When two women believed to be from Russia?s restive North Caucasus exploded themselves during rush hour traffic in subway stations in central Moscow, it brought back dreaded memories of the 1990s and early 2000s, when the capital?s soft targets were pulverised by countless terrorist attacks.
The string of bombings in Moscow and other major Russian cities up to 2004 was a blowback from ongoing counter-insurgency wars in Chechnya and Dagestan, where historic resentments of Turkic Muslims absorbed into Russia since Czarist times have triggered rebellions. The only difference between then and now is that Monday?s carnage occurred well after the Russian government declared an end to the war against Islamic separatists in Chechnya.
The question, when the Kremlin announced formal victory in Chechnya last year, was whether it was a public relations gimmick or if the impoverished and still-discriminated-against Muslim republics of the Caucasus were finally at peace. The answer came in the form of a new wave of deadly attacks on Russian policemen in Dagestan starting in 2009 by Islamist outfits pushed out of Chechnya. The stunning November 2009 bombing of the Nevsky express train between Moscow and St Petersburg was claimed by the ?Caucasian Mujahideen?, which operates under the leadership of a self-proclaimed ?Emir?, Doku Umarov.
As investigators decipher closed-circuit TV footage from the Moscow subway stations to piece together the identities of the female suicide bombers, attention is being drawn to Umarov?s ?black widow? unit and the ?Garden of Paradise? martyrs brigade. In February, he warned that the unit had been replenished and would bring the war to Russian cities and homes. The latest strikes in the heart of Moscow are very likely to be acts of revenge undertaken by zealously indoctrinated women who may have lost loved ones to Russian operations in the Muslim south. The objective was to make Russians in safe territory feel the pain that Chechens and Dagestanis allegedly face on a daily basis under the iron grip of Moscow.
The attacks also serve the terrorist purpose of raising serious doubts about the efficacy of the Russian government?s strategy of installing staunch pro-Kremlin strongmen as ?presidents? of Chechnya and Dagestan. These puppet rulers, like the notorious Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya, have been accused by locals of massive human rights abuses and behaviour akin to medieval tyrants who brooked no dissent. With bosses in Moscow who emerged from the ruthless Soviet security apparatus and constitute a tight-knit circle around PM Vladimir Putin, the regional satraps in the Caucasus have licence to liquidate all resistance without bothering about consequences.
Two particularly shocking high-profile incidents of assassinations of fearless female journalists Anna Politkovskaya and Natalia Estemirova, who had been covering the repression of Moscow-appointed overlords in the Caucasus, brought out to the wider world the lethal power granted to state-backed militias that are totally unaccountable in the war zones. From the point of view of insurgents, the greater the number of terrorist attacks in Russia?s urban centres, the bigger the challenge will be to Putin?s claim of restoring law and order in the Muslim south through killing machines like Kadyrov.
The resilience of Islamist militancy in the Caucasus, despite nearly two decades of heavy-handed Russian military operations, is a central problem that stared at Putin as he vowed on Tuesday that terrorists ?would be dredged from the bottom of the sewers?. A former KGB spy in eastern Germany with illiberal instincts, Putin is a hardliner who utilised a previous round of terrorist attacks in 2004 to over-centralise power in his own hands and snatch autonomy from the regions.
The few independent Russian media outlets that survive on razor?s edge have been debating whether the Moscow subway blasts will become a pretext for another series of oppressive laws and regulations to help consolidate Putin?s Soviet-style control over Russian society.
Some pundits are of the opinion that anti-terror legislation and the police state-like behaviour of the authorities already exist to the brim and that there is no need for the Russian elite to resort to more of the same.
Electorally, given the tight restrictions on opposition parties and Putin?s popularity as a tough ruler who fits the so-called Russian psyche?s yearning for autocrats, it is clear that this week?s Moscow bombings will not cause any major damage to the PM?s United Russia Party. Rare public protests against Putin?s handling of the economy since the global financial crisis of 2008 recently lit a spark, but security lapses have not managed to become a rallying point for greater discontent. Fears that the subway attacks will constrict Russian civil liberties may be legitimate. But the status quo ante was not much freer in the first place.
While Russia?s failure to find non-coercive solutions to religious secessionism in the Caucasus is the structural cause of the Moscow blasts, it is worth asking if there is an external hand fanning the renewed bouts of terrorism. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov speculated that the subway attacks were masterminded by Al Qaeda, which is entrenched in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and whose ?route leads to the Caucasus?. Arab guest fighters have indeed been active in Chechnya and Dagestan and the link could point to another spill over from the ?Af-Pak? theatre into Russia?s underbelly.
The Kremlin will do well to adopt a dual-track response?one domestic, to calm the waters in the Caucasus through political settlements, and the other foreign, through joint diplomatic and intelligence coordination with fellow victims of ?Af-Pak? externalities like Iran and India.
The author is associate professor of world politics at the OP Jindal Global University