al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2017 part 19-122-russia-10-90-nato-8

CdW Intelligence to Rent In Confidence

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2017 Part 19-122-Russia-10-90-NATO-8

With tensions running high in NATO, it seems the alliance is in sore need of a fresh course on Russia and a new deal on security. A former US ambassador to Moscow and an ex-German envoy to NATO gave their takes to DW. "Is NATO obsolete? Absolutely!" Jack Matlock, one the last US ambassadors to the Soviet Union and the author of several books on the end of the Cold War and its consequences, told DW. "It was formed to prevent a Communist Soviet Union from encroaching on Western Europe. Russia is not capable of confronting and dominating the rest of Europe," he said.Unlike Trump, Matlock believes that boosting defense spending would be a step in the wrong direction."To think that our disputes will be solved by military posturing is a dangerous illusion," said Matlock, who represented the US in Moscow between 1987 and 1991 and played a key role in reducing the tensions between the USSR and the West under President Ronald Reagan."The sort of military jockeying that NATO and Russia are indulging in today reminds me of the geopolitical games played by the Great Powers in 1914," Matlock said. "Are our leaders incapable of learning anything from history?"

10 Feb, Russian President Vladimir Putin has again scrambled his jets in a snap military drill meant to prepare his air force for a "time of war.""In accordance with the decision by the Armed Forces Supreme Commander, a snap check of the Aerospace Forces began to evaluate readiness of the control agencies and troops to carry out combat training tasks," said Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, according to Russia's state-run media."Special attention should be paid to combat alert, deployment of air defense systems for a time of war and air groupings' readiness to repel the aggression," continued Shoigu.Russian snap exercises on the border with NATO happen often, without warning, and they often come with menacing overtones. For some time now, Russia has held a numerical, qualitative, organizational, and timing advantage over NATO forces in the Baltics.In 2014, Putin said he could take Kiev in two weeks. In 2015, a Czech general said Russia could take the Baltics in two days. The US and NATO have responded to Russia's rising aggression steadily but slowly, most recently by stationing 80 tanks in Poland.But according to a presentation made at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia by Senior International Research Analyst Michael Johnson of the RAND Corporation, Russian tanks outnumber NATO tanks at about 480 to 80.In Air Power, even with a US Navy carrier battle group in the mix, Russia could muster up fully one-third of their air force to the fight, according to Johnson.Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of US F/A-18s can't currently fly due to budget cuts that lead to a backlog on maintenance and sourcing new parts, Defense News reports. The Marine Times reports something similar — more than half of the Marine Corps' planes couldn't fly in December.Even with the US's ship-based aviation crippled by age and budget cuts, the bigger problem is Russia's advanced anti-air systems.In October, Dr. Igor Sutyagin, an expert on Russian and US air power and air defenses at the Royal United Services Institute, said even the US's best, stealthiest jets and pilots would have to be "operationally, tactically brilliant" to cope with Russia's advanced S-400 air defenses.Legacy fighters from the US and NATO would have their work cut out for them in a battle of the skies and against missile defenses, leaving few planes left over for close air support. Essentially, US troops would fight without total air superiority for the first time since World War II.Additionally, by the time US and NATO reinforcements reached the Baltics, the Russians would have

1The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. –Winston ChurchillCees de Waart: CdW Intelligence to Rent of 14

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long ago established themselves, possibly with more air defenses. US troops would have to go from fort to port, 5,000 miles across the sea, land outside of Russian missile range or air space, and then make their way to the Baltics. The whole ordeal could take up to 6 months, according to Johnson.US President Donald Trump has often called NATO "obsolete," though the current challenges from Russia would argue that the alliance now bears more relevance than any point since the end of the Cold War. Trump, and Obama before him, have both called on all NATO states to pay their fair share on defense, but the US must still lead the fight."There are more police officers in New York City than there are American soldiers stationed in Europe today. So while bipartisan presidents have always called on Europeans to do more, I think we can also look to our own situation in Europe now," said Johnson.

