Recently in Armenia Category

Caucasian contribution to the funding of jihad
by Joseph “Soso” Zaalishvili

Anyone who thinks that jihad is a just war that simply begins one day, he is profoundly mistaken.

Jihad involves the teaching of Islam, the spiritual state of the Mujahedeen, and even more importantly, a lot of money.

I want to present one of the schemes for the financing of jihad which is well tested in the Caucasus.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, economic crisis reigned in the Caucasus. The population of the North Caucasus regions of Russia (Chechnya, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Ingushetia) and the new states (Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan) needed new jobs and economic stability.

Jihadists have always considered the Caucasus their territory, and actively began economic expansion to help the people of the Caucasus in the development of small businesses.

Citizens of Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Chechnya and other Muslim parts of the Caucasus received goods produced in Arab countries and Pakistan as practically free, as gifts.

A senior official of Chechen jihadist intelligence explained the origin of these items: these products were zakat (Islamic assistance to the needy). Goods sold in the Caucasus funded jihad in the Caucasus.

According to him, in the jihadist movement, there are special economic groups whose responsibilities include the establishment of business relations with the authorities of countries. So it was in Azerbaijan and Georgia. The jihadists fed the people with cheap products and earned money to continue the jihad.

In the Christian republics of the Caucasus, such as Georgia and Armenia, the jihadists are trying to establish business relationships with the law enforcement authorities of these republics, as serious business in post-Soviet republics is invested in the representatives of the power structures.

This scheme of funding jihad has been successfully operating today.

A significant portion of financial assistance that Georgia receives from the United States is spent on the purchase of household goods and food products manufactured in Islamic countries such as Iran, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.

Georgian armed forces take part in anti-terror operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Georgian nation is proud of it, while the government is encouraging economic relations with Iran.

If the international community does not treat seriously the issue of the financing of jihad in this way, the economy of the Caucasian republics so reaches out to the financial interests of the jihadists that they will lobby their political interests, and serious signs of this already exist in Georgia. There is a visa-free regime including Iran, Turkey and the North Caucasus, while in Georgia there is no official list of terrorist organizations, such as Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, the Caucasian Imamate, etc. In Georgia, they are not officially considered terrorist organizations.

It overshadows an Islamic shrine. And who needs reconciliation with those kuffar Armenians, anyway? Islamization of Turkey Update: "Turkey begins dismantling monument," from AP, April 26 (thanks to Block Ness):

Workers have begun dismantling a giant sculpture meant to promote reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia....

The hulking monument had been criticized in Turkey because it overshadows an Islamic shrine in the area. During a visit to the site in January, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called it a "freak," prompting moves by local officials to have it removed.

From VOA News via the Texas Panhandle, "Armenia Rejects Proposal From Turkey To Join Study Of WWI Events"

WASHINGTON - Last month, Turkey made an unprecedented gesture by offering its neighbor Armenia to conduct a joint study of the historic events that took place during World War One in Anatolia, the Asian part of Turkey. Armenia rejected the proposal.

Peter Balakian, author of several books on Armenian history, says ample research has already been done. He notes that many studies, including one by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, concluded that mass killings and deportations of Armenians from Anatolia under the direction of the Ottoman government amount to genocide.

"I think there is a growth in recognition of the Armenian genocide worldwide - the Canadian government last year, the French government in 2000, the Swiss government last year, the Danish Parliament, the Italian Parliament the Vatican and many countries in Latin America and the Middle East as well. It is the result of education, of the fact that scholars have done increasingly brilliant work over the last couple of decades, writing objective, detached histories of the Armenian genocide."

According to Armenians, on April 24, 1915, the government headed by the Young Turks , the ruling political party of the Ottoman Empire, began to deport and massacre its Armenian Christian minority population, approximately 2.5 million people. Turkey denies that there was a planned campaign to eliminate Armenians from Anatolia. It says that both sides suffered losses in the war. Atrocities may have occurred, they say, but only at the hands of rogue groups or individuals, Turkish as well as Armenian. Turkey says no more than 300-thousand Armenians perished in the clashes.

Turkish-born Muge Gocek, a historical sociologist at the University of Michigan, says ordinary Turks have denied the massacres for many years because they haven't had access to their historic documents.

"Turkish society knows very little about what happened in its own past for two reasons, says Professor Gocek. "One is because of the alphabet reform that happened in Turkey in 1928, where the Arabic script was abandoned and Latin script was adopted. Turks cannot read their own past historical documents. And the second is that things from the past were selectively translated and therefore very little scholarly information has been made available to them about the Armenian question."...