The anti-terrorist activity of the Russian special services and those who oppose them intensified many times in 2010. In the North Caucasus, a series of liquidations of militant leaders was carried out, and in Ingushetia, the military emir of the "Caucasus Emirate" Magas was captured. At the same time, suicide bombers were blown up in the capital's metro, and militants attacked Kadyrov's ancestral village.
The loud scandal with the expulsion of Russian illegal immigrants from the United States questioned the adequacy of the SVR leadership to modern conditions.
Liquidation
It is impossible not to notice the increase in the activity of the FSB in the North Caucasus, where the department previously tried to avoid responsibility for the fight against terrorism, shifting it to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. True, this activity mostly boils down to liquidations.
In March, two young and charismatic leaders of the underground were killed, in Kabardino-Balkaria - Anzor Astemirov, who led the attack on Nalchik in 2005, and in Ingushetia - the ideologist of the Caucasus Emirate Said Buryatsky, who was believed to be involved in organizing a terrorist attack against Ingushetia's President Yevkurov and undermining the GOVD in Nazran. (True, the special operation against Buryatskoye in the village of Ekazhevo led to destruction comparable to the damage inflicted on the school in Beslan during the release of the hostages in 2004.)
The capture in June of Magas (Ali Taziev), one of the organizers of the militant attack on Nazran and the seizure of a school in Beslan, is an obvious success for the FSB, comparable to the capture of Salman Raduyev 10 years ago.
In 2010, there were regular reports of the use of force by security officers in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. In August, in Dagestan, FSB officers from the Central Service Department of the FSB killed Magomedali Vagabov, the leader of the Gubden militant group, who is believed to be the organizer of the terrorist attacks in the Moscow metro.
It is not excluded that the growth of FSB activity in the North Caucasus is caused by the fact that recently the militants began to hunt not only the policemen, but also the officers of the special services. So on November 19 in Baksan, an employee of the local department of the FSB was killed, the day before in Dagestan, militants attacked the mountain base of the FSB, and at the end of August in Kabardino-Balkaria, near the Chegem waterfalls, a husband and wife were shot, both were FSB officers from Krasnodar Territory. … In September, Akhmed Abdullaev, head of the FSB department in the Tsumadinsky district of Dagestan, was blown up in a car.
And terrorist attacks
Despite the successful liquidation of militant leaders, the number of terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus in 2010 increased many times - a clear indication that the stake on a military solution to the problem is not justified.
According to Deputy Prosecutor General Ivan Sydoruk, since the beginning of 2010, four times more terrorist attacks have been committed in the North Caucasus Federal District than in the entire last year (information was given in September). According to the official statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, for 11 months of this year, “609 terrorist crimes” were committed in the North Caucasus, 242 representatives of power structures were killed and 620 were wounded, 127 civilians were killed.
In Kabardino-Balkaria, where Anzor Astemirov was killed in March, who gathered 150 armed people to attack Nalchik five years ago, during the year the number of terrorist crimes, according to Interior Minister Nurgaliyev, has grown fivefold.
In October 2005, when tragic events took place, it was believed that the despotic ex-President Kokov and the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Shogenov, who pressed young Muslims, had brought the republic to such a state. This version was supported by the new energetic president Kanokov, who was expected to put things in order in the local police and attract investments. As you know, investments in the development of tourism in the Elbrus region came to the republic, but local jamaats in response only intensified their attacks.
The murder of Anas Pshikhachev, the head of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of the KBR, in Nalchik, which took place the other day, once again showed that Kanokov's policy in this area did not bring any results. In addition, the development of the tourism sector, where the state is most actively investing money, has fueled the conflict between the Adygs and Balkars. (For six months now, representatives of Balkar villages, who are being pushed back from the tourist business in the republic and deprived of hayfields and pastures, are starving in Manezhnaya Square, trying in vain to attract the attention of the federal authorities.)
This year's events also destroyed the myth that Ramzan Kadyrov's policies are effective against militants. In addition to other terrorist attacks in the republic, the "armed underground" in 2010 was able to organize and carry out two serious attacks, which also have a symbolic meaning. This is an attack on Kadyrov's ancestral village of Tsentoroi at the end of August and on the Chechen parliament a month and a half after that. According to official information, the Kadyrovtsy suffered small losses - 9 people died in repelling the attacks, but these attacks showed how vulnerable the authorities in the republic are.
