Category Archives: History

Will Hillary Really Do It?

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She is lining up the sun the moon and the stars, especially the progressive stars to make her run. Why exactly? Power. Most interesting is Hillary has ordered the State Department to not cooperate with FOIA requests from media on the successes during her reign as SecState. What is she hiding beyond the obvious?

Many news agencies and advocacy groups have been trying to get State Department documents about Clinton with little success, leading to accusations that the stonewall is politically motivated.

The AP reported in December 2014 that it had several outstanding FOIA requests on Clinton’s schedule, calendar, and other records from her four years as secretary of state. One of those requests was over four years old. The state department also rejected the AP’s request for expedited processing—a fast-track for FOIA requests afforded to journalists working on newsworthy stories in the public interest.  It would perhaps be prudent for media to file FOIA request on Cheryl Mills, Hillary’s Chief of Staff.

THE POLITICO’s Mike Allen has given us inside look at the nascent Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Allen’s piece is the latest in a long line of stories explaining how formidable the 2016 operation will be, and assuring us that Hillary has learned from her disastrous failure in 2008. Here are five things we’ve learned about the campaign thus far:

1. Hillary loves power even more than she loves money

Allen reports that Clinton “never really hesitated” in deciding to run for president again. The likelihood that she will run reportedly went from 98 percent to 100 percent late last year.

The decision is somewhat puzzling, given Hillary’s well-document obsession with making money, and “getting houses.” She has made millions on the public speaking circuit since quitting her job at the State Department, and has even scoffed at public university students who have protested the use of taxpayer funds to pay her exorbitant speaking fees. (After all, she already offers universities a special discounted rate of $300,000.)

Her decision to forgo millions in future speaking fees is a curious one, which can only be explained by an even greater obsession with power and self-aggrandizement.

2. So many white bros

The Daily Beast’s Tim Mak notes that some Democrats are beginning to express concern about the conspicuous male whiteness of Hillary’s campaign. Pretty much everyone she has hired for a top role is a white dude:

One operative quipped that the top levels of the campaign are in danger of looking like “white dudefest 2016.”

“If Hillary doesn’t begin hiring well-respected African-American or Hispanic political aides in top positions,” said a senior African American Congressional aide, “I would imagine that people will really start to wonder if she is serious about covering her left flank. If that is the case they will look for a candidate who is eager to demonstrate that senior level inclusiveness is a high priority.”

Allen’s report notes that the campaign is already beginning to discuss potential running mates, and at the moment, two white dudes—Sens. Michael Bennet (D., Colo.) and Tim Kaine (D., Va.)—are “dominating the early speculation.”

Canada DEM 2016-Clinton

3. Hillary is obsessed with Hillary, and afters decades in politics, still has thin skin

Allen reports that Hillary 2016 is determined to have a better relationship with the reporters, people she has previously described as having “big egos and no brains.” At the very least, Allen writes, she wants “to have a ‘good cop’ role to help her get off on a better foot with the journalists who will help shape her image.”

That may be easier said than done, given how obsessed Hillary seems to be with reading (and nitpicking) stories about herself:

Advisers know that Clinton doesn’t like or trust the press – and feels that it’s mutual. She remains a voracious consumer of news about herself, occasionally complaining about an article’s tone or omissions.

One of the few top campaign positions yet to be filled is that of communications directors. Potential hires include Karen Finney, whose MSNBC show “Disrupt” was cancelled last year.

4. Hillary possesses an “instinctive insularity,” according to dozens of close aides who won’t stop speaking to the press anonymously

One of the reasons why Team Clinton wants to hire a media-friendly liaison is to serve as “a counterweight to the instinctive insularity of Hillaryland.” This information was relayed to Allen via a number of anonymous aides close to Hillary who have spoken to a number of different reporters over the past several weeks about how awesome Hillary 2016 is going to be.

5. Why she’s running

Actually, the rationale for Hillary’s campaign remains unclear, beyond the fact that she became a grandmother last year, and that made her think a lot about the future. According to Allen, now that a campaign architecture is in place, Team Hillary finally get work “developing her message,” whatever that may be.

