The spectacular fall of the Assad regime last month is a massive turning point for the Middle East. Assad had long been considered to be a victor of Syria’s ruinous civil war, left to rule over the ashes of his country. That all changed in the space of 11 days, when a rebel offensive launched from the tiny opposition enclave of Idlib saw the Syrian dictator’s forces routed and he himself was forced to flee to Moscow on December 8. It was a startling blow to Russia, whose intervention on Assad’s side in 2015 had turned the tide of the civil war and had served as the lynchpin of Vladimir Putin’s Middle Eastern policy ever since.
But while Moscow may have found itself in the lurch, another group of erstwhile Russian citizens now also finds itself without a clear path forward. That group is the Chechen and North Caucasian fighters who have played such a critical role in Syria’s rebel movement over the past 14 years. With the Assad regime toppled and their goal of the past decade-plus accomplished, what will they do next — and will it be in Syria, or elsewhere?
Militants from Chechnya, Dagestan and other parts of the North Caucasus established themselves as a key force among Syria’s burgeoning rebel movement as early as 2012. At that time, the insurgency in the North Caucasus was still going strong, but its fortunes were waning — Russian security forces were in the midst of a major counterinsurgent campaign ahead of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, to be held on the region’s western edge. As key leaders were picked off and cells were crushed one by one, many Chechen and North Caucasian militants looked to another arena, one where they could still fight against a Russian-backed regime. One militant put it succinctly, describing that by late 2012, waging jihad in the North Caucasus had become ‘1,000 times harder than in Syria.’ Moscow’s own security services, all too happy to see them go, enabled the militants by providing a passport and a one-way plane ticket to Turkey for any radicalized young men who wished to leave the Caucasus and fight Bashar Assad’s regime instead.
Hardened by more than a decade of fighting
In Syria, Chechen fighters in particular quickly acquired a fearsome reputation. They participated in pivotal battles such as the August 2013 capture of the Menagh airbase in northern Syria, an operation led by one Umar al-Shishani — then a quickly rising commander in the burgeoning Islamic State (IS). When open warfare broke out between IS and other Syrian rebel groups (particularly Jabhat al-Nusra, the precursor of today’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) in December 2013, Chechen and North Caucasian rebels were split into three main groupings, with many active in the two aforementioned groups. But many others refused to take part in the IS-rebel conflict, instead swearing off battle against other Muslims in favor of fully devoting their efforts to the fight against Assad. At their peak in early 2017, there were likely around 4,000 Chechen and North Caucasian fighters in Syria, making them one of the largest foreign contingents in the war.
Shifting battlefield fortunes would see the activity of these fighters sharply decrease in the coming years. Russia’s 2015 intervention in the conflict, leading to the full capture of the city of Aleppo by Syrian government and allied forces in December 2016, marked a turning point in the war. Ajnad al-Kavkaz, the largest majority-North Caucasian group, announced it was suspending its activities in late 2017; other groups similarly went silent as rebels were rolled back across the country, eventually becoming bottled up in the enclave of Idlib in Syria’s northwest. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, some would take the opportunity to join their brethren there: Chechen volunteer groups, primarily the Sheikh Mansur and Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalions, had been active alongside Ukrainian forces since 2014. They were joined by an indeterminate (but likely small) number of Chechen fighters coming from Syria, particularly Rustam Azhiev, better known as Abdulhakim al-Shishani, who arrived in Ukraine in mid-2022.
But others remained in Idlib, biding their time. When HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani launched his daring offensive in November, two North Caucasian-dominated groups were at the forefront of the campaign: Jaysh al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar and the reactivated Ajnad al-Kavkaz. Images and videos showed these groups in action in places such as Saraqib, where Ajnad commander Abdulmalik al-Shishani led his men in one of the most difficult battles of the short campaign. Both groups would then take part in the five-day campaign to take Hama, a city whose fall all but spelled the end of the Assad regime. From both the quality of gear on display and the locations they fought in, these groups were clearly used in a ‘tip of the spear’ capacity, assaulting and breaching Syrian Army and allied positions in the most difficult parts of the battlefield. A few days later, they were in Damascus, raising the banner of Imarat Kavkaz — the defunct jihadist organization that had led the insurgency in the North Caucasus from 2007 to 2016.
The battles in Syria are now over — Assad is gone, his regime is destroyed. What is less clear is what the future holds for the Chechen and North Caucasian militants who helped topple him. There are three main possibilities worth addressing: staying in Syria, moving to Ukraine, or trying to bring the fight back home to the Caucasus.
The settle in Syria option
Settling in Syria is certainly an option available to them. HTS leader Jolani (now going by his birth name, Ahmed al-Sharaa) indicated shortly after the capture of Damascus that foreign fighters who had participated in the fight to overthrow Assad could be given Syrian citizenship if they so wished. A few weeks later, he gave high-ranking military posts to a number of foreign militants who had fought with or alongside HTS. One of these was Abdullah al-Dagestani, the leader of Jaysh al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar: he received the rank of colonel and a position in Syria’s new Ministry of Defence.
