A round table was held in Moscow today to discuss problems of nationalist and religious extremism. The head of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, Alexander Brod, was among the participants, he presented a report prepared by his organization and devoted to the problem of IS.
In an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza, he outlined the main provisions of this document, as well as sharing his opinion on how to fight this evil.
"The report 'ISIS - a threat to the security, a threat to Russia' was prepared since the beginning of the year by a group of experts of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights. Experts from the North Caucasus regions were also involved in the work on it. We are constantly in contact with this district, we visit it, know about the difficult situation there. Of course, an essential part of the report concerns the North Caucasus Federal District," Alexander Brod said.
"First of all, this is connected with the fact that outbreaks of radicalism were observed there in the past. We are talking about the events in Chechnya, and about Beslan, and about Budennovsk, and about Nalchik, the anniversary of the attack on which will be on October 13-14. The second moment: radical movements in the North Caucasus have not disappeared anywhere, we know that there is very serious work on recruiting young people, causing thousands of residents of the North Caucasus to fight on the side of ISIS. There is no accurate statistics on this point. In this report, we are saying that there are two thousand of them, there are expert opinions that there are 5-7 thousand of them, or even more. But the fact that from the regions of the North Caucasus, such as Dagestan, hundreds of people are leaving and joining the ranks of ISIS, has become, unfortunately, a sad reality," he complained.
The current situation is caused by the fact that "the North Caucasus is a region where there are risks, a basis for the development of such radicalism." "First of all, there is the unsettledness of social issues, there is unemployment, there is poverty, failures in the work with young people, the weakness of civic society institutions, there are authoritarian tendencies in government, which cause a mood of protest in the region. The recruiters of the radicals are playing, speculating on these difficulties, on these worldview problems, identity problems and so on," the head of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights explained.
"It is no coincidence that we are beginning the series of round tables in the regions of the North Caucasus Federal District. I spoke on this topic to the apparatus of the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President in the North Caucasus Federal District, Sergey Melikov, I spoke with some high-level officials of the North Caucasus republics, and there is an understanding that the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war. In the sense that the issues of prophylaxis, warning of these risks, of these threats, counteraction to radical ideology and practice, it is better to carry them out now, while the problem is not so actively developed. ISIS has repeatedly stated that the North Caucasus is in its area of interest. It is likely that those who are fighting on its side may return to the North Caucasus and defend their ideas with weapons, there are such risks. It is necessary to consolidate society, to seek a strategy of counteraction, to unite civic society and the authorities in understanding, assessing and responding to all these problems," Alexander Brod stressed.
