"Russia's Bin Laden" Threatens the Winter Olympics

Summary: Doku Umarov and the Caucasus Emirate have threatened Russia's 2014 Winter Olympics. If they make good on this threat, they will cease to be seen as fighting a localized war against Russia, and instead become known as international jihadis.


Doku Umarov, nicknamed "Russia's Osama Bin Laden" for his attacks on civilians there, has called on his followers to employ "maximum force" and "any methods" to prevent the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Umarov was the last President of rebel Chechen Republic of Ichkeria against Russian rule, before he proclaimed himself the first Emir of the Caucasus in 2007. Sochi, in the north Caucasus, thus falls within his declared "emirate", and as a major prestige project of Umarov's arch-enemy President Putin, the Winter Olympics there could hardly fail to be a major target for him.

Umarov's Caucasus Emirate  (Имарат Кавказ Imarat Kavkaz) has pursued a mixed strategy in its war against Russia, on the one hand perpetrating significant attacks on civilians (bombing the Moscow Metro in 2010 and a Moscow airport in 2011) and fostering links with al Qaeda and the Taliban, and on the other hand occasionally declaring halts on attacks against anything but military and police targets. With this threat against the Winter Olympics, Umarov is clearly once more giving the green light to attacks against all Russians, military and civilian alike.

However, he most distinctive feature thus far of the Emirate, and Umarov in particular, has been their distinct and intense localism. Historically, they have tried to assure the world that their struggle is anti-Russian, not pan-Islamist. When terrorists of Chechen descent bombed the Boston Marathon earlier this year, Umarov denied any involvement by his organisation, stressing that their primary enemy is Russia and they “are not engaged in military hostilities with the United States.” They have also paid only the most minimal lip service to the 'Palestinian cause', that sacred cow of jihadis across the world. Umarov's religious beliefs are also unusual and particular to his Chechen homeland. He specifically abjures Salafi and Wahhabi forms of Islam, and instead identifies himself as a "traditionalist" Muslim, placing him at odds with most violent jihadis.

This threat against the Sochi Winter Olympics, however, has a much more international edge to it. Though Umarov may justify attacking this "Satanic dancing" on the grounds that the north Caucasus is the graveyard of innumerable Muslims killed in Russia's conquest of the region two centuries ago, if his organisation actually follows through and strikes at the events their victims will hail from many different countries. This, alongside with the lingering association with the Boston Bombing, would be sufficient to earn the Caucasus Emirate a new international status, and a host of new enemies to go along with it. Umarov will need to consider if striking at Putin's prize is worth making his name known to the angry populations of half the world.

The Seeds of Jihad in Egypt's Crisis

Summary: If violent jihad arises in Egypt in the coming months, it will likely rest upon four pillars: police clashes at mosques, the Muslim Brotherhood's young male supporters, Syrian refugees, and the Salafis and other small Islamist groups.



The Pillars of Egyptian Jihadism

When the Egyptian Army stepped in and removed President Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood earlier this month, they shattered not only Egypt's first democratically-elected government, but also likely the belief of tens of thousands of Islamists in the power of the ballot box over the bullet. This has raised the spectre that some of the Brotherhood's supporters may now turn to jihadi violence to restore Islamist rule in Egypt.

If this occurs, it will probably not be due to a conspiracy or central plan by existing jihadis, but rather much like the two Egyptian 'revolutions' seen in the past few years: as an outgrowth of mass unrest and anger on the streets. The constituency for this anger will not simply be the members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Rather, it will likely be specifically the young men of the organisation, in concert with members of Egypt's Syrian refugee population and the Salafi and other smaller Islamist groups. The spark for the transition to violence may be provided by provocative security operations against mosques and other religious sites like those the Brotherhood are currently organising from.

The Brotherhood

Probably the most unfounded fear Western fear about the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood is that the organisation will turn to violence and the way of jihad now that democratic means to power have seemingly been denied to it. Make no mistake -the Muslim Brotherhood is sincerely committed to non-violence and achieving power though lawful means. This is not due to an inherent pacifism or profound desire to be law-abiding, but rather a hard-learned lesson of experience. The Brotherhood has faced three serious government crackdowns since it was founded in 1928, including the assassination of their founder (Hassan al-Banna) and the torture and execution of their leading cleric (Sayyid al-Qutb), and it has disavowed violence (at least in Egypt) since the 1970's.

The leadership has also not forgotten the failure of the violent Islamist insurgency in Egypt during the 1990's. Freedom and Justice Party (the political wing of the Brotherhood) leaders may have called for "an uprising by the great people of Egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks", but they mean "uprising" in the fashion of those which brought down Mubarak and now Morsi -through mass protest. To the leadership, this is just one more government crackdown on their long road to what they believe will be their eventual irresistible victory.