There are many reasons, however, to think that many of the rank and file under him may not choose such a path. Most of the North Caucasus militants in Syria have been fighting for many years; some have been jihadists for two decades or more, having previously fought in the insurgency against the Russian army in Chechnya itself in the 2000s. Fighting is all they know, and many would likely struggle to adapt to civilian life or prefer to continue the battle elsewhere. There is also serious trepidation about these foreign fighters in many parts of Syrian society, which will also likely create social pressures for the erstwhile migrant jihadists in the new Syria. The example of Junud al-Sham, an Idlib-based Chechen-dominated militant group led by commander Muslim al-Shishani that was largely destroyed by HTS after disagreements in 2021, also gives an ominous precedent to any Chechen fighters who might think of banding together to advance their interests. It would not be surprising if many therefore decided that their future lay elsewhere.
The Ukraine redeployment option
The most obvious avenue for those wishing to continue the fight is the ongoing war in Ukraine. Many Chechen commanders in Ukraine would surely welcome the presence of additional compatriots, especially as recruitment among the Chechen diaspora in Europe (numbered at perhaps as many as 400,000) has been ongoing for years. The addition of such battle-hardened fighters, who could seemingly be easily suborned to existing units under respected coethnic commanders, would be a significant boon to Ukraine’s combat capabilities as well. Chechen units in Ukraine have fought in the most difficult battles of the war, ranging from the defence of Kyiv to the battle of Bakhmut and the incursion into Kursk. The popularity of the cause of independent Chechnya, and North Caucasus issues in general, is growing in Ukraine, as seen with the recognition of Ichkeria (as independent and ‘temporarily occupied’) and the recognition of the Circassian genocide, making Ukraine just the second country (after Georgia) to recognize it. Amidst the major manpower crisis Ukraine is experiencing, adding several hundred experienced and dependable foreign fighters would make sense on a number of levels.
There are plenty of issues that make this unlikely, however. The first is simple geography. It would take logistical support and political will from allied countries to transport these fighters from Syria to Ukraine: they are unlikely to be able to simply transit through Moldova, Romania or Poland without the express participation of these countries, who would likely balk at cooperating with foreign jihadists. While Azhiev evidently managed this journey, one man is easier to move than one hundred. Chechens in Ukraine, even leadership figures, have also experienced problems related to visas and status: Poland, a key transit point, has continued to deport Chechen and Ingush refugees to Russia, where they face almost certain torture and worse. The most high-profile case is that of Islam Belokiev, a native of Ingushetia and the former press secretary for the Sheikh Mansur Battalion, who nevertheless faces extradition to Russia after he was detained while traveling to Poland. This possibility would give even the most fearless fighters pause.
The possibility of a Chechen return
There remains one other possibility: that of returning to Chechnya and the North Caucasus and attempting to relaunch the insurgency there. Many Chechen commanders have spoken openly of this possibility, spirits buoyed by Assad’s fall. Fati Barayev, son of the well-known Chechen separatist commander from the 1990s Arbi Barayev, released a video from Ukraine, addressing Ramzan Kadyrov with the threat that he will soon ‘meet the same fate as Bashar [Assad].’ Azhiev, speaking in an interview several weeks ago, stated that ‘the guerilla movement [in Chechnya] has always existed, and we are trying to make it more organized and large scale,’ adding that ‘people are tired of repression and are ready for anything.’ While this sentiment certainly exists (and was palpable even during the author’s own visits to Chechnya between 2015 and 2018), the scale of state repression in the republic is so intense that little in the way of active resistance remains. Several insurgent attacks did occur in Chechnya in recent months, however, while 2024 saw a resumption of attacks on security forces in Ingushetia and Dagestan to levels not seen since 2014: the coordinated attacks in Derbent and Makhachkala (Dagestan’s two largest cities) on June 23 resulted in 22 deaths in one of the largest mass casualty events in the region in years. Chechnya has been further destabilized by the waves of Ukrainian drone attacks on military facilities in Grozny and elsewhere in recent months, a phenomenon that is only picking up speed. But Kadyrov still possesses overwhelming force in the republic, and has even increased the number of military units under his command by nearly triple since the start of the current Ukraine war. Cracks are beginning to form, but the realities of the situation — in particular the challenging and unclear geography of physically reaching Chechnya from Syria — are not fundamentally different from what this author wrote two years ago.
In sum, none of these three options are particularly clear-cut. Ukraine is still probably the most likely, but there are significant hurdles involved there too, and the number of Chechens to make their way there from Syria over the next year will more likely be numbered in the dozens rather than hundreds. The recent uptick in attacks in the North Caucasus bears close watching, however, and as the Russian economy continues to crumble as the deleterious effects of the Ukraine war make themselves known, insurgent activity in Chechnya and beyond is only likely to grow.