*** There is much more you need to know. Hillary has a spy unit and it was created a few years ago. What kind of spy unit? Well American Bridge is an intel army, spying on all of her opposition.   “American Bridge PAC spent last week spying on the private conversations of attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

The group also plans to spy on the private lives of GOP delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention wherever the convention is located, but Politico reports ABPAC has issued the following threat if the GOP selects Las Vegas as its host city. American Bridge has set up this website at “SinCityGOP” and announces (bold print supplied):

While the Republican Party debates where to hold the Republican National Convention in 2016, American Bridge is preparing our team of researchers and trackers to capture the action no matter what city they choose.

In making their selection, Republicans would do well to remember that Las Vegas is already the city with the most cameras per capita of anywhere on the planet. What’s another two or three dozen American Bridge trackers added to the mix?

And if the RNC does choose Las Vegas, this is the site for all the action. What happens in Vegas… will go right here.

American Bridge was founded by Clinton ally David Brock and is funded by longtime Clinton supporter and billionaire George Soros. American Bridge PAC president Brad Woodhouse boasted that the group’s “trackers” at CPAC had been “in the hallways capturing conversations and that kind of thing.” Meaning? Meaning Hillary’s American Bridge is about invading privacy. CPAC’s today, someone else’s tomorrow. Yours.

The news of “capturing” private conversations at CPAC follows on the heels of multiple congressional investigations into the Obama-run IRS, which has been using the government to ask Tea Party groups about the contents of their members’ prayers, what books they read, and the contents of private phone calls and media interviews. A second controversy has erupted over the NSA collection of “metadata”—including the phone numbers of all Americans.

The news of Clinton’s high tech spies peering into private conversations at CPAC and set to peer into the private lives of GOP delegates comes as the privacy of American citizens has erupted as a major political issue in both the 2014 and 2016 campaigns.” More here.

 

Putin has mobilized…

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(Reuters) – Federal prosecutors in New York unveiled criminal charges on Monday against three men for their alleged involvement in a spying scheme for Russia’s foreign intelligence service.

According to a criminal complaint, Evgeny Buryakov, Igor Sporyshev and Victor Podobnyy conspired in the United States to gather intelligence on behalf of Russia and to recruit New York City residents to help.

The conspiracy ran from 2012 to the present, and during that time, Buryakov worked at a bank, Sporyshev was a Russian trade representative, and Podobnyy was an attaché to Russia’s mission to the United Nations, the complaint said.

Buryakov was arrested on Monday in the Bronx borough of New York City, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara for the Southern District of New York.

The status of the other defendants was unclear, and it was unclear whether the defendants had hired lawyers. *** Ah but read on it gets more chilling. Russian state owned media was used for cover. *** Security service of Ukraine has evidence of committing so-called militants. “DND” and Russian military crimes against humanity — against the peaceful population of Donbass. It said the head of the SBU Valentyn Nalyvaichenko during a briefing.  January 24th, an aggressor has committed a crime against humanity – Russian artillery Division shot the peaceful population of Mariupol with dostavlenoï from the territory of Russia especially dangerous artillery weapons, said the head of the SBU.

The direct instructions of Russian officers was carried out 5 bombardment of peaceful districts of the city, which stopped only after receiving information that the shelling goes OSCE mission.

As a result of the shelling of Mariupol Russian “Mortared” killed 30 and wounded more than 100 residents. The Russian battery, which was pounding, was near the village of Noname-on territory controlled by terrorists “DND”.

The attack was carried out by the artillery Division of the terrorist organization “DND” comprising 4 artillery batteries, armed TANK DESTROYER “Tulip” and “Grad” installations.   The fire was discovered by an officer of the RUSSIAN FEDERATION with the callsign of “Highlander”.  After the bombardment, artillery batteries were hidden in the village of Markìne, then the surviving Russian military and technology team that came from the southern military district of RUSSIAN FEDERATION, in order to hide crimes were bred on the territory of Russia by the FSB border service of the Russian Federation.

«SBU publishes so called password «Ryazan-Astrakhan “, followed on 24 January this year Russian border guards and military obscured on the territory of RF tools of crime – equipment, armament, Russian Gunners”,-told Nalivaychenko.

Further proof that the crime involved Russia, is to use during planning and committing the bombardment of Mariupol sophisticated satellite communication systems 5 generations of “Bêloz′or”, which are only in the Russian Federation.

The Foundation has presented evidence of involvement of Russian military in crime against the civilian population.

