This expert's view into the strategic directions, tactics, leaders, and significant attacks connected to Chechen and North Caucasus terrorists examines the network's operations as well as the success of Russia's counterterrorist responses. This authoritative account traces the emergence of terrorism in the volatile region of the North Caucasus from its origins in the early 1990s through the present day. It presents a detailed examination of local and global counterterrorism strategies—everything from military force, to diplomacy, to politicization—providing valuable insight into effective methods for fighting terrorism here and around the world. This candid work uncovers the roots of Russian terrorism and provides a historical overview of the conditions that advanced terrorism and its unprecedented warfare practices, including radioactive attacks and suicide attacks by women. Author and native Russian speaker, Elena Pokalova, analyzes prominent terrorist groups such as Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade, Riyad us-Saliheyn Martyrs' Brigade, and Special Purpose Islamic Regiment, and reveals the regional and global influence of the Caucasus Emirate on the movement.

"This expert's view into the strategic directions, tactics, leaders, and significant attacks connected to Chechen and North Caucasus terrorists examines the network's operations as well as the success of Russia's counterterrorist responses."--

In 2013, the United States suffered its worst terrorist bombing since 9/11 at the annual running of the Boston Marathon. When the culprits turned out to be U.S. residents of Chechen descent, Americans were shocked and confused. Why would members of an obscure Russian minority group consider America their enemy? Inferno in Chechnya is the first book to answer this riddle by tracing the roots of the Boston attack to the Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia. Brian Glyn Williams describes the tragic history of the bombers' war-devastated homeland-including tsarist conquest and two bloody wars with post-Soviet Russia that would lead to the rise of Vladimir Putin-showing how the conflict there influenced the rise of Europe's deadliest homegrown terrorist network. He provides a historical account of the Chechens' terror campaign in Russia, documents their growing links to Al Qaeda and radical Islam, and describes the plight of the Chechen diaspora that ultimately sent two Chechens to Boston. Inferno in Chechnya delivers a fascinating and deeply tragic story that has much to say about the historical and ethnic roots of modern terrorism.

This expert's view into the strategic directions, tactics, leaders, and significant attacks connected to Chechen and North Caucasus terrorists examines the network's operations as well as the success of Russia's counterterrorist responses. This authoritative account traces the emergence of terrorism in the volatile region of the North Caucasus from its origins in the early 1990s through the present day. It presents a detailed examination of local and global counterterrorism strategies—everything from military force, to diplomacy, to politicization—providing valuable insight into effective methods for fighting terrorism here and around the world. This candid work uncovers the roots of Russian terrorism and provides a historical overview of the conditions that advanced terrorism and its unprecedented warfare practices, including radioactive attacks and suicide attacks by women. Author and native Russian speaker, Elena Pokalova, analyzes prominent terrorist groups such as Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade, Riyad us-Saliheyn Martyrs' Brigade, and Special Purpose Islamic Regiment, and reveals the regional and global influence of the Caucasus Emirate on the movement.

The line between criminal and terrorist groups is often blurred, and Chechen groups are an excellent example of this new phenomenon. As the Soviet Union collapsed, groups began to fill the cracks offering services that the state could not. The Chechens were one group that outrivaled many groups, and they soon became synonymous throughout the Russian Federation with criminal. This work looks into the historical, social, and religious reasons behind the rise of militant Islam in the region. From there, it will discuss the historical difference between organized crime and terror, how the two have coalesced into the crime-terror nexus, and how the Chechens compare to two other groups that have gone through the same evolution: The Sicilian mafia, and the militant Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU. Though neither group are exactly the same, there are links that can help the reader understand the domestic and foreign problems that twenty-first century nation-states deal with throughout the world.

This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Besides the apparently frequent small-scale attacks against government targets in several regions of the North Caucasus (NC), many ethnic Russian and other non-native civilians have been murdered or have disappeared, which has spurred the migration of most of the non-native population from the NC. Russian authorities argue that foreign terrorist groups continue to operate in the NC and to receive outside financial and material assistance. Contents of this report: (1) Intro.; (2) Impact of the Aug. 2008 Russia-Georgia Conflict; (3) Recent Developments in the NC: Chechnya; Ingushetia; Dagestan; Other Areas of the NC; (4) Contributions to Instability; (5) Implications for Russia; (6) International Response; (7) Implications for U.S. Interests. Map.

For the first time, a military expert on both Russia and insurgency offers the definitive guide on activities in Southern Russia, explaining why the Russian approach to counter terrorism is failing and why terrorist and insurgent attacks in Russia have sharply increased over the past three years. The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus: From Gazavat to Jihad is an comprehensive treatment of this 300 year-old conflict. Thematically organized, it cuts through the rhetoric to provide a contextual framework with which readers can truly understand the "why" and "how" of one of the world's longest-running contemporary insurgencies, despite Russia's best efforts to eradicate it. A fascinating case study of a counterinsurgency campaign that is in direct contravention of U.S. and Western strategy, the book also examines the differences and linkages between insurgency and terrorism; the origins of conflict in the North Caucasus; and the influences of different strains of Islam, of al-Qaida, and of the War on Terror. A critical examination of never-before-revealed Russian counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns explains why those campaigns have consistently failed and why the region has seen such an upswing in violence since the conflict was officially declared "over" less than two years ago.