In addition to terrorist attacks against civilians and attacks on government officials, there were regular reports from the North Caucasus about trains derailed, undermining power lines, cellular stations and gas pipelines. The attack of the militants on the Baksan hydroelectric power station on July 22 only by chance did not end in a large-scale tragedy, showed that the armed underground, as the special services call it, continues to exercise in carrying out attacks on strategic objects. The propaganda effect of this action is greater than the damage from the temporary shutdown of the hydroelectric power station: it is impossible not to recall the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station, the responsibility for the organization of which was claimed by the leader of the Caucasian militants, Doku Umarov. No evidence was presented, but the behavior of the authorities who pressured the press, including local journalist Afanasyev, who had been prosecuted, and an Interfax reporter who was kicked out of the station, heightened suspicions.
The most resonant terrorist attack of this year - the explosion in the Moscow metro of two female suicide bombers from Dagestan, one of whom was the widow of the “Emir of Dagestan,” liquidated by the special services Umalat Magomedov - seemed to demonstrate the strategic failure of the state policy in the fight against terrorism. But this is the opinion of independent experts and citizens, and for the Kremlin these terrorist attacks did not become a reason for criticism of the special services. According to the current concept of combating terrorism, it is not the number of victims that is critical, but the threat to political stability. Therefore, the main efforts of the special services are aimed at preventing attacks similar to the attack by militants on the security forces of Ingushetia in 2004, and not at identifying the impending suicide bombings.
Positional battles for control and authority
In 2010, it became especially noticeable how the same events related to the special services are perceived differently within the country and abroad. This is potentially a dangerous tendency that can lead to loss of orientation in the outside world.
First of all, we are talking about the scandal around Russian illegal immigrants in the United States. If in the West their exposure was perceived as a defeat for Russian intelligence, domestically, this failure was presented almost as a triumph for the SVR. The very presence of illegal immigrants supports the myth that Russia is still a superpower, which competes on equal terms with the United States. In turn, the failure of illegal immigrants was explained by the betrayal of defectors Poteyev and Shcherbakov, reviving the Soviet tradition of shifting responsibility for mistakes to enemies.
It is worth recalling that the SVR remains the only Russian special service that has never been reformed: in the early 1990s, the First Main Directorate of the KGB was simply singled out as an independent intelligence service, but its methods of work were not critically revised.
The celebration of the 90th anniversary of intelligence in December this year showed how important Soviet mythology is for Fradkov's department. A commemorative plaque to Kim Philby was hung on the building of the SVR press service with a quote: "I look at the life I lived as if it were devoted to the cause, in the rightness of which I sincerely and passionately believe." Meanwhile, the cause Philby believed in, that is, the victory of communism (the only reason why he and his comrades from the Cambridge Five worked for the USSR), has nothing to do with the tasks of Russian intelligence, which the SVR leaders cannot but understand. However, the absurdity of the situation did not embarrass either SVR director Mikhail Fradkov or Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who was present at the ceremony.
Curiously, this story ultimately proved to be the most beneficial for the FSB. The exchange of researcher Igor Sutyagin, who pleaded guilty to espionage, for illegal immigrants, embarrassed the human rights community. In turn, the scandal with the traitors gave rise to a discussion in the media about the need for external control of the intelligence service, and a wave of criticism fell upon the SVR's own security center. The fact is that over the past decade the FSB has put under its control the security services of most of the special services and law enforcement agencies, with the exception of the SVR. The escape of the traitors is a chance for the FSB to extend its control over foreign intelligence.
In 2010, the FSB also received more powers in the so-called fight against extremism, which for the past two years has been mainly dealt with by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The secret service lobbied for amendments to the legislation, thanks to which it received the right to issue warnings to citizens "about the inadmissibility of actions that create conditions for the commission of crimes." Human rights activists and experts believe that the FSB will use this to put pressure on journalists and public figures, especially in the provinces. In December, President Medvedev reaffirmed that the FSB would play a more active role in the fight against extremism, stating that this fight should be “systemic,” and the task of the FSB is to identify the organizers of provocations.
