While we're fighting the Islamic State, a.k.a. ISIS, in Iraq and Syria, and American officials tout the alleged danger of an attack on the US homeland, in Ukraine Washington and the Caliphate are fighting on the same side. A remarkable
series of articles by Marcin Mamon in
The Intercept has documented an aspect of the Ukraine conflict that no one else has paid any attention to: the role played by the "Dudayev Battalion," a fighting force of radical Islamists consisting of Chechens, but also including fighters from throughout the Caucasus as well as some Ukrainians.
The keys to Ukraine's Islamist underground were handed to Mamon by a contact in Istanbul, "Khalid," who commands the ISIS branch there. "Our brothers are there,"
he told Mamon, and the reporter traveled to Ukraine where he was put in touch with a contact named Ruslan, who led him to Munayev's clandestine camp.
Named after the first "president" of breakaway Chechnya,
Dzhokhar Dudaev, the Dudayev Battalion was commanded by
Isa Munayev, recently killed in a east Ukraine. Imbued with a fanatical hatred of the Russians, who are backing the rebels in the east, Munayev's men also feel they are paying back a debt, since the ultra-nationalist Right Sector battalions now fighting for Kiev apparently helped the Chechens in the past. Right Sector is an
openly neo-fascist paramilitary group which provided much of the muscle that made the coup against Viktor Yanukovych, former Ukrainian president, possible. Organized into various battalions, including the notorious
Azov Brigade, they idolize the World War II collaborators with the Nazis, who fought Soviet troops: the ultra-nationalists have been accused of carrying out
atrocities in the Donbass, as well as
terrorizing their political opponents on the home front. According to Mamon, they also have been involved in fighting the Russians in far-off Chechnya, where former Right Sector bigwig Oleksandr Muzychko fought alongside Munayev and "the brothers" against the Russians. As Ruslan told Mamon:
"I am here today because my brother, Isa, called us and said, 'It's time to repay your debt. There was a time when the brothers from Ukraine came [to Chechnya] and fought against the common enemy, the aggressor, the occupier."
Comment: "Another U.S.-backed and instigated color revolution?!" you may ask, or exclaim. "They're all over the friggin' place!" you might add. And you'd be correct in expressing shock, outrage, and anger over such a realization. But one should no longer be surprised. It seems that the U.S.'s number one export, besides arms, is the instigation and support of racist and fascistic governments that, under the banner of democracy and democratic values, reduce some segment of its citizenry to a 'sub-human' status, and that quite often adopts 'nationalistic' and economic plans that serve the interests of Imperial hegemony only; the 'color revolution' template being adapted to meet the particular country's and its people's worst predilections. Why send soldiers or stormtroopers when you can get the targeted country to act like Nazis themselves -- even if they're Buddhist monks.