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The Stable Boy and Assassins in the Desert Kingdom, Part 1
This is the first post in a series about Ramzan Kadyrov's rise to power. The series is a breaking up of a longer piece I wrote in late 2009 melodramatically titled The Stable Boy and Assassins in the...
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The Scene: A Murder in Dubai
North Caucasus Caucus is pleased to present part 2 of our on going series on Ramzan Kadyrov. Today's portion describes the scene which is central to our story, the assassination of Sulim Yamadayev in...
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The Reconstruction of Chechnya and the Creation of a Political Frankenstein
After long delay, North Caucasus Caucus brings you part 3 of our on going series on Ramzan Kadyrov. Check out part 1 and part 2 to get background information.(Pictured above: Grozny, 2000)In May 2004,...
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Part 5: “King” Ramzan Consolidates his Power and Removes Rivals
Today North Caucasus Caucus is pleased to present part 5, "King" Ramzan Consolidates his Power and Removes his Rivals"of our on-going series on Ramzan Kadyrov entitled "The Stableboy and the Assassins...
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Update on Chechnya Reconstruction Corruption
The corruption surrounding the reconstruction funds for Chechnya (as described on North Caucasus Caucus here) continues. Colonel Oleg Kazyurin, who occupied the post of deputy director of the state...
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Drone Warfare and the North Caucasus
I listened to a very interesting episode of On Point with Tom Ashbrook, a daily NPR show based in Boston the other day. The episode, entitled "The Drone War Goes Global", discussed the use and...
View ArticleCollection of Articles about Assassination of Aslan Usoyan aka Ded Hasan
There have been a number of articles since the death of Aslan Usoyan aka Ded Hasan on 16 January. I am not really providing any commentary. I decided to collect here all the articles I have seen so far...
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Test Your Knowledge of Azerbaijan (circa 2004)
Today I found some old issues of "Monitor" magazine from 2004 in my desk. This Russian language weekly magazine, which was quite critical of the government, was popular in Baku during its two year run...
View ArticleViolence is Down in the North Caucasus (Statistically Speaking)
Following the daily news from the North Caucasus, it can seem as if there is just an unending stream of violence that, as an outside observer does not seem to change. However, the 03 April 2013...
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Insurgent video on Tsarnayev's "Terrorists" Playlist
Note: First and foremost, this post is simply to describe the video which has now been deleted from YouTube. It does not imply any connection between the people in the video and Tamerlan Tsarnayev.Like...
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Tsarnaevs, Dagestan's Field Commanders and the Export of Insurgency
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators that the brothers learned to make the bombs from instructions from the Internet and said that neither he, nor Tamerlan ever met or had any contact with any...
View Article“Remember Ours in Chechnya”
Note: Considering the events of this month in Boston and the renewed interest in Chechnya, I thought I would post a portion of a larger piece I wrote back in late 2009.INTRODUCTIONThe internationalist...
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Political Economy of Turkish Islamist Parties: 1970-1990
Sisli neighborhood of Istanbul With the protests around Turkey and the first major stumble by the AKP, I thought I would write something giving some historical context to the discussions of...
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Caucasus Emirate Will Try to Stop Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics
The AnnouncementThis is a very, very early look and I am sure it is full of typos, but I wanted to get everything together as nothing was out in English yet and Egypt and Snowden were dominating the...
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Q2 2013: Casualties Continue to Decline in North Caucasus
Very short post today. I calculated the causalities for the conflict in the North Caucasus for the second quarter of 2013 (April-June) using data from the independent news website, Caucasian Knot. I...
View ArticleMeaning Behind Re-Shuffling in Azerbaijan's Government
There are some major changes happening in some parts of the Azerbaijani government - most notably in the Ministry of Defense. Joshua Kucera at the Bug Pit already did a good post on the replacement of...
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The Politics of Ashura in Azerbaijan
On Friday, 14 November 2013, Ashura mourning ceremonies were held in a number of cities across Azerbaijan, passing without incident. There was a noticeable departure from previous years when the...
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More Than Just Corruption
Stateless Media put out a short piece last week about Gular Ahmadova, the parliamentarian from the New Azerbaijan Party who was caught on a hidden video discussing the purchasing of a seat in...
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Top Ten Most Important Trends in Azerbaijan in 2013
The following are the top ten trends in Azerbaijan over the last year. The list was based on the top ten list complied by the BBC Azerbaijani Service and a Twitter conversation between myself and some...
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Possible Signs of Internationalization of the Caucasus Emirate
Russian language text translation of Kebekov's Arabiclanguage video to fighters in Syria. Source - VdagestanThe weeks during and after the Sochi Olympics were relatively quiet in the North Caucasus,...
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Thoughts on Recent Events in Nagorno-Karabakh
Many Azerbaijanis are using this symbol as theirsocial media profiles to show their mourning overthe large number of soldiers killed, Source - TwitterAs I read today's news about large number of...
View Article2015 Update
I realized that while I have published a couple articles and made some first forays into doing podcasts, I have posted anything on here since last summer. Below is a quick round up of everything I have...
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Were foreigners involved in the Nord-Ost hostage crisis?
The other day Sam Heller (@AbuJamajem) alerted me to some interesting tweets from March 2014 by Iyad al-Sha'ar (aka Abu al-Hassan) [reproduced below]. al-Sha'ar is a high level commander in Ahrar...
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Islamic State in Turkey: Network Charts and Detention Maps (UPDATE: 06APR16)
Below is a chart covering the Islamic State's Turkish network. It is based on open-source reporting compiled by myself, Noah Blaser (@nblaser18), Aaron Stein (@aaronstein), and Has Avrat (@hasavrat). I...
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An Azerbaijani foreign fighter killed in Somalia?
It has been quite a while since I posted anything but a friend of mine who works on East Africa sent me a strange story and I thought I would do a quick post. The Somali news outlet, Halbeeg, reported...
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