Sergey Melikov: 1500 militants from NCFD join IS

About 1500 mercenaries from Northern Caucasus are fighting in Syria and Iraq on the side of militants. This was reported in Pyatigorsk by Sergey Melikov, the Russian President's Envoy to the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD).

According to him, it is not easy to return the mercenaries back to Northern Caucasus; however, the spread of the ideas of the "Islamic State" (IS) in the region is a very serious threat. Sergey Melikov has noted that at least five militants involved in the combat actions in Syria were killed in Northern Caucasus during the special operations in 2014.

The Russian President's Envoy has emphasized that the ideas of the "Imarat Kavkaz", which used to be active in the region, can serve as a ground for the spread of the militants' ideology in Northern Caucasus. According to Sergey Melikov, Dagestan is the most vulnerable republic in that regard, since there a lot of hard-to-reach and remote villages in the republic.

According to the calculations made by the "Caucasian Knot", in the period from January 1, 2014, till March 25, 2015, at least 52 criminal cases have been instituted against residents of the NCFD regions, who are still fighting in the Middle East, and against citizens, who have returned to Russia from the territory of the armed conflicts in Syria and Iraq. The criminal proceedings were instituted against residents of Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkaria, Ingushetia, Dagestan, and the Stavropol Territory.

The "Caucasian Knot" monitors the impact of the events in the Middle East on the political and social life of the regions of southern Russia and Southern Caucasus, and it publishes materials on these topics in the pages of "Caliphate takes aim at Caucasus" and "Syria in fire".

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.