Thread: The first partisan to arrive in Chechnya in 1995 was Emir Khattab, or Samir Saleh Abdullah al-Suwailim, a Saudi-Jordanian foreign fighter. He came from a religious and well-to-do family, and was captivated by the Mujahideen and traveled to Afghanistan in 1988.
2. Though capable, he got caught up in the infighting between the various Arab factions in Jalalabad. Seemingly dissatisfied with his jihad in Afghanistan, he started an insurgency in Tajikistan to try to remove the Soviet-backed communist government.
3. His contribution in 1st Chechen war led President Maskhadov 👇 to make him him a brigadier general in 1996. Khattab, had not severed ties with Saudi Arabia, unlike Osama bin Laden.
4. He leveraged support of the kingdom’s heavyweight religious scholars like Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz 👇 , Muhammad al-Uthaymin, Muhammad al-Farraj and others. With their support, he had access to the immense financial riches of the Gulf, turning him into a kingmaker.
5. One of the heroes of the 1st Chechen war, Shamil Basayev 👇, having had his presidential ambitions thwarted, teamed up with Khattab. With access to Khattab’s resources, he acted independently of Maskhadov’s political agenda.
6. Khattab claimed to be non-sectarian, but allowed Salafi scholars to come and “correct” the beliefs of Chechen recruits. Courts and camps were set up outside of Maskhadov’s control. Graduates of the camps gave birth to an indigenous pipeline of future Salafi-jihadis.
7. Those fractures were exacerbated by the likes of Akhmad Kadyrov (father of Ramzan), who, used the presence of Wahhabis to agitate against his political rivals, making the situation in Chechnya even more sectarian and volatile.
8. Moreover, he paved the way for his eventual successor, Ramzan, to weaponize Sufism, or traditional Islam, to kill any form of political opposition against his rule in the name of destroying the Wahhabis.
9. The foreign proselytizers, introduced ideas wholly alien to Chechen culture, changing the religious topography of the region — especially among the young. Some were even appointed judges and tried to ban Chechen traditions that went back centuries.
9A. In 1998, after the Wahhabi and jihadist factions tried to apply the Sharia on some local Chechens in the town of Gudermes. The locals refused to be punished publicly. Open gun battles broke out, and the town of Urus-Martan became a no-go zone for Maskhadov’s forces.
10 So powerful had Basayev become that Maskhadov was forced to come to an agreement with him over the introduction of Sharia in Chechnya in 2002. It played into the hands of the Russians: It showed the world Chechnya was a country of warlords, only Russia could reestablish order
11. The end game came when Basayev and Khattab aimed to expel the Russians from neighboring Dagestan. The problem was that Dagestan was part of the Russian Federation. The independence movement had gone beyond the borders of the Ichkerian republic.
11A. It was on one of those raids into Dagestan that the Second Chechen War broke out in 1999, resulting in the fall of the self-styled republic. It was a spectacular own goal.
12. In a final act of self-inflicted harm, Basayev was appointed vice-president of Ichkeria in June 2006 by Dokka Umarov. Meanwhile, in 2007, Umarov confirmed the world’s fears: He tore up the republic’s constitution and declared it an Islamic emirate.
13. The republic was truly dead the moment Umarov renounced the presidency and relied on the fatwas issued in London and Amman by jihadi scholars like Abu Basir al-Tartusi and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (in video on the left speaking to Abu Qatada).
14. The ramifications of the Chechen conflict endure to this day. Although Khattab was assassinated by the FSB in 2002, he became a global internet legend. With the help of forums and websites, his exploits were amplified among the Muslim diaspora. See forum chat 👇
15. For many young Chechens, he was also more than just an internet star: He was the new martial example to be followed. Khattab had changed Chechnya’s religious DNA.
16. In the past, Chechens had joined the ghazawat which was like a Sufi anti-colonial war. The warriors were Sufi devotees or “murids” of Sheikh Mansur or Imam Shamil. Both had resisted the imperial expansion of Catherine the Great or Alexander II.
17. So infused was Sufism within the Chechen tradition that the wars of the 19th century became known as the Murid wars. The men who fought alongside Imam Shamil belonged to the Sufi orders. Now the young had found a new “order” in Salafi-jihadism, embodied in Khattab.
18. So it was not surprising that many Chechens became wandering warriors just like their hero, going as far afield as Syria to ply their trade, causing security analysts to wake up in cold sweats.
19. In Syria, too, the legacy of the Chechen conflict played its part.
When Syrians demanded freedom from authoritarianism, the world understood. After hardline Islamists and Salafi-jihadis entered the fray, things changed.
20. In the mix were contingents of Chechens born out of Khattab’s legacy, to whom Assad could point as evidence for this claim. Indeed, the Chechen Abu Omar al-Shishani became the poster boy 19. for the Islamic State group.
21. It mattered little that some of these Chechen jihadis stayed aloof from the intra-rebel infighting or never joined the Islamic State. Their mere presence buoyed Assad’s argument and helped to kill the uprising, filling the world with fear. al-monitor.com/originals/2022…
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