Date: Sun 28 May 07
From: Robert Bruce Ware (rware@siue.edu)
Subject: Re. "No Terrorist Acts in Russia", A. Smirnov, JRL 07-120
Andrei Smirnov is a dedicated analyst of the North Caucasus, who is clearly correct in his central conclusion that North Caucasian militants have renounced terrorism since Beslan, because such tactics could never again serve their purposes following that horrific hostage atrocity ("No Terrorist Acts in Russia Since Beslan: Whom to Thank?" Jamestown Foundation Chechnya Weekly, 24 May 07, JRL 2007-120, 27 May).
One of the great tragedies besetting this region was the apparent success of Shamil Basaev's raid on Budenovsk in June 1995. During that raid, Basaev and about 150 supporters took more than 1,000 hostages inside a Russian maternity hospital. The triumphal return of the terrorists to the mountains of southern Chechnya had the effect of rallying the supporters of Chechen separatism and reversing the direction of the conflict that had been largely favorable for Moscow, and disastrous for the separatists, during April and May of that year.
This raid itself revived tactics that Basaev had used earlier in hijacking a flight to Turkey in 1991, but the widespread press coverage of the Budenovsk raid, and its consequences for the conflict in Chechnya, led to a long series of attempts by Chechen terrorists to replicate its impact.
The first of these was Salman Raduyev's raid on the town of Kizlyar, Dagestan in January 1996. The raid may have aimed at a nearby Russian helicopter base, but it led to 3,000 civilian hostages in a Kizlyar hospital, and culminated in the total destruction of the Dagestani village of Pervomayskoye by Russian artillery. Raduyev and most of his men survived the massacre to bring 50 Dagestani hostages back to Chechnya.
For the next three years, the hostage industry flourished in Chechnya. Far more than 1,000 people from neighboring republics were kidnapped and transported to Chechnya where they were tortured and mutilated for purposes of extracting exorbitant ransoms. Much of the ransom loot went to support the cause of radical Islamism in Chechnya. During the same years as many as 10,000 Chechens were kidnapped by their compatriots as Chechnya rapidly degenerated into a terrorist state. Yet these horrors were shamefully ignored outside of the region, in no small part because most journalists were too terrified visit the area in order to cover the story.
In order to attract any attention, Chechen hostage-takers were consequently forced to take the tactic back out of the region, in the style of Budenovsk. The result was the Dubrovka hostage incident at the end of October 2002. More than 800 hostages were held in a Moscow theater, and more than 100 died when the theater was stormed by Moscow security forces, who had learned to respond in the harsh and brutal manner of the destruction of Pervomayskoye ,and not in the humanitarian manner of the capitulation at Budenovsk.
Also in contrast to Budenovsk, the international media placed the blame for Dubrovka on the terrorists, along with the Russian security forces. Thus Dubrovka proved to be a set-back for hostage-taking as a terrorist tactic. This led to the rise of suicide bombings as the most common form of terrorism in Russia from 2003 and 2004.
Basaev's return to hostage-taking as a terrorist tactic did not come until the raid on Beslan's School No. 1 in September 2004. On the one hand, Beslan was, like Kizlyar and Dubrovka, yet another attempt by Basaev and his cohorts to relive their triumph at Budenovsk. Yet Basaev failed to recognize that sometime after September 2001, tolerance for terrorism had changed in some parts of the world. Moreover, the taking of child hostages was now universally condemned (even by many of Basaev's militant Chechen supporters, and by most international Muslim commentators), even though the taking of child hostages was common in Chechnya from 1997 to 1999. Thus, ironically, the world's ignorance of the Chechen hostage industry during those years was among the factors that culminated in the horrors of Beslan.
As a further irony, the cause of Chechen militancy, which had been revived by terrorism in Budenovsk, was essentially extinguished by an attempt to replicate that triumph nine years later in Beslan. During those nine years both the North Caucasus and the rest of the world had changed in ways that Basaev failed to grasp. His failure was effectively his epitaph, as well as that of Aslan Maskhadov, who had alternately ( and conveniently) repudiated, supported, and acquiesced in Basaev's tactics. It was also the tombstone of radical, Chechen militancy. Now hostage-taking and terrorism are once again practiced primarily by Chechens against other Chechens. Even intra-Chechen terrorism is now slowly subsiding as the republic is gradually stabilized and reconstructed.
This narrative does not overlook the terrorism that was perpetrated by Russian military forces against Chechen civilians. Indeed, Basaev's Budenovsk raid was preceded by, and may have been substantially motivated by, the murder of several of his family members during a Russian attack on the southeastern Chechen town of Vedeno. Hence, Basaev liked to style himself after Mel Gibson's William Wallace (who led another mountain population) in "Braveheart". Of course, the narrative of Moscow's terrorism against Chechen civilians has been rehearsed in many accounts of the Russian/Chechen conflicts.
In Dagestan, the trajectory of terrorism has been different, and this is where Mr. Smirnov's account goes astray. The Dagestani equivalent of Beslan could have been Kizlyar in 1996 had the Russians not obliterated Pervomayskoye. Instead it came at the Victory Day parade on 9 May 2002 in the Dagestani coastal town of Kaspisk. A bomb produced more than 40 fatalities, over half of them children. There were reasons to suspect: a) Dagestani Islamist terrorists led by an ethnic Lak named Rappani Khalillov, b) the local police, c) the Russian military. In the end, Khalillov and his supporters took the blame in a series of judicial exercises of varying credibility.
I thought that it was Khalillov if only because there was a similar attempt to bomb a Victory Day celebration in Makhachkala in 2000. Had it not been discovered by "sniffer" dogs a few hours before the event, that bomb would have killed most of Dagestan's pro-Moscow leadership. Hence, the 2000 bomb was clearly not in the interest of either the federal or the local security forces, and was clearly in the interest of Khalillov. Heightened security precluded a repeat attack in Makhachkala in 2001, but neighboring Kaspisk was ripe for a copy-cat bomb in 2002.
In any case, beginning in 2002, Dagestani Islamists began targeting high ranking officials of Dagestan's local anti-terrorism forces. In fact, these attacks began, in February 2002, before the Kaspisk bombing, but they picked up momentum that autumn, after the Kaspisk bombing turned the stomachs, as well as the hearts and minds, of most Dagestanis. Yet by 2004, these attacks had become (much like hostage-taking in Chechnya from 1997 to 1999) almost daily events that were waged seemingly against any available security forces, especially in the Dagestani cities of Khasavyurt and Makhachkala.
Mr. Smirnov is correct in noting that during the last 18 months these attacks have mutated once again. During this period there have been two extremely sophisticated and well-coordinated attacks upon high officials in Dagestan's Interior Ministry. The latter of these, in August 20006, involved the murder of a well-liked prosecutor in the Dagestani town of Buinask as "bait" to lure Dagestan's Interior Minister out on a remote stretch of mountain highway between Buinask and Makhachkala. There his convoy came under massive attack. It also involved a well-timed and effective assault upon the tele-communications system of the entire city of Makhachkala.
However, contrary to Mr. Smirnov's suggestions, these latter attacks are most likely indications of an emerging symbiosis between Dagestan's Islamist militants and its leading opposition political figures. It appears that the latter may be motivated to coordinate with the Islamist underground since this is the only form of effective political opposition that remains in Dagestan following President Putin's decision that a Dagestani president would be selected, not by the local population, but by the Kremlin.