Putin Orders Air Force Into Topmost Battle Readiness President Vladimir Putin ordered a snap military exercise of the Russian Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno-Kosmicheskye Sily—VKS), on February 7. The VKS was placed at top battle readiness: the missile- and anti-aircraft-defense radar network and interceptor missile batteries, together with the air force, including long-range strategic bombers (Dalnya Aviatsya—DA). “Topmost” VKS battle readiness is the last possible step before all-out war. Mobile anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries (S-300, S-400 and Pantsir-C), together with radar stations designated to defend Moscow and the surrounding “Central Industrial Region” began to massively redeploy and spread out to new “reserve positions” by road and railroad from their permanent bases (Militarynews.ru, February 8). The massive spreading out and combat redeployment to disguised field positions is intended to make the air defense forces less vulnerable to sudden nuclear and conventional precision strikes by an attacker. By February 8, the Ministry of Defense reported that the SAM batteries and their mobile radars were successfully redeployed and fully combat operational (Militarynews.ru, February 8). The Tu-160 and Tu-22M3 strategic bombers of the DA also began a massive strategic spreading out operation by redeploying to airstrips not regularly used in peacetime. Some 20 heavy Il-76 transport planes transferred ground maintenance crews and essential equipment to these far-flung airstrips to ensure their capability to maintain the strategic bomber force operations “in the face of foreign aggression” (Militarynews.ru, February 8). The dispersing and combat redeployment of the DA bombers is equally designed to hide them from possible preemptive attack. Newly appointed Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin briefed foreign military attachés about the snap VKS exercises. Fomin was appointed to his new role on January 31, to replace career diplomat Anatoly Antonov, who was previously in charge of the defense ministry’s foreign relations. Last December, Putin moved Antonov back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he is now a deputy minister. Reportedly, Antonov may soon become the Russian ambassador to Washington (Kommersant, February 6). Fomin was previously the chief of Russia’s state arms trading agency FSVTS (TASS, January 31). According to Fomin, the VKS snap exercises involve some 45,000 troops, 150 aircraft, 200 air-defense missile systems, and 1,700 pieces of other heavy military equipment. Fomin insisted that because of the snap nature of the exercise, Moscow was not obliged to warn anyone or invite foreign observers; his briefing of foreign military attachés in Moscow was, thus, “an act of good will” (Militarynews.ru, February 8). Russia’s tactical air force was also deployed: Su-27 and MiG-29 fighters, new Su-34 bombers, multipurpose Yak-130 jets and Ka-52 helicopter gunships. Together with the DA heavy bombers, the


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tactical air force jets simulated attack sorties for the SAM batteries to detect and intercept. The entire exercise centered on defending the Moscow region from air attack (Militarynews.ru, February 9). Running such a massive VKS exercise at the height of the severe Russian winter has never been customary, even during the Cold War. Suddenly putting the VKS into topmost battle readiness does not seem like a good way to improve relations with Washington. Several hours after United States President Donald Trump and Putin talked on the phone on January 28, a massive escalation of fighting began in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas (see EDM, January 30, February 6). It is unclear who actually initiated the present round of hostilities, with both sides reporting attacks and counterattacks. The ground fighting does not seem to have involved large numbers of infantry or armor, and there have been no substantial changes to the existing line of control, but the artillery and rocket bombardments are heavy, hitting populated residential areas on both sides of the front: in Avdiivka (north of Donetsk, held by Ukrainian government forces) and nearby Gorlovka and Donetsk (held by pro-Russian forces). Clashes were also reported east of Mariupol (Mariupil)—a Donbas port city held by the Ukrainian army. Both sides report dozens of casualties, with the exact numbers unclear (Kommersant, January 31). The situation in Donbas is tense and could escalate. The time of year is optimal for large-scale winter warfare: low temperatures have gripped the region for some time and the dirt is frozen, making dirt roads and fields passable for heavy military equipment. Ukrainian soldiers have apparently managed to inch their way onto important hilltop locations near Gorlovka, which could allow them to take up heavy machinegun firing positions to impede traffic on the main road connecting Gorlovka to the rest of Russia-controlled Donbas. The Russia-backed “rebels” have put forward a “peace plan” involving a withdrawal of heavy weapons and Ukrainian soldiers from recently acquired forward positions. The rebels have accused the Ukrainian authorities of rejecting this “peace plan” outright, and they have rebuked the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) observer mission in Donbas for allegedly not being impartial and for siding with the Ukrainians (Militarynews.ru, February 8). Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced that a referendum will be held sometime in the future on Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), citing a profound change in Ukrainian public opinion in favor of membership. This plan has been angrily denounced in Moscow and by the pro-Russia rebels in Donbas (TASS, Kommersant, February 2). Ukraine is highly unlikely to actually join NATO anytime soon; but for Moscow the entire notion is anathema, as is the prospect of Ukraine becoming an unofficial ally of the West. On February 9, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov announced there that will be “no deals” with the Trump administration on the future of Ukraine and Donbas (Interfax, February 9). Attitudes in Moscow seem to be hardening, with a clear signal sent to Washington that any deal possibly tacitly recognizing Russian control of Crimea in exchange for a withdrawal and pacification of Donbas is unacceptable. Ukraine, as a pro-Western state seeking to join NATO and the European Union sometime in the future, is equally unacceptable to Russia. Furthermore, it is also possible that if the Ukrainian military will not stand down and rescind their recent tactical gains near Avdiivka and Gorlovka, the VKS may actually begin a limited air offensive to push them back. A possible non-contact engagement, like the one Russia had been carrying out over Syria, could utterly destabilize the NATO-friendly Poroshenko regime.--Pavel Felgenhauer


