M.N.: This new and deliberately released piece of information confirms my original impressions: "A Chechen in Syria, the rising star of ISIS..."

M.N.: This new and deliberately released piece of information confirms my original impressions (not published previously) that this whole "ISIS" affair is the elaborate and planned long (at least a year) ahead GRU operation as a response to "color revolution" in Ukraine and as a particular case of general "strategic" response to these situations, designed most likely by Primakov, who was researching these "color revolutions" since the last Balkan war, as he stated himself purposefully and openly at the Milosevic trial. 

This is confirmed by recent Putin's speech to MID diplomats, when he stringed all these events together. 

This operation has many prongs and many purposes, the main among them "forcing the West to peace" and one of the secondary ones to demonstrate the dangerous side of Chechen Islamism and to turn Western public opinion against them. "Shishani" is most likely the GRU agent; "shish" in Russian (шиш) means three fingers figure, the fig sign.  

And, I think this was also intended as an open and easy to interpret (for more or less informed) "messidge" and as a follow-up to the previous one: "Don't tread on me!" (EVERYWHERE, obviously; you are absolutely correct). 

Rising Commander of ISIL Emerges - YouTube

Wednesday July 2nd, 2014 at 1:51 PM

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Published on Jul 2, 2014

A young, red-bearded ethnic Chechen has rapidly become one of the most prominent commanders in the breakaway al-Qaida group that has overrun swaths of Iraq and Syria, illustrating the international nature of the movement (July 2)

A Chechen in Syria, the rising star of ISIS | News , Middle East

Wednesday July 2nd, 2014 at 7:01 PM

The Daily Star >> News

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BEIRUT: A young, red-bearded ethnic Chechen has rapidly become one of the most prominent commanders in Al-Qaeda splinter group ISIS that has overrun swaths of Iraq and Syria, illustrating the international nature of the movement.

Omar al-Shishani, one of hundreds of Chechens who have been among the toughest jihadi fighters in Syria, has emerged as the face of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, appearing frequently in its online videos – in contrast to the group’s Iraqi leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who remains deep in hiding and has hardly ever been photographed.

In a video released by the group over the weekend, Shishani is shown standing next to the group’s spokesman among a group of fighters as they declare the elimination of the border between Iraq and Syria. The video was released just hours before the extremist group announced the creation of a caliphate in the areas it controls.

“Our aim is clear and everyone knows why we are fighting. Our path is toward the caliphate,” the 28-year-old Shishani declares. “We will bring back the caliphate, and if God does not make it our fate to restore the caliphate, then we ask him to grant us martyrdom.” The video is consistent with other Associated Press reporting on Shishani.

Shishani has been the group’s military commander in Syria, leading it on an offensive to take over a broad stretch of territory leading to the Iraq border. But he may have risen to become the group’s overall military chief, a post that has been vacant after the Iraqi militant who once held it – known as Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Bilawi al-Anbari – was killed in the Iraqi city of Mosul in early June. The video identified Shishani as “the military commander” without specifying its Syria branch, suggesting he had been elevated to overall commander, though the group has not formally announced such a promotion.

As the militant group’s operations in Iraq and Syria grow “more and more interdependent by the day, it is more than possible that someone like [Shishani] could assume overall military leadership,” said Charles Lister, visiting fellow with the Brookings Doha Center.

The extremist group began as Al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, and many of its top leaders are Iraqi. But after it intervened in Syria’s civil war last year, it drew hundreds of foreign fighters into its operations in Syria. Now with victories on the two sides of the border, the two branches are swapping fighters, equipment and weapons to an even greater extent than before, becoming a more integrated organization. Its declaration of the caliphate – aspiring to be a state for all Muslims – could mean an even greater internationalization of its ranks.

Alexei Malashenko, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow office, said ethnicity was not a major factor in jihadi movements, only dedication to jihad. Shishani “is a fanatic of Islam with war experience, and he obviously has had a strong track record [among fellow fighters],” he said.

Syria’s civil war, in its fourth year, has attracted militants from around the world. Some estimates run as high as 10,000 foreign fighters in the country. But the Chechens – hardened from years of wars with Russia in the Caucasus region – are considered some of the best fighters.

Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency known under its Russian acronym FSB, said last October that about 500 militants from Russia and hundreds more from other ex-Soviet nations were fighting in Syria.

Shishani, whose real name is Tarkhan Batirashvili , is an ethnic Chechen from the Caucasus nation of Georgia, specifically from the Pankisi Valley, a center of Georgia’s Chechen community and once a stronghold for militants.

