Opinion Mountains of terror

The first suicide bombings began in 2000,after Russia’s victory in the Second Chechen War. In 2002,the siege of Moscow’s Dubrovka Theatre brought to light the cult of female Chechens ready for death. The first female suicide bombers surfaced a year later,in an attempt on Akhmad Kadyrov,the pro-Moscow Chechen leader and father of Kremlin-backed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. In February 2004,came the first big one: an attack on the Zamoskvoretskaya line of the Moscow metro that killed 40. In August,a woman blew herself up outside Rizhskaya station,killing 10. After that attack,came Monday’s. Meanwhile,women militants had taken part in the Beslan school siege in September 2004 in North Ossetia.

Mostly Chechen and Ingush,these women terrorists lost husbands,fathers,brothers,sons at Russian hands. A couple of the women in the Dubrovka siege were reportedly victims of rape by Russian soldiers. From brutal victimisation to terror is the route that only a minority of the overwhelmingly traumatised Chechen women took. Yet,for Muscovites,if there’s a suicide bombing and the bomber is female,the trail,axiomatically,leads to the North Caucasus.

A twist in the tale this time,however,taking one back to the question of repositioning Russia’s terror narrative,is Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s claim that militants originating along the Af-Pak border may have facilitated Monday’s attacks. Moscow’s growing agitation at the prospect of a US pullout from Afghanistan in 2011 — a region that had terminally infected its last empire and could again jeopardise its geopolitical security along with New Delhi’s — is no secret. The Caucasian militias’ old links to jehadis in Af-Pak could be re-manoeuvred to carry out attacks which presumably will spread out among Russia’s cities,particularly the Federal Cities of Moscow and St Petersburg. Monday’s attacks were most likely in retaliation for recent federal military successes in the North Caucasus,including the slaying of a militant leader in Ingushetia allegedly linked to the bombing of the Nevsky Express in November last year that left 29 dead. That’s why Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov’s promise last month,to export the Caucasian war to Russia’s cities,appears quickly buttressed by action.

Russia fears the North Caucasus as its Achilles Heel,where,despite putting pro-Kremlin regimes in place,it has no assurance of continued control. The North Caucasus,still retaining Lermontov’s scenic,topographic,ethnic beauty and ruggedness,still the “cauldron of nationalities”,lies between the Black and Caspian Seas,overlooking the path to Turkey and Iran,allowing Russia access to the Mediterranean. It’s where Europe meets Asia; it has been fought over by nations since the distant past. Today,it’s the key to Russia’s dominance of its rediscovered “traditional sphere of influence”. Ironically, Chechnya is relatively calm now. But its spillover has resulted in burgeoning Islamist violence in Ingushetia and Dagestan.

North Ossetia is the only healthy dwarf of the region. The rest — Chechnya,Ingushetia,Dagestan,Kabardino-Balkaria,South Ossetia and Abkhazia (the last two technically in Georgia,and focus of the Russo-Georgian war of 2008) — are each a basket case,with poverty,unemployment and corruption radicalising the youth in the Muslim-majority republics,notwithstanding Kremlin-funded development projects. If history,for centuries,has been made here,resentments too run back into the past. The Muslim ethnic groups (Chechen,Ingush,Balkar) were accused of collaborating with the Nazis by Stalin and mass-deported to Central Asia. They returned in the ’50s,to find the Soviets redrawing their maps. That unforgiven act triggered invasions when the Soviet Union suddenly stood dissolved.

Moscow’s hope lies in the exhaustion of the ordinary folks. Even Chechens are not sure anymore if they want independence. The rest are just aware of their vulnerability. If large-scale investments by Russia’s government and oligarchs help rebuild the republics’ economies,a very dangerous conflict zone could go off the radar of global terror. A little money in the right pockets does what the best militaries cannot.

sudeep.paul@expressindia.com