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‘Crawling Advance’: A New Tactic of Ukrainian Troops in Donbas The assault on the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka (January 28–February 4) was a combined-arms operation by Russia’s proxy forces, aiming to reverse the recent Ukrainian gains on the ground in a sector of key significance (see below) and, more broadly, to seize the initiative in the ongoing positional warfare. This proceeds in several sectors along and between demarcation lines. Ukrainian forces have held the initiative for the last few months, using small-unit operations to push into “gray zones” that separate Ukrainian positions from those of the “Donetsk people’s republic’s” (DPR) forces. Since last autumn, Ukrainian forces have regained small but valuable portions of territory which the Minsk armistice had left under Ukrainian control, but which were subsequently seized by Russian-DPR forces with impunity. Ukrainian commentators describe the pushback to recover the lost ground as “creeping [crawling] advances.” The term denotes the crawling tempo of these Ukrainian operations—it can take weeks to advance a few hundred meters in a given sector—and the tactic of enveloping enemy positions with small Ukrainian units in a noose-tightening process (“anaconda tactic”). These operations’ inconspicuous character has kept them out of the media’s limelight (until the Avdiivka battle). Specialized commentators in Kyiv (such as Dmytro Tymchuk, Yurii Butusov, Kostyantin Mashovets and Oleksandr Motuzyanik), however, regard the “crawling advances” as a new chapter in this conflict and a reflection on the Ukrainian forces’ capacity to plan and execute challenging operations (Sprotiv.info, Tsenzor.net, Info.napalm, January 28–February 8; RFE/RL, January 30). Those are purely tactical operations within the paradigm of positional warfare on a sector-by-sector basis. Whether the local crawling advances are subsumed into a strategic design is unclear. But they do seem to correspond to a common denominator. Ukrainian units in each case seek to improve their defensive positions against possible attack by massed hostile forces. By the same token, the Ukrainians seek to occupy favorable jumping-off locations for possible offensive action. They aim to seize—or position themselves for possibly seizing—key sections of highways, railroads or junctions thereof, electricity and heating plants, water reservoirs, or dominant hills, preferably on the outskirts of DPR-controlled towns. These moves are certainly not intended to reopen all-out hostilities against superior adversary forces. The more likely intent is, first, to improve Ukraine’s defensive resilience against a possible hostile invasion/incursion across the demarcation line, as Ukraine has repeatedly experienced. Equally, they appear designed to improve Ukraine’s bargaining position in the event—which many in Kyiv fear, rightly or wrongly—that Western powers might pressure Kyiv into a political-territorial accommodation with the Moscow-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk. The first known (but hardly publicized) “crawling advance” seems to have occurred in October 2016, when Ukrainian troops gained control of the Svitlodar strip, north of Debaltseve. In December 2016, the Ukrainians moved further into the town of Novoluhanske, six kilometers from the railway and highway junction of Debaltseve (the main Donetsk-Luhansk connecting link), which Russian regular forces captured from the Ukrainians in 2015 (see below). By the end of 2016 and in early January 2017, Ukrainian troops gained one or two more kilometers in several sectors, edging closer to the outskirts of the DPR-controlled towns Horlivka and Yasynuvata (parts of the wider Donetsk agglomeration) as well as half-encircling Dokuchaeve (farther south). And from their long-held


