Monitoring Desk: The killing of top Russian General Igor Kirillov along with his assistant confirmed again connections between emerging terrorism and Central Asian republics.
This was the second event of terrorism in Russia where Central Asian men were allegedly involved while videos and footage arriving from Syria also indicate the presence of thousands of Central Asian men conquering Syrian cities as foot soldiers of forces of former Alqaeeda leader.
Russia said on Wednesday it had detained a suspect who had confessed to planting and detonating a bomb in Moscow that killed General Kirillov, who was the chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops, on the instructions of Ukraine’s SBU security service.
In the March 2024 jihadist massacre at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, four Tajik citizens were held for allegedly murdering at least 143 people in the concert hall. last week. Some of the Tajiks arrested including Faridun Shamsiddin emigrated to Russia, then traveled to Turkey, before returning to Moscow in early March. BBC reported that Turkey is a convenient country for a migrant worker to renew a Russian permit and is also seen as somewhere where IS’s Afghan-based affiliate Islamic State Khorasan can recruit militants.
In both cases of terrorism in Russia, Ukrainian secret services allegedly recruited Central Asian youth while the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) force recruited them thereby sending a possibility that Central Asian men are available as ‘hire-guns’ and their recruitment allegedly by Western allied forces is dangerous for all who are not aligned with NATO forces.
In December 2020, Uzbekistan brought home 25 women and 73 children from Syria where they had been staying at camps with other families of Islamic State fighters.
Central Asian republics border Russia, Iran, China, and Afghanistan and three of them are on the hit list of Western allies while one (Afghanistan) is a launching pad of terrorism where Western allied forces had already left NATO-grade war weapons that had been used against Pakistan now.
The merging scenario can be dangerous for the region if such Central Asian youth are hired against China and Iran in the future as hired-gun as they would have Afghanistan as a terrorism launching pad.
