not Al-Bara Shishani is still directing ISIS cells in Kyiv inexplicably. We don’t know if that’s still happening, but it’s hard to rule it out at this point unless the guy is reported to have died. And even then...
The situation is rapidly destabilizing and threatening to blowing up into something much larger. That appears to be the somewhat predictable state of affairs in the Middle East following a drone armada attack by Iran against Israel. Time will tell this is turns into the spark for something much larger, perhaps soon.
But it’s worth noting one of the grimly interesting aspects of the potentially unfolding larger conflict between Iran, Israel, and maybe a host of other nations in the region along with the US: we appear to be in period of elevate ISIS activity and virtually all of these entities are the stated enemies of ISIS. In fact, it was just back in January when Iran suffered twin bombing attacks by ISIS‑K, the same branch behind the Moscow concert hall attacks last month. So with ISIS‑K seemingly getting much more active in recent months, we have to ask who exactly is ISIS going to target as this conflict plays out? They’re going to have plenty of targets.
Again, time will tell, but that grim question brings us to the following set of stories about one of the notable aspects of the the ISIS‑K attacks against Iran and Russia: First, it turns out Iran also warned Russia about an impending ISIS‑K attack shortly before the March 22 attacks, in addition to the US warnings we’ve heard so much about. But unlike the US, which reportedly gained its intelligence from intercepted “chatter”, the Iranians apparently gained their intelligence from the interrogations carried out following the ISIS‑K attacks back in January.
Next, it also turns out the US warned Iran of its own ISIS‑K attacks shortly before the bombings back in January. Warnings that also were reportedly based on intercepted communications. Interestingly, while ISIS took credit for the bombings in Iran, the group didn’t specify that it was ISIS‑K behind it, but the US insisted that it was definitely ISIS‑K. So based on these two recent ISIS‑K attacks and the US’s advance knowledge based on intercepted communications, it would appear that the US has a remarkable handle on ISIS-K’s planning and operations.
All the more remarkable by the fact we saw these claims about the ability to intercept these communications show up in news reports following both attacks. The ability to readily intercept a terror group’s communications like that is quite a thing to just admit in the press. But it happened. Twice this year already, as we’re going to see. This is a good time to recall the Ukrainian government’s alarming relationship with ISIS...is that possibly the basis for the US’s remarkable penetration of ISIS-K’s communications?
And then there’s the other major ISIS‑K target that isn’t (hopefully) going to be part of this larger conflagration unfolding between Iran and Israel but is very much a major US adversary with growing influence in the region: China. Yes, it turns out ISIS‑K declared China to be one of its major targets. The declarations were made in 2023 following a string of attacks inside Afghanistan targeting targeting China interests in the country.
But ISIS‑K isn’t just interested in driving China out of Afghanistan. The “happiness and freedom” of ” “all the Muslims of East Turkistan” is the big declared new goal for the group, a call to arms that is implicitly piggybacking on Western claims of genocide against the Uyghurs of Xinjiang. While we have yet to hear about ISIS‑K attacks inside China, we can be confident they are coming.
So who is ISIS‑K going to attack should a war open up drawing Israel, Iran, the US (and who knows who else) into a much larger conflict. Will ISIS‑K play a role in that conflict? Or maybe take advantage of the conflict to stage attacks in places like Russia or China? We’ll see, but at this point, we can be pretty confident the US is going to have advance knowledge, whatever it is.
Oh, and it turns out we’re already hearing some interesting advice from US national security experts about how best to handle the rising ISIS‑K activity around the world: According to a piece recently published by Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), the best US response to ISIS‑K is no response. Yep. As Kavanagh argues, the US’s track record of crippling terrorist groups hasn’t exactly been a stunning success while the risks of a domestic attack are relatively low. But, more importantly, the US can’t afford to redirect resources towards ISIS when much larger threats from Russia and China are looming. That was Kavanagh’s argument published a couple of weeks ago. And while Iran wasn’t mentioned as a looming threat, we can reasonably assume Iran would get added to that looming threat list too.