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Avdiivka stronghold, Ukrainian troops edged southward to the village Spartak, three kilometers from the Donetsk city line. They also edged eastward from Avdiivka, poised to interdict the Donetsk-Horlivka highway and even the Yasynuvata highway and railroad junctions (Tsenzor.net, Sprotyv.info, Info.napalm, January 28–February 8). Ukrainian troops carefully avoid any move that might be interpreted as intending to cross the Minsk One armistice line (September 19, 2014). Kyiv recognizes this line, not the subsequent changes. Russian and proxy forces breached that line massively in two stages, seizing territories that the Minsk One armistice had left under Ukrainian control. The first stage of land-grabs unfolded in the winter of 2014–2015, as Russia supplied overwhelming firepower, compelling Ukraine to request another armistice. Minsk Two (February 12, 2015), officially purporting to implement Minsk One, did the opposite: Russian and proxy land-grabs in breach of Minsk One were ratified by Minsk Two. And within days of the Minsk Two armistice, Russian forces seized a large Ukrainian-held salient, including Debaltseve (see above), which Minsk Two had left under Ukrainian control. Germany and France, purported guarantors of the armistice, kept silent (see EDM, February 14, 19, 20, 2015). Ukraine takes the position that the Minsk One armistice line is the only valid line, and therefore the only acceptable reference in terms of disengaging military forces on either side. If the Minsk Two demarcation line—indeed the Russian-breached Minsk Two line—is taken as the basis for a disengagement of forces, then Russian-supplied heavy firepower would threaten to reach more deeply into Ukrainian-held territory, adding to Russia’s capacity for coercion. On these and other grounds, Kyiv aims to reinstate the Minsk One demarcation line. Ukraine has reasserted this position in the Minsk Contact Group’s meetings, including the latest (Ukrinform, February 1). The Minsk One line has validity as a military arrangement in the field: one that was negotiated, officially recognized, never abrogated, and guaranteed (if only on paper) by the top leaders of the “Normandy” powers (see above). This does not imply that the demarcation line has legal validity. The Minsk One and Two documents have no legal force (it is Russia that seeks to turn their political provisions into legal obligations of Ukraine). For its part, Ukraine is determined to have the Minsk One demarcation line reinstated. This means that Ukrainian forces have no intention of crossing that line. It also means that Ukraine is fully justified to recover ground in the gray zone, between the Minsk One and Minsk Two lines, as it has done recently through “crawling advance” tactics. --Vladimir Socor 1Feb, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been advocating for President Donald Trump to back the addition of Montenegro into the NATO military alliance, infuriating Russia in the process.If Trump goes along with Flynn’s proposal, the administration’s policy towards Russia will take an interesting turn, as recently, the president has been accused of mysteriously friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.Supporting Montenegro’s entrance into the military alliance would anger Russia, which sees the alliance as little more than gradual Western encroachment into its sphere of influence and at times overt provocation, Politico reports. 9 Feb The US and Russian armed forces are not aligned well in order to conduct joint campaigns, former NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove said at a US Senate hearing on Thursday.WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Breedlove argued the United States and Russia do not have the same


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approach to targeting nor to protecting "non-belligerent life."In addition, the United States has deeper bench of precision weapons than Russia, Breedlove added."I don’t find that we are well-aligned in the way that we would conduct a fight," Breedlove told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when asked how effective a joint military campaign with Russia would be.Is NATO Really Ready for a War?When Jürgen Bornemann was a junior army officer in West Germany’s Bundeswehr, he spent many months of every year practicing getting his unit from its base to likely conflict zones near West Germany’s border with East Germany. His unit was not alone. “Entire divisions were moved within West Germany,” Bornemann, who went on to become a lieutenant general and director general of NATO’s international staff, told me. (A division consists of some fifteen thousand soldiers.)Practicing movements involving tens of thousands of troops towards potential hot spots was, in fact, a main component of NATO’s Cold War defense planning. “NATO was constantly practicing, fine-tuning deploying fifty thousand troops across the Atlantic and moving them across Europe,” said Ian Brzezinski, an assistant secretary of defense under George W. Bush. “It was a demonstration, but it was also a way of making sure the wheels were always greased.”

By comparison, today’s NATO troop movements look rather modest. Exercises are less frequent and typically involve brigade-size forces, around five thousand troops each. “In 2015 we had an exercise [Trident Juncture] that involved thirty-six thousand troops, but it took a long time to plan and only took place in Italy, Portugal and Spain,” Brzezinski pointed out. And as Bornemann notes, with many years having passed without large regular exercises, officers lack the knowledge of how to do it. They often lack the equipment, too. During the Cold War, Germany’s Deutsche Bahn kept thousands of rail cars available for Bundeswehr transportation. That’s no longer the case.

Equally worrisome is the speed at which the exercising troops advance. Referring to NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, which consists of five thousand troops, a senior NATO official told me, “Sometimes we have ten nations participating. It’s not just a matter of the number of troops and vehicles moving. We have to be able to go from anywhere to anywhere. It’s extremely complex, whereas during the Cold War everyone knew which route they would be taking.”With battle zones so much harder to predict than during the Cold War, it’s difficult to know where to pre-position equipment. “We don’t know where we’ll need it, whereas during the Cold War we knew exactly where we’d need it,” the NATO official said.Cold War NATO commanders also knew the specifics of every bridge, railroad, road, tunnel, airport and seaport on NATO territory. They could easily access the information in the alliance’s Capability Catalogues, a meticulously maintained encyclopedia that detailed every piece of infrastructure that could be used by the military. “But we let the Capability Catalogues go,” the NATO official told me. As a result, commanders have incomplete information about the infrastructure they need to use in order to move their troops. Though bridges and railroads may seem secondary, logistics is the pillar of any military exercise—and any military engagement.Newer NATO member states’ capabilities never added Capability Catalogues, and were also left with Communist-era infrastructure. “Some of them have rebuilt their infrastructure in a lot of places where some of the older Allies haven’t, but some of the bridges in some of the former [Warsaw Pact] nations will probably need upgrading at some stage,” the NATO official said. “We’re talking sometimes seventy or eighty tons of armor, so you put that on top of a flatbed and then you’ve got the issues of going across a bridge.” Since the 2014 Wales Summit, NATO has again been collecting capability entries from its member states, and the official says the alliance is making progress towards a


