French intelligence facing the elusive “Chechen network” – L’Express

Djamboulat Souleimanov knows the political mysteries of this world well. After studying history at the University of Grozny, he joined at the head of a battalion of 280 fighters during the Second Chechen War. At the head since 2017 of the Bart-Marsho association, then of the United Force political party, Souleimanov intends to structure the Chechen voice in Europe, and fight against the extremism of the youngest. Father and daughter are therefore not at their first meeting at the prefecture: in recent years, they say they have been asked several times to provide their expertise on the North-Caucasian community exiled in France. “Usually, they only want to talk about specific problems that Chechen youth may pose,” they say. The last meeting was different: we were able to detail to them the reasons for the radicalization of these young people, which can also be explained by the circumstances of their exile and their life in France.”

The meeting illustrates the attention paid by the intelligence community to members of the North Caucasus community. “There is concern about the Islamists in the Chechen community. It is a group of young people, rather intelligent and often very radicalized,” confirms a French intelligence leader. A sector that is often less well followed than their counterparts born and raised in France. “Since 2008 and the disappearance of general intelligence, the emphasis has been placed less on ethnographic knowledge of communities, and more on the direct identification of violent elements, regrets a former RG. This was necessary to respond to the urgency of the fight against terrorism, but we have lost granularity.”

The increase in young North Caucasians involved in attacks in recent years gives substance to this concern. On May 12, 2018, Khamzat Azimov, 20, attacked passers-by with a knife in Paris, in the Place de I’Opéra district. It left one dead and four injured. On October 16, 2020, Abdullakh Anzorov, 18, a Russian of Chechen origin, beheaded history professor Samuel Paty near his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. The knife attack in Arras on October 13 was the latest occurrence. Meanwhile, at least six planned attacks involving members of the Ingush and Chechen diasporas have been foiled by intelligence services.

According to a count by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, the number of S files of Russian nationality, mainly of Chechen origin, amounted to “around sixty” on October 14. The risk is therefore well considered: in an October 2020 note consulted by several media, the DGSI was also alarmed in 2020 by a “new Chechen generation”, the children of refugees from the wars of the 1990s and 2000s Inserted into society, they nevertheless develop “an anti-French discourse, aligned with that of the actors of the movement [djihadiste] endogenous”. Intelligence is still struggling to understand in depth a community scattered across the French territory, hermetic, and often suspicious of the authorities.

In its note, the DGSI explains that the North Caucasian diaspora is “made up of 20,000 to 40,000 individuals”. Two waves of arrivals are identifiable, punctuated by the two wars of independence against the Russian army, from 1994 to 1996 and from 1999 to 2009. “The diaspora has never been unified. There have always been political clans , and above all a differentiated relationship between the different generations, nevertheless explains Laurent Vinatier, specialist in the post-Soviet world and author of the thesis on the European exile of the Chechens between 1997 and 2007. The first generation to arrive has a very secular relationship with religion, which is less the case for the next one: we observe a break between some who see the war through the nationalist prism, and others under that of religion.” French anti-terrorism estimates that 150 North Caucasian individuals are today in jihadist networks in Iraq and Syria. Chechnya even had a self-proclaimed emir in the mid-2000s , Dokou Oumarov.

“Ten years ago, there were 17,000 Chechen refugees with political asylum as they went back and forth to fight in the Caucasus emirate. We wrote to Beauvau to change the rules and no longer admit,” says a former senior domestic intelligence official. An attack then already shines a light on the radicalization of part of the exiled youth of the North Caucasus. On April 15, 2013, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaïev, two young men of Chechen origin who had taken refuge in the United States, committed a double attack during the Boston marathon. In France too, movements are attracting the attention of the authorities. “We had worked on some who had participated in the Moscow metro attacks in 2010 and had claimed responsibility for them from France,” continues the former senior official. Questioned in February 2016 by the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defense and Armed Forces Committee, the former director of the DGSI Patrick Calvar had also declared that between “7 to 8% of people wishing to leave France for Syria or coming back are Chechens.

But, despite the thwarted attacks, understanding and monitoring the radicalization of this youth is complex. “The North Caucasus community is opaque. Its very endogamous lifestyle makes it difficult for the intelligence services to monitor free electrons, analyzes Viatcheslav Avioutskii, specialist in international relations and author of a book on Chechnya (Presses Universitaires de France). To this, we must add that there is a severe shortage of translators.” In L’directory of sworn translators in France, which lists the experts working in the courts, only nine official translators are listed in France. So little that police departments often simply have to rely on bilingual members of the Chechen community. Djamboulat Souleimanov, accompanied by his daughter at the Paris police headquarters, is an example. In Nantes, Shamkhan Bopaev, president of a local wrestling association, Marsho, also says he is familiar with the experience. “Once or twice a year, the police call on me to translate when they have been able to question people of Chechen origin,” he assures. This system D is not without consequences. “Interpreters can cooperate with suspects,” notes our former senior intelligence official. “There is a big reliability problem.”

In addition to translation problems, intelligence also faces distrust from members of the North Caucasus community. “Due to their history with the Russian state, a Chechen will not often have confidence in the police,” notes Aurélie Campana, professor of political science at Laval University, in Canada. Searches for “informants” are therefore difficult, as evidenced by this anecdote from Zauberk Goulaev. Arriving in 2003, naturalized French in 2009, he presents himself as a former police officer, and has been contacted several times by his French colleagues in the Alpes-Maritimes. “They gave me the names of people who worked in Nice and asked me to inform them about their past in Chechnya. They asked me to listen to people by telephone, too,” he says. I said no. I don’t swing and I don’t work for free!”

Despite everything, keen to stem the radicalization of Chechen youth, Zauberk Goulaev proposed his own action plan to the prefecture a few weeks ago. The former police officer intends to deal with radicalized young people himself, by trying to reason with the most worrying elements of the diaspora. With Bart Masho, Djamboulat Souleimanov claims to proceed in the same way. “Several times, my father managed to calm situations in Chechen families that the French police were unable to stop,” assures his daughter. A community management that makes a former cabinet member in Beauvau who became prefect jump: “It’s insane,” he says indignantly. The police work with relays within the communities, of course, but do not delegate management to them . It is completely contrary to the French concept of integration.” In fact, the profiles of the people leading these initiatives are sometimes murky. Among the members of the diaspora specializing in deradicalization and members of his association, Djamboulat Souleimanov notably directed us to… a man banned from entering Switzerland and Monaco for Islamism.