In an article entitled "Chechen Volunteers in Syria and the Dangers of Intervention", Forbes drew attention to a report by Moscow journalist Julia Ioffe in New Republic.
Joffe earlier reported with reference to Moscow KGB website Gazeta.ru, which in turn refers to the AFP, that "citizens of Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and also Chechnya" were fighting in Syria on the side of the rebels.
A Forbes journalist, Mark Adomanis, writes:
"This isn't exactly ironclad proof of Chechen involvement, and we should certainly be cautious in over-analyzing the importance of this information, but this story does help to explain why most Russians have so little enthusiasm for supporting the Syrian rebels.
The Russians see the Syrian rebels not as a merry band of freedom fighters but as extremely dangerous Islamist radicals, and as ideological fellow-travelers of the people who have bombed civilian targets in Russia with increasing regularity. Ioffe even quotes a deputy editor from Kommersant, hardly a pro-Putin publication (this publication of the FSB is for the liberals - KC), calling the rebels "blood-sucking vampires".
That certainly seems over the top, but I do think that the US media could stand to be rather more skeptical of an opposition that has made such heavy use of suicide bombings and which is evidently being supported by thousands of foreign volunteers loosely affiliated with Al-Qaeda".
User Robert Glasel brings back Adomanis in the agency's guestbook back to the subject - the Chechens - and writes:
"The opposite-spectrum folks at Kavkaz Center will be first to announce, and proudly, when and if the first Chechen will ever go to fight a jihad against non-Russians (anyone) anywhere.
But until that actually happens, they will continue to ridicule such reports (check their many articles about what they call "Chechen Trace" in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, etc.). Incidentally, Ramzan's personal comedy troupe is called "Chechen Trace", too: If there's the one thing that such diverse individuals as Kadyrov and Udugov can all publically agree on, this is it.
Also there are indeed quite a lot (about 20,000) ethnic Chechens really in Syria, except they live there since the XIXth century".
Meanwhile, the KGB approved its concoction on the "Chechen trace" through its departmental agency Gazeta.ru and obliging Julia Ioffe, and published the "news" its "big press" using its Assad's puppets.
On June 30, the KGB agency ITAR-TASS said: "Official Syrian media report about the persecution and destruction of terrorist groups, capturing their bases and weapons.
According to the satellite channel Suriya (this "news" went to Assad's agitprop directly from the KGB - KC), there were mercenaries from Yemen, Chechnya and Pakistan among the arrested militants, who belonged to Islamic extremist organizations".
Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center
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