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complete set of catalogues.And troops need to regularly use the infrastructure. ”We used to move armor up from Greece into Kosovo and the Balkans, for example,” the NATO official pointed out. “It’s not new for NATO to be able to do that, we just need to get to where we were before in terms of being up to speed and having that situational awareness.”In recent months, the alliance has made crucial progress in another area: border crossings. Until last year, many NATO member states didn’t issue automatic clearance to alliance troops entering their territory. Now that issue has been resolved.Still, NATO is decidedly less swift than Russia, which can deploy tens of thousands of soldiers on several days’ notice—and has the advantage of large military bases not far from three NATO member states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. By contrast, NATO’s best and largest armed forces units are based in western Europe, where the United States still maintains a respectable military presence.That’s where NATO’s decisionmaking speed plays a crucial role. After the Cold War, decisionmaking power for NATO’s exercises shifted from commanders to the civilian North Atlantic Council, which operates at distinctly unmilitary speed. Military commanders have been aware of the problem caused by slow decisionmaking for a long time, but political decisionmakers have had their heads in the sand. Brzezinski said, “It’s changing now, but is it changing fast enough?” It’s not just a valid question, but an urgent one, given Russia’s energetic exercise schedule and its military modernization, which includes new antiaccess/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities in the Baltic Sea region. A2AD slows an adversary’s advance by means of missiles and other air-defense weapons. Giving its commanders more power over exercises would make the alliance more efficient.

But how many NATO troops, accompanied by tanks and other equipment, should be moving across Europe in order to keep the wheels greased, and how often? Getting from five thousand to fifty thousand constantly exercising troops will be near impossible in the short term. “And the Russians would consider large exercises an escalation,” Bornemann warned. This year will, however, offer a good opportunity for NATO to show its teeth and speed. In September, Russia will again conduct a Zapad exercise, this time in the country’s west. Last year’s Zapad involved 120,000 troops. What if NATO were to conduct a similarly sized exercise at the same time?Elisabeth Braw is a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council .

Taking on Turkey: Islamic State’s New FrontierYasir Kuoti In November, as Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led coalition air support closed in on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi issued a fretful call to his supporters, exhorting them to conduct attacks in Turkey. Islamic State (IS) has recently experienced substantial losses following the start of the Mosul offensive in October last year, including being forced out of the city’s east side in January. The IS leader’s call was likely intended to deflect from his organization’s defeats. The declaration of all-out war on Turkey is a bold and arguably foolhardy move by the group. It heralds a new era in IS’ campaign, exacerbates Turkey’s long-strained relations with its Kurdish population and brings with it significant security and economic repercussions for Turkey and beyond. ‘This Is What God Has Promised Us’


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On November 3, 2016, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivered an unexpected speech entitled “This Is What God Has Promised Us.” The speech served as a motivational call to IS fighters in Mosul, and occasioned the cry for establishing a new frontier – effectively a war with Turkey. “O monotheists,” al-Baghdadi said, “Turkey has today entered the sphere of your work and your jihadi project. Turn its security into panic, its luxury into dread, and include it in your blazing areas of struggle” (al-Naba, Issue 53, 03 November, 2016). Just a day later, IS claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir that killed nine people and wounded more than 100 others. That IS should seek to expand into Turkey is, on one level, unsurprising. At its most fundamental, the group’s worldview is expansionist and apocalyptic and seeks, ultimately, to obtain global domination beginning with the countries of the Muslim world. Such a worldview is informed by the Arabic mantra baqiya wa tatamadad (“remaining and expanding”), which suggests the group considers itself to have a kind of divine mission to expand into new territories. However, IS expansion has so far been more-or-less limited to failed or semi-failed states. Noteworthy announcements of expansion into new areas of operation have also tended to follow periods of success in existing areas, possibly serving to communicate visible successes to locals in the territories into which the group is expanding. Al-Baghdadi’s recent call, then, is unusual. Not only because it comes on the heels of losing territories in Syria, Iraq and Libya, but also because Turkey is a functional state. Another difference with IS’ other expansionist announcements is that al-Baghdadi did not disclose details of local leadership hierarchies or strongholds. There are obvious reasons for this. First, unlike the states IS usually preys upon, Turkey has functional security services that could efficiently identify and arrest IS leaders and operatives. Secondly, the IS leadership is under pressure. The group has finite personnel and resources, and is increasingly in survival mode. Justification for Violence At the core of IS efforts to legitimize its expansion of terror into Turkey is the promotion of a narrative that Islam faces an existential threat from a multitude of adversaries that inevitably include crusading Christians and Zionist Jews. These enemies, so the IS narrative goes, aided by apostate Muslim governments such as that in Turkey, are the principle hurdle to creating an alternative world order based on Islamic teachings, or more accurately one based on IS’ Salafist version of Islam. IS uses this narrative of clashing civilizations to justify its attacks on Muslim countries. To justify targeting Turkey, IS regularly publishes magazines and provides analysis of the “faults by successive Turkish governments dating back to 1944.” These include joining the North Atlantic


