Boko Haram, the Caucasus Emirate and Al Shabab: Common and specific in practices of terrorism and political violence

Political science and area studies
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Abstract:

This paper studies the causes and efficacy of jihadism as a phenomenon and an analysis of three contemporary jihadist projects. On a number of key characteristics (organizational structure, way of mobilizing supporters, the nature of interaction with the population, methods of implemented violence, public opinion and the state reaction, features of propaganda and ideology) are “Boko Haram”, “the Caucasus Emirate” and “Al-Shabab” compared. The article also describes the process of Islamic revival in the North Caucasus and analyzed the situation of contemporary Russian Muslims and the reasons for the radicalization of Islam. It has shown that the Islamization of Russian regions took place as a struggle against of separatist movements. The author proposes an approach to minimizing the negative effects of the Islamization of Russia. It is also shown, that jihadist organizations go through several stages in its development, what can be useful in prediction of terrorist activity. In the end the author gives a forecast of the situation in Russia in the case of the jihadists’ success.