It’s no secret that young men and women from the North Caucasus are fighting in Iraq and Syria for Islamic State. From Europe, where they lived as refugees, and Egypt and Syria, where they studied in religious institutes, men and women originally from Russia’s North Caucasus have been travelling to join Islamic State (IS) over the past 18 months.
But there are also young men and women who have travelled to Iraq and Syria from Chechnya itself. And now these fighters are appearing on YouTube, declaring they will return to their homeland and ‘put things right’. Chechnya’s security services, however, are trying to limit the influence of IS ideology on the republic’s youth, which continues to emigrate under various guises.
From the ‘Emirate’ to ‘Daulya’
‘Iblis state’, this is what Chechnya’s top brass calls the terrorist organisation known as Islamic State. Indeed, the word iblis (‘devil’ in Arabic) appears often on Ramzan Kadyrov’s Instagram account and official government websites, and you can hear it from Chechen public officials at various events inside and outside the republic.