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Treaty Organization (NATO), which it considers un-Islamic as it “exhibits loyalty and agency to the crusaders in their fight against Islam”; constitutionally adopting secularism in 1983, which requires the separation of mosque and state; and joining the global anti-IS coalition in 2014 (al-Naba, Issue 14, January 18, 2016; al-Naba, Issue 57, December 01, 2016). According to IS, Turkey is also at fault for joining the United Nations, as the group sees the UN Charter as un-Islamic for affording dignity and worth for every person irrespective of faith or creed. From an IS standpoint, the human worth of a believer and nonbeliever cannot be equated. Pragmatism on Both Sides During IS’ early successes in Iraq and Syria, Turkey emerged as a key transit center for those seeking to join the group, its borders crossed by radicals and potential jihadists arriving from Asia, Europe, Russia, North Africa and elsewhere. At that stage, Turkey and IS were careful not to overtly carry out operations against each another. When either did, they took care to ensure deniability. This prompted criticism from observers who claimed it equated to a cooperative relationship between IS and Turkey (al-Sharaq al-Awsat, September 27, 2014; al-Hayat, September 21, 2014). Although there is no evidence to show any formal agreement existed, it is plausible that IS and Turkey, their actions governed by pragmatism, saw a tacit understanding as mutually beneficial between 2014 and mid-2015.

Turkey represented a lifeline through which foreign fighters, goods and weapons entered and left Syria (Sasapost, December 6, 2015; al-Arabiya, September 20, 2015; YouTube, September 20, 2015). As long as Ankara ignored its smuggling activities, there was no reason for IS to establish a new frontline. The group’s priorities at that time were the consolidation of acquired territories and its experiments with local administrations in Iraq and Syria. Pragmatism, likewise, influenced Turkey’s tacit acceptance of IS. For one, a war on IS might not have been a popular choice for the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, considering that only 10 percent of Turks polled in January 2016 considered IS as a terrorist organization (Masr al-Arabia, July 1, 2016). For another, Turkey would have risked IS retaliations. Turkish military action against IS would likely have resulted in harm to the 48 Turkish hostages captured during an IS raid on the Turkish consulate in Mosul in June 2014 (Idaat, December 27, 2016; CNN Arabic, June 11, 2014). It would likely also have encouraged IS attacks on Turkish targets, impacting the local economy and the country’s tourism industry. Al-Baghdadi understood that fear, stating that, “Turkey had been reluctant to go into direct fights [with us] fearing that this might force the hands of the mujahedeen [holy warriors] to include it in their operations and fights” (al-Naba, Issue 53, November 3, 2016). Resistance to Kurdish Nationalism In the summer of 2015, however, a game-changing event took place. The Suruc bombing on July 20 of that year swayed Turkey in favor of joining the anti-IS coalition. Suicide bomber Abdul Rahman Agaloz attacked a group of Kurdish activists in the Turkish town of Suruc as they gathered to discuss plans for rebuilding the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria. The blast


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killed 32 people. Turkish officials blamed IS for the attack, but Kurdish leaders insisted that the identity of perpetrator was irrelevant. What was important, they said, was that the bombing was proof of their clams the government did too little to protect them. Two days later, on July 22, 2015, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), acting in revenge for the Suruc bombing, claimed responsibility for the killing of two Turkish officers in Sanliurfa (al-Jazeera Arabic, July 23, 2015; al-Sharq al-Arabi, July 21, 2015; al-Watan, July 23, 2015; YouTube, July 20, 2015). Turkey and IS, it seemed, shared a common enemy – the PKK. Hostile relations between Turkey and the PKK date back to the mid-1980s when Kurdish leaders demanded an independent state. Erdogan’s government considers Kurdish nationalism a national security problem, one “more threatening to Turkey than Daesh [IS]” (al-Arabiya, August 22, 2016). IS too has been locked in conflict with the Kurds who, with Western backing in the form of high-quality training and equipment, particularly from the United States, have been one of the most effective fighting forces on the ground against the group. The overlapping, triangular IS-Turkey-Kurd relationship is complex, but IS fears the fighting tenacity of the Kurds – who present a serious challenge to IS ambitions in Syria – and like Turkey, harbors an ideological objection to them. That objection is less about specifically Kurdish nationalism, but rather because nationalism itself is at odds with IS’ ideology. Kurdish nationalism is prefaced on Kurdish identity, whereas IS pursues an existence in which an Islamic identity outstrips all other identities whether personal, social or otherwise. Put differently, IS Islamism and Kurdish nationalism are inherently opposed to one another, and IS straightforwardly rejects the modern concept of the nation state in favor of a more “universal” form of government in the form of the caliphate. In one publication, IS explains its stance on Kurdish nationalism: “The Kurds found in collaborating with the crusaders against the Islamic State a tool to establish their nationalist state. If Kurds read history well, they will know that even if the crusaders mean well and grant them a state, the Islamic State war against them shall not stop until they go back to God and distance themselves from nationalism” (al-Naba, Issue 19, February 23, 2016). Between July 2015 and January 2017, IS claimed responsibility for, or is suspected of conducting, at least 60 attacks on Kurdish targets in Syria and Turkey, resulting in causalities that reach into the thousands. Looking Ahead IS does not have the resources to pose a serious threat to Turkey, but in a sustained conflict the group will be able to sap Turkey’s financial and other resources, and badly impact Turkey’s tourism industry. IS thrives on domestic discord, and by far the most immediate impact of its conflict with Turkey has been on Turkey’s already tense relations with the Kurds.