Apprehended by SBU koriguval′nik fire artillery terrorists Kirsanov, 1975, n., nicknamed “Gaìšnìk” said that the mass killing of civilians of Donbass was Russian artillery battery commanded by Russian officer with the callsign “Pepel”.

Have other members of the criminal group. Among them is a citizen of Ukraine Ponomarenko, 1977 Ph.d., nicknamed “Terrorist” is the leader of one of the gangs in the so-called. “army of novorossiya,” known in criminal circles recidivìst.

SBU Counterintelligence was intercepted by conversations that show that “Terrorist” appealed to the action “Peplu” with a request to carry out a bombardment using reactive artillery. After the adoption of the criminal mind and Russians the bloody crime scene, the results caused damage koriguval′nik Kirsanov reported first Russian soldiers, and then Ponomarenku in Donetsk.

After stepping up hostilities in Donbas in the second half of January 2015, more evidence of the participation of Russian citizens that militate against Ukraine. January 23, 2015 after confronting an armed attack on defensive positions of Ukrainian military were able to establish the identity of an enemy reconnaissance and diversionary groups was zneškodženij. It turned out to be a citizen of the RUSSIAN FEDERATION Emelyanov, 1974 n. Victim was dressed in camouflage clothing from ševronom “Maps kazačij Regiment with the Grand Don Vojska Donskogo IM. Platova. ”

Slavic mìs′krajonnim Court sentenced to 8 years imprisonment of a citizen of the Russian Federation Korčagìna Nikolay Viktorovich, 06.12.1974, n., for active participation in the activities of Russian illegal military formation of a terrorist organization “DND”.

The head of the SBU reported today that all the ambassadors who are working in Ukraine, including Russian, will be given the evidence base of the involvement of terrorists “DND” and the Russian military to commit crimes against humanity.

The security service operates on the principles of dokazovostì, humanity and humanity. In cooperation with other law enforcement authorities, we will continue to publish, with the permission of investigators, documentary evidence, facts and names, in order to stop the referral on our territory of Russian terrorists and diversantìv», – said the head of the SBU. *** NATO just held a meeting.  We have just held an extraordinary meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission. The meeting was held at Ukraine’s request.

We condemn the sharp escalation of violence along the ceasefire line in eastern Ukraine by Russia-backed separatists.

This comes at great human cost to civilians. We express our condolences to the Ukrainian people for these tragic losses. Thirty civilians were killed and around a hundred were injured in the attack launched on residential areas of Mariupol. The attack was launched from territory controlled by separatists backed by Russia. More here.

Saudi Kingdom/White House, Mutual Disdain

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NBC News foreign correspondent Richard Engel dropped a rhetorical bomb on the Obama State Department this weekend when he revealed that late Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud was no friend to President Barack Obama.

Engel was responding to the diplomatic statement delivered on behalf of the administration that included a passage reflecting on the “genuine and warm” friendship the president shared with the late king.

“One of the big ironies here is that President Obama, in his statement, said how close he was to King Abdullah… King Abdullah did not like President Obama. In fact, a lot of people I know that are quite close to the late King Abdullah said that the king could not stand President Obama. This close personal bond between the president and the late Saudi leader, I think, is people being polite at a time of a national funeral.”

Engel cited Obama’s unquestioning support of the “Arab Spring” movement as well as his abandonment of long-time US ally Egyptian President Mubarak as reasons why Abdullah was less-than-friendly with Obama. *** So, could this be the reason that the State Department has issues an essay contest for the now deceased King Abdullah? No joke, an essay contest? *** But who exactly is King Abdullah’s successor? King Salman is no moderate.                                                    

 

“In the Middle East, it’s nothing new: You create your own terrorists, then pretend you are fighting them,” said Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi activist who runs the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington. “The Saudis didn’t even invent it, but they’re good at it.”

Ahmed said the Saudi government is “playing both sides” to give “the appearance that they are the good guys.”

“They get a lot of political traction out of it,” Ahmed said. “To the Americans, they are the guardians of safety, and no matter how horrible they are on human rights, the way they treat women and all that, they are the ones who are keeping things under control. Really, they are very clever.” *** What more do you need to know? Plenty. ***   Saudi Arabia’s New King Helped Fund Radical Terrorist Groups
Monarch tied to anti-Semitic Muslim clerics, funding of jihad

King Salman, Saudi Arabia’s newly crowned monarch, has a controversial history of helping to fund radical terror groups and has maintained ties with several anti-Semitic Muslim clerics known for advocating radical positions, according to reports and regional experts.

