IS Al-Qaeda's remake but with more militants - Moscow
MOSCOW. Aug 25 (Interfax) - The Islamic State (IS), a terrorist organization, outnumbers Al-Qaeda and is its remake, said Ilya Rogachyov, Director of the Russian Foreign Minister's Department of New Challenges and Threats.
"I think if you compare a criterion such as the number of militants 'in the field' who have been physically fighting on the side of the IS, now this structure is significantly superior to Al-Qaeda," he said in an interview with Interfax.
"Unlike Al-Qaeda, these bandits have seized significant territories and installed their own administration," the diplomat said.
He could not say how much more powerful than Al-Qaeda the IS is financially, adding that "their sources, as far as I understand, are reliable."
At the same time, Rogachyov noted that an analysis of this organization "should take into account the specifics of how the IS came into existence."
"You have rightly drawn parallels with Al-Qaeda in a sense that I consider the IS its remake. Like in a movie: a film was shot, thirty years later a new one can be made. It might involve other actors, some circumstances might be different, but the plot remains largely the same," the diplomat said.
"Just like Al-Qaeda was once reared to help achieve certain goals and objectives in Afghanistan, the IS emerged approximately in the same fashion," he added.
Rogachyov recalled that "some countries overwhelmingly believe that the IS in Iraq are terrorists and those in the neighboring state are the radical opposition."
"But in any case, if not directly nurtured, the Syrian opposition, including the group that has become the IS, was under the political cover of influential foreign forces," he added.
"Thus, a situation where an armed force is being created to address certain issues in the interests of a certain group of nations, and subsequently the rest will have to fight this force by engaging the whole world, the UN (United Nations) and so on - this is a well-known algorithm. This is why I have been talking about a remake," Rogachyov said.