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Those strained relations are nothing new, but they have intensified because of Turkey’s unwillingness to prevent what was effectively a campaign of ethnic-cleansing by IS against Syrian Kurds in Kobani in late 2014. This fomented Kurdish popular protests in Turkey in which demonstrators raised the picture of jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, and on occasions violently clashed with local security forces (al-Binaa, November 03, 2014; al-Araby al-Jadeed, November 01, 2014; BBC Arabic, October 9, 2014). If IS succeeds in carrying out further attacks against the Kurds, these will again be blamed on the government for failing to protect a part of its population. Such attacks will increase polarization in Turkish society, which, as part of a vicious cycle, IS can then further exploit. Turkey must be weary that a continued conflict could cause some citizens to look elsewhere for protection or empowerment. If IS succeeds in creating large enough jihadist safe havens in Turkey — there are already enclaves in the cities of Istanbul, Antalya and Gaziantep — there will be serious consequences for Turkey, and to Western countries that offer visa-free entry to Turkish citizens. Yasir Kuoti is a Washington-based Middle East Analyst. He has lived and traveled extensively in the Middle East and received his Master’s degree in International Affairs from Marquette University.

The ‘Khasavyurt Group’: A New Watershed of Islamic State Activity in DagestanNeil Hauer The discovery of what appears to be a sizeable Islamic State (IS) cell in the Russian city of Khasavyurt, located in the North Caucasian republic of Dagestan, has sparked numerous violent confrontations as long-simmering tensions between Russian authorities and adherents of Salafism in the region erupt once again into open hostilities. While the extent of the previously unknown group is still to be fully determined, its discovery has put the city of Khasavyurt at the heart of an Islamist insurgency and could mark the most acute IS penetration of the Caucasus region to date. The Khasavyurt Group On December 29, 2016, sources within the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that seven IS fighters had been detained at an unspecified location in Dagestan (Ren TV, December 29, 2016). The militants were allegedly planning a series of Bataclan-style attacks in Moscow, in which armed suicide bombers would have opened fire on public gatherings during New Year's celebrations before detonating their suicide belts. The detainees, all natives of the Khasavyurt region, had allegedly received training in Syria before returning home. The FSB claimed the attacks had been planned on the orders of IS leaders in Syria, seeking to exact revenge for Russia’s participation in the conflict there (RBC, December 29, 2016). An FSB statement described the detained militants as part of the “Khasavyurt Group,” a previously unknown extremist cell in the western Dagestani city of Khasavyurt (Ren TV, January 1, 2017). The FSB says the group is linked to IS, but until the arrests in December had remained unknown to the authorities and had not appeared on any government watch lists (Caucasian Knot, December 30, 2016).