Keep in mind Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security advisor, is a former CEIP senior fellow. So when we see columns calling for a ‘do nothing’ approach to ISIS‑K published by a group like CEIP, that’s a big clue as to what the US national security establishment is thinking.
So while there’s going to be no shortage of factors to keep an eye on as the conflict erupting between Iran and Israel develops, it’s going to be worth keeping an eye on how a newly reinvigorated ISIS‑K might take advantage of the situation. By the “enemy of my enemy” logic, ISIS‑K is everyone’s enemies’ enemy, making it a very interesting player in this situation.
Ok, first, here’s a Reuters report from a couple of weeks ago about the other warning Russia received shortly before the Moscow concert hall attack. A warning from Iran obtained thanks to the interrogation of ISIS‑K affiliates following the twin bombings inside Iran back in January. The Iranian warnings were non-specific and just warned that something big was coming, contrasting significantly from the US warnings that specifically included warnings about attacks on concert halls. And as we also learn from an unnamed source familiar with the US intelligence’s very specific foreknowledge of the attack, that intel came from intercepted “chatter”. So Russia did indeed receive multiple warnings about an impending attack. A vague general warning from Iran and a stunning specific warning from the US:
““Days before the attack in Russia, Tehran shared information with Moscow about a possible big terrorist attack inside Russia that was acquired during interrogations of those arrested in connection with deadly bombings in Iran,” one of the sources told Reuters.”
It wasn’t just the US providing those warnings to Russia. Iran issued them too. Although the basis for these warnings differed significantly. In the case of Iran, the intelligence was obtained during the interrogation of ISIS‑K affiliates who were rounded up after the group’s January attacks in Iran. Attacks that, notably, were also carried out by Tajik nationals. The US, on the other hand, appears to have derived its intelligence on interceptions of ISIS‑K “chatter”:
And as the following Reuters report from back in January mentions, the detection of ISIS‑K chatter was also the basis for the US’s warnings to Iran shortly before those attacks. So the US appears to have a remarkably good penetration of ISIS-K’s communications. And for whatever reason, we’re seeing admissions of this penetration showing up in news reports. It’s an interesting state of affairs in counter-terrorism:
““The intelligence is clear-cut and indisputable,” one source said.”
Clear-cut and indisputable. That’s how one of the unnamed sources described the nature of the intelligence picked up through intercepted communications. It was so clear-cut that the US was able to determine that it was ISIS‑K that carried out the attacks in Iran even though the claims of responsibility from ISIS didn’t specify which branch had done it:
So far in 2024, we have the US warning two key adversaries about impending ISIS‑K attacks based on intercepted communications. And it’s only April. How many more ISIS‑K attacks on major US adversaries are we going to see over the course of the rest of 2024? And how many of those attacks will include warnings from the US? Those are some of the rather odd questions we’re forced to digest given the circumstances.
But as the following Vice article from back in March of 2023 reminds us, Iran and Russia aren’t the only major US adversaries suffering from ISIS‑K attacks of late. China has become a major focus for the group. It started with the December 12, 2022, attack on the Longan Hotel in Kabul, followed by a failed suicide bombing attempt the following month targeting the Afghan foreign ministry facility in Kabul. Both attacks occurred right around the times of official visits by Chinese delegations.
And while part of ISIS-K’s motivation for focusing on China clearly has to do with the prominent position the Chinese government has played in opening up relations with the new Taliban-led government, it’s also clear that ISIS‑K isn’t just intent on driving China out of Afghanistan. The “happiness and freedom” of Uyghurs of Xinjiang, or “East Turkistan” as the group puts it, is now a major declared objective for the group:
“In recent months, ISIS‑K—otherwise known by the initialism ISKP—has adopted an increasingly bellicose position toward China. What started as a campaign to undermine Chinese support for the Islamist group’s Taliban rivals has transformed into targeted condemnation of the East Asian superpower itself. Now that vitriol has boiled over into violence. And with targeted attacks against Chinese citizens in Afghanistan likely to continue, Beijing’s prospects in the country are looking more and more perilous.”
