The Duran Podcast - Trying to sow division in Dagestan

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Trying to sow division in Dagestan

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the terrorist attack in Dagestan, targeting two cities, including the region's capital. Orthodox Church was targeted. Synagogue was targeted. A priest was killed. Security officials, police were also killed in another terrorist attack in Russia. Russia, we're about three, four months removed, or maybe more, from Krokes, about three months removed from Krokes. Yes. And here we are again with another terrorist attack this time in Pakistan. What's your take on this? Well, this has been a sequence of attacks of this kind.

First of all, as you correctly said, there was Kroka City Hall. The Kroka City Hall attack. I think it was in March, in Moscow. we remember and discussed all of that. Then a couple of days ago, there was some kind of hostage siege in Rostov. This apparently happened in a prison. We haven't been given a huge amount of information about the people who carried out this hostage siege, only that they were prisoners, that they were people who were being held in a prison in Rostov and that the security forces were able to free the hostages and the all of the people who had seized the hostages were killed and that their bodies would not be returned to their families. And now we've had these attacks in Dagestan, which is one of the Muslim republics in the northern Caucasus. It's close to Chechnya. And it's in two places, in two towns there, Mahchakala, which is the capital, and Derbent.

which is on the Caspian Sea. And the attacks in Dagestan specifically focused upon religious centres, places of worship, by non-Muslim community there. There were Russian Orthodox churches and one Jewish synagogue. Now, it's not entirely easy to piece this all together,

But if you read Russian reports, I think it's fairly clear who was behind all of these attacks, or at least who perpetrated all of these attacks. It looks like, just as was the case with Crocos City Hall, in the attack in Rostov and the two attacks in Dagestan, they all seem to be people who were ISIS affiliates. Now, ISIS, as we've discussed many times, very complex organisation, not very easy to work out exactly who's behind it and what it does, but the assumption is that people, that there are people behind it who pull the strings. The Russians have now straightforwardly said, and they've been saying this now for some time, it hasn't been widely noticed, but Russian officials have officially said that, Ukrainian intelligence was behind the attack in Crocus City Hall, that they've now got the evidence,

which as far as the Russians are concerned, confirms it. This has been said by Bornikov, who is the head of the FSB, which is Russia's main anti-terrorist agency. So the Russians say the Ukrainians were behind the attack on Crocus City Hall. We've had a whole succession of other attacks against religious buildings in Dagestan and against people in Rostov. It looks as if someone is trying to create tensions between Russian Muslims and Orthodox Christian and, by the way, Jewish Russians in the Northern Caucasus, where of course, as we know, there was a prolonged war in the 1990s and early 2000s and the Russians are going to say that it's the Ukrainians who were behind this. I think this is as certain as night follows day.

The Ukrainians and I imagine the West, they're going to say. Or some Russians, maybe not officially from the government. Well, Russia, well, I mean, as I said, with Croca City Hall, the Russians are saying straightforwardly now that the Ukrainians were behind Croca City Hall. The perpetrators came from ISIS and were, jihadi fighters. The people who carry out these attacks are ISIS affiliates, but that the Russians say that the masterminds, the people who pulled strings, are located in Kiev and elsewhere in the West. That's what the Russians are saying. Yeah, so they'll probably say the same thing with

the Rhebekis. They probably will say the same thing about these attacks too. And these were coordinated, both cities coordinated in order to sow division between the different religions and ethnicities. Yes, yes. It's clear. I think it's very, very clear. This is, this is standard stuff for, for ISIS, but for the three-letter agencies. I mean, this is pretty standard. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, bear in mind that, you know, this is. You've seen this in the past before. We have seen this in the past before. By the way, I mean, I also quickly add that there was also an incident back in October of last year in Machiakala at the airport when again a flight, as I seem to remember to Tel Aviv was basically attacked. And the passengers were attacked by a group of people. With the telegram channel. Exactly, which had been all concerned.

So it all looks as if this is the same, you know, the same. groups that are operating and are trying to coordinate all of this. Now, I'm going to say again, I think that these attempts are going to fail. I think that the attempts to create problems between Muslims in Moscow and Russians in Moscow have not really been successful. The Russian authorities have clamped down on guest workers from Central Asia, and this has caused some frictions. But it's not escalated into anything.

I think in the Northern Caucasus, the mood is completely different. Everybody there remembers the wars of the 1990s and early 2000s. Dagestan, along the rest of the Northern Caucasus, are now enjoying, if you like, the benefits of the current Russian economic boom. Settled conditions of life have returned to these places. Already by the 2000s, it was clear that in Dagestan, the vast majority of people did not support the export of militant jihadism to their republic. And I think this is going to fail.

