ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—Security forces in Russia’s Caucasus region hit back against militant groups following an attack in the Chechen capital Grozny last week that killed 14 police officers.
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov vowed this week to punish families of suspected militants by deporting the relatives and demolishing their homes.
“Those who helped it [attack in Grozny] happen or failed to stop it would be held harshly accountable,” Russian media quoted Kadyrov as saying.
According to Soufan Group, a New York-based security and intelligence firm more than 2,500 Muslims from Chechnya and the Caucasus have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State (ISIS).
“The primary threat to Russia from the Islamic State is the prospect of North Caucasian volunteers who return from the battle fronts and rejoin local terrorist networks,” said a Soufan report on Russia last month.
Russia’s federal service for supervision of communications has blocked access to Vimeo, an online video hosting site which ISIS has used to promote its brand of jihad and recruit new members.
"We will liberate Chechnya and the Caucasus, Allah willing,” said ISIS in a video in August, threatening to bring the war to Russia.
"This is a message to you, oh Vladimir Putin, these are the jets that you have sent to Bashar, we will send them to you, God willing, remember that," said one ISIS fighter in a video transcribed by AFP.
Abu Omar al-Shishani is known as the most prominent ISIS Chechen fighter. In October he was sent by the group to lead the fight against the Kurds in Kobane.
Reports from Kobane, and a statement by Chechen President Kadyrov last month said that al-Shishani was killed by the Peoples Protection Units (YPG).
The Soufan group wrote that al-Shishani’s success as an ISIS commander may have served as a recruitment tool to bring more Russian Muslims into the radical group.
Kurdish fighters in Syria and Kurdistan Region have in the past three months killed a significant number of foreign fighters, including a dozen Chechen militants near the Mosul dam last month.
In August Kurdish security forces in the Garmiyan region captured an ISIS Chechen militant who failed to detonate his truck bomb.
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