Translated material
Metro to the Caucasus
Moscow was once again reminded of the war in southern Russia
As is usually the case, on the day of the tragedy in the Moscow metro there were not only condolences to the families of the victims, but also versions of what happened. The main version is officially declared to be the North Caucasian one. It is striking that in the North Caucasus it is mainly security forces who are killed, while in Moscow they killed civilians. Therefore, I would really like to count on a truly exhaustive investigation.If the North Caucasus terrorist version receives final confirmation, it will be a terrible reminder for those who believe that the problem of the Caucasus in Russia has been solved. For those who believe television pictures about the triumph of peace and stability, who are sure that understanding complex Caucasian names and even more complex realities is burdensome for the ordinary person.
38 ordinary people went to work on Monday morning, but found themselves in a war and died in it. Alas, this could only be called a surprise by someone who was completely weaned from analyzing what was happening by the official propaganda about the advent of peace in the North Caucasus.
Any country on whose territory there is radical armed Islam must be constantly prepared for events of this kind. Alas, Russia is just such a country. But Russian public opinion is so lulled by daily reports about the triumph of law and order in the North Caucasus and at the same time so tired of the negativity emanating from this territory that for many this Monday it became a revelation: it turns out that we are still at war. It turns out that it is not only in distant and incomprehensible North Caucasian villages that there can be shootouts between security forces and militants. It turns out that you can come face to face with this war by habitually sitting in a Moscow metro car on the way to work.
First of all, this means that the measures taken in the six years since the last such terrorist attack turned out to be insufficient or inadequate. And the successes that security forces have especially often boasted of over the past few weeks do not at all guarantee the safety of civilians.
The destruction of Said Buryatsky or Anzor Astemirov looks like a victory only until it becomes clear that their death does not at all prevent someone else from sending suicide bombers into the Moscow metro and killing several dozen people who considered themselves absolutely not involved in what was happening in Northern, far from Moscow. Caucasus. But the fact of the matter is that the distance is much shorter than it seems, and we, the majority of the country’s residents, don’t even really know what’s going on there.
The terrorist attack on the subway is doubly scary because it is silent and anonymous. Silent because the suicide bombers exploded without making any demands. Anonymous because for several years the special services carefully notified us about the regular destruction of the leaders of the North Caucasus underground. Almost all the names that were heard were crossed out from the lists of the living. But it turned out that this is by no means a panacea. They were replaced by someone who prepared and carried out a military operation in the center of Moscow. Although it seemed that after the sad lessons of Nord-Ost, the Avtozavodskaya metro station, two planes from Domodedovo and the Rizhskaya metro station were quite enough to exclude this possibility forever. It turned out that there were still gaping holes in the security network that the security forces had been weaving over the past decade, with absolute carte blanche in their hands from the country’s leadership. The budget billions allocated for the fight against terrorism were not enough to reliably ensure even the security of the capital.
It would seem that this in itself implies organizational conclusions. But the call to draw organizational conclusions is met with indignation: dismissing responsible generals and officials now means following the lead of the terrorists. Those who demand this “rock the boat” and themselves become almost accomplices of the militants - from the point of view of the authorities, this is exactly what social consolidation should look like in the face of a terrorist threat.
Meanwhile, the consolidation of society (and not a meeting of state employees and members of generously funded loyal youth unions under the slogan of opposing terrorism) is becoming very problematic. In particular, because as a result of many years of targeted propaganda work, very few people understand what is really happening in the North Caucasus.
And in the North Caucasus, a sabotage war has been going on for a long time and intensively. It is very different from the one that was in Chechnya in 1994-1996. Back then, part of the ethnic group fought for political independence from Russia. Now we are talking about approximately the same thing, but under a different banner: the militants do not want a sovereign Chechen Republic, but a Sharia emirate of the Caucasus. If we had not weaned ourselves from listening to anyone other than official propagandists, we would know that the self-proclaimed Emir of the Caucasus, Doku Umarov, regularly reports how he intends to liberate the Krasnodar Territory and Stavropol Territory from Russian occupation. How the number of his like-minded people grows to tens of thousands. How ready they are to go into battle throughout the enemy’s territory, which means including in the Moscow metro.
In fact, supporters of Doku Umarov are a categorical minority. A huge part of the residents of the North Caucasus would like to live in a normal, secular and democratic Russia, raise children and earn money. They don’t want to know about any Caucasus emirate, even despite the fact that over the past decade and a half, the Russian repressive machine has swept through so many of them.
Yesterday, the Commissioner for Human Rights in Chechnya, Nurdi Nukhazhiev, asked not to identify suicide bombers with any regions, ethnic or religious groups. Mr. Nukhazhiev’s motivation is clear: it is officially believed that Islam is a religion of peace, that only “shaitans” and scumbags are fighting for the Caucasus Emirate with weapons in their hands, and that blaming an entire ethnic group or even the entire Caucasus region for the crime of a few people is incorrect.
Nevertheless, to deny that there is a religious war going on in the North Caucasus means to seriously sin against the truth. Close supporters of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov and himself know this better than anyone else: in 1999, his family went to war with those who tried to introduce a non-traditional form of Islam in Chechnya. Ramzan Kadyrov himself has repeatedly said that he lost several hundred relatives and friends in this war. This war continues because, as the Chechen president himself noted yesterday, “it is impossible to eradicate evil with persuasion alone.”
The problem is that almost no one knows these subtleties about the religious war. For a huge number of people, the enemy after a terrorist attack is associated not with a bunch of armed radicals, but with any immigrants from the North Caucasus. Including those who simply brought potatoes to the market. Any attempts by officials from the North Caucasus itself and from Moscow to call for ethnic tolerance are perceived by many as a lie and an unnecessary irritant. On the contrary, any reaction aimed at defeating the rights of the North Caucasus will be received with approval. Although this is precisely the path to the disintegration of the country - not necessarily territorial, but social and moral. A surge in ethnic and religious intolerance is almost inevitable: Caucasians and Muslims will be avoided, feared, and possibly persecuted. No matter who is behind the organization of the explosions, no matter what goals they pursue, if this flywheel spins up, the result will be much worse than the results of last Monday.
There is almost no doubt that if the issue of secession of the North Caucasus were put to a referendum, a significant number of people who do not live in the North Caucasus would support this idea. Because the idea of a “high fence” absolutely naturally comes to mind in a situation where even many years of efforts by the military and intelligence services do not lead to a solution to the problem. Despite the fact that there would be several hundred thousand ethnic Russians “behind the fence”, whom in fact there is no one to “cover”. Even Russian refugees who fled the Caucasus in the early 1990s often still live in squalid dormitories and are perceived with hostility by the local population. Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of indigenous residents of the Caucasus are, in principle, against secession and have nothing to do with terrorist attacks and terrorists.
The world experience of responding to terrorist attacks generally does not know many ways to respond. The first step, as a rule, is to escalate the use of force, but this only increases the level of mutual violence. In addition, the practice of building fences and limiting democratic rights in favor of increased security. But the fence is decay. And strengthening security in conditions where one hundred rubles can solve any problem with documents when a police officer has questions, looks like a fiction.
It turns out that only society itself can take care of its own integrity and safety, but it is asleep, and any attempt to wake up is perceived by the authorities as a threat worse than suicide bombers in the metro: just look at the police cordon near Mayakovskaya on the days of sparsely attended democratic opposition events.