Military political scientist: There are many Azerbaijani immigrants among IS militants; outflow of citizens continues
There are a lot of Azerbaijanis Among the "Islamic State" (IS) militants; in the same time the outflow of the citizens of this country to IS continue, Azerbaijani news portal "Minval.az" reports, referring to an interview of the military political scientist Alexander Perendzhiev with the "Echo.az" site.
"Official Baku should remove the reasons for leaving their citizens in the ISIL camp. And fight against those who have returned to their homeland in order to destabilize the country and in the South Caucasus as a whole," said Perenjiyev.
To "Echo.az" question how Azerbaijanis appear among the IS militants, the analyst Arabist Alizadeh replied, "Unfortunately, there are a lot of illiterate young people in the country. Therefore, they are easily caught by the ISIL supporters. Besides that, many people in the country have no faith that something good may happen, considering the not very successful social status, level of corruption, etc.," he noted.
According to him, they just lose their faith and, in their opinion, it will be possible to improve the situation only with the weapons in their hands. "It is unfavourable to fight with them by administrative methods, it will only lead to even more negative result, you need to solve all the above mentioned problems, which bring people to despair," said Alizadeh.
It’s not the first time that Azerbaijani Salafis or Wahhabis fight among various terrorist groups in Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to the Azerbaijani news agency "Vesti.az", the total number of the Azerbaijani terrorists in these countries is 300. Thus, according to the Azerbaijani portal "FaktHeber" about 200 Azerbaijani terrorists have been killed in Syria over the past three years. The media was also repeatedly reporting about the elimination of commanders among the Azerbaijani terrorists.
The ties between international terrorist groups and Azerbaijan originated in the early 1990s. By that time the leadership headed by Heydar Aliyev involved the international terrorists and members of radical groups from Afghanistan (Gulbuddin Hekmatyar group), Turkey ("Grey Wolves" and others.), Chechnya (grouping Basayev Raduev, etc) in war the war against the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh and some other regions. The international terrorists found reliable for them ties in Azerbaijan, recruitment was conducted among the Azerbaijanis, who were then sent to Afghanistan and to the North Caucasus, where they participated in fights against the international coalition forces and Russian structures. In recent years, citizens of Azerbaijan are actively involved in terrorist and extremist activities in Russia, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.