The attack on Domodedovo airport in Moscow on Monday, in which 35 people died, appears to have been the work of one of several groups battling against Russian control in the North Caucasus. Such groups are certainly Islamist, and do employ vile tactics with which Islamist terror has made much of the world depressingly familiar. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to conclude that Russia has an al-Qaeda-style problem. In fact, it has an IRA-style problem. Or rather, it has several.
The distinction is both important and one that both President Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, may be reluctant to confront. Terrorism is an unjustifiable abhorrence in any form, and the West must stand with Russia in defeating it. Yet a crushing response will only ever half-address that country’s security woes.
In Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and elsewhere between the Black and Caspian seas, extremist religious ideology exists only in a form parasitic on an existing national cause. Moreover, while the tactics employed by separatist groups are abhorrent, their claims to nationhood are just.
For all the horror of this latest attack, Russians have grown grimly accustomed to terrorism on a scale far beyond that experienced in the West. Last March, two suicide bombers detonated themselves on a Moscow Metro train, killing scores. In November 2009, another train was derailed en route to St Petersburg by a blast, and 28 died. In 2004, a double suicide attack killed 90 on two passenger planes leaving Moscow. Barely a week later, the world watched in horror as 331 hostages, half of whom were children, died in a bungled attempt to liberate a school in Beslan after it was seized by Chechen extremists.
In the face of such horror, Russians themselves have displayed remarkable stoicism, with attacks on transport infrastructure rarely even reducing passenger numbers. In 2003, Chechen suicide bombers killed 20 at the entrance to a Moscow rock festival, and the event continued nevertheless. Yet it seems reasonable to assume that those behind this latest attack were aiming to attract the attentions of a wider constituency.
Domodedovo is one of the main international entry points into all of Russia. A preliminary list of the dead featured eight nationalities, including a Briton and a German. In 2018, Russia hosts the Fifa World Cup. In 2014, it hosts the Winter Olympics in Sochi, on the very edge of the North Caucasus. Fans of all nations will be travelling through Russian airports and on Russian trains. Traditionally, Russia has bristled at suggestions that its own internal security is anybody else’s business. It can no longer do so.
As a result, apart from being a tragedy, this latest attack is also an embarrassment for Russia. “It is clear that there is a systemic failure to provide security for people,” President Medvedev has said of Domodedovo airport itself. He has also called on the Interior Ministry to identify transport officials responsible for security flaws, and has specifically instructed security services to keep visitors to the Winter Olympics safe.
All of this is wise, but will provide only short- term solutions to long-term problems. Mr Putin, in particular, has political capital invested in his reputation as the man who crushed the rebels of Chechnya. Nonetheless, sooner or later, Russia must stop seeking to crush its problems in the Caucasus, and instead start trying to solve them.