The 'Little Brothers'

However, there is risk that the rank and file of the Brotherhood may be more susceptible to jihadi ideologies and tactics in the wake of the coup. This would be especially true of younger members born too late to remember the failed violent campaigns or the harshest government crackdowns, and thus less wedded to non-violence. These 'little Brothers' are also far more likely to be unemployed and face poorer prospects than their older brethren. With Morsi and so much of the senior leadership arrested, they lack clear leadership and will act more on their own initiative.

Most importantly, the youth of the Brotherhood are disproportionately likely to be involved in the wave of sit-ins and protests that their organisation has vowed to paralyze Cairo with until Morsi is restored. These protests are the most likely sites fat which violent confrontation with the police or their opponents will emerge. Almost sixty people have been killed and hundreds more injured in just two such clashes since the coup. Most significantly, the Brotherhood has been holding many of its sit-ins around mosques and organising communal prayers at its protests. Several of the Brotherhood's leaders currently hiding from arrest warrants are believed to be near the sit-in at the Rabaah al-Adawiya Mosque in eastern Cairo.

This creates the explosive potential for scenes of Egypt's police violently dispersing men at prayer or storming into barricaded mosque compounds -images which would almost instantly be beamed across Egypt and around the world. Such scenes would fit perfectly into the narrative that some Islamists are already spreading: that el-Sissi is no more than the head of a "militia" that is seeking to annihilate Islamists, just as al-Assad is doing in Syria. And even if the Brotherhood will not adopt this 'civil war' stance, there are smaller and more extreme Islamist groups, including jihadism who will be far more open to it.

Egypt's Embattled Syrians:

There may be as many as a hundred and forty thousand Syrian refugees in Egypt today, with almost all having fled the Syrian government's crackdown. President Morsi welcomed them warmly, allowing them to travel without visas and extending the use of state hospitals and schools to them. He also spoke loudly in support of Syria's rebels and his senior officials stated that they would not stop Egyptians from going to fight in Syria. All this created a great deal of support for Morsi and the Brotherhood in the pockets of Cairo and other major cities that quickly became dominated by Syrians setting up shops and homes.

This identification of the Syrians as a constituency of the Brotherhood's, however, was used against the refugees once the anti-Morsi protests began. Morsi's appearance at a mid-June rally where many speakers called for jihad in Syria, shocking many more moderate Egyptians, may even have been the tipping point of his unpopularity leading to the July protests which ousted him. Since the coup, anti-Morsi television networks have used the arrest of six Syrians in violent street clashes to claim that the Brotherhood is paying Syrians to fill the pro-Morsi protests. A popular TV presenter has even warned Syrians that they will be beaten with shoes if they "interfere in Egypt"by protesting the coup. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has also urged Syrians to stay away from such protests. Syrian children are now being denied access to state schools, and only five days after Morsi was removed from power Syrians without visas began to be turned back at Cairo airport. In the eyes of many coup supporters, both in the government and in the streets, a Syrian is a Brotherhood proxy.  

What this means is that Egypt contains a hundred thousand-strong community with affectionate feelings for the Morsi regime, an increasing feeling that the new regime is shutting them out, very raw experiences of another 'secular' state crackdown, and nowhere else to flee to. For the services the Egyptian state previously supplied to them, the Syrians will now have to turn to the Brotherhood's supporters and other Islamists who oppose the new government. This will make it even more likely that their young men will be drawn into the protests, and the combination of their experiences in Syria and their new desperation in Egypt will make them easy recruiting grounds for the most violent Islamist groups, especially if they can provide for their welfare. As witnessed amongst countless other refugee populations, this may mean the Salafis and the jihadis.

The Salafis: The Fighting Man's Brotherhood?

Egypt's leading Salafi (ultra-conservative Sunni) political party, al-Nour, has been something of a wild card so far. While it supported the coup that removed Morsi, after the shooting of over fifty protesters by police last week it withdrew from all talks about forming an interim government and stated that it would not remain silent on the "massacre".

Significantly, al-Nour was only founded after the 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak, and so is eighty-four years younger than the Brotherhood, giving it no institutional memory of the decades of crackdowns that followed past Brotherhood violence. This also places its mentality much closer to that of the Brotherhood's angry youth. It claims eight hundred thousand members (almost as many as the Brotherhood), and has so far rallied members through advocating for a puritanical vision of Islam and public life in Egypt. It has also displayed political sophistication, supporting and then abandoning Mursi in line with public opinion, and leveraging the Army's need for at least some Islamist backing for a new government in search of political concessions.