Salman, previously the country’s defense minister and deputy prime minister, was crowned king last week after his half-brother King Abdullah died at the age of 90.

While Abdullah served as a close U.S. ally and was considered a reformer by many, Saudi Arabia has long been criticized by human rights activists for its treatment of women and its enforcement of a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to travel to the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Tuesday to pay respects to Abdullah and meet with Salman, who also has been seen as a moderate friend of the United States.

However, throughout his public career in government, Salman has embraced radical Muslim clerics and has been tied to the funding of radical groups in Afghanistan, as well as an organization found to be plotting attacks against America, according to various reports and information provided by David Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

In 2001, an international raid of the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, which Salman founded in 1993, unearthed evidence of terrorist plots against America, according to separate exposés written by Dore Gold, an Israeli diplomat, and Robert Baer, a former CIA officer.

Salman is further accused by Baer of having “personally approved all important appointments and spending” at the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), a controversial Saudi charity that was hit with sanctions following the attacks of September 11, 2001, for purportedly providing material support to al Qaeda.

Salman also has been reported to be responsible for sending millions of dollars to the radical mujahedeen that waged jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s, according to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who is now director of the Brookings Intelligence Project.  “In the early years of the war—before the U.S. and the Kingdom ramped up their secret financial support for the anti-Soviet insurgency—this private Saudi funding was critical to the war effort,” according to Riedel. “At its peak, Salman was providing $25 million a month to the mujahedeen. He was also active in raising money for the Bosnian Muslims in the war with Serbia.”

Salman also has embraced radical Saudi clerics known for their hateful rhetoric against Israel and Jews.

Salman has worked closely with Saleh al-Moghamsy, who tweeted in August 2014 that “Allah only gathered Jews in the land of Palestine to destroy them.”

Al-Moghamsy also stated in a 2014 television interview that “the hatred of Jews toward Muslims is an eternal hatred.” He also claimed in 2012 that Osama bin Laden had died with more “sanctity and honor” than any infidel, or non-Muslim.

Despite this rhetoric, Salman has maintained close ties to al-Moghamsy.

Salman chairs the board of an organization run by al-Moghamsy and has sponsored the cleric’s public events, including a 2013 festival. Salman and al-Moghamsy were pictured many times together at that event, according to regional reports.

Al-Moghamsy also has been an adviser to two of Salman’s sons, one of whom posed for a selfie with the cleric in July.

Salman also has reached out to other hardline preachers, including Safar Hawali, a one-time mentor of Osama bin Laden who has called for non-Muslims to be expelled from Saudi Arabia.

In 2005, Salman called Hawali to inquire about his health and in 2010 praised him upon the release of a book.

While crown prince, Salman also made a point of phoning Aidh Abdullah al-Qarni, a Saudi author currently on the U.S. Terrorist Screening Center’s No Fly List who has praised Hamas and called Israelis “the brothers of apes and pigs.”

Additionally, Salman, in his role as crown prince, has recently visited Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti, the nation’s highest religious authority, who has asserted that 10 is an appropriate age of marriage for girls and called for the destruction of all churches in the Arabian Peninsula.

Weinberg, who has been tracking Salman closely, said that the new monarch is taking up his predecessor’s mantle of moderate reform.

“Just like King Abdullah tried to present himself as a reformer, some are trying to suggest that the new king, Salman, is a moderate who will continue his half-brother’s so-called progressive policies,” Weinberg said. “But just look at where Saudi Arabia is after Abdullah: people are being decapitated and flogged by the state in the streets.”  “Women are systematically oppressed by their own government, and the regime continues to propagate incitement and intolerance,” he continued. “Salman’s background funding mujahedeen abroad and embracing hateful clerics suggests that he is at best a political opportunist who will tolerate continued religious extremism, even if he does not hold such views himself.”

