A sentence against a resident of Moscow, Tural Rahimov, began yesterday. He was found guilty of military activities in Syria on the side of the terrorist organization Islamic State (Daesh). He was sentenced to prison for four years. This is the first sentencing of a member of Daesh in Moscow. Rahimov was accused of recruiting potential terrorists in Moscow, as well as of sending ammunition to militants in Syria. According to the mass media, several years ago Rahimov was a successful businessman, owned a big automobile service station in Moscow, his wife was an official in one of the districts of the capital. However, he got acquainted with supporters of radical extremists and began to pay part of his revenues to militants acting in the Middle East; in summer 2013 he went to the war.
Rostislav Prokopishin, an employee of the Center for Emergency Psychological Aid MGPPU, speaks about the work of Daesh recruiters in Russia.
“Everything comes down to a single thing – a very short memory. We are discouraged from remembering via the Internet. Nobody remembers now that in the 1970s the Arab East had a workers' and peasants' ideology, this is forgotten now. There was very little of Islam. And all politics, all life revolved around the workers' and peasants' movement. All that we have now linked with Daesh is the new trend of the time, it is an artificially created structure,” the expert says.
He believes that the education system encourages young people to support radical ideas: “Unfortunately, the situation at school is quite frightening – education is now turning into an educational service. The component of education is preserved at schools where teachers are reasonable. At schools where principals formally comply with their duties, there are only services. And the services are paid. And we have a category of poor people, and they are the main target for propaganda. Because studies carried out, for example, in Tatarstan in 2012 showed that the profile of the average student of a rural school is the same as the socio-psychological profile of a militant from Arab countries. This category of students is potentially ready to unite beneath the banners [of Daesh]. These people do not have serious knowledge, they do not seek a better future, do not want to change their lives, but at the same time they want everything at once. That's what pushes them over to the ideology of ISIS.”
Rostislav Prokopishin complains: “We have a state without ideology. We just need some ideology. Whether the state can’t defend itself in this regard, and the state ideology can’t be the very ideology that should be defended. We can be destroyed simply in this way. That's where we have a huge problem.”
According to the expert, the recruitment of one person to Daesh requires one-two recruiters. To save a person, the work of 6-7 specialists is necessary for two years. “This is serious. In addition, information materials are not enough. We need to build a strategy harmoniously in the information space. We are not catching them up,” Prokopishin says.
