Ivan Sukhov: Rebel Activity in North Caucasus on the Rise

In a piece published in the October 2 edition of Vremya Novostei, North Caucasus correspondent Ivan Sukhov wrote that the region’s insurgents are slowly but surely becoming more active.

“The militants are conducting their war to establish a Sharia order against local officials who long ago lost the trust of the population and against federal authorities and siloviki who are trying stamp out the [rebel] underground but who allow ‘side effects’ in the form of victims among the civilian population and in this way assist the growth of the underground,” Sukhov wrote. “That underground will live on even if it is completely cut off from its sources of ideological and financial support abroad. The last ten years were enough for the idea to put down solid roots and money is easy enough to take from the [state] budget if you go to rural administration head with an automatic weapon and demand it on penalty of death.”

Sukhov noted that while the local Federal Security Service (FSB) branch in Dagestan managed to kill two leading local rebel “emirs” last month (North Caucasus Weekly, September 19), “today the underground network already functions regardless of how well known the person who heads one or another of its nodes is. And the victory in this case was overshadowed by losses among the police, and those losses continue to grow.”