 

What you Need to Know About the Greek Elections

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It was 2011 that Greece erupted in epic protests over economic conditions and government imposed austerity programs. Since that time, Greece has moved to recover yet that recovery has not proven effective. Chancellor Angela Merkel has threatened Greece with several conditions including removing Greece from the European Union.  Over the weekend, Greece completed their election cycle with the an anti-austerity party known as the Syriza party prevailing. It is important to know that Greece is in a tailspin as noted by the party that placed third in the number of votes. A very dangerous new contour is emerging in Greece and it is filtering through Europe, the Golden Dawn Party.

Extreme right party headed for 3rd place in Greek election

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The specter of Neo-Nazism is no longer haunting Greece. It looks like it is here to stay.                               

 

The extreme right, anti-immigrant Golden Dawn party, which has Nazi roots, appears headed for a third-place finish in Sunday’s election. Its showing comes despite the fact that the party’s leader and most of its lawmakers are behind bars, facing charges of participating in a “criminal organization” accused of murders, brutal attacks on migrants and others, extortion and arson.

With more than 90 percent of the voting precincts reporting, Golden Dawn was receiving 6.3 percent of the vote, narrowly leading the centrist Potami (“River”) with 6.04 percent. Both parties exceeded the 3 percent minimum required to gain seats in the 300-member parliament — with each forecast to win 17 seats.

Its share of the vote doesn’t match the 9.39 percent it received in last June’s European Parliament election in which Golden Dawn also finished third. It also trails the 6.92 percent won in the previous national election, in June 2012.

But considering the exposure of a series of crimes allegedly committed by its members, including the Sept. 2013 murder of a leftist rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, the result obtained Sunday may be even more significant. This is no longer merely an angry protest vote, a one-off voters’ tiff with “corrupt politicians.” This is an established vote and a hardened electorate.

“They can no longer plead ignorance. They have dipped their hands in blood,” Communist lawmaker Liana Kanelli commented on Sunday’s result.

Golden Dawn leader Nikos Mihaloliakos and his top lieutenants were not free to campaign ahead of the election, since they were behind bars. They were free to stand as candidates because they have not yet gone to trial. Some of them, including Mihaloliakos, may soon be set free when their 18-month maximum pre-trial detention limit is reached.

In a taped statement Sunday, Mihaloliakos celebrated his party’s performance.

“We achieved this great victory despite the fact that we could not be guaranteed an equal and so-called democratic election as the regime likes to call it, shunned by all (media), facing mudslinging and slander from all sides … having to campaign through a payphone. We have a fresh mandate … everyone fought to keep Golden Dawn away and they lost. Golden Dawn won,” Mihalioliakos said in his taped message.             

In a further twist, if the radical left Syriza party, the winner of the election, fails to achieve an outright majority, a prospect still possible early Monday, it might fail to form a government and return the mandate, given to it by the President of the Republic. In that case, the second party takes up the mandate and, if it fails in turn, the third party does. The prospect of a handcuffed Mihaloliakos, escorted by police to meet the Greek president to be asked to try to form a government, sends jitters throughout the political class. And, if it gets the chance, Golden Dawn is certain to exploit the occasion for maximum effect to ridicule the democracy they despise and whose benefits they are trying to exploit. *** Syriza ran on a single issue: reversing Greece’s reforms, which had been the quid pro quo for the assistance Greece has received from the IMF, EC and ECB (known collectively as the “troika”) over the past several years. It is hard to see how Mr. Tsipras could change course dramatically and say that he is planning to honor Greece’s promises to the troika. Attention will now shift to the response of the troika to Syriza’s victory and its policy reversal.

Will the troika respond with a suspension of future assistance and a refusal to roll over existing subsidized debts? Judging from the statements of Mr. Draghi and European political leaders, it appears so. All current indications are that the troika will not accede to a reversal on Greek promises, which will mean an unavoidable Greek government default in a matter of two months. ECB refusal to roll over debt is also likely to produce a Greek banking crisis, as depositors recognize that the withdrawal of ECB assistance to Greece’s banks will mean that Greek banks will be unable to continue to operate at their current debt levels. In anticipation of the withdrawal of troika support, economic theory suggests that depositors should begin to run Greek banks preemptively. How much immediate pressure depositors bring to bear on Greek banks is hard to know.

