Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 31 – Former Russian
President Boris Yeltsin defined terrorism as any action which killed a large
number of people, but under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leading independent
specialist on its intelligence community says, terrorism has been redefined as “’a
policy of intimidation and pressure on the organs of power.’”
That change is something terrorist
groups understand and have adapted themselves to, according to Andrey Soldatov,
but for a variety of reasons, it has not led to the kind of changes in the
intelligence agencies that will allow them to counter the actions of individual
terrorists or small terrorist groups (lenta.ru/articles/2013/12/30/soldatov/).
And that in turn opens the door to the possibility
of more attacks of the kind seen in Volograd over the last several days,
especially if the regime pursues its populist approach in the wake of such attacks,
measures that will only flood with security services with phone calls from the
population and increase xenophobic attitudes in Russian society.
Such an approach, the editor of the Agentura.ru
site which follows the activities of the FSB and other Russian security
agencies told Lenta.ru “may pacify those who are dissatisfied with the
authorities, but [it] will hardly help in the struggle against suicide
terrorists” or protect the population from that kind of violence.
Approximately
a decade ago, the Russian special services were partially reformed, Soldatov
says, but at the same time “the radical Islamists in the North Caucasus also
re-arranged their structure,” shifting from “’quasi-mlitary formations,
regiments and brigades’ to small cells which are distinguished [as Volgograd
shows] by high effectiveness.”
The attacks in Volgograd have spread panic
in the population very much like what happened in Moscow in 1999, Soldatov
says, and led the regime to take measures that give the appearance of fighting
terrorism but that in fact are not especially helpful in that regard.
The use of druzhinniki might help
against a large group of armed people, but it will do little to stop individual
terrorists. Consequently, “today’s panicky calls for vigilance are insufficiently
effective” against the current threat. And the only thing they will produce
besides a flood of useless calls to the security agencies is “an explosive
growth of xenophobia.”
(That xenophobia is high and rising in
the Russian Federation is clear not only from anecdotal reporting but also in
the documentation provided in a report prepared by the SOVA analytic center in
its report released yesterday on such attitudes in recent months (sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/publications/2013/12/d28739/).)
“Eighty percent” of the task of
unmasking and stopping a suicide bomber in advance involves the collection of
information, Soldatov says, adding that “unfortunately,
now, the main problem [of the FSB] is [the need for and the lack of] rapid and
even instantaneous exchange of information between various subdivisions of
various agencies across the entire country.”
Russian special services have a major
problem in this regard, one that “has not been resolved up to now.” It is “connected
with the absence of trust people don’t trust the information which comes from
units o the FSB for Chechnya, Daghestanor Ingushetia.” And “Moscow chekists are
unwilling to share the information they have with the North Caucasus units.”
“Russian special services and
counter-terrorist units passed through a period of reforms in 2006-2007,”
Soldatov says, but these reforms were designed to fight the kind of threats
that terrorists had presented earlier – such as the appearance of large groups
of terrorists in one place – but no longer were.
At that time, the security agencies
forcused on improving coordination among their number within a particular
place, but “in the case of a suicide bomber, this arrangement doesn’t work, and
the bitter irony is that while Russianspecial services were conducted their
period of reform, the Islamists in the North Caucasus were carrying out their
own.”
By fighting the last war, Russian
special services were not ready for the smaller and often individual terrorist
threats,”and this is a very serious problem.
Moreover, except for Moscow and several units in the North Caucasus, “the
Russian FSB up to now lives in the framework of structurues created already in
Stalin’s time.”
“The regional services of the FSB are
the direct heirs of the NKVD which were created in order to process a largeumber
of people for repression.” That system “wasn’t
touched either in the times of Andropov or in the 1990s. Putin has been afraid
to touch it because it is unclear what should be done with it.” But one thing
is clear: it isn’t designed to deal with the current threat.
That is all the more so given Putin’s
redefinition of terrorism as an attack on the state. He is concerned in the
first instance about any possibility that “terrorists will dictate to the authorities
what the latter are to do.” But suicide bombers do not present that kind of
threat: they are directed against the population.
Despite the change in the nature of the
terrorist threat, Soldatov says, the FSB continues to do what it had done
earlier: round the clock patrols, monitoring of the phones, and a large number
of meetings. All this “creates the
appearance of activity but doesn’t give great results becausein this case only
a long-term strategy works.”
The current attacks in Volgograd, Soldatov
says, are “important not in and of themselves” because there are “no special
demands” from those who committed them, and there won’t be. Consequently, “one must
consider scenarios in which this series of terrorist actions is a diversionary attack
to distract attention” from something that may be done elsewhere.
But these attacks are
psychologically important, he continues, because “the militants show that they
can organize terrorist acts beyond the borders of the North Caucasus,” a
demonstration that the authorities cannot fail to respond to and thus will be
compelled to disperse their forces.
Asked if the FSB is up to this,
Soldatov acknowledges that it is “massive,” but he points out that “not all” of
those working there “are involved in the struggle with terrorism” and that it
is “impossible” to redirect the organs “in the course of one day.”
Soldatov concludes by noting tht
Doku Umarov, the North Caucasus underground leader, earlier said he would not
carry out terrorist actions in Russia because protests were taking place there.
But “then he lifted this embargo” in July.
That statement and the ensuing terrorist actions as in Volgograd raise
some important questions:
“Were there no explosions earlier
because the special services worked so well or because Umarov declared an
embargo? And does he now have the people and opportunititess to commit
terrorist acts in central Russia?”
“Unfortunately,” Soldatov says, the
answers to these questions are positive: “Yes, he has the people and the
possibilities” to carry out terrorist acts, and unfortunately, the FSB has not
come up with a way to stop him or them.
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