The December 2022 ISIS‑K bombing the Longan Hotel in Kabul marked a shifted in ISIS-K’s overall strategy. It was now a staunchly anti-China group. And while China’s deepening ties to the Taliban can explain part of that strategic shift, it’s not like ISIS‑K is focused on attacking Chinese interests in Afghanistan. ‘Freeing the Uyghurs’ is now a major ISIS‑K goal:
And that December 2022 attack was following up with a failed January 11, 2023, suicide bombing at the targeting the Afghan foreign ministry facility in Kabul during a Chinese visit. Weeks later, a video was released with a message of freedom and happiness for “all the Muslims of East Turkistan”:
It’s hard not to notice the incredible alignment of the US’s long-standing strategic objectives with ISIS-K’s new areas of focus. Which brings us to the following opinion piece published by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where we find Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie, making the case that the best US response to the recent string of ISIS‑K attacks is no response. Why no response? Well, as Kavanagh argues, the US’s counter-terror operations haven’t exactly been stunning successes in the past and have a demonstrated limited ability to really impact the operations of terrorist groups, which, itself is an interesting admission.
But then she gets to the other big reason to do nothing: the US should focus on the looming threats posed by Russia and China and going after ISIS‑K would be a distraction and waste of resources in light of those much larger conflicts:
“President Joe Biden’s administration should resist calls to expand the scope of its counterterror operations overseas, even by a little. Increasing overseas military operations is not the most efficient way to protect the U.S. homeland in this instance—and in fact, it may do more harm than good. U.S. intelligence capabilities appear able to track the group proficiently, even without forces deployed in Afghanistan. An already overstretched U.S. military can ill-afford to widen its counterterrorism responsibilities as it tries to manage the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and tensions in the Western Pacific—especially given its limited success in countering similar terrorist threats elsewhere. This is a case where the best response may be no response.”
No response. At least nothing more than the US is currently doing to prevent ISIS‑K attacks. The US military can’t handle the extra workload given the looming challenges it faces with Russia and China. That’s the recommendation we’re from Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
And as part of her reasoning, Kavanaugh suggests that the risk of an ISIS‑K attack inside the US is limited and that all indications are that the US intelligence on the group hasn’t degraded since the pull out from Afghanistan. And, well, given the extremely prescient intelligence on both the attacks in Iran and Russia, it’s hard to argue with the assertion. At a minimum, the US demonstrably has a very good handle on ISIS-K’s plans:
And, of course, the column ends with an emphasis on the the “more pressing threats from Russia and especially China.” Pressing threats that happen to be key targets of ISIS‑K, along with Iran:
As we can see, as long as ISIS‑K is attacking Western rivals, the group is seen as a low priority. That’s the reasoning we’re seeing laid out in this column published by this highly influential think tank. The kind of reasoning that suggests we should expect a lot more ISIS‑K attacks in the coming months that convenient hit the West’s major geostrategic rivals. And a lot more reports about how US intelligence knew the attacks were coming.
It seemed to come out of nowhere. A lightning offensive out of Idlib toppling one city after another. Damascus soon falls and a new phase of Syria’s civil war is here. Is this the beginning of the end of the civil war? Or, more likely, the start of a new phase? The jihadist around Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) may control Damascus, but the country is still balkanized with no real indication that a jihadist-led government can somehow unify it. Sure, HTS’s leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, has been making all sorts of declarations about how the group is committed to respecting religious minorities and has no plans on imposing the kind of brutal Sharia rule its already imposed on cities under its control. But it’s hard to imagine that’s actually how this situation is going to play out. Reprisals and authoritarian brutality are a certainty. It’s just a matter of time and opportunity. And then there’s the Kurdish held areas where hundreds of US troops maintain a presence protecting oil fields, ostensibly as part of the US’s anti-ISIS operations.