Mr. Tsipras has said that he wants to stay in the euro zone, but if the troika refuses to continue sending money his way, then he is likely to have no choice but to suspend Greek banks’ convertibility into euros, default on Greek debt payments (more than three-quarters of which are owed to the troika), leave the euro zone to finance his deficits by printing a new domestic currency, and re-denominate bank deposits, loans and contractual wages into that new domestic currency (otherwise, mass insolvencies of borrowers, employers, and banks would result, as euro-denominated obligations will be much harder to fulfill). And if Greek depositors become sufficiently uneasy, Mr. Tsipras may not even have the chance to climb down from his pre-election rhetoric, even in the unlikely event that he comes to his senses; after all, once a run on the banks occurs, Greece could be forced out of the euro within a matter of hours rather than months.

Chechens in Syria, Joining Islamic State

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Battle-hardened fighters are on the move from Chechnya to the Middle East. This is not a recent development however a new dynamic is underway. First there was Syria, now there is Islamic State and Abu Bakr al Baghdadi is happy to have new fighters.     

 

***  There may, in fact, be as many as four separate categories of Chechens in Syria — or even five, if an unconfirmed recent report that a detachment of the Chechen security forces is fighting in Aleppo on the side of Assad is indeed true.

The first category are the battle-hardened veterans of the North Caucasus insurgency. It has been suggested, but not proven, that Qatar and Saudi Arabia financed the recruitment of those experienced former insurgents because “the Chechens are regarded as the best of the jihadist fighters.” 

“The Guardian” profiled in September 2012 a brigade of fighters that included Chechens, together with fighters from Libya, Tajikistan, Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The author of that article described the Chechen fighters as “older, taller, and stronger” than their comrades in arms, many of whom clearly lacked any previous combat experience. He further noted that the Chechens “carried their weapons with confidence and distanced themselves from the rest, moving around in a tight-knit unit-within-a-unit,” suggesting that many have been members of the North Caucasus insurgency.

The second category is Kists — members of Georgia’s Chechen minority from the Pankisi Gorge close to the Georgian-Chechen border. Two of the Chechen commanders in Syria, Abu Omar al-Chechen (the commander of the brigade profiled by “The Guardian”) and Saifullah, are reportedly from Pankisi.

One of those fighters from Pankisi, who gave his name as Abu Hamza, told a Western journalist two months ago that he was motivated to travel to Syria and join the opposition by video footage on the Internet of Syrian government forces killing innocent women and children. The Georgian-Russian border is so tightly controlled that it is far easier for the Kists to travel to Syria than to enter Chechnya to join the North Caucasus insurgency.

The third category is young Chechens from among the estimated 250,000 who left Chechnya since the beginning of the first war in 1994 and settled in Europe and elsewhere. Abu Hamza said most of the Chechens he encountered during the several months he spent in Syria were from this category.

Pro-Moscow Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov has confirmed that young Chechens from Europe are fighting in Syria. He claims some of them, from low-income families, were attracted by the prospect of “violence and looting,” while others were victims of a concerted effort by Western intelligence services to recruit fighters by means of jihadist websites. Last summer, Kadyrov had affirmed that if young Chechen refugees in Europe wanted to take up arms they would travel to the North Caucasus to join the insurgency.

The fourth category is young Chechens from the Chechen Republic who either abandoned their studies at Middle Eastern universities to fight in Syria or managed to leave Chechnya with the explicit aim of joining the Syrian opposition forces.  Kadyrov categorically denied last summer that any “Russian citizens from the Chechen Republic” were fighting in Syria. But over the past two months he has admitted on several occasions that Chechens from both Chechnya and the émigré community in Europe and Turkey had traveled to Syria to fight.

On May 6, Kadyrov implied that the latter category far outnumber the former: he said “a few” Chechens from Chechnya were fighting in Syria, and that “hundreds” from Europe and Turkey had been killed. Two weeks later, however, Kadyrov said “just a few” Chechens from Europe had been killed in the fighting.

The exodus of young men from Chechnya intent on fighting in Syria was discussed at a session of Chechnya’s Economic and Social Security Council on June 6. The website Kavkaz-Uzel quoted an unnamed member of that body as saying 29 Chechens have left Chechnya for Syria, seven of whom have been killed. That source did not specify a time frame. He did say, however, that those who left were mostly aged between 25 and 30, which contradicts Kadyrov’s repeated claims that the men in question are immature adolescents seduced by recruitment videos posted on the Internet.

