Return of Big Terror To Russia: Black Widows (Female Martyr Bombers)

03 January 2014

By Markaz Kavkaz

Newsweek reported in its electronic version on return to Putin's Russia of Stalin's Big Terror. In an article, entitled The Volgograd Bombings and the Return of Big Terror to Russia, the magazine in particular writes:

- Putin may have had a banner year in 2013, but the Volgograd martyr attacks expose how unstable Russia remains in the run-up to Sochi.

The twin terrorist bombings that struck the city of Volgograd this week—the first targeting a train station, the second a trolleybus—came just five weeks before the most expensive Winter Olympics in history will be held in Russia's warmest city.

Upwards of $ 50 billion has already been poured into this Kubla Khan-style behemoth meant not only to enrich Putin's many friends and business associates but to burnish Russia's image as a fully modernized state capable of accommodating major international events. But that Sochi is now a subject for a nail-biting security concerns, not to mention a quiet boycott by Western leaders angry about Russia's vicious anti-gay law, only spoils a narrative that the Kremlin had been hoping to see creep right on into 2014.

Instead, his annual New Year's speech carried the vow to wage war against terrorists "their complete destruction" — a throwback to 1999 when, as prime minister, he promised to "waste them in the outhouse". Plus ça change.

The return of big terror to central Russia tarnishes an otherwise excellent calendar run for serially awarded "person of the year" Putin.

He's outfoxed the United States in Syria, bribed Ukraine out of moving closer to the European Union, transformed himself in the eyes of many from being a foremost human rights abuser to the reluctant host of "human-rights campaigner" Edward Snowden, let out of jail political prisoners he no longer views as credible threats to his reign.

Yet the scenery for this annus mirabilis production has always been rather flimsy. Little about Russia is ever stable or secure, no matter what Kremlin reassurances are given or how much cash and manpower is injected into a given scheme. This past year alone, for instance, has also seen one of the worst spates of racist pogroms hit St. Petersburg and Moscow owing to worsening tensions between ethnic Russians and a lumpen class of migrant workers who live in wretched conditions in and around the country's major cities and hail mainly from the Muslim-majority Caucasus or former Soviet states of Central Asia.

The 15-year war in Chechnya officially "ended" in 2009 by presidential announcement, but violence emanating from restive southern regions of Russia never did.

2009 also saw the Nevsky Express railroad bombing, followed in 2010 by the bombing of the Moscow metro by two "black widows" (female martyr bombers). In 2011, Domodedovo Airport in Moscow was attacked, the last major "spectacular" to be waged inside the Russian heartland until Volgograd happened this week.

Withal, however, murders, kidnappings and explosions have been constant nightmares in the North Caucasus.

Moreover, the reason for the lull in assaults on metropolitan areas has less to do with any counterterrorism savvy displayed by the security services and more to do with the decision-making of the terrorists themselves, specifically Dokku Umarov.

In 2012, Umarov suddenly decided to stop targeting major cities like Moscow, possibly because he wanted to see what became of the anti-Kremlin protests that they gave rise to (they only increased the Big Terror - KC). But all that changed in July when he declared Sochi to be a primary target for Russian jihadists.

Umarov functions more as a rallying figure rather than an actual commander, much the way former al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki did for so-called "lone wolf" or "al-Qaeda-inspired" terrorists. This poses an added threat for the Olympics because those who may only wish to follow Umarov's edicts remotely rather than execute an orchestrated, top-down jihadist plot can be much harder to track.

"The Russians are throwing unprecedented sums of money and numbers of security personnel into guarding Sochi", Mark Galeotti, a specialist in Russia's security services who teaches at New York University, told.

"Two billion dollars, plus up to 63,000 police and troops. That buys a great deal of protection and on the whole I'd expect Sochi to be locked down tight".

For the most part, Galeotti sees the Olympics itself—around which a 25-mile inland security zone and a 60-mile coastal defense are to be implemented—as relatively protected, although the cities outlying Sochi, such as Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Stavropol and Astrakhan, are more probable targets.

Andrei Soldatov, another expert, points out that the man in charge of Olympics security, Oleg Syromolotov, hails from the FSB's counterintelligence division rather than from its counterterrorism one.

Here it pays to remember that Ramzan Kadyrov has often employed ex-jihadists in his region's security forces. So might Syromolotov's pedigree indicate that what the Kremlin fears most is someone meant to protect Sochi playing both sides to facilitate an attack on it?"

 

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