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       Behind Islamic State's Battlefield Gains, Battle-Hardened Chechens

   by Mike Eckel

   Among the legions of foreign fighters who have turned the Islamic State
   into the world's most dangerous terrorist organization, the Chechens
   stand out.

   They crow on YouTube videos about battlefield successes, wave Arabic
   language flags referencing the war-torn Russian region, and in some
   cases, sport striking red beards.

   In all, hundreds of fighters from Russia's North Caucasus, where
   Chechnya is located, and other Russian-speaking regions are believed to
   be fighting in Syria and Iraq, alongside the Islamic State and
   al-Qaida-linked groups like the Al-Nusra Front.

   The Chechens aren't the largest group among the thousands of foreigners
   in Syria, but they may be playing an outsized role, as many,
   battle-hardened by years fighting Russian forces, help spearhead the
   Islamic State's sweeping successes through Syria and Iraq, experts
   said.

   This bodes poorly not only for U.S. efforts to roll back the Islamic
   State in the near term, but also could mean a new cycle of violence is
   looming for Russia's long-troubled North Caucasus.

   And this may be an indication why the U.S. State and Treasury
   departments on Wednesday slapped new financial sanctions on several top
   Chechens, and the military units they lead.

   "I think that's a reason why the Islamic State has been as successful
   as they've been," said Bill Roggio, founder of the Long War Journal, a
   website that tracks jihadi groups.

   "The fighters from the Caucasus, they have experience in fighting
   professional militaries, the Russians, they've been doing guerrilla
   warfare for decades and this experience is translating to the
   battlefield," he said. "They tend to be tactically proficient."

   "These aren't the guys that go around occupying someone's villa then
   sitting around by the swimming pool eating Snickers bars. They are hard
   fighters," said Richard Barrett, senior vice president at the Soufan
   Group, a New York-based security consulting group.

   Caucasus calm

   After two wars waged by Russia since 1994, the North Caucasus has
   become relatively stable, free of all-out war and major terrorist
   attacks.

   Poverty, unemployment, corruption and rights abuses still plague the
   region.

   Despite Russian successes in killing leading Chechen militants-- Shamil
   Basayev, Ibn al-Khattab, Abu Hafs al-Hudani, Abu al-Walid, Doku
   Umarov-- the insurgents have not given up, regrouping under a new
   leader reportedly based in Dagestan, immediately to the east of
   Chechnya.

   Many of those fighters joined the fight in Syria early on, as the
   uprising that began in 2011 morphed into a chaotic civil war.

   Some of the less experienced ones may have been encouraged to gain
   battlefield experience in Syria by the then-head of the Chechen
   insurgent network, Doku Umarov, according to Barrett.

   Umarov, who founded an organization known as the Caucasus Emirate in
   2007, died in August 2013, possibly after being poisoned.

   Omar the Chechen

   Among those experienced fighters traveling to Syria was Tarkhan
   Batirashvili, whose nom de guerre is Omar al Shishani.

   Batirashvili, an ethnic Chechen, grew up in a remote part of the former
   Soviet republic of Georgia, and served in the Georgian army, even
   reportedly battling the Russian armed forces during the August 2008
   war.

   According to the Treasury Department, Batirashvili this year became a
   senior military commander for the Islamic State and a member of the
   Shura Council-- a top consultative body to the Islamic State
   leadership,  including al-Baghdadi.

   The group Batriashvili used to lead, the Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar
   (Army of Emigrants and Supporters), or the Muhajireen Brigade, was
   among two groups sanctioned by the Treasury Department on Wednesday.

   Batirashvili "has assumed a very prominent military command role within
   IS' Syria-based operations, with him likely being the most senior
   operational military commander in Syria," said Charles Lister, a
   well-regarded analyst and a visiting analyst with the Brookings Doha
   Center think-tank, said in an email interview.

   "The large majority of IS' most high-profile offensives on the Syrian
   side of the border have been connected in some way or another with
   (his) leadership," he said.

   Among the successes Batriashvili has been credited with, or claimed
   credit for, was the Aug. 2013 seizure of the Minigh airport near
   Aleppo, which reportedly featured multiple suicide bombers.

   Then there's Murad Margoshvili, known as Muslim al Shishani, who
   reportedly served in the air defense division of the Soviet army in
   Moldova and fought alongside a key leader in the Chechen terrorist
   circles more than a decade ago.

   Margoshvili, who heads a Chechen regiment called Junud al Sham, was one
   of a dozen individuals hit with State Department sanctions Wednesday.
   Like Batirashvili, he is notable for having a long red beard.

   Elaborately produced videos showing Margoshvili training fighters have
   been circulating in recent weeks on some YouTube channels.

   Another video published Sept. 2 showed Arabic-speaking fighters
   standing near a Russian fighter jet seized at a Syrian airbase,
   threatening to liberate the Caucasus from Russian control. The video is
   subtitled in Russian.

   Chechen rifts

   The Chechen cause in Syria is not monolithic; different groups have
   different loyalties, experts said.

   And Chechens traditionally have strong identification with their clans
   or extended family networks, which makes rivalries and turf wars
   common, at home or abroad.

   In Syria, Batirashvili's decision to pledge allegiance to the head of
   the Islamic State created a rift among Chechen units, experts said.

   Fighters with his former unit, the Muhajireen Brigade, retained their
   loyalties to the Caucasus Emirate, which had ties to Al-Qaida dating
   back more than a decade. Lister argued that could strengthen the
   Caucasus Emirates' links to Al-Qaida in the long-term.

   "I'm sure the Russians are as worried about that as anybody," Barnett
   said. "Blowback is always possible. As the Islamic State gets knocked
   back by the U.S., there's more of a likelihood that these fighters will
   be pushed back into other regions" like the Caucasus.

   "If history is any judge, you don't take threats from a group like
   this, that has shown the capacity to do major attacks in the past, you
   don't take these threats lightly," Roggio said.

   VOA's Fatima Tlisova and Anna Kalandadze contributed to this report.
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References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/syria-chechens-islamic-state-iraq/2462711.html