Yet Another "Jihad" ???

Small Wars Journal has an article by Dr. Dmitry Shlapentokh which gives a point of view you won't see in the MSM (or coming from "The Gummint" either).

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-lesson-of-russian-jihad

The Lesson of Russian Jihad

Recently, groups of people in Russia, most of them people from Central Asia, engaged in a killing spree near Moscow. They placed iron spikes on a road and waited until a lone car was damaged. When the driver got out of the car, he was killed. This was a killing for the sake of killing since the attackers took no money or the car. The extremists were able to kill at least ten people before they were apprehended. There were no visible signs of any external connections or influences. One might assume that these people were self-radicalized and engaged in terrorism because they were Muslims and were influenced either directly or indirectly by radical Islamists. Still, radicalization is not necessarily related with Islam as Russian examples clearly demonstrate.

In 2010, groups of Russian youngsters in the Maritime Provinces—all of them ethnic Russians, and not converts to Islam—murdered several local policemen for political reasons. Killings such as this indicate that what is called a “lone wolf” or “lone wolf groups” could well emerge even in an authoritarian society with strong control over society and could engage in violence for a long time before they could be apprehended.

One might ask why the American public should be concerned with these events. The answer can be found in the case of the Tsarnaev brothers, two Chechens from Russia who engaged in the Boston marathon bombings. Most people in law enforcement, home security and other government agencies concerned with protecting the American homeland were clearly convinced that the Tsarnaevs were influenced from abroad. It was assumed that this drive/intention to engage in terrorist activities was due to Islamist influence from the Northern Caucasus. The notion that the outside influence, if any, might be minimal and that the brothers were radicalized by the conditions of American society was basically discarded. Still, both in the case of recent Moscow terrorists, “Maritime guerrillas” and the Tsarnaev brothers, the root of radicalization was mostly internal and might not necessarily be related either with external influences or even radical Islam. Understanding this is essential to understanding the possibilities of such scenarios in the United States. It must be understood that the “lone wolf” or “lone wolves”—the very small groups of homegrown terrorists—could emerge from a variety of groups in American society. And these groups hardly fit any public or law enforcement profile. One could also assert that the U.S. is more predisposed to the emergence of “lone wolves” than any other society, and these groups hardly fit any public or law enforcement profile. One could also add that “lone wolves” could create many more problems in the U.S. than in other societies, such as, for example, Russia.

American Society as a Breeding Ground for the “Lone Wolf”