Russia arrests alleged Daesh operatives

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has arrested ten people from Central Asia with alleged links to Daesh who they say planned to carry out attacks with firearms and explosives in Moscow and St Petersburg, Russian news agencies reported today.

The FSB said in a statement that the ten had been detained with the help of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It said they had been plotting assaults with automatic weapons and home-made explosives in public places in the two major Russian cities.

Moscow last year launched a campaign of airstrikes in Syria to help embattled President Bashar Al-Assad take on various opposition groups who had almost toppled his family’s half-a-century old dictatorship.

Although the Kremlin has claimed that its main objective is to crush the Daesh militant group, it has been viewed as having used the radicals as an excuse to target moderate Syrian opposition factions that are not terrorists in order to prop up the Assad regime.

The Russian intervention on behalf of Al-Assad upended perceptions on the United States being the dominant power in the Middle East. This is because Russian allies Syria and Iran have been able to antagonise US and Western interests with no repercussions, including outgoing US President Obama’s threats in 2013 to bomb Syria should Assad ever use chemical weapons.

Obama’s “red line” was crossed by Assad to no response from what was once the world’s only superpower.

Thousands of Russians have been fighting in Syria with anti-Assad forces, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in early November, warning of possible attacks by them when they return home.

Analysts comment that Russia has exposed itself to greater risk of terrorist attack by rescuing the Assad regime from imminent downfall, and by using what many deem to be disproportionate and indiscriminate force that has led to thousands of Syrian deaths.

The Ferghana Valley, a fertile and densely populated strip of land that straddles Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, is considered to be the heart of anti-Russian militancy in Central Asia. Many groups operating in the area will see Russia’s Syrian military adventure as another reason to attack Moscow at home and abroad.