Russia church-synagogue attack: Dagestan has been a site of Islamic State terror modules

Dagestan is one of the 21 republics of the Russian Federation — excluding Crimea that Russia annexed in 2014 but not recognised by the international community. Dagestan is one of the five main republics of Russia’s North Caucasus region, and is the largest and most populous among them. It has been a centre of Islamist terror activities for about two decades.

Bordering Chechnya, which faced jihadi insurgency for years, Dagestan has been a hub of terror leaders pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.

The attackers who targeted the cities of Derbent — home to an ancient Jewish community — and Makhachkala on Monday on the Orthodox festival of Pentecost were not immediately identified, but Dagestan has in the past been the scene of Islamist attacks.

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The trouble in Dagestan

A 2015 Human Rights Watch report says that Russian security forces had been battling an armed insurgency conducted by an array of Islamist militant groups which declared affiliation to the Caucasian Emirate before pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (IS).  

Both the Caucasian Emirate and IS have been banned by Russia’s Supreme Court as “terrorist” organisations. The insurgents have committed numerous lethal attacks against state officials, law enforcement and security forces, and civilians.  

Observers see the rise of terrorism in Dagestan as a tussle between two broad beliefs — Sufism, which follows Islam in a syncretic form incorporating local traditions, and Salafism, which follows the same rigorous interpretation of Sunni Islam — the one followed by the Islamic State.

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But there is an ongoing war of narratives as well

A predominantly Muslim republic, Dagestan is one of the poorest parts of Russia. BBC reports that the Caucasus Emirate and the Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus staged several attacks between 2007 and 2017 in Dagestan and the neighbouring Russian republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. Russia blamed IS for these attacks and vowed to finish them off on its soil.

However, following the outbreak of the Ukraine war, the narrative seemed to change. For example, when the terror attack on the Crocus City Hall venue near Moscow happened in March, Russian authorities pointed the finger of blame at Ukraine and the West. They blamed their current “enemies” despite the Islamic State claiming responsibility for the terror attack. More than 135 people died in the attack.

Back then Russia’s President Vladimir Putin insisted that his country “cannot be the target of terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists” because it “demonstrates a unique example of interfaith harmony and inter-religious and inter-ethnic unity”.

The realities were, however, different

In April, Russia’s domestic security service, the FSB, reported thwarting an IS plot to attack a Moscow synagogue. It also conducted raids in Dagestan after the March attack in Moscow.

Russia’s news agency TASS reported that the FSB detained members of a terrorist cell of foreigners headquartered in Dagestan that funded and armed the terrorists who attacked Crocus City Hall and that they were also preparing a terrorist attack on Kaspiysk, a city in the same republic.

The FSB press office said, “On March 31, the Republic of Dagestan’s branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) suppressed the activity of a terrorist cell consisting of four foreign citizens who were plotting a terrorist act in a public place in Kaspiysk."

“It was also established that the detained militants were directly involved in financing and providing instruments of terror to the perpetrators of the March 22 terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall music venue in a Moscow suburb,” TASS quoted the FSB press office as saying.

The FSB said “the criminals scouted the location, made an improvised explosive device and acquired automatic weapons” in Dagestan. Immediately after the terrorist attack, they planned to leave Russia, it said.