by Gordon M. Hahn
As I noted in my April 3, 2014 testimony before the U.S. Congress Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence Hearing “Assessing Terrorism in the Caucasus and the Threat to the Homeland: “In Russia, I suspectthat the Caucasus Emirate will see the lowest annual tally of attacks in this year, since its inception in 2007, because of the exodus of mujahedin to Syria” (Testimony Before the U.S. Congress Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence Hearing “Assessing Terrorism in the Caucasus and the Threat to the Homeland,” 3 April 2014, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg88780/html/CHRG-113hhrg88780.htm).
This turned out to be the case. In Russian President Putin’s address to a collegium of the FSB, he noted: “In 2014 there were 2.6 times less terrorist-oriented crimes committed than in 2013 (http://www.kremlin.ru/news/47963).
Putin added: “If we look at the dynamic for the last 5 years, then their general number has fallen by 9 times” (http://www.kremlin.ru/news/47963). My own data actually shows that the decline did not begin in 2010, as Putin’s statement suggests, but rather in 2011 when the number of attacks and violent incidents related to terrorism declined to 546 from 583 in 2010. Lacking funding and employment, I ceased tracking jihadi attacks in Russia after 2012.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gordon M. Hahn is an Analyst and Advisory Board Member of the Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, Chicago, Illinois; Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, San Jose, California Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; and Senior Researcher and Adjunct Professor, MonTREP, Monterey, California. Dr Hahn is author of three well-received books, Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002), Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), which was named an outstanding title of 2007 by Choice magazine, and The ‘Caucasus Emirate’ Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland Publishers, 2014). He also has authored hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and other publications on Russian, Eurasian and international politics and wrote, edited and published the Islam, Islamism, and Politics in Eurasia Report at CSIS from 2010-2013. Dr. Hahn has been a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (2011-2013) and a Visiting Scholar at both the Hoover Institution and the Kennan Institute.