Experts state absence of charismatic candidates for leader of "Imarat Kavkaz"

A military leader may head "Imarat Kavkaz" (IK), recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia, since there are no influential religious leaders in it. The number of known candidates for the post is getting still smaller, said the experts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot".

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on August 11, the Russian National Antiterrorist Committee (NAC) announced the killing of Magomed Suleimanov, who headed the IK since April 2015.

There are fewer and fewer well-known candidates who can lead the IK, Akhmet Yarlykapov, a senior fellow at the Centre for Ethno-Political Studies of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"The new IK's Amir will be most probably a military, not a religious figure," said Yarlykapov.

He thinks that the most likely scenario after the death of Suleimanov is the IK's accession to the "Islamic State" (IS), also recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia.

In his turn, Ruslan Martagov, a Chechen historian and political scientist, a former consultant of the "Anti-Terror" Foundation, believes that the physical liquidation of Suleimanov indicates not a weakening of the IK, but rather an increase in the number of its members.

"Should there be a few militants, they'd be sitting in gorges; and nobody could have found them," Martagov told the "Caucasian Knot", adding that the principle of succession is well mastered among leaders of North-Caucasian militants.

"After taking the post, each of them immediately starts looking for a successor. This is typical for such a self-regenerating structure like the IK. It has a huge human reserve, including people in the Middle East. We can not exclude the emergence of new 'Said Buryatskiy'," said Martagov.

In his words, "it does not matter much," whether the new Amir is a military or a theologian – in any case he will fight against Russia.

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