The fighting may have subsided but it would be foolish to see this as the end. The only safe bet at this point is more instability, likely in response to the brutality of the new HTS-led regime. In fact, as we’re going to see in the following New Yorker piece, a former emir of Jabhat al-Nusra, who knows Julani well, insisted that “The man hasn’t changed at all, but there’s a difference between being in battle, at war, killing, and running a country,” and that Juliani now considers himself a “statesman”. In other words, perhaps we might expect Julani to try to start off with a relatively ‘moderate’ form of rule, but don’t expect it to stick. Julani may fancy himself a statesman now, but he still possesses the mindset of an al Qaeda leader. Which is all the more reason to assume a new phase of the civil war is just a matter of time. Someone like Julani is simply unfit to lead a country as diverse as Syria. It’s going to be a disaster.
But just because Julani’s ‘moderate jihadist’ rule is largely doomed from the start, that doesn’t mean the HTS regime won’t be able to maintain some degree of military superiority. They did just force the collapse of the Syrian Army, after all. How did that happen? Well, as we’re going to see, it appears HTS has had a bit of a military technology homemade revolution in recent years. A flood of powerful military grade homemade drones and missiles, included guided missiles that are so powerful they’ve replaced the need for the kinds of suicide truck bombs HTS would have relied on just five years ago. It sounds like this drone and missile onslaught was so overwhelming the Syrian army just melted away with no real defenses.
So how did HTS learn how to build all these drones and missiles on their own? Well, on the one hand, this is the age of the internet and 3D printing, and it sounds like much of what HTS has done was simply applying existing off-the-shelf technology. And yet, guided missiles aren’t exactly standard off-the-shelf technology and that brings us to a remarkable claim made by Syrian American activist Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an American humanitarian organization that works for democracy in Syria. According to Moustafa, a desire to help Ukraine played a role in HTS’s decision to launch the assault. Which seems like a stretch. But it points towards one of the more interesting twists in this story: according to a December 1 report in the Kyiv Post, jihadist media is indicating that Ukrainian special forces have been training members of both HTS and the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) in warfighting techniques that include the use of drones. The special forces members were part of the Khimik group of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR). In fact, according to this some Kyiv Post report, we are even told that Ukrainian special forces assisted in an HTS attack on a Russian base near Aleppo back in September and there were suggestions that Ukrainian special forces advisors were providing support for the current attacks, although that hadn’t been independently verified. Still, we’re getting indications from multiple sources, including the Kyiv Post, that Ukraine and HTS have some sort of alliance. This is a good time to recall all of those intriguing stories following the ISIS‑K attack on the Crocus theater in Moscow about how the attacks appeared to be trying to escape to Ukraine and how Ukraine had become a kind of ISIS safe house. HTS may not technically be ISIS, but they are definitely fellow travelers.
Also keep in mind there’s basically zero chance Ukraine has been cooperating with HTS without the US being aware of this relationship. Which brings us to another interesting detail in the Kyiv Post report about the nature of this surprise HTS offensive: According to Mouaz Moustafa, he knew about the attack weeks in advance. So this Syrian American activist who is asserting HTS was trying to help Ukraine with this surprise offensive also knew about the plans well in advance. A surprise offensive that apparently included Ukrainian special forces advisors.