He did military service in the Georgian army but was discharged after an unspecified illness, said one of his former neighbors, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. At one point, Georgian police arrested him for illegal possession of arms, the neighbor said. As soon as he was released in 2010, Batirashvili left for Turkey. Georgian police refused to comment.

He later surfaced in Syria in 2013 with his nom de guerre, which means “Omar the Chechen” in Arabic, leading an Al-Qaeda-inspired group called “The Army of Emigrants and Partisans,” which included a large number of fighters from the former Soviet Union. A meeting was soon organized with Baghdadi in which Shishani pledged loyalty to him, according to Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper, which follows jihadi groups.

He first showed his battlefield prowess in August 2013, when his fighters proved pivotal in taking the Syrian military’s Minnigh air base in the north of the country. Rebels had been trying for months to take the base, but it fell soon after Shishani joined the battle, said an activist from the region, Abu al-Hassan Maraee.

ISIS entered the Syria conflict in 2013, and initially it was welcomed by other rebels. But rebel groups – including other Islamist militant factions – turned against it, alienated by its brutal methods and kidnappings and killings of rivals, and accusing it of trying to take over the opposition movement for its own ambitions of creating a transnational Islamic enclave. Rebel factions have been fighting against the group since last year in battles that have left thousands dead. Al-Qaeda’s central command ejected the extremist group from the network.

For the past two months, Shishani has led an offensive in Syria’s eastern Deir al-Zor province against rival rebels, seeking to solidify his hold on a stretch of territory connected to neighboring Iraq.

In May, some Arab media outlets reported that Shishani was killed in the fighting. An activist in Iraq in contact with members of ISIS said Shishani suffered wounds in his right arm and was taken into Iraq where he underwent treatment before returning to Syria. He spoke on condition of anonymity for security concerns...

Baby-faced Chechen jihadist emerges as face of ISIS terror group

Wednesday July 2nd, 2014 at 2:46 PM

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A bloodthirsty Chechen jihadist has risen to become one of the top commanders of ISIS, the Al Qaeda splinter group that has declared a new "caliphate" across the fractured border of Iraq and Syria.

In a photo circulating on social media and militant websites, Omar al-Shishani sports a chest-length red beard and wicked grin as he steps out of an American-made Humvee said to have been abandoned by Iraqi forces in Mosul.

Since the Sunni extremist group's takeover of northwest Iraq, al-Shishani has emerged as its public face, appearing in multiple videos urging Muslims to pledge allegiance to a new Islamic state forged amid the rubble of the two broken countries, The Associated Press reported.

The 28-year-old's public bravado stands in contrast to his low-profile boss, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, dubbed "The Invisible Imam" who has hardly ever been photographed.

ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, named al-Baghdadi it's caliph - or superior religious and political leader - in a statement on Sunday.

Al-Shishani, an ethnic Chechen from Georgia who honed his battle skills in the Syrian civil war, proclaimed the group's intentions in a video released just before the statement hit the Internet.

"Our aim is clear and everyone knows why we are fighting. Our path is toward the caliphate," al-Shishani says in the video, according to the AP.

"We will bring back the caliphate, and if God does not make it our fate to restore the caliphate, then we ask him to grant us martyrdom."

A map purporting to show the group's five-year expansion plan showed a black-shrouded continent stretching from Iraq across North African and into southern Europe, including Greece and Spain.

Al-Shishani was the group's military chief in Syria, but may have recently been promoted to its top general after the militant who held that position was killed in Mosul, the AP reported.

Born Tarkhan Batirasvili in the rugged Pankisi Gorge region of northern Georgia, al-Shishani served in the Georgian army before joining the fight to topple Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in 2012.

Scores of Chechens and other Islamists from former Soviet states have joined the gruesome holy war. Experts say Chechens are revered as the conflict's most fearsome fighters.

Al-Shishani, whose nom de guerre is Arabic for "Omar the Chechen", distinguished himself by masterminding the capture of a key air base outside of Aleppo, in northern Syria, last August, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In that siege, a suicide bomber drove a massive tank festooned with oil drilling pipes and packed with four tons of explosives into the base and detonated it, clearing the way for a rebel assault on the government forces hunkered there, the Journal reported.

Friends and relatives in Georgia painted a portrait of a gifted, easygoing soldier who turned to radical Islam after a series of personal hardships, including a 16-month stint in a Georgia prison in 2011 and 2012.

According to the Journal, Al-Shishani told a jihadist website last year, "I promised God that if I come out of prison alive, I'll go fight jihad for the sake of God."