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Ever since the eruption of the Russo-Ukraine War in February 2022, the foremost insidious objective of the Western authoritarian regimes has been to somehow create a schism between Russia’s national security institutions and the general public. Because Western military strategists are acutely aware of the historically proven fact that popular wars supported by the public almost invariably end in glorious triumphs, whereas unpopular wars disliked by the public end in humiliating defeats.

Therefore, for the purpose of creating a rift between Russia’s military and the public, the rogue Western regimes have applied all available tactics in the Machiavellian playbook of hybrid warfare. They have imposed stringent economic sanctions on Russia in order to squeeze its typically vibrant economy. The Western deep states have literally coerced multinational corporations to wrap up lucrative and highly profitable businesses in Russia since the beginning of the war.

Against the established rules of the international financial system, the European Union has recently decided to allocate $300 billion of seized Russian assets for rearming Ukraine. But after all available tactics failed to break the spirit of the valiant Russian nation, then the security establishment of the United States decided to play the most effective trump card in its scaremongering playbook since the days of the Soviet-Afghan War of the eighties, the Islamic terrorism, in order to send a clear message to the Russian public that the war will impact their lives, too, and they wouldn’t be safe at home.

Image: HTS in Idlib, Syria 

For this nefarious purpose, four Tajiks, allegedly belonging to the Islamic State, were hired from a former Soviet republic in order to reduce suspicion of the CIA’s involvement. They were paid large sum of money to travel to Turkey, from where the Turkish intelligence, known for closely collaborating with the CIA in Syria’s proxy war since 2011, whisked the jihadists away across the border to northwest Syria in the territory controlled by the Turkish proxy al-Nusra Front, rebranded as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Thus, after training for several months in Syria’s northwest Idlib Governorate with al-Nusra’s highly skilled fighters, the terrorists were let loose at Moscow’s fabled Crocus City Hall on March 22, where they massacred over 140 innocent civilians and wounded many more before being arrested by Russia’s security agencies.

Reportedly, two weeks before the terrorists staged the bloody attack in the suburbs of Moscow, the US government gave a vague warning of imminent terrorist attack to Russian officials. But one doesn’t have to be an Agatha Christie, the celebrated British detective novelist, to understand the simple fact that actually it’s quite common in the world of crime that the real perpetrator of the crime becomes the confidant of the victim in order to gain his trust, hence absolving himself from the crime and deploying diversionary tactics to implicate others.

The recent spate of terrorist attacks in Russia, specifically the Crocus City Hall massacre and the attacks on churches, synagogues and police posts in Dagestan on June 23 claiming 25 lives, clearly has the fingerprints of the CIA all over them in order to destabilize Russia amidst the Ukraine War.

It’s worth noting that both self-proclaimed caliphs of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his successor Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi, were killed in October 2019 and February 2022, respectively, in al-Nusra’s territory in Syria’s northwest Idlib Governorate, miles away from the Turkish border, which lends credence to the assertion that the caliphs of the Islamic State are merely Turkish stooges, and in fact the real caliph of the Islamic State is none other than neo-Ottoman Sultan Erdogan himself. Moreover, the artificial distinction between the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and the rest of Syria’s jihadist proxies is more illusory than real.

The imperial United States’ steadfast NATO client, Turkish President Erdogan, has not only provided Bayraktar drones, military assistance and offer of joint production of weapons to Kyiv but he has also sent Syria’s battle-hardened jihadists to fight alongside Ukrainian forces against Russia.

Clearly, both the self-styled caliphs of the Islamic State, al-Baghdadi and his successor al-Qurayshi, were hiding in Syria’s Idlib with the blessings of al-Nusra leadership and the Turkish security forces, which have trained and armed myriad groups of jihadists during Syria’s proxy war since 2011, and were used as bargaining chips to extract geo-strategic concessions from Washington.

The scapegoating of both the ISIS caliphs by the Erdogan government, first in October 2019 to let Turkey mount Operation Peace Spring in northeast Syria and then in February 2022, was done to reconcile with the Biden administration as Erdogan was repeatedly snubbed by Biden throughout the maiden year as the president due to Erdogan’s personal friendship and business partnership with Biden’s predecessor and political rival Trump.

During the four years of the Trump presidency, Erdogan acted with impunity in regional conflicts, from Syria and Libya to Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, because he had forged a personal bonhomie with Donald Trump, as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was a business partner of Erdogan’s son-in-law and former finance minister of Turkey Berat Albayrak, who was summarily dismissed from the ministry as soon as Trump lost the US presidential election in November 2020.

This is the reason Erdogan is bending over backwards to reconcile with the Biden administration to regain their lost international prestige. For the purpose, Erdogan took a trip to Ukraine in 2022, offered to mediate in the crisis while ironically selling armed drones and lethal weaponry to Ukraine, and is recruiting and sending Syria’s battle-hardened jihadists to fight alongside Ukrainian forces against Russia, some of whom have been tasked by the CIA and SBU to infiltrate across the border to mount subversive activities inside Russia, including the four Tajik jihadist who were reportedly fleeing toward the Ukraine border after perpetrating the Crocus City Hall massacre before they were caught by Russia’s vigilant security forces.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Middle East and Eurasia regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to Global Research.

Featured image: Russian Crocus City Hall amphitheater interiors, day after terrorist attack on 22 March 2024 (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)