The Caucasus Emirate in the age of ISIS : a short history of Islamic “States” in the North Caucasus -

Abstract

North Caucasian resistance movements against Russian colonial incursion and political dominance have consistently framed their struggles in terms of “Gazawat,” “Holy War,” and “Jihad.” Despite the religiosity of their rhetoric, only four such resistances have been lead by ideologists who actively campaigned for and declared the establishment of an Islamic State in the region. This project identifies these ideological leaders and their “states,” providing comprehensive contexts from which they emerged. These states were more virtual than tangible and relied on ideological constructions and propaganda formed by key religious and military leaders to make them “real” in the minds of their supporters. This project extensively examines the most recent incarnation of this trend: The Caucasus Emirate, established in 2007. The Caucasus Emirate claimed to be following the model set by the previous “states,” yet it is remarkably novel in the region and distinct from its predecessors in its geographical scope, its adherence to imported Salafism over traditional Sufism, its connections with the Global Jihad movement, and its ability to use modern technologies to disseminate information and propaganda. The final part of this project explores how the Caucasus Emirate’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War weakened it to the point that the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIS) was able to wage and win an ideological war for the allegiance of radical Salafist North Caucasians, resulting in the creation of the “Wilayat Qawqaz” in 2015.