A Mediterranean Battlefield - Syria

[Magda Hassan]

The Great Game Round Up brings you the latest newsworthy developments regarding Central Asia and the Caucasus region. The proxy war in Syria is still in full swing and affects not only the Middle East but also Central Asia and the Caucasus. There are even a few Central Asian fighters among the Syrian rebels':Three Tajik citizens killed since start of hostilities in Syria special services of TajikistanThe threat of joining terrorist and extremist groups by young Tajik citizens has become the reason of the decision to bring students studying at religious education institutions abroad back to the home country. Otherwise, the circumstances would be irreversible, Melikov believes.…Two Kyrgyzstanis recruited for Syria return homePreventive and precautionary measures aimed at preventing involvement of citizens of the Kyrgyz Republic in extremist and terrorist activities, and participation in armed clashes in Syria and other countries in the Middle East continue. At the same time GKNB is working on identification of traffickers and recruiters.…We probably shouldn't wait for an investigation to expose the culprits as long as this could damage certain business relations.Rising radicalism in Syria and the unstable situation in Afghanistan prompted Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, to warn of an increasing terror threat. Many foreign militants fighting in Syria are from the Russian republic of Chechnya [emphasis mine]:12 Chechen fighters killed in central Syria: activistsThe Syrian government has long been charging that foreign fighters are joining the battles alongside the opposition rebels, accusing regional countries, such as Turkey, of facilitating the flow of those jihadists into Syria.…So there is reasonable concern in Russia that the Syrian crisis could reach the Caucasus [emphasis mine]:Syrian crisis rapidly spreads and can affect the CaucasusPushkov does not exclude that "terrorism can come to those states where it never existed previously. So I would not want the states of the southern Caucasus to become involved in this terrorist activity, but it could happen. Because total destabilization leads to a situation where some people, especially with the funding of certain fundamentalist groups that are growing by leaps and bounds, on oil and gas in a number of Arab states, may have an idea, but why not try to support extremist tendencies in a particular country in the region, say, in Azerbaijan. I think that's what is dangerous about the Syrian crisis it can, like cancer, metastasise into other countries.…
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/05/...y-26-2013/