I think it's going to encounter very, very stony ground. And it's going to fail. Now, there's been some rather interesting information about who was behind this latest attack in Dagestan. and it turns out that they were people who had achieved prominence in some of these people. One of them in particular, the key organiser seems to have been a person who was involved in the Russian political party, a just Russia, which is a social democratic left-wing party that operates right across Russia. So he looks to be very, very much like a plant,

some kind of asset that had been infiltrated into this party and had been used to using the structures of this party to build up a local network, local networks. So that again suggests a fairly sufficient, sophisticated operation to me. I think the Russians will very, very quickly get on top of it. So just the final note, this appears to be all part of the same strategy. We did a video talking about terrorist attacks in Crimea. The strategy of sowing unrest, chaos in order to get Russia to freeze the conflict or capitulate in some sort of a manner where the collective West can

then declare some sort of victory in Ukraine, whatever that means. But this is the strategy to create chaos. And it seems like they've picked Dagestan as an area where they perceive there are some tensions and some weaknesses there that they can exploit in order to create chaos from different angles, long-range missiles into Russian territory, create ethnic tensions, all of these things to try and get to the point where things are so, are so tense and so chaotic in Russia and with the Putin administration, that eventually you get to some sort of a capitulation

or some sort of an agreement to freeze Project Ukraine. I mean, is that what this looks like to you? Yeah, that's, I mean, that seems logical. Of course, I'm on to stress again. I mean, one doesn't have all of the information, but, you know, it would make. I'm guessing. Exactly, but it makes sense.

It's consistent with everything else that we know. And it would make sense. It's the kind of thing, as you said, that has been done before. So it makes absolute sense. I think what they're going to find is, yes, there are some people in Dagestan and the North Caucasus who would probably be swayed in this kind of way. Dagestan is a complex republic. there are lots of people of many, many different ethnic affiliations in Dagestan.

I say that, that's perhaps not stating things exactly. I mean, there is a Dagestani nation, but it's one which has been very fragmented into different groups historically and which has had back in the 19th century a history of resisting the Russians. So, you know, they think they can capitalize on all of this. Dagestan did not participate in any meaningful way in the great uprisings that took place against the Russians in the 1990s in the northern Caucasus. And when in 1999 there was an attempt by a jihadi force to invade Dagestan from Chechnya, which is at that time not the Chechnya that was. we have now, which is run by Kadirov, but the previous Chechnya that was semi-independent and

basically controlled by jihadi groups. Anyway, when that force tried to advance into Dagestan, the local people rallied and actually fought against it. They didn't want it on their territory. They did not want the spread of that kind of religious militancy to their republic. And I think in Dagestan and in the Northern Caucasus overall, again, it's a mistake to underestimate the sophistication of people. I think they understand perfectly well who is behind all of this and what they're trying to do. Yeah, I think that this is going to be a stretch. But just to add the video, I think Duda and Kayakalis, they kind of give the game away, don't they, when they say that Russia needs to be broken apart, when Duda said that Russia has 200 ethnicities and it's the prison of people or of nations, whatever he said at the Swiss Peace Summit, it gives the game away as to what they're trying to do, which is to to break up Russia into different nations,

whichever way they can do it. Yes. So here they are looking at Dagestan and saying, okay, this is our starting off point. Yes. That's exactly what I mean, I agree. I mean, I've got nothing to add to that.

I mean, the one thing I would say, I'm sure Duda overheard things, right? Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure he overheard things. Exactly. Precisely, yes. And this is what they want to do. They want to provoke the Russians

into some massive reaction. in Dagestan, which rounds up everybody and creates tensions there, because that's what they think the Russians do. The Russians are far more sophisticated. And when we talk about the Russians, the authorities in Dagestan themselves are apparently very experienced and know very well how to deal with this kind of thing. I don't think it's going to work. As for what Duda and Kallas and all of those are saying, of course, they are willfully ignorant of the fact that 80% or so of the population of Russia are Slavs who identify probably now overwhelmingly as Russians. Now, I think the actual census figures put it at something like 71, 72%.

But it's actually higher than this because, of course, you're getting an awful lot of people who are coming in from Ukraine and from Belarus and all sorts of places, who might not yet have registered as Russian citizens, but who are there. And beyond that, many of these other people who are not for the moment registered as Russians probably would self-identify as Russians also if they were challenged to. They probably speak Russian and think of themselves as Russian and have assimilated very deeply into Russian society, people from the Armenian and Georgian diaspora, for example, which are huge in this country.

So Kales and Duda are talking about a country that does not exist. It's not the patchwork of nationalities that they imagine. It doesn't work like this. It's actually a very, very cohesive place. Yeah, they need to be careful with their comments. Absolutely. Well, these people are never careful with their comments. That's asking them to change into something that of course they're not.

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