Moustafa also makes another noteworthy assertion: the Israeli pager attacks on Hezbollah and airstrikes on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Syria were seen by HTS as a signal that now was the right timing for an assault of their own. Which is a reminder that some sort of ‘surprise offensive’ of this nature has probably been something on the minds of US and Israeli strategists from the moment it became clear that the conflict in Gaza could erupt into a much larger regional war. Which also suggests the installation of a jihadist ‘unity’ government following the fall of Assad isn’t much of a surprise either. A lot of planning on gone into creating the nightmare about to unfold in this next chapter of Syria’s civil war:
“The offensive came at a time when Assad’s key backers were tied down or weakened by other conflicts: the Russians in Ukraine, and Iran and Hezbollah with Israel. The push was spearheaded by Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the founder and leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, which he rebranded as part of H.T.S. a few years ago, claiming to disavow ties to Al Qaeda and casting himself as a fatigues-clad statesman. Other groups, most notably the Syrian National Army, were also involved in the blitz, as were foreign fighters from factions including the Turkistan Islamic Party, which has long been present in rebel-held territories. On Syria’s exceedingly complicated battlefield, H.T.S. and its earlier Al Qaeda incarnation opposed both Assad and various rebel groups, defeating many during years of intra-opposition infighting. If anything, H.T.S. and its hard-line conservatism represented a counter-revolution that was rejected by the more secular, pro-democratic opposition. They weren’t so much “the rebels” but rather the factions that defeated the rebels.”
If anything, this wasn’t a “rebel” victory. It was the victory of the jihadist that first defeated the rebels and then defeated the government. In that sense, it’s less a cause for celebration than it is an ominous warning of darker days to come. At least that’s assuming the jihadists of HTS behave like jihadists always behave when granted total power. And as we can see from the comments of a former emir of Jabhat al-Nusra, who knows Abu Mohammad al-Julani well, there should be no expectation that Julani has somehow changed. The circumstances may have changed, but the guy is still a radical jihadist. It’s not just a recipe for a gross betrayal of all the promises we are hearing from HTS about its commitment to respecting minority rights. It’s a recipe for a further balkanization of the country. Jihadist may control Damascus, but that didn’t end the conflict:
And note how, for all the hopes about millions of refugees returning to Syria, it’s very possible there’s going to be a renewed refugee crisis, especially for Lebanon where millions of Alawites could end up fleeing. This is at the same time the supply routes between Hezbollah and Iran are potentially lost. Could civil war be in the future for Lebanon too? Either way, Lebanon has a new period of major destabilization likely coming up:
And if that renewed civil war does erupt, don’t be surprised if HTS continues to demonstrate a remarkable level of battlefield dominance. Because as the following FT piece describes, a big part of HTS’s battlefield success appears to be rooted in newly acquired drone and missile building capabilities that the group didn’t previously possess. Home made military drones and guided missiles. Large guided missiles that can replace the need for suicide truck bombs. It was the kind of military hardware the Syrian army simply couldn’t defend against. And, obviously, the kind of military hardware terror groups of all kinds around the world would love to learn how to build in their garages too:
“But HTS’s homegrown manufacturing, particularly of drones and missiles, has enabled it to pose new threats to a regime that lacks significant anti-drone capabilities. In recent days, the militant group has posted slick footage from suicide drone attacks on a commanders’ meeting in a Syrian army building and another drone attack on the air base in the central city of Hama.”
While the speed of the ‘rebel’ assault has shocked many, more remarkable is the military hardware behind that assault: homemade drone and missile capabilities. Including rocket drones and guided missiles that have effectively replaced suicide truck bombs. It’s quite a technological accomplishment: building military drones and missiles in garages. The kind of technological accomplishment that would obviously be incredibly useful for terrorists everywhere:
And then there’s HTS’s acquisition of anti-air missile systems, along with multiple light-attack aircraft. The world has long had concerns about anti-aircraft weapons falling into terrorist hands. Concerns that should be a lot bigger now:
And note how unnamed ‘experts’ are insisting that Turkey isn’t directly supplying HTS, at the same time we are being reminded of the reality that HTS’s stocks of weapons have been supplied, in part, from the Turkish-backed Syrian groups which maintain close co-coordination:
It’s going to be very interesting to learn how the coordination and weapon flows between these Turkey-backed groups and HTS evolves now that the Syrian civil war has reached this new stage. Then again, with homemade drone and missile building capabilities, HTS may not be as reliant on Turkey’s donations as it used to be. Especially if it has help from other sources. Like Ukraine, perhaps? Yes, that’s the claim we’re seeing. Sort of. First, there’s the claims by Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an American humanitarian organization that works for democracy in Syria, that a desire to aid Ukraine and punish Russia was part of the motivation for HTS’s offensive. Which is a really bizarre claim if you think about it. Sure, Russia is very much HTS’s enemy. But launching an offensive to aid Ukraine seems like a very bizarre form of support. And yet, as we’re also going to see from reports in the Kyiv post, Ukrainian special forces have reportedly been training members of HTS in tactics including the use of drones. Beyond that, it sounds like Ukraine special forces advisors have been on the ground in Syria assisting with HTS’s offensive operations include a September 15 attack against Aleppo. In other words, Ukraine has been working with the Syrian jihadist groups for months now. Interestingly, Moustafa also claims that he knew about the plans for this surprise advance weeks ago. So the head of a US-based Syrian activist group knew about the plans for this surprise offensive weeks in advance and also claims a desire to aid Ukraine played a key role in the launch of the offensive:
“Mr. Moustafa said the rebels had taken close note of the damage caused by pager attacks targeting Hezbollah members in Lebanon, and Israeli airstrikes on leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Syria. Those attacks signaled to the rebels that the time was right for one of their own assaults, he said.”
