Chechen in Syria a rising star in extremist group

Bassem Mroue | AP

BEIRUT: A young, red-bearded ethnic Chechen has rapidly become one of the most prominent commanders in the breakaway Al-Qaeda group that has overrun swaths of Iraq and Syria, illustrating the international nature of the movement.
Omar Al-Shishani, one of hundreds of Chechens who have been among the toughest jihadi fighters in Syria, has emerged as the face of the Islamic State (IS), appearing frequently in its online videos — in contrast to the group’s Iraqi leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who remains deep in hiding and has hardly ever been photographed.
In a video released by the group over the weekend, Al-Shishani is shown standing next to the group’s spokesman among a group of fighters as they declare the elimination of the border between Iraq and Syria. The video was released just hours before the extremist group announced the creation of a caliphate — or Islamic state — in the areas it controls.
“Our aim is clear and everyone knows why we are fighting. Our path is toward the caliphate,” the 28-year-old Al-Shishani declares. “We will bring back the caliphate, and if God does not make it our fate to restore the caliphate, then we ask him to grant us martyrdom.” The video is consistent with other Associated Press reporting on Al-Shishani.


Al-Shishani has been the group’s military commander in Syria, leading it on an offensive to take over a broad stretch of territory leading to the Iraq border. But he may have risen to become the group’s overall military chief, a post that has been vacant after the Iraqi militant who once held it — known as Abu Abdul-Rahman Al-Bilawi Al-Anbari — was killed in the Iraqi city of Mosul in early June. The video identified Al-Shishani as “the military commander” without specifying its Syria branch, suggesting he had been elevated to overall commander, though the group has not formally announced such a promotion.
As the militant group’s operations in Iraq and Syria grow “more and more inter-dependent by the day, it is more than possible that someone like (al-Shishani) could assume overall military leadership,” said Charles Lister, Visiting Fellow with the Brookings Doha Center.
The extremist group began as Al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, and many of its top leaders are Iraqi. But after it intervened in Syria’s civil war last year, it drew hundreds of foreign fighters into its operations in Syria. Now with victories on the two sides of the border, the two branches are swapping fighters, equipment and weapons to an even greater extent than before, becoming a more integrated organization. Its declaration of the caliphate — aspiring to be a state for all Muslims — could mean an even greater internationalization of its ranks.
Alexei Malashenko, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow office, said ethnicity is not a major factor in jihadi movements, only dedication to jihad. Al-Shishani “is a fanatic of Islam with war experience, and he obviously has had a strong track record (among fellow fighters),” he said.
Syria’s civil war, in its fourth year, has attracted militants from around the world. Some estimates run as high as 10,000 foreign fighters in the country. But the Chechens — hardened from years of wars with Russia in the Caucasus region — are considered some of the best fighters.
Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency known under its Russian acronym FSB, said last October that about 500 militants from Russia and hundreds more from other ex-Soviet nations are fighting in Syria.
Al-Shishani, whose real name is Tarkhan Batirashvili, is an ethnic Chechen from the Caucasus nation of Georgia, specifically from the Pankisi Valley, a center of Georgia’s Chechen community and once a stronghold for militants.
He did military service in the Georgian army but was discharged after an unspecified illness, said one of his former neighbors, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. At one point, Georgian police arrested him for illegal possession of arms, the neighbor said. As soon as he was released in 2010, Batirashvili left for Turkey. Georgian police refused to comment.
He later surfaced in Syria in 2013 with his nom de guerre, which means “Omar the Chechen” in Arabic, leading an Al-Qaeda-inspired group called “The Army of Emigrants and Partisans,” which included a large number of fighters from the former Soviet Union. A meeting was soon organized with Al-Baghdadi in which Al-Shishani pledged loyalty to him, according to Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper, which follows jihadi groups.
He first showed his battlefield prowess in August 2013, when his fighters proved pivotal in taking the Syrian military’s Managh air base in the north of the country. Rebels had been trying for months to take the base, but it fell soon after Al-Shishani joined the battle, said an activist from the region, Abu Al-Hassan Maraee.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant entered the Syria conflict in 2013, and initially it was welcomed by other rebels. But rebel groups — including other Islamic militant factions — turned against it, alienated by its brutal methods and kidnappings and killings of rivals, and accusing it of trying to take over the opposition movement for its own ambitions of creating a transnational Islamic enclave. Rebel factions have been fighting against the group since last year in battles that have left thousands dead. Al-Qaeda’s central command ejected the extremist group from the network.
For the past two months, Al-Shishani has led an offensive in Syria’s eastern Deir el-Zour province against rival rebels, seeking to solidify his hold on a stretch of territory connected to neighboring Iraq.
In May, some Arab media organizations reported that Al-Shishani was killed in the fighting. An activist in Iraq in contact with members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant said Al-Shishani suffered wounds in his right arm and was taken into Iraq where he underwent treatment before returning to Syria. He spoke on condition of anonymity for security concerns.
Since then, Al-Shishani has appeared multiple times in photos and videos put out by the group. The photos and videos are consistent with the AP’s reporting from activists on the ground. In a recent photograph, the young, round-faced Al-Shishani, wearing a black cap and beige gown, is seen with a big smile as he examines a Humvee said to have been captured in Iraq and brought into Syria.
Hussein Nasser, spokesman for the Islamic Front coalition group of rebels, said Chechens are among the most feared fighters in Syria.
“A Chechen comes and has no idea about anything (in the country) and does whatever his leader tells him,” Nasser said. “Even if his emir tells him to kill a child, he would do it.”
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Associated Press writers Bilal Hussein in Beirut, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili in Tbilisi, Georgia contributed to this report.

