Putin’s Effort to Prevent Terrorism at Sochi Games Backfiring Now in Middle East and Caucasus

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 21 – Vladimir Putin received enormous credit for preventing any terrorist incidents from interfering with the 2014 Sochi Olympics, but the method he adopted – helping jihadists to leave the Caucasus for the Middle East prior to the games and then blocking their return to the Russian Federation – is now backfiring in both places.

            Last week, the International Crisis Group released a 53-page report “Jihad for Export” (crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/europe/caucasus/Russian%20translations/238-the-north-caucasus-insurgency-and-syria-an-exported-jihad-russian.pdf) that has attracted attention in Russian media. (Seerufabula.com/news/2016/03/17/sochi-terror and kommersant.ru/doc/2939336.)

            Putin’s policy helped reduce terrorist incidents in the North Caucasus at the time of the Olympiad but only by intensifying Islamist radicalism in the Middle East and further radicalizing those jihadists in the North Caucasus, the ICG report suggests. This is yet another example of the way in which Putin’s pursuit of his short term goals often entails larger and longer term disasters.

            In support of its argument, the ICG report quotes a source in the law enforcement organs of Daghestan who said that “of course, we opened the borders and helped [the Islamist radicals] to go there and then closed the border behind them by introducing criminal responsibility for participation in such militant activities.”

            According to that source, “everyone is happy: they are dying there on their way to Allah, we have no terrorist acts here, and we are bombing them” at the present time in Syria.

            The Moscow-assisted departure of jihadists from the North Caucasus in the months before the Sochi Games not only led to a decline in the number of terrorist incidents there but allowed the Russian force structures, after the world’s attention shifted away from Sochi, to take draconian steps against those remaining in the North Caucasus.

            Although “Kommersant” called the ICG conclusion that “the Russian authorities to ensure the security of the Sochi Olympiad made possible the departure of extremists from the southern region of [Russia],” the Moscow paper itself quoted a Russian political scientist, Ruslan Martagov who said that is exactly what happened.

            Martagov told the paper that “In Daghestan there were not a few cases when people connected with the special services unselfishly gave foreign passports to young people who wanted to go to Turkey and then to Syria,”  where their arrival boosted the ranks of Islamist radicals and helped spark the refugee exodus.

            Meanwhile, in the North Caucasus itself, the Russian authorities in the second half of 2014 -- that is after the Sochi Olympiad -- intensified their moves against Islamist radicals there. Even as they blocked the return of jihadists from Syria, the authorities composed lists of those they felt were already or were likely to become disloyal and arrested many of them.

            But as both the ICG report notes and as “Kommersant” seconds, these actions have not led to a further decline in radicalism in the North Caucasus but instead have led, in the Moscow newspaper’s words, “to still greater activism” on the part of the militants. To the extent that is true, the Sochi Games continue in this sphere as well to cast a dark shadow on the region.

Ukraine Should Shift from Cyrillic to Latin Script, Former Verkhovna Rada Deputy Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 21 – To solidify its break from a Russia-dominated space, Ukraine should shift from the Russian-based Cyrillic alphabet Moscow imposed on it to a script based on the Latin alphabet used by European countries, according to Aleksandr Donyi, the head of the Last Barricade social organization and a former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada.

            He has been pushing this idea on his Facebook page, arguing that the Latin script developed for Ukrainian by a Czech linguist in the 19^th century not only is more adequate to the sound values of Ukrainian but also represents more accurately Ukraine’s position in the world (turkist.org/2016/03/ukraine-cyrillic-latin.html).

            Such a shift would be difficult and expensive and would certainly outrage Moscow which has opposed all shifts away from Cyrillic in other post-Soviet states, most recently in Kazakhstan (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/02/kazakhstan-recommits-to-dropping.html). But it is not as marginal and exotic an idea as many in the West may think.

            Not only were Ukrainian texts of the 16^th and 17^th centuries written in the Latin script, but several scholars in the 19^th century – Iosif Lozinskyi of Lviv and Joseph Irecek of Prague – worked out a modernized Latin script for Ukrainian. And in the 19^th and early 20^th century, Ukrainians living in Austro-Hungary used a Latin script.

            Donyi says that he is encouraged by Kazakhstan’s decision and that of other post-Soviet Turkic republics to shift away from the Russian script Moscow imposed on them in the 1920s and 1930s and by the fact that many Slavic peoples, including the Poles, the Slovenes, the Slovaks, and the Czechs use the Latin script.

            The benefits to Ukraine of such a shift are obvious: it would mark a final break with the Moscow-centered state to the east and put Ukraine on a trajectory more like Poland and the Czech Republic. But there are real costs beyond those imposed on the state by such a shift – and they will have to be considered before any such step is made.

            On the one hand, it is virtually certain that ethnic Russians in Ukraine would insist on retaining the Cyrillic script of their nation, something that would exacerbate the tensions between the two peoples by underscoring the civilizational divide between them and possibly create conditions for even more Moscow-orchestrated Russian separatism in Ukraine.

            And on the other, every time a country changes alphabets, it not only tends to cut off its population from the past when a different script was used but leads to a decline in reading of the media and literature because many people familiar with the older script find it uncomfortable to say no more to use the new one.

            Over time, these difficulties can be overcome; but in the short term, they may be prohibitively large.  At the very least, however, talking about shifting away from a Russian alphabet that the Russian empire in its various guises imposed on Ukraine is a useful next step in Ukraine’s turn away from Eurasia toward Europe.

           

To Visitors to the Window on Eurasia Site

Today, I am resuming my Windows on Eurasia series.  I want to thank all of you who wrote me during my recent illness and look forward to resuming our conversations.  Paul Goble

TO VISITORS OF WINDOWS ON EURASIA

I am happy to report that my heart surgery was successful and that I am recovering well. I hope to return to the production of Windows sometime later this week. Many thanks for all your messages. Paul Goble