Russia Bombing Highlights Security Failure
By Simon Saradzhyan for ISN
The bombing on 27 November of a Moscow-St Petersburg train that killed 26 and injured more than 90 others is the first terrorist attack outside Russia’s North Caucasus to lead to significant casualties since 2004. That year saw two passenger airliners, which departed from Moscow, and two Moscow subway stations bombed by North Caucasus-based terrorist groups, killing more than 200 people.
The casualties in the 27 November attack would have been even larger had the bomb derailed the locomotive. Fortunately, the terrorists appeared to have miscalculated the speed of the train, and the bomb - which consisted of several ingredients, including plastic explosives, and which contained an equivalent of 7 kilograms of TNT - detonated too late.
The attack came as a stark reminder to residents of ‘mainland Russia’ that the period of relative safety that they saw during the second half of Vladimir Putin’s second term in office and the beginning of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential rule might be over.
For residents of the North Caucasus that period ended more than a year ago when the series of assassinations of officials and suicide bombings started to gain a deadly momentum.
Initial reports suggested that ethnic Russian ultranationalists - who have increasingly been expanding their arsenal from knifes to guns and explosives - could have planted the bomb, and one neo-Nazi group even claimed responsibility. But subsequent investigation revealed that the attack bore a characteristic feature of those organized by insurgent and terrorist groups in the North Caucasus – the planting of a second bomb nearby to target investigators.
That second bomb exploded when Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor General’s Office, and other senior law-enforcers, were inspecting the site. Russia’s top investigator suffered a brain concussion in the second explosion, which would likely have been fatal if the bomb detonated fully.
According to one account by law enforcers, the remote-control bomb failed to fully detonate because the radio signal had been jammed. According to another account, the second bomb could have been damaged by the first explosion or by humidity.
The very fact that the rapid response teams had not detected the second bomb is a glaring failure regardless of whether the result of deadly negligence or lack of a nationwide standard operating procedure for sappers to look for a second explosive device based on knowledge of the tactics of North Caucasian groups.
The same Moscow-St Petersburg railway had been the victim of a similar attack in 2007, which authorities say was organized on orders of leader of the North Caucasus-based insurgency. Sixty people were injured in that attack.
Following the 2007 attack, Moscow-St Petersburg railway authorities installed video cameras at bridges and other junction points; however, neither these measures nor regular railway inspections managed to prevent the 27 November bombing, which occurred at a thinly populated stretch.
This failure underscores the impossibility of covering the numerous potential targets for attacks. Having seen authorities boost security on subways and in airports following the 2004 attacks, in which hundreds died, the terrorists began to target other critical infrastructure, such as railways, where attacks could prove less spectacular, but be almost as deadly.
Should Russian authorities now opt for formidable and sustainable improvement of security at railways, which could prove much costlier than increasing security at airports, the terrorists may opt for yet another type of target.
Instead, Russian authorities should boost efforts to identify and neutralize the existing agents of terror, such as members of violent networks based in the North Caucasus. They must also prevent the rise of other potential agents of terrorism, such as ultranationalists who often try to justify their violence by citing terrorist attacks of North Caucasus groups.
Law enforcers must keep in mind that each failure to prevent a deadly attack, in which racial or religious hatred plays a role, is bound to increase racial and religious tensions in the country, which is home to over 100 diverse peoples, and which is still recovering from the violent ethnic secessionism bids of the 1990s.
Russia’s security services and law enforcement agencies should further shift their attention and resources from attribution towards prevention and interdiction in all Russian regions vulnerable to such attacks.
One good example of this was the interception by Russian security services of a group sent from the North Caucasus to Moscow to carry out a suicide bombing in the Russian capital in September 2009.
Prevention of terrorism should also include increased efforts to address root causes and contributing factors to the recent rise in terrorism and other forms of politically motivated violence.
Medvedev’s new concept of countering terrorism and his decision to appoint a North Caucasus tsar are steps in the right direction in the uphill battle for reducing security threats emanating from this region and its ultimate stabilization, but many more practical steps need to be made before Russia will see the top of the mountain in this battle.