Moscow: As a recruitment tool, ISIS may have hit more than one target in Istanbul to sweeten the allure of its brand. Not just the wanton killing and egregious mutilation of so many travelers but as a rallying call for more jihadists, from all points over the globe.
The attackers were a Russian from Dagestan, an Uzbek along with a Kyrgyz, Turkish government bodies stated. Kyrgyz and Russian authorities haven’t yet confirm this, but when it turns out to be the situation it might be foolish to consider ISIS high command didn’t plan it by doing this.
Turkish government bodies have previously stated ISIS leadership in Raqqa, its ‘capital’ in Syria, was behind the attack. What exactly would ISIS as well as their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gain?
An impassioned pitch to jihadi wannabes in all three countries. Ratchet up awareness, create heroes, draw more recruits to the caliphate. Simply put: more skin in the game.
Two several weeks later the IMU, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an organization that for many years had ties and training camps distributed to al Qaeda and also the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan also promised allegiance to Baghdadi. And merely two several weeks ago a Muslim cleric in Kyrgyzstan was charged with attempting to rally youthful Muslim to participate ISIS in Syria.
ISIS has a strategy. Awaken Muslims in far-flung communities. Make them think. Give them a stake and star in the ISIS fight.
The IMU of Uzbekistan has more typically sent its fighters across the border to Afghanistan, but Baghdadi faces a crumbling Caliphate. Loyal franchises so far from the core of his fight in Iraq and Syria do him no good.
So that as for Kyrgyzstan, it’s obvious Baghdadi really wants to kindle an awakening there. To date radical Islamists happen to be a rarity within this Sunni condition, but room nowadays is protected from ISIS’s toxic ideology. Its tentacles have arrived at to Bishkek within the north as well as in the south near the traditional silk route capital of scotland- Osh may be the Uzbek border and also the IMU.
I was at that border a few years ago and watched people cross freely. Gaping holes had been ripped in the flimsy mesh fence border. At that time, families were escaping instability in Osh, but it was clear to me the post-Soviet borders were porous to people and whatever ideology they carried with them.
Yes, Baghdadi used the nationalities for a number of reasons, not least of which to invest their countrymen in his fight, to get more skin in the game.