Moscow’s Terrorist Organization List Arbitrary and Incomplete, Russian Analyst Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 18 – For the last 12 years, the FSB has maintained a list of those organizations which Russian courts have identified as terrorist.  There are now 23 on the list (fsb.ru/fsb/npd/terror.htm), but it is arbitrary, incomplete and fails to provide any indication of the relative threat posed by these groups to Russia and the world, according to Pavel Gusterin.

            In a comment for Kavkazoved.info, the analyst who identifies himself as “an independent analyst” but who was at least until recently attached to the influential Russian Institute for Security Research (RISI), says that the official list is chronological but does not reflect the size of the threat each presents (kavkazoved.info/news/2015/07/17/rejting-terroristicheskih-organizacij-priznannyh-takovymi-rossijskimi-sudami.html).

            It remains unclear, Gusterin says, why the list does not include groups like Boko Haram, Ansar ul-Islam and others which have emerged, and why it continues to include groups that have been absorbed by others or simply disbanded.  How are Russian officials to distinguish between groups like that and those on the list?

            To remedy this situation, he offers his own rating of the groups on the list on the basis of the probability that a group will engage in terrorist activities against Russian institutions, recruit Russians to its ranks, or otherwise cause harm to the security of the Russian Federation and its allies.

            Gusterin’s list is as follows:

1.      ISIS

2.      The Caucasus Emirate

3.      The United Forces of the Mujahids of the Caucasus

4.      The Congress of Peoples of Ichkeria and Daghestan

5.      The Right Sector in Crimea

6.      Hizb ut-Tahrir

7.      The Islamic Party of Turkestan

8.      The Base (Al Qaeda)

9.      The Front for the Support of Greater Syria

10.  The Forces of Greater Syria

11.  The Taliban

12.  The Muslim Brotherhood

13.  Lashkar-i-Tayib

14.  Islamic Jihad

15.  The Society for the Rebirth of the Islamic Inheritance

16.  Jamaat-i-Islami

17.  Asbat al-Ansar

18.  Holy War

19.  Al-Gamaa al-Islamia

20.  The House of the Two Saints

21.  The Society ofSocial Reforms

22.  Al Qaeda

23.  The Syndicate of the Autonomous Military Terrorist Organization