The true number of Chechens who have headed to Syria to fight may be even larger. Kavkaz-Uzel quoted a representative of a local NGO as saying he knows of some 30 who have left, while an unnamed cleric suggested the true figure could run into dozens, or even hundreds. Predictably, the Chechen authorities are reportedly exerting pressure on the parents of those young men to persuade them to return to Chechnya.

Federal Security Service head Aleksandr Bortnikov told journalists earlier this month that some 200 militants from the Russian Federation are fighting on the side of the “terrorists” in Syria. He did not, unfortunately, give any indication how many are from which republic.

Last fall, the insurgency website Kavkaz Center reported that there were 150 fighters from the “Caucasus Emirate” in Syria, divided into four brigades. One of those brigades is from Kabardino-Balkaria. *** Shock Waves From Insurgency Commanders’ Defection To IS Felt Beyond North Caucasus    The decision late last year by several prominent North Caucasus insurgency commanders to retract their oath of allegiance to Caucasus Emirate leader Aliaskhab Kebekov (Sheikh Ali Abu-Mukhammad) and pledge loyalty to Islamic State (IS) leader Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi has apparently engendered confusion and discord not only across the North Caucasus but within the Chechen diaspora community.

That at least is the message conveyed by Akhmad Umarov (nom de guerre Abu Khamza), the brother of Caucasus Emirate (IK) founder and leader Doku Umarov and the IK’s official representative abroad, in a 15-minute video address posted last week on Checheninfo.com, the website of the Chechen wing of the North Caucasus insurgency.

In that video footage, Umarov requests a statement of moral support from Kebekov and Emir Khamzat (Aslan Byutukayev), the commander of the Chechen insurgency wing, in response to what he terms the “groundless accusations” dreamed up against him by the pro-IS faction and the latter’s “childish” attempts to justify their actions.

He says it is “unacceptable” that those who do not obey Shari’a law “are trying to obstruct us in our work and spread discord,” and insists that those persons who do so, whether unwittingly, or at the behest of “enemies of Islam,” or in the hope of securing a comfortable post within the IS leadership, should be held responsible under Shari’a law, and will answer for their actions on Judgment Day.

Umarov appeals to Kebekov and Khamzat to explain why Chechen commanders are violating their oath of loyalty to Kebekov and their theological arguments for doing so. He says failure to clarify their arguments will only deepen the split between the two factions.

Umarov then presents his superiors with a choice: either to issue a statement of support for the stance adopted by the IK representation abroad with regard to the defections to IS that would make clear to all fighters from Chechnya and Daghestan that they should “abide by all demands that do not contradict the Koran and Sunna,” meaning remain loyal to Kebekov. Or, “if you have doubts about what we are saying and our sincerity, then we ask you to appoint new people to replace us and dismiss us from our posts. If you have faith and confidence in us, then we ask you to grant us additional powers to restore order and establish a strict and functional system in accordance with Shari’a law to address urgent questions which it is imperative to resolve — questions concerning religion, politics, and social, financial, and informational issues.”

Umarov then addresses Chechen fighters both in the Caucasus and beyond “who are trying to help the cause and to defend our religion and honor,” urging them to take a clear stance against the renegade faction. He says he can provide an explanation for what that faction “is saying behind our backs,” but does not say what those criticisms are.

With regard to Syria (he does not use the toponym “Sham” favored by the Chechens fighting there), Umarov affirms unequivocally that “any fighter who travels to Syria to take part in jihad there should understand that he will have to answer for that on Judgment Day. We appeal to you, especially to the young people of the Vilayat Nokhchiicho [Chechnya], to stay where you are. Your holy duty today is jihad in the Caucasus…to defend our land, the territory of the Caucasus Emirate,” from the “primary foe” in the person of the Kremlin regime and its apostate collaborators, meaning the pro-Moscow Chechen leadership.

Given that Umarov speaks in very general terms, it is impossible to assess the extent of support among IK fighters for IS and the magnitude of the threat that faction poses to the cohesion of the insurgency ranks. But his request for “additional powers” suggests he faces a serious challenge.

Since the statements of support for Baghdadi by six Chechen and Daghestani commanders last month, several insurgency commanders from Chechnya and Ingushetia who for reasons they do not specify are no longer in the Caucasus have reaffirmed their loyalty to Kebekov. So too has Emir Salim (Zalim Shebzukhov), commander of the Kabardino-Balkar-Karachai insurgency wing.