Russia’s North Caucasus insurgency has gone relatively quiet, but reduced casualty numbers belie a still-worrying situation where long-standing grievances remain. As more and more fighters join the cause of globalized jihadi groups, most of all the self-declared Islamic State (ISIS), Moscow may find that it has only transformed and widened its war.
A thwarted suicide bombing
outside a police station near the Northern Caucasus city of Stavropol on Monday was the latest sign. Adding to the threat is the fear of blowback at home of previously dormant ISIS-inspired terrorist cells. This comes after a remarkable reduction of violence in Europe’s deadliest conflict since 2014. For two years in a row, the numbers of casualties in Russia’s North Caucasus insurgency have been halved each year. Security sector successes were partly responsible, but the
insurgency was not entirely quashed
, nor did the root causes of the anti-Russian upsurge in the region disappear.
Rather, a major ideological and operational transformation continues to change the nature of the insurgency, from an anti-Russian nationalist rebellion that emerged in the mid-1990s as part of the Chechen separatist movement, toward what its adherents saw as a
regional jihadi project in the late 2000s
and what today has become a global jihad under the leadership of the Islamic State.