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In the evening on December 29, another three militants in Khasavyurt were killed in a shootout with police (Caucasian Knot, December 30, 2016). Further fighting broke out in the village of Yamansu, 15 kilometers (km) southwest of Khasavyurt, on January 1. In that encounter, police shot dead two more insurgents also said to be part of the Khasavyurt Group, which at that point police estimated had only about ten members remaining (Caucasian Knot, January 1; RBC, December 29, 2016). Violent incidents continued to unfold in Khasavyurt and across the region throughout January. Security forces shot dead two more Khasavyurt Group members on the outskirts of Kizlyar, 60 km north of Khasavyurt, on January 21 (Caucasian Knot, January 21). Another three militants were killed in Khasavyurt itself in a security operation on January 29 (Caucasian Knot, January 29). The total number of militants killed and detained in Khasavyurt since December 29 suggests a group of unusual size and ambition for the region. Numbers from media reports of security operations indicate a total of seven militants detained and 10 others killed in battles with police. It is likely not all of these fighters are necessarily members of the Khasavyurt Group, as there is some incentive for local security forces to inflate their successes and embellish the figures. Even by conservative estimates, however, the group appears to have at least initially consisted of more than 20 individuals. That would make it one of the larger militant cells in the North Caucasus in recent years. The group’s plans to conduct attacks in Moscow and speculative links to a large training camp discovered in the forests southeast of Khasavyurt suggest it could be even larger (Caucasian Knot, November 30, 2016). Local Tensions Inflamed Prior to the events of the past year, Khasavyurt itself was not considered particularly vulnerable to Salafist militancy. Despite regular clashes throughout the region between militants and security services, Khasavyurt remained largely untouched by the violence there. In August and September 1999, the city’s hinterland was notably the location at which local Dagestani militants aided federal security forces in repulsing an incursion by Chechen rebels commanded by Shamil Basayev (Moscow Defense Brief, 2001). The establishment of the Khasavyurt Group, however, represents the natural evolution of the ongoing battle between local political authorities and Salafist Islamists in Dagestan. Tensions have been building for years as the influx of hardline Islamist thought has, in some areas, displaced traditional Sufism. In Khasavyurt itself, those tensions manifested most clearly in early 2016, when local authorities attempted to close the Severnaya and Vostochnaya mosques, the two largest Salafist mosques in the city. Authorities claimed the attempted closure of the Severnaya mosque was due to its reputation as a recruiting ground for IS. Growing protests on the matter culminated in a march on January 31, 2016 that drew thousands of civilian demonstrators, primarily young men, onto the streets. One participant claimed that IS elements had tried to convince protesters to take up arms and “declare jihad on the authorities” (Meduza, February 24, 2016). While the mosques were eventually allowed to remain open, the atmosphere in the city is one of


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suspicion. The authorities regard large segments of the local populace as potential militants under the sway of Salafist imams, while the strength of the protests indicated the necessary civilian support mechanisms for an insurgency — sympathetic elements of the population willing to aid potential militants — already exists. Authorities in Dagestan maintain a list of “Wahhabists” — civilians they deem to be budding terrorists (Human Rights Watch, June 2015). The list includes 100,000 individuals (out of a population of three million), each of whom can expect persistent harassment from security forces. That kind of treatment may be counter-productive, as noted by the assistant imam at the Vostochnaya mosque, Murad Dibirov. He invoked the volatile “Caucasian temperament” and spoke of the pride a young person might have upon seeing his countryman, having joined the jihad in Syria, “on a tank with a machine gun, having found total freedom” (Meduza, February 24, 2016). Islamic State in the Caucasus The events in Khasavyurt mark one incidence of a growing IS presence in the Northeast Caucasus. In Ingushetia in October, following a shootout with security forces, authorities killed an IS emissary sent from Syria to establish a new IS cell there (NTV, October 10, 2016). Chechnya has also seen a spate of militant activity in recent months, including a shootout in the capital Grozny that marked the worst fighting in the city in two years. In December, five militants infiltrated the city and opened fire on police along the main boulevard, in an attack later claimed by IS (RBC, December 20, 2016). Following the attack, in mid-January, Chechnya saw the largest counterterrorism operation in the Republic in years, as authorities searched for militants in several districts south and east of Grozny (Kavkaz.Realii, January 11). The degree to which IS is really involved in the creation and direction of terror cells in the Caucasus is likely limited. While it has largely displaced the Caucasus Emirate, the traditional vehicle for insurgent activities in the region, IS probably serves more as a brand, one to which local militants can declare affiliation, rather than a true franchise operating with a hierarchical chain of command. This is borne out by local experts, who point to the shootout with supposed IS-linked militants in Grozny in December and note that a true IS-organized cell would likely have been provided with better weaponry (OnKavkaz, December 19, 2016). Prospects for Future Conflict Insurgent activity in Dagestan is once again on the rise. Officials in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital, recently estimated there are 1,200 Dagestanis fighting for IS in Syria, while deaths from the conflict in Dagestan rose 33 percent in 2016 (Caucasian Knot, January 31). January alone has seen Dagestan mount five counterterrorism operations, several of them aimed at countering the Khasavyurt Group. With the Caucasus Emirate now nearly defunct, local security forces have noted militants adopting a compartmentalized structure (Life News, 9 January, 2017). Individual cells often contain as few as two or three militants. In that respect, the Khasavyurt Group’s size sets it apart from other militant organizations in the region, but the degree of IS control is still yet to be determined. The discovery of the group has put Khasavyurt city at the center of an Islamist extremist insurgency in Dagestan. While the cell has been weakened, it will likely resurface in the weeks and months to come.


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Neil Hauer is Lead Analyst at the SecDev Group in Ottawa, Canada, where he focuses on Syria, Russia and the Caucasus.


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