Coordinated or not, it’s pretty remarkable how the Israeli military strikes against Hezbollah and Iran were seen as a signal that now is the time to launch this surprise lightning offensive. Made all the more remarkable by the suggestion that a desire to aid Ukraine was another factor in the offensive, with the goal of striking a blow against Russia. It’s an odd and rather remarkable assertion to make in all of this. Those are the claims of Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, who claims to have also known about the plans for this offensive in recent weeks. Which makes this all seem like less of an HTS surprise offensive and more like a well-coordinated plan between many allied parties:
And while Moustafa was only talking about Ukraine providing assistance in things like countering Russian disinformation or medical assistance, Ukrainian media has been talking about something far more significant: Ukraine special forces providing direct training to HTS members in areas like drone warfare. And it sounds like these special forces advisors have been operating on the ground in Syria for months now, participating in HTS assaults:
“According to reports on some Islamist social media sites, the rebel groups based in the Idlib region – which is said to include members of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) – had received operational training from special forces troops from the Khimik group of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR). The training team focused on tactics developed during the war in Ukraine, including on the use of drones.”
Wow, so Ukraine’s special forces troops from Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) have been training HTS and Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) groups in tactics including the use of drones. Beyond that, the Ukrainians were credited with an attack on a Russian military base near Aleppo back on September 15 and there’s suggestions that Ukrainian special forces were providing support for the latest round of attacks. Remarkable if true. And apparently just the latest example of Ukraine working with jihadists around the globe including direct support for the Islamist militia attack on the Wagner Group in Mali back in July
And, again, let’s not forget that this is unlikely to be the end of Syria’s civil war. A jihadist victory was always doomed to spark further conflict. So will Ukraine’s special forces continue to serve as advisors to HTS as the Syrian civil war continues? Time will tell. But if this relationship deepens, trying not to be surprised if we get future reports of jihadists fighting against Russia in Ukraine. Presumably with drones and missiles instead of suicide bombs at this point.
With the future of Syria looking increasingly dark as the new HTS-led jihadist government secures its grip on power, here’s a pair of article that are a reminder that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan poised to play a major role in how that future unfolds. And also a reminder that Erdogan’s motivations are likely to be cynical corrupt and heavily motivated by his own autocratic ambitions. And it turns out those autocratic ambitions hinge on the support of a perhaps unexpected demographic: Turkey’s Kurds.
Yes, if Erodgan is going to deepen his grip on power he’s going to need the support of Turkey’s large Kurdish minority. And as we’re going to see, it appears Erdogan is operating from a playbook telling him that his negotiating position with the Turkish Kurds is actually helped by a weaker positions for Syria’s Kurds. That was the playbook Erdogan operated under in 2014 when he made one of his earlier power grab bids: the overhaul of the Turkish constitution to transform the office of the Prime Minister into an “executive presidency” with sweeping powers, something he initially proposed in 2012.