However, while al-Nour's leadership may want to 'sell out' for political gains, its austere constituents and conservative allies may balk at this and demand confrontation. Already, one of the Brotherhood's hardline allies, Assem Abdel Maged, has declared to crowds that al-Nour's leaders must seek repentance from God for their "betrayal". Images of Egyptian police breaking down mosque doors and apprehending clerics may be too much for the religious rank-and-file of both al-Nour and the (leaderless) Brotherhood, who would easily identify with calls for 'jihad' to defend the practice of their faith. The political avenue may also be rapidly closing for Islamists in general and the Salafis in particular. It is widely believed that in new elections al-Nour will come nowhere near to the twenty per cent of the vote and that the Brotherhood's share may fall to little more than that. Violence may thus become a more attractive and plausible path to power in the eyes of many.

The experience of Russian security forces in the Caucasus in seeing how quickly Salafi groups can militarize and turn to violence in the face of 'attacks on their communities' should give the Egyptian Army pause. So should the growing numbers of young men wearing the white shrouds of "martyrdom" at the Brotherhood's sit-ins, and their declarations that will fight and die if necessary to restore an Islamist President. Whatever party or organisation first declares jihad against perceived anti-Islamic police actions may be able to harness the power of such young men, and for al-Nour and its kind, with no hope that temptation may prove too great

Conclusion

Aggressive security operations targeting mosques, the Brotherhood's leaderless youths, Syrian refugees under siege, the presence of Salafi groups with little attachment to non-violence, and sectarian enemies to 'target' may all combine to provide Egypt's political crisis with a religious edge -and that is all that would be required for jihadis to become major players.


Next time: what an Egyptian jihadi insurgency would look like

Boko Haram's School Killings

Summary: Boko Haram is increasingly targeting government and secular schools in Nigeria's Muslim-majority north east, killing large numbers of students and teachers. This campaign may soon be widened to include Islamic schools that eschew their violent jihadi ideology.


Boko Haram has recently been returning to the mission implied by its name: "Boko Haram" means "secular education is sinful" in Hausa, and over the past weeks Nigeria's foremost violent jihadi organisation has been carrying out deadly attacks on non-Islamic schools. In the most recent incident yesterday in Yobe state, thirty people were killed as a school dormitory was set alight as the students slept. Earlier this week in bordering Borno state, suspected Boko Haram militants gunned down a headmaster and his entire family at their home.

These are but the latest in a string of attacks. Since the beginning of 2012, Boko Haram has attacked twelve schools in and around Maiduguri (capital of Borno state) alone. It is not by coincidence that Boko Haram's school attacks have been concentrated in Nigeria's Muslim-majority north east, and especially in the three states placed under a state of emergency earlier this year. Maiduguri itself is seen as the spiritual home of Boko Haram, as well as probably its most important base of operations. Not only does Boko Haram object to the 'corruption' of Muslim children by the secular form of education provided by government schools, but Boko Haram's sources have specifically linked their attacks against these to alleged Nigerian security forces' abuses against Qur'an schools in the region.

Many of these Islamic schools are suspected by government officials of being used as recruitment and training grounds by Boko Haram, and a large number of clerics associated with them have been arrested for having terrorist links since the state of emergency was declared. In March last year, purported Boko Haram spokesman Abu Qaqa justified an attack on a government school thusly: “Certainly, if Quranic education will not be allowed to continue, then secular and Western education will not continue also.” In June this year, he claimed that Nigerian soldiers had beaten Qur'an school students with canes, and declared that "When you attack Koran schools, you totally destroy Western schools."

Although the origin of this 'justification' well before the state of emergency and the security crackdown shows just how contrived it is, Boko Haram's tactic of attacking secular schools is succeeding in at least one sense: an estimated ten thousand students across Nigeria's north east have been forced out of government schools since this violence started. In response to Saturday's attack, the Governor of Yobe state took the extraordinary step of closing all secondary schools in the state (though primary schools have also been targeted). This may not just be Boko Haram's aim for 'theological' reasons -the intention may also be to force all but the Qur'an schools to close, driving more and more students into Boko Haram's recruiting grounds. Of course not all Qur'an schools are linked to violent jihadi organisations, and so if Boko Haram succeeds in shutting more secular schools, expect their next step to be carrying out similar attacks on non-jihadi Islamic schools. The organisation already has a long history of targeting Islamic leaders and congregations that oppose their violent campaign -two such clerics were murdered in Borno state in May.

Boko Haram's campaign against schools it does not control should not be seen as a consequence of the security crackdown. If anything, the increased security presence may be all that is preventing them from casting their bloody net far wider.