Reforms By Russia To Tackle Terrorism

It is right to condemn the Moscow bombers, but also to look for new ideas for the north Caucasus

SORROW and condemnation are the right responses to the deaths of innocent people at the hands of terrorists, whether in London and New York or in Madrid and Moscow. This week’s terrorist bombings on the Moscow metro killed at least 39 people and injured many more.

For all its problems, the Russian capital held together. There was no panic, medical help was swift and the work of the emergency services was better co-ordinated than in the past. Moscow, which has lived through a theatre siege in 2002 and several previous bombings, including two in the metro in 2004, has learned to cope . Muscovites took the attack in their stride, and even the authorities responded more humanely. President Dmitry Medvedev observed a minute’s silence and he visited one of the bombed metro stations to lay flowers. In a country where leaders have a habit of disappearing from view at times of disaster, this counted for something.

There were a few ugly incidents, including several reported attacks on metro travellers who looked Muslim. And marauding taxi drivers took advantage of the chaos to raise their prices tenfold. Equally unpalatable were the attempts by some politicians to capitalise on the tragedy to advance their own pro- or anti-Kremlin agendas. It only adds to the offence that there is no room for a public debate about the causes and consequences of such attacks.

The Russian authorities are surely right to suspect that the two female perpetrators had links to Muslim terrorists from the north Caucasus. Despite two ferocious wars in Chechnya, despite the imposition of Ramzan Kadyrov as an autocrat in charge of the republic and despite Vladmir Putin’s earthy pledge “to rub out the terrorists in the shithouse”, violence across the region has not abated. Rather, it has spread from Chechnya to other republics, especially Ingushetia and Dagestan, which have lapsed into a state of near-civil-war. Bombings, shootings and kidnappings are common. Most go unsolved. Attacks by insurgents are no longer treated in Moscow or in the outside world as terrorist attacks on Russia.

Solving the Caucasus conundrum.........

Few parts of the world have as miserable a history as the north Caucasus. Last September Mr Medvedev identified it as Russia’s biggest domestic problem. After this week’s attacks, he and Mr Putin pledged again to destroy the terrorists without wavering and to the end. Yet he surely knows that political repression and police and military action alone will not be enough to bring peace to the region—or to the rest of Russia.

There are two obvious transmitters of terrorism through the north Caucasus and into the Russian heartland. The first is the lawless and brutal behaviour of Russia’s security forces, which tends only to strengthen popular support for a small group of terrorists. The second is widespread corruption, which allows the terrorists not only to move with mystifying ease around Russia but also to secure a steady source of income. Corrupt officials steal money that Moscow sends to the region, as Mr Medvedev himself has conceded, and they buy off terrorist cells to leave them alone.

Yet to tackle these two faults would require broader reforms in Russia. And even a big change in policy might not stop terrorist attacks. Defusing mines that were created over decades will take time. The bombs on the Moscow metro were not the first and, sadly, are unlikely to be the last. Even so, it would be tragic if Russia’s leaders used them to justify further centralising power, more crackdowns on political freedom and greater powers for the state’s security forces. Far from making Russia safer, that would only make it more vulnerable.

Source: Economist.