During the Chechen crisis Russia suffered much at the hands of the rebels. In 2002, Chechen rebels killed 170 people in a hostage situation in Moscow. Over the years, however, the intensity of their attacks tapered off, though it did not complete cease. In 2003, there were the twin suicide strikes that claimed 34 lives, threatening the holding of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. In 2011, one of Moscow’s airports came under attack, which was claimed by insurgents from North Caucasus. In that attack, 37 people lost their lives. Of late, though, incidence of terrorism has mushroomed all over the region where Russia felt safe and secure. But that was a kind of calm in the eye of the storm. This past Monday, 11 persons were killed and several injured, some critically, in a bomb explosion in a metro as it was passing through a tunnel between two stations in St. Petersburg. No one has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, though it is believed to be a suicide-bombing by a terrorist who has been identified as Central Asian, and possibly a returnee from Syria where some 2,500 Russian nationals are fighting for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Russia’s deep involvement in Syria on the side of President Assad, “is a matter of defending our own security... Our main aim is to make sure that our citizens who went out there (to fight with ISIS) never come back,” said a member of Duma, Russia’s parliament. But someone from the Syrian front seemed to have returned from Syria and exploded himself in the metro in St. Petersburg.

Now that Al-Baghdadi’s “caliphate” is on the retreat in its heartland of Syria and Iraq, there is every reason to believe that the volunteers who joined him from all over world would be returning to their countries. War-tested as they are, the possibility cannot be ruled out that their next battlefields would be the very countries they come from. Russia would be no exception. And they are not in small numbers – at least 7,000 nationals from the former Soviet republics, including Russia, have joined militant groups in Iraq and Syria, mostly the ISIS. It was Chechen al-Shishani who played a key role in the Islamic State’s initial successes. Who joined the ISIS from the rest of world, including non-Muslim countries, are definitely far greater in number. So even if the ISIS caliphate is uprooted from Mosul, as seems to be likely, ISIS-inspired terrorism is not going to end anytime soon. On the other hand, there remains the possibility that on return to their countries the soldiers of Al-Baghdadi’s caliphate would try enforcing their ideology, and resultantly there would be more incidents like the blast in the St. Petersburg metro. To engage Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq meant fighting the enemy within well-defined limits of time and space. How unpredictable would be the outcome should that fight erupts on dozens of fronts – a likelihood that cannot be ruled out following the fall of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. Imperative it is that the countries, particularly those from which ISIL volunteers come, should join hands and firm up a plan of action and devise ways and means to confront them on their home fronts. Putting in place a counter-terrorism mechanism is certainly a must-do option. But no less critical is the imperative to de-radicalize the erstwhile ISIL volunteers. What we face today is a battle for minds and hearts – the enemy has to be defeated not only on terra firma but also on the fronts of mind and heart.