Terrorism: view from Moscow

By Vestnik Kavkaza

This week Russia remembered victims of the terrorist attack on Dubrovka. According to VCIOM, the view of Russian citizens on the operation on rescuing hostages during the musical Nord Ost has changed. Previously 51% believed that everything was done right. Today only 29% think so.

Yuri Nagirnyak, general director of the Fund of Veterans of Law-Enforcement Agencies

The history of terrorism is rather long in Russia. At the same time, events of the last decade differ from terrorism of the 19th century and the state terrorism of the Civil War. The main peculiarity is powerful financial flows and organizations which are formed by foreign countries and appear to be a medium for development of terrorism in Russia. Despite the Western media’s opinion, there is no real political or social ground for terrorism in Russia. The terrorist attacks which happen in our country are provocations by hostile organizations or certain states. Anyway they are caused by corporative or state political interests, big money. And it defines the form and character of the terrorist movement in Russia. Speaking about social aspect and developments happening within a super-ethnic group in the Middle East, I would set a question: what is an initial reason, an initial ground? Is the development natural or provoked by tendencies of globalization and pressure by the West on the East world in the sphere of geopolitics, imposing certain stereotypes and views? I think in this sense terrorism is a product of European, American, Western politics. Activeness of terrorism will depend of the position of the West on certain general civilization approaches, rather than fighting against it. The process of implementation of multiculturalism politics is gathering way. But the US position which was demonstrated during a certain historic period became one of basic reasons for development of terrorism.

One of basic problems of the political situation in the Middle East is a struggle between Sunnism and Shiism. When Iran and Iraq were in the situation of a war, I lived in Iran for 5 years and watched it. Iran suffered from terrorism more than its opponents in other countries. In 1979-1981 the opposition committed terrorist attacks daily in Tehran. The summed up number of terrorism’s victims in Iran is larger than in other states of the world. If we refer to the fact that the Iranian government used certain acts which may be considered as terrorist, we should note that they had not a systemic, but a political character. This is a method of working of Iranian special services. However, Iranian policy doesn’t go beyond regional limits.

Yeugeny Satanovski, director of the Middle East Institute

Any foreign thing becomes our headache someday. For example, once upon a time a tradition of drinking coffee was brought from France – today there are more coffee cafes in Moscow than in Paris. If there were no objective conditions for activity of radical Islamism (we are speaking about this kind of terrorism), if there were no our own internal failures in Chechnya and other the North Caucasus republics, if there was no civil war in Chechnya in the 1990s, there would be no grounds for terrorism there. They could compose a thousand of maps on which the Russian territory were the territory of jehad, but jehad had nobody to rely on, without local support the Arab and the Afghan world could do nothing in the Caucasus. If these are our internal failures, they are our own problems. We know what countries initiated it. I am not politically tolerant and nice, but we know that today the headquarters of international terrorism is Doha and Riyadh. There are relevant financial flows and logistics nets, including special services. People are studying in universities not in Qatar or Saudi Arabia, but in Syria and Egypt and return home much more radical than it used to be.

We have serious systems of spreading radical Islam (Turkish, Iranian). It is not exclusively Arab states’ cup of tea. However, in general we have to fight against Salafis or neo-Salafis. Radicalism comes through Central Asia from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Thus, the role of migrants is huge – not only in traditionally Muslim regions of Russia, but also in major cities, including Moscow where big communities of natives of South Caucasus republics and Central Asia exist. Therefore, it turns out that foreign things appear to become our own. Big terrorist attacks are committed in Russia with participation of “new Muslims” – Russians who came to Islam and representatives of new-Islamic ethnic groups. We know Said Buryatski. We know that Said Chirkeisky, the leader of traditional Muslims of Dagestan, was murdered by ethnic Russians who came to Islam. We know about a huge number of such “new Muslims” in France and Europe in whole – no more than 10% of them will become terrorist, but it is quite enough. Their role is great in the territory of France and beyond. We understand that closed communities are capturing mosques, charity funds, Islamic schools, are organizing an Islamic ghetto separated from the rest of the country. The same things are happening in Tatarstan, Dagestan, and even Bashkiria today. These are platforms for tomorrow terrorism and jehad. These people don’t believe they are terrorists – they are fighters for the future of Islamic umma, for the right khalifat. There is no recipe – it is a phenomenon of our everyday life like car accidents. We have to live with it.