Could e ISIL fighters be used against Iran, as a Russian official claimed?
Russia’s Federal Security Service chief said Western powers could weaponise former fighters, but analysts doubt the claim. Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia’s Federal Security Service
Russia’s Federal Security Service chief said Western powers could weaponise former fighters, but analysts doubt the claim. Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, claimed late in May that the West is trying to use e fighters of the ISIL (ISIS) armed group against Iran. “Western intelligence services don’t give up on their attempts to utilise militant terrorists from Syria as proxy forces in the war against Iran,” Aleksandr Bortnikov told a meeting of intelligence officials from eight e Soviet nations on May 26, according to the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. In February, the United States began transporting thousands of imprisoned fighters linked to ISIL from detention centres in northeastern Syria to Iraq. The move followed the decision of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to join the anti-ISIL coalition and regain control of northeastern areas controlled by Kurdish-dominated forces that had detained up to 9,000 ISIL fighters, according to the US military. Bortnikov did not specify which Western nation’s intelligence service is allegedly trying to “utilise” them and did not present any evidence, such as intercepted conversations or photos. So has Russia’s intelligence tsar and President Vladimir Putin’s closest ally revealed a clandestine Western operation against Iran, or was his announcement an attempt to influence Moscow’s former vassals? Bortnikov’s agency, better known by its Russian acronym, FSB, is the main successor to the Soviet KGB, where he served with Putin in the 1980s. The FSB has a history of misinforming Putin, especially about developments in Ukraine, according to the White House, multiple leaks and media reports. Gennady Gudkov, an e KGB officer and lawmaker-turned Putin critic, said Bortnikov’s claims reflect a lack of oversight over security agencies in today’s Russia.
“These are just words, without any proof, not even an attempt to back them with details or facts,” said Gudkov, who served in the KGB in the 1980s and was stripped of his lawmaker’s status in 2012 after participating in protest rallies and lambasting government corruption. He told Al Jazeera that when he was part of parliamentary commissions on security in the 2000s, lawmakers, prosecutors and courts could exert at least theoretical control over what security agencies said and did. “When all control over them was gone, they understood they could lie about anything at all, and no one could check them,” said Gudkov, who fled Russia in 2019 and is wanted there as a “terrorist and extremist”. In his comments about ISIL, Bortnikov reiterated the FSB’s earlier claims that Western intelligence “created” the armed group and “trained” its fighters. “ISIL’s history began back in the day in similar Iraqi prison compounds that were overseen by special services of the [US-led] Western coalition” fighting in Iraq, Bortnikov reportedly said. “That’s when our nations reported a significant growth in the number of adherents of the jihadist ideology,” he reportedly said. Bortnikov’s claim ‘a bit far-fetched’ Thousands of residents of Russia’s mostly-Muslim region of the North Caucasus joined ISIL more than a decade ago, often taking their families with them and occasionally rising through the ranks. Russian intelligence let thousands of alleged “radicals” from the North Caucasus flee to ISIL-controlled areas in Syria and Iraq and recruited agents or informers among them, often by blackmailing their relatives at home, observers say. Some of these jailed agents have been transferred to Iraq and have contacted their superiors in Russia, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, an expert with Germany’s Bremen University.
The BriefWire