{"id":27498,"date":"2014-11-20T01:04:51","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T01:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/?p=27498"},"modified":"2014-11-20T01:04:51","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T01:04:51","slug":"isis-growing-sphere-of-influence-in-central-asia-and-caucasus-poses-new-security-risks-for-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/isis-growing-sphere-of-influence-in-central-asia-and-caucasus-poses-new-security-risks-for-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"ISIS\u2019 growing sphere of influence in Central Asia and Caucasus poses new security risks for Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United Nations Security Council says<\/a> foreign fighters are continuing to flood the world\u2019s zones of conflict and in Syria and Iraq alone; there are 15,000 militants from more than 80 countries. \u00a0Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has told the Council that terrorism, drug trafficking and transnational crime was growing in intensity and feeding off each other.<\/p>\n

Remarking that the \u201cscourge of violent extremism\u201d also had its socio-economic roots that needed to be addressed, Mr Ban said that violent extremism was a multi-dimensional challenge that needed to be effectively addressed at the grassroots level.<\/p>\n

There seems to be a growing acknowledgement that the threat posed by the groups such as ISIS cannot be dealt with military means alone.<\/p>\n

As well as its strong presence on the Internet and the propaganda tools \u00a0available to it to recruit and radicalize significant numbers of people globally,\u00a0 ISIS is the world\u2019s largest, richest terrorist organization.<\/p>\n

The news agency Associated Press recently reported<\/a> \u00a0about the information provided by one former ISIS group commander turned informant, the 36-year old Abu Shakr in a Baghdad prison.<\/p>\n

Arrested in 2013, he gave security officials detailed insider information on the organisation\u2019s tactics, including provision of fighters with good salaries.<\/p>\n

Similar accounts of being given a salary, social benefits and accommodation by ISIS can be heard from the Central Asian Islamist militants. In a video circulated on the Internet by a group naming itself after the ancient name for Uzbekistan , Mavarounnahr\u00a0 Mujohudlari<\/a>, it is possible to get a good idea why the dispossessed men and women might be attracted to the idea of joining the ranks of the extremists.<\/p>\n

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, with close ties to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda has already announced its allegiance to ISIS.<\/p>\n

According to Kazakhstan\u2019s National Security Committee (KNB), more than 300 Kazakh citizens are fighting alongside ISIS militants in Syria and Iraq and half of those are women.<\/p>\n

Poorer countries of Central Asia, such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, especially in their shared Ferghana Valley region, are said to be fertile ground for ISIS recruitment.<\/p>\n

It is estimated that the number of Chechens fighting in Syria range between 200 and 1,000, many of them veterans of previous conflicts. \u00a0Chechens are known to have a prominent role in ISIS and the group has threatened to take the fight to Russia. In September, ISIS militants directly threatened<\/a> Russia.<\/p>\n

There are also signs that ISIS\u2019 growing sphere of influence has already reached the south Caucasus. Hundreds of Azerbaijanis are known to have joined the ISIS forces in Syria. On 19 November, Dogan News Agency reported<\/a> the arrest of 22 foreigners on the Turkish-Syrian border town of Kilis trying to cross illegally into Syria. 18 were of Uighur origin and 4 of them citizens of Azerbaijan. BBC Azeri Service confirmed<\/a> the identities of the Azerbaijani citizens with the Azerbaijani authorities.<\/p>\n

All of the countries of the former Soviet Union mentioned here have abysmal human rights records with widespread crackdown on civil society activists. Freedom of speech and the religious freedoms are severely limited. \u00a0Any claim by the authorities of the threat of Islamic radicalism has to be taken with a pinch of salt based on their past record.<\/p>\n

However, the possibility of ISIS recruiting Muslim citizens from Central Asia and Caucasus in significant numbers to gain a foothold in the region is very real and should not be dismissed lightly.<\/p>\n

A recent Chatham House research paper titled \u201cThe Myth of Post-Soviet Muslim Radicalization in the Central Asian Republics\u201d<\/a> \u00a0argues that there is little or no evidence of significant levels of Islamic extremism and political violence in the region. That may be the case but the authors of the paper fail to deal with the question of ISIS-style global scale radicalization as a new phenomenon. \u00a0As they mention in passing, the relationship between societal Islamicization and political radicalization is not as straight- forward as they claim.<\/p>\n

The UN Secretary-General Ban\u2019s warning that the scourge of violent extremism having socio-economic roots that needed to be addressed is particularly relevant to Muslim populations of the former Soviet republics.<\/p>\n

As for Turkey, the growing numbers of Central Asian and Caucasian militants trafficking through its territory can only add to already vulnerable border security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United Nations Security Council says foreign fighters are continuing to flood the world\u2019s zones of conflict and in Syria and Iraq alone; there are 15,000 militants from more than 80 countries. \u00a0Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has told the Council that terrorism, drug trafficking and transnational crime was growing in intensity and feeding off each other. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27500,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27498\/revisions\/27500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}