Securing support of Turkey’s Kurdish minorities for the overhaul was key to Erdogan’s strategy, which included starting talks with the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK). At the time, Turkey’s Kurds were furious with Erdogan over Turkey’s lack of support for the Syrian Kurds facing attacks from ISIS. Which makes this a good time to recall how Erdogan wasn’t simply opposed to an anti-ISIS Turkish intervention oh Kobani’s behalf. He insisted that Turkey’s participation in any anti-ISIS operations would only happen of those anti-ISIS operations explicitly became anti-ISIS and anti-Assad operations. Beyond that, the Turkish army that was positioned at the border with Kobani while doing noting to stop the ISIS advance at the same time riot police blocked Kurdish volunteer defenders from traveling traveling there. Turkey went on to block the US from using Turkish airbases in the US’s anti-ISIS operations. This was around the same time Erdogan gave a speech where he declared Lawrence of Arabia a bigger enemy than ISIS, pointing to Erdogan’s grand ambitions to redraw the map of the Middle East and potentially claim parts of Syria. Despite all that, of course, the Kurds of Kobani managed to hold off the ISIS offensive and Erdogan’s AKP party went on to fail to win a majority in the June 2015 elections as Kurdish parties did well in results seen as a rebuke of both Erdogan’s constitutional overhaul ambitions but also Erdogan’s overall regime change ambitions in Syria that, by that point, had become unpopular with the Turkish public.
The following month, in July of 2015, Turkey simultaneously bombed ISIS in Syria and the PKK Kurds in Northern Iraq, a move that many Kurds saw as a cynical plot to revive the Turkish government’s longstanding conflict with the PKK in order to undermine the support of the Kurdish parties so he could try again to overhaul the Turkish constitution. That same month, a US raid on a compound housing ISIS’s “chief financial officer” produced evidence that Turkish officials dealt directly with ranking ISIS members. In November of 2015, russia accused Turkey of shooting down a Russian jet to protect its illegal ISIS oil pipeline. And while Turkey denied the claims, it was in May of 2015 that a investigation by Reuters revealed how the MIT Turkish intelligence agency was helping to ship arms into Syria to the jihadist rebels.
Now, as we also saw, Erdogan did eventually succeed in getting his constitutional overhaul in 2017, with the constitutional referendum that replaced the office of Prime Minister with a power executive presidency with sweeping powers, including a reset of term limits that would allow Erdogan to server as President until 2029. Passed by a narrow majority in a vote marred with numerous ‘anomalies’ according to international observers. As a result, Erdogan got another decade to be in power. With more power than ever.
But those new constitutional term limits are now just four years away, and Erdogan wants another constitutional overhaul. One that will allow him to run for president again in 2028. And, sure, enough, he has once again begun talks with jailed PKK leaders in the hopes of gaining Kurdish support for the overhaul. Except now Assad has fallen and a jihadist government had assumed control of Damascus. Syria’s civil war isn’t over and there’s every reason to suspect a resumption of hostilities happens. Especially if the new jihadist government insists on exerting control over all of Syria, including the Kurdish held regions. Some sort of war between the Syrian Kurds and the new HTS government is extremely possible in coming months. How will Erdogan’s proven impulse to weaken the Syrian Kurds in order to shore up the domestic support he needs for a constitutional overhaul play out this time?
But let’s not forgot another major factor at play in this situation: Donald Trump is returning to office. And he doesn’t particularly care for the Kurds. In fact, as we’re going to see, he reportedly had a ‘f#ck the Kurds’ attitude back in 2019, around the time he ordered the withdraw of the hundreds of US troops in Syria that had been fighting along side the SDF Kurdish forces. In fact, Trump actually ordered the withdrawal of US troops under the pretext that, according to Trump, the Kurds “didn’t help us in the second world war, they didn’t help us with Normandy as an example – they mention the names of different battles, they weren’t there.” Yep, he actually said that. Now, it also turns out that he did effectively reverse that withdrawal order, under the pretext that US troops were still needed there to ‘protect the oil’. But still, it’s pretty clear that Trump doesn’t like the Kurds and would have zero problem stabbing them in the back again.
