The Islamic State (IS) has reportedly issued a video challenging a powerful global leader, but it was not President Obama or one of his counterparts in Europe. It was Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In the video, fighters pose atop Russian military equipment, including a fighter jet, captured from the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This is Agence France-Presse’s transcription of what follows:
“This is a message to you, oh Vladimir Putin, these are the jets that you have sent to Bashar, we will send them to you, God willing, remember that,” said one fighter in Arabic, according to Russian-language captions provided in the video.
“And we will liberate Chechnya and the entire Caucasus, God willing,” said the militant. “The Islamic State is and will be and it is expanding God willing.”
“Your throne has already teetered, it is under threat and will fall when we come to you because Allah is truly on our side.”
Russia is an old ally of the Assad regime and maintains its only remaining naval facility on the Mediterranean in the Syrian port of Tartus. In the initial stages of the Syrian conflict, Putin’s government urged reconciliation and dialogue with the Assad regime, but rapprochement with the opposition never came to pass. Russia is Assad’s primary source for military hardware.
The jihadists’ reference to Chechnya and the Caucasus should not be a surprise. The Chechen insurgency has gone deep underground – the worst of the open violence was more than a decade ago – but Russia’s heavy-handed rule over the North Caucasus has radicalized some in this Muslim-majority borderland. Fears of Caucasus-related terrorism haunted the buildup to this year’s Winter Olympics in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.
According to AFP, a second voice heard in the video, jeering over the stolen jet, speaks in “accented” Russian. There are an estimated 200 Chechen fighters within the Islamic State ranks. The most prominent, a red-bearded 28-year-old who goes by the name Omar al-Shishani (Omar the Chechen), is thought to be one of the senior-most commanders in the whole terrorist organization.
The video directed at Putin may just be a hollow boast, but it shows the many international dimensions to the Islamic State’s jihad.
Fighters who may have initially been attracted to a separatist cause in one region have surfaced somewhere else all together, inflamed with a zeal not shared by many locals.