Coaching for killing
By German Sadulayev, special to Prague Watchdog
St Petersburg
Said Abu Saad, also known as Alexander Tikhomirov, also known as Sheikh Buryatsky (the Buryat Sheikh), appeared in a video that was allegedly made just before the bomb attack on the Nazran police department on August 17 this year, and in which he delivered his “last” sermon. On August 28 the Hunafa news website published a statement by the Islamist insurgent commanders that the reports of Buryatsky’s death were incorrect. On September 5 another video featuring Buryatsky himself appeared in which he said that the rumours of his martyrdom were slightly exaggerated. And on Sept. 7 yet another video was posted online, in which he again denied that he had been killed and which included an account of the results of the Nazran operation, probably in an effort to make sure that no one would think the earlier video had been recorded in advance, before the blast.
In the footage, Buryatsky says that "the brothers have made a mistake." However, if one studies the video carefully, one can see that it has clearly been made in such a way as to mislead the “brothers”.
A man sits in a Gazelle van packed full of explosives which have been cut free of their armature. He says: "We have prepared this iron for the kafirs and murtads.” Before this, he has talked several times about the need to sacrifice oneself on the path of jihad. The Gazelle moves off, we hear bursts of automatic fire and an explosion. All this time, the soundtrack plays heartrending singing. We are meant to understand that the hero in the video has merely helped to cut the armature, and that another hero, who is not visible, has gone away to blow himself up. It appears that the footage was initially intended to be a final message by a suicide bomber, but that then the concept changed.
Said explains that that the real suicide bomber did not want to appear in the video, and that the insurgent commanders decided to keep his name a secret in order to prevent his family being persecuted by the authorities. While this is understandable, one would perhaps have preferred to hear the explanation from the mouth of the bomber himself. The whole thing has a distinct sense of theatre, of having been staged.
It has been claimed that the Islamist insurgent leader Dokka Umarov has personally forbidden Buryatsky to blow himself up because Buryatsky can be more useful to the jihadist movement by engaging in propaganda work. That is probably true. Indeed, Buryatsky has another profession: that of trainer, both of preachers and of martyrs. A video shows him giving individual lessons to young aspirants, and the process is somewhat akin to coaching. A "jihad coach" is something of great value to the insurgents, and it would be unwise to waste such a person in one attack.
In Russia a few centuries ago the Old Believers burned down whole villages so as not to let them be defiled by the heresy of Nikonian Orthodoxy. They had instigators, wandering elders. The elder would gather all the villagers in the barn and set fire to it, while he himself escaped through a secret hatch, not out of cowardice or lack of faith, but from a sincere belief that he would be more useful if he sent one or two more villages heavenwards.
Perhaps the Gazelle also had a secret hatch? Among the hundreds of victims of the explosion in Nazran there were probably ordinary old women who washed floors, ordinary people who lived in the buildings next door. And the role of the police is to catch the criminals. But it’s all wrong. Policemen are doing the fighting instead of soldiers, killing and being killed, tormenting peaceful civilians, wiping out the relatives of the young men who have joined the insurgents. Because they are unable to do away with the insurgency, the police take it out on the innocent. The torture, summary executions and disappearances continue. The insurgents don’t have the capacity to conduct a full-scale war, but they do have suicide bombers. With tutors like Said Buryatsky the production of human bombs can be placed on a conveyor-belt.
Does everyone have their own truth? No, I don’t think so. Everyone has their own lie. And the cycle of killing goes on.
(Translation by DM)
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