Websites crucial to funding Caucasus jihad
April 22, 2013Webpages operated by the Caucasus Emirate terrorist organization have played a key and growing role in financing their operations, according to a late-2011 report from the Center for Strategic & International Studies. The report revealed that while the Caucasus Emirate relied on centralized sites such as Qoqaz.net in the early 2000s, the Caucasus Emirate and Al Qaeda now follow a more decentralized approach of communicating through discussion forums, social media, and smaller websites.
What role, if any, such websites played in engaging Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev is yet to be determined, but the 2011 article below from Reuters via Radio Free Europe about the CSIS findings now merits a second look.
The article also acknowledges the symbiotic relationship and financial ties between Al Qaeda and the North Caucasus guerrillas that Money Jihad profiled last Friday:
Think Tank Says Al-Qaeda Funding Caucasus Rebels
September 30, 2011
A leading Washington think tank says Al-Qaeda is providing growing support, including financial, to Islamic rebels in Russia’s restive North Caucasus.
In its report, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said Al-Qaeda has played a key role in “proselytizing jihadism” to the mujahideen in Chechnya and the Caucasus.
The report’s author, Gordon Hahn, pointed to a growing number of websites linked to the insurgency that are carrying statements of support from leading jihadists such as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, who inspired Al-Qaeda in Iraq and is now in jail in Jordan.
Such websites, Hahn said, are also used to raise money.
Hahn pointed to the arrest by Czech police in May of eight individuals in Prague suspected of plotting attacks in the North Caucasus as possible proof of ties to Al-Qaeda.
The rebels goal is a state called the Caucasus Emirate, stretching from the Black Sea to the Caspian.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has labeled the insurgency Russia’s top security threat.
Hahn noted Chechen-born rebel leader Doku Umarov has called for the Caucasus Emirate to be incorporated into global jihad…
The full report can be accessed through CSIS’s website here.
Money Jihad 
Reblogged this on .
Reblogged this on oogenhand and commented:
Internet cutting both ways, oil money no longer needed. So alternative energy sources won’t cripple jihad that much.
Possibly. I agree that communicating has become easier, cheaper. But it was Saudi seed money that enabled Chechen jihadists to expand their recruiting network and communications tools in the first place. Petrodollars are still in the mix.
The main obstacle for a major Arab involvement in the Chechen conflict was the strong position and authority of local warlords such as Shamil Basayev. Only when Chechens found themselves close to defeat in the mid-2000s, they shifted towards a more strictly Islamist agenda. In 2003 Basayev adopted the title of Emir Abdallah Shamil Abu-Idris, and quotes from the Quran started to precede his statements on terrorist websites. In October 2007 Doku Umarov, who succeeded Sheikh Abdul Halim Sadulayev as president of the self-proclaimed Chechen republic of Ichkeria, proclaimed the Caucasus Emirate, declaring himself its Emir and converting Chechnya into a vilayat (province) of the emirate.
[…] through Islamic front charities to jihadist causes around the world. The revenues supported the creation of websites and recruitment tools that helped radicalize North Caucasus diaspora like Tamerlan […]
[…] through Islamic front charities to jihadist causes around the world. The revenues supported the creation of websites and recruitment tools that helped radicalize North Caucasus diaspora like Tamerlan […]
[…] last several months about the Tsarnaev brothers and the Boston marathon bombing. (See here and here.) The attack wasn’t just about the costs of the explosives purchased by Tamerlan, or even his […]
[…] dollars into the training and recruitment of fighters, the construction of radical mosques, and the creation of jihadist websites in Slavic languages. Tamerlan Tsarnaev read and engaged with these websites and pursued support […]
[…] individual supported Qoqaz.net, a flagship jihadi website of the early 2000s (see here and here). He also supported Azzam Publications, a website which instructed readers how to send […]
[…] The alert also encouraged financial support to other known terror finance entities: Qoqoz.net (a website tied to the Al Qaeda-linked Caucasus Emirate), Benevolence International Foundation (designated as a terror finance entity by the Treasury […]
[…] The alert also encouraged financial support to other known terror finance entities: Qoqoz.net (a website tied to the Al Qaeda-linked Caucasus Emirate), Benevolence International Foundation (designated as a terror finance entity by the Treasury […]