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If there is anything to be learned from the events of the past few weeks in Iraq and Syria is that politics makes strange bedfellows! The enemies of yesterday could easily become the allies of today, albeit until the winds change direction again. The United States, Iran an even the beleaguered regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad are scurrying to help the troubled government of controversial Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. Even Russia’s Vladimir Putin is stepping in by supplying used SU-25 fighter planes and experts to the distressed Iraqi Army, if only to spite the American administration, which is yet to decide if it will sell F-16 jets to Iraq.
The June 10 surprise fall of Iraq’s second biggest city, Mosul, to Sunni insurgents, infiltrated by fighters of the notorious Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has upset regional and international priorities. ISIL and its Sunni tribe allies had stormed at least three Iraqi governorates and vowed to march on Baghdad to topple the Al-Maliki government. The autonomous region of Kurdistan did not hesitate to dispatch troops to take over the disputed oil-rich province of Kirkuk. And Shiite religious references have called on Iraqis to protect holy sites in the south from invading Sunni radicals. Meanwhile, Iraqi leaders are squabbling over a political formula to dislodge Al-Maliki’s eight-year grip on power. The latter has resisted local and international pressures to step down or form a national salvation government.
But the regional agenda has changed. Suddenly foes and allies are coming together to confront the perceived threat of ISIL in both Iraq and Syria. This has set a new dynamics with the list of winners and losers being rewritten almost every day.
For the time being here is a look at who appears to have gained, and who may have lost, as a result of latest events.
Assad emerges as a likely winner as regional and international attention shifts from war-torn Syria to distressed Iraq. The international community has failed to come up with a political solution to Syria’s civil war and the Syrian president has secured a third term in spite of worldwide condemnation. His forces have made important gains lately and the rise of ISIL has only cemented his claim that he is fighting radical militants on behalf of the West. As regional and international powers focus on Iraq, pressure on the Syrian regime will decrease noticeably.
Iran too is making gains, for now, as it proves once more that it is an important regional power broker. There are reports that it had dispatched advisers from the elite Republican Guards and the Jerusalem Force to Iraq under the command of Maj-Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who has been active in Syria as well. It is ironic that the US, which has sent 300 Pentagon advisers to Baghdad, and Iran are both working for what appears to be the same objectives in Iraq.
Perhaps the biggest winners are Iraq’s Kurds who are getting closer to achieving their historic dream of declaring an independent Kurdistan. President Masoud Barzani has said that Iraq has changed since the Sunni insurgency broke out and that Kurdish forces will never leave Kirkuk, adding that the file of disputed territories between Kurdistan and Baghdad has been closed. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his country backs Kurdish independence. The breakdown of Iraq and Syria and the creation of ethnic and sectarian states and enclaves will only bolster Israel’s insistence that it be recognized as a Jewish state.
ISIL, this mysterious organization that shot up in the last three years, is likely to make political and territorial gains in the short term. Symbolically it announced the creation of an Islamic caliphate in areas under its control and has renamed itself “Islamic State” and proclaimed its leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi as caliph. This development will send waves across the region, especially in the jittery Gulf countries. It will surely bring together foes and allies to confront this new menace. The Sunnis of Iraq, who say they are fighting to regain their rights, will soon challenge the new ISIL state leading possibly to internecine wars. The birth of a Sunni enclave between Iraq and Syria may be considered as a victory, but it will have deep geopolitical repercussions on its neighbors.
Al-Maliki is a likely loser. He has lost the support of most Shiite coalitions, not to mention the Kurds and Sunnis, in addition to the important backing of Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. Iraqi leaders are trying to find an acceptable alternative; one who, according to Muqtada Al-Sadr, will address the legitimate grievances of all, including the Sunnis. Al-Maliki’s political fate will also be decided in Tehran, which so far supports him, but his intransigence will almost certainly suck Iraq into the vortex of sectarian war. Iraq as a country may still disintegrate.
Another loser is the Syrian opposition, which is now being asked by Washington to join the fight against ISIL in Iraq. President Obama has said that no moderate Syrian opposition was able to unseat Assad. But he has asked Congress for half a billion dollars to arm and train the Free Syrian Army (FSA) which has been engaged in bitter fighting against ISIL in eastern Syria. The US is attempting to repeat the experiment of Iraq’s Awakening forces in Al-Anbar by shifting the focus of the FSA from the Syrian regime to ISIL.
One more loser in all of this is Al-Qaeda, which had disowned ISIL only to see its influence increase in the past few months. Already some members of Jabhat Al Nusra, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda, have joined ISIL in Bou Kamal in Syria. The more radical ISIL is today the biggest regional challenge.
One potential loser, in the long run, is the United States, which under President Obama has seen its regional influence recede even among its own Gulf allies. For now alliances are shifting and new ones are emerging and the ISIL factor has made this happen. The outcome of this political and military reshuffle will dramatically reshape the region.

Email: alsharif.osama@gmail.com

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