So if you were wondering, “how will the US betray the Kurds this time?”, we sort of already have our answer. Trump will probably betray them as part of some sort of deal with Erodgan, helping Erdogan solidify his grip on power even further in the process. Then again, with all that Kurdish oil, who knows what kind of offer the Kurds might might make Trump to change his mind. Either way, with Erdogan seeking out a new constitutional overhaul, it’s looking like Erdogan will either get that support for his power grab from the Kurds in Turkey or end up taking it out on the Kurds in Syria:
“Erdogan has two big problems that a post-Assad Syria might help him solve. First, the constitution does not allow him to run for another term as president in 2028. To fix that, he has been seeking the support of the pro-Kurdish party, which has enough seats in parliament when added to his own to enable him to change the constitution. With that in mind, Erdogan has started talks with the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK). Recent developments in Syria may help him further.”
He wants to remain in power indefinitely but those pesky term limits are getting in the way. Autocrat problems. But Erdogan has a solution in mind. The same one he had in mind back in 2014 when he engaged in peace talks with the PKK to secure Kurdish backing to establish an “executive presidency”. Powers Erdogan did eventually secure back in 2017 with the constitutional referendum that replaced the office of Prime Minister with a power executive presidency with sweeping powers, including a reset of term limits that would allow Erdogan to server as President until 2029. Passed by a narrow majority in a vote marred with numerous ‘anomalies’ according to international observers. Erdogan got his wish. And now he’s wishing for more and wants Kurdish support to get it. And yet, he seems to be operating from a playbook that tells him a weakened position for the Kurds in Syria strengthen his hand in negotiations with Turkey’s Kurds. In other words, a collapse of the Kurdish ambitions for an independent, or at least autonomous, Syrian state is going to be one of Erdogan’s top priorities for deepening his power grab:
Flash forward to today, and we find the prospects of a balkanized Syria arguably more likely than ever following the consolidation of Syria’s government in the hands of an HTS-led jihadist government. Syria’s Kurds currently have a kind of de facto autonomous status, protected in part by roughly 900 US troops, but that autonomous isn’t necessarily permanent, especially if the Syrian civil war continues. And most especially if history repeats itself and the US pulls its direct support, once again stabbing the Kurds in the back:
So should we expect a second Trump administration to stand by the Kurds or stab them in the back? Well, on the one hand, Trump did technically leave those US troops in Syria during his first term and didn’t pull them out despite threats to do so. But on the other hand, while Trump did order the withdrawal of US troops out of Syria in 2019, it wasn’t a real withdrawal since the US kept troops to protect oil fields in Syrian Kurdish-held areas. It’s the kind of decision that might suggest Trump had warm feelings towards the Kurds. Nope. As we’re going to see in the following Guardian piece, Trump reportedly had a ‘f#ck the Kurds’ attitude behind closed doors :
“Trump eventually ordered the US withdrawal. Justifying his abandonment of the Kurds, he said they “didn’t help us in the second world war, they didn’t help us with Normandy as an example – they mention the names of different battles, they weren’t there”.”
The Kurds weren’t there in WWII for the US so why should the US be there for them now? That was seriously Trump’s reasoning back in October of 2019 when he initially ordered the withdrawal of US troops (while keep them there to protect the oil). It’s the kind of cynical madness that makes is rather difficult to predict what should expect from a second Trump administration in terms of policy towards the Kurds. On the one hand, Trump clearly doesn’t like the Kurds for whatever reason. But on the other hand, there’s a lot of oil in those Syrian Kurdish areas. Will the Kurds offer Trump some sort of corrupt oil deal that’s too good to refuse? What will Erdogan offer as a counter-offer? Another Trump Tower in Turkey? Time will tell, but it’s hard to imagine this is going to end well for the Kurds. History rhymes again.