On Sept. 27, the People's Protection Units (YPG) claimed responsibility for killing Abu Omar al-Chechen, a leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and 15 other members of the group. It could have been just another report on the never-ending skirmishes of the Syrian conflict if it hadn’t echoed miles away from the Middle East in another hotbed — the North Caucasus.
Conflicts, insurgency and terrorism plaguing the region since the breakup of the Soviet Union have always been aggravated by a complex ethnic mosaic. While Chechens and Circassians are probably the most well-known North Caucasus ethnic groups outside the region — due to their large diasporas abroad as well as two wars in the first case and the genocide issue in the latter — there’s one group whose regional profile is practically unknown but rising, which may have surprising implications for Russia’s Middle Eastern policy: the Kurds.