RUSSIAN COUNTER-INSURGENCY SUCCESSES FORESHADOW CHANGES IN NORTHERN CAUCASIAN REBEL LEADERSHIP
On June 9, the director of Russia’s federal security service, the FSB, announced that his organization had detained Emir Magas, the leader of the rebel insurgency in Ingushetia. The capture of Magas comes on foot of a series of recent successes by security forces against the insurgent organization in the Northern Caucasus. In February, security forces accounted for Seif Islam, a military counsellor to rebel leader Doku Umarov. In March, Anzor Astemirov and Said Buryatsky, two leading rebel ideologists, were eliminated. These losses have created vacancies in at least two key leadership positions within the Caucasus Emirate organization.
BACKGROUND: The rather shadowy background of Emir Magas has been explored at length by other observers. Suffice it to say that very little information is known for certain about this individual apart from the fact that under his stewardship, from 2004 to 2010, the rebel movement in Ingushetia became more deadly and more efficient in general. It is believed that Magas was an associate of the late Shamil Basayev, the famous Chechen guerrilla leader, and Russian officials have repeatedly claimed that these two men conspired to orchestrate the mass rebel attack on Nazran in 2004. Magas’ military successes were acknowledged in 2006 when Doku Umarov, the rebels’ supreme leader, promoted him to the rank of brigadier-general and appointed him ‘Emir of the Caucasus Front’.
In effect, this made Magas responsible for the rebels’ overall military campaign, from Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia in the east, to the Circassian territories in the west. Magas’ political profile had also grown in recent times. Unlike other young, up-and-coming rebel leaders – for example Anzor Astemirov – Magas had little interest in public relations, preferring instead to concentrate on his military duties.
Nevertheless, in his capacity as Emir of the Caucasus Front, Magas was undoubtedly among the most powerful figures in the Emirate. On June 9, 2010, however, Russia’s intelligence services arrested him in the town of Malgobek, Ingushetia. Magas, or Ali Taziev as he has since been identified by the FSB, has been transferred to Moscow for further interrogation. Russian sources have previously implicated Magas in the 2004 Beslan school siege, the abduction of a well-known Ingush parliamentarian in 2006, and the attempted assassination of Yunas-Bek Yevkurov, president of Ingushetia, in June 2009.
Magas’ detention means that two high-ranking posts in the Emirate’s political hierarchy are currently vacant: overall military responsibility for the Caucasus Front and the chairmanship of the Sharia Court. The latter post has remained unoccupied since March, when Russian security forces shot and killed Anzor Astemirov in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria. Theoretically, the chairmanship of this body is the second most influential post in the Emirate. This consideration, and the apparent dearth of suitably qualified candidates for the post, might explain why the rebel leadership has not yet announced a replacement for Astemirov. The post vacated by Magas is also a lucrative one and will be highly sought after. By contrast with the vacant chairmanship of the Sharia Court, there are plenty of suitably credentialed candidates for the role of military commander of the Caucasus Front.
IMPLICATIONS: Among the front-runners to replace Magas are two of his deputies: Tarkhan Gaziyev, a Chechen guerrilla leader operating in south-western Chechnya, and Muhanned, an Arab field-commander who is the recognized patron of foreign fighters in Chechnya and elsewhere in the Northern Caucasus. Gaziyev and Muhanned were appointed to these posts by Umarov in July 2007.
Gaziyev would appear to have the edge in the contest to succeed Magas, however. It is generally believed that Gaziyev is on excellent terms with Umarov. In March 2007, Umarov appointed Gaziyev chief of the Emirate’s Mukhabarat, or intelligence service. In mid-2008, Umarov and Gaziyev narrowly escaped capture when they became encircled during a counter-insurgency operation in Chechnya’s Shatoisky District. Gaziyev is also believed to have links with Ingushetia’s rebel organization, which will surely aid him in the contest to succeed Magas.
Muhanned, meanwhile, is not known to be particularly close to Umarov and there is a sense that top-tier posts in Umarov’s Emirate have been ring-fenced for members of the rebel movement who are indigenous to the Northern Caucasus. Moreover, the financial support foreign fighters in the Northern Caucasus once enjoyed from wealthy financiers in the Middle East has been significantly reduced since the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The process behind the selection of a new Qadi, or chairman of the Sharia Court, is even more difficult to discern. There are no obvious candidates for this position – at least nobody obvious to non-indigenous observers of the situation in the region. The pool of potential candidates is further reduced by Umarov’s insistence that those holding leadership roles within the rebel movement should reside in the Northern Caucasus, and not in exile in Europe, the Middle East, or anywhere else. The late Sheikh Said Buryatsky, killed in Ingushetia in March, would have been a ready-made replacement for Astemirov. A charismatic Islamic theologian with no overt political ambitions, at the time of his death Buryatsky represented a genuine – and arguably a less querulous – alternative to Astemirov.
Certainly Buryatsky’s self-effacing, yet highly effective, public relations style stood in stark contrast to that of Astemirov, who publicly boasted of how he persuaded a reluctant Umarov to declare the formation of the Caucasus Emirate. One possible candidate to succeed Astemirov might be Umarov’s current naib, or deputy, Supyan Abdullayev. Abdullayev was a founding member of the Islamic Renaissance Party in the late 1980s. He has impeccable Islamic credentials, being associated with the Chechen independence movement during the 1990s and with the Caucasus Emirate project since its more recent inception in 2007. Of course, appointing Abdullayev as Qadi would necessarily open up another leadership position, thereby leaving the critical deputy leadership position void.
It is more likely that Astemirov’s replacement will be plucked from relative obscurity, much in the same way that the unknown Islamic theologian, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, was appointed rebel leader in 2005 following the death of Aslan Maskhadov. It is probable that this person will be a non-Chechen given the movements’ evident eagerness to demonstrate the broad nature of its ethnic composition.
CONCLUSIONS: For the wider rebel movement, replacing departed leaders at a local level has not been a serious problem. Anzor Astemirov, for example, has already been replaced as leader of Kabardino-Balkaria’s rebel organization by his associate Asker Dzhappuyev. Magas’ main legacy is the generation of young militants he has trained in Ingushetia, and it is doubtless from this growing constituency that a suitable replacement for him will be chosen. While Gaziyev seems to be the most likely to succeed Magas as Emir of the Caucasus Front, the identity of the new Qadi is more difficult to predict and is certain to surprise even the closest observers. The recent high attrition rate among leading personages in the rebel movement invites speculation as to what might happen were Umarov, or Abdullayev, captured or killed by state forces. Umarov and Abdullayev are notable for being the only two rebel personalities in top leadership positions who have been under arms against the Russian state since 1994. Sooner rather than later, young men from a different generation will be taking over the political-military directorship of the Caucasus Emirate.
AUTHOR’S BIO: Kevin Daniel Leahy holds a postgraduate degree from University College Cork, Ireland.
