“One masked militant said that the video was the militants’ final address from Syria and Iraq and that their next video could be filmed ‘from the mountains of Tavildara in central Tajikistan, or the Tajik capital, Dushanbe — or even from the Kremlin.'”
These are the same kind of threats that Islamic State jihadis have made all over. Somewhere, sometime, they’re going to make good on these threats.
“Tajik IS Militants Threaten ‘Jihad’ At Home (Or Even In The Kremlin),” by Joanna Paraszczuk, RFE, March 23, 2015:
A group of Tajik militants who claim to be fighting with the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria has posted a new video in which it threatens to transfer its activities from the Middle East and fight in Tajikistan, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, Radio Ozodi, . [sic]
The 16-minute video was shared on the Russian-language Odnoklassniki social network on March 19 and shows a group of 16 masked militants, most of whom appear to be Tajiks. It is not possible to independently verify the date or the exact location in which the video was shot.
Tajikistan’s security authorities have yet to comment on the video, Radio Ozodi reported.
One masked militant said that the video was the militants’ final address from Syria and Iraq and that their next video could be filmed “from the mountains of Tavildara in central Tajikistan, or the Tajik capital, Dushanbe — or even from the Kremlin.”
One of the men in the video appears to be a notorious Tajik militant, known as Nusrat Nazarov or Abu Kholodi Kulobi, who says he is 38 years old and hails from the village of Charmagon in the Kulob district of Tajikistan. Nazarov claims to be now living in a suburb of Raqqa, an IS stronghold in Syria.
Nazarov addressed the Tajik government and pro-government religious leaders, saying that they would be “held accountable” for actions carried out against militants in the Central Asian state.
In with Radio Ozodi, Nazarov said that his goal is to introduce Shari’ah law throughout the world, including among Native Americans.
Nazarov has also claimed that there are as many as 2,000 Tajiks fighting in IS, and that around 500 have been killed, figures that are almost certainly highly exaggerated.
The State Committee for the National Security of Tajikistan said in November that as many as 300 Tajiks have gone to join the fighting in Syria and Iraq. Edward Lemon from the U.K.’s University of Exeter, who researches and tracks Tajik militants in Iraq and Syria, of over 60 documented Tajiks in Syria….