The suicide bombings of two Moscow subway stations that killed 39 people Monday appear to have emanated from a place that few people could find on a map: Russia’s North Caucasus region, a sliver of land wedged between the Black and Caspian seas that is home to 7 million people.
Russian czars annexed the North Caucasus in the latter part of the 19th century after wars that lasted several decades, but the people in the region were reluctant Russians. No sooner did the Soviet colossus start wobbling than the region, particularly the breakaway republic of Chechnya, descended into chaos.
The results have been gruesome. Russia has fought two full-scale wars to retain control of Chechnya (from 1994 to 1996 and from 2000 to 2009), though Moscow has tried to cast its role as fighting terrorism.
In 2009, Russia proclaimed victory by declaring an end to its “counter-terrorism operations” in Chechnya and turned over full control to the republic’s president since 2007, Ramzan Kadyrov, who has ruled with an iron fist and has tried to use economic reconstruction to weaken the insurgents. The results have been mixed at best.
Violence continues to rock Chechnya, and the perpetrators have grown increasingly militant in their fundamentalism, fighting not just for independence from Russia but also to establish an Islamist state based on Sharia law in the North Caucasus, which also includes Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Adygea and Dagestan.
The militants recently have vowed to extend their operations into the Russian heartland, so that ordinary Russians can no longer regard the North Caucasus as a faraway place of little consequence to them.
Monday’s bombings certainly achieved that objective.
What’s even more problematic for Moscow is that the blood-letting in the North Caucasus is no longer limited to Chechnya. It has engulfed the neighboring republic of Dagestan and has spread west into Ingushetia and North Ossetia.
The expanding violence has included abductions, assassinations, suicide attacks, car bombings and even operations by insurgents involving protracted and pitched battles against security forces. Foreign fighters also have joined the struggle. But to blame the mayhem of the North Caucasus on “Wahhabis” and “jihadists,” as Moscow tends to do, is to deny its complex origins.
Russia has inflamed tensions in the region by propping up corrupt local elites. Security forces take bribes and practice torture. The unemployment rate has soared: Young men are driven to extremist ideologies because they are hopeless, have seen relatives disappear after having been swept up in ubiquitous police dragnets.
What has been the central government’s response? Moscow has touted its “victory” in Chechnya and vowed to quash insurgents and terrorists elsewhere in the North Caucasus. But while Chechnya is calmer, the rest of the region has become more violent.
Russian leaders trumpet how they have plowed billions of dollars in economic aid into the area, but this largesse has subsidized economic mismanagement and corruption.
In January, President Dmitry Medvedev created a special North Caucasus Federal District, headed by a presidential representative, Alexander Khloponin. He is reputed to be a sound manager, but he has his work cut out for him.
Monday’s subway bombings — which came just four months after the bombing and derailment of a luxury train traveling between Moscow and St. Petersburg that killed more than two dozen people — demonstrate clearly that the violence in the North Caucasus cannot be easily contained within that region.
No government can be expected to tolerate terrorist attacks, but Moscow should avoid inflaming xenophobia and encouraging ultranationalist groups. It also must find better ways to tackle the region’s festering socioeconomic problems. And it must insist that local governments and federal forces act within the law.
Rajan Menon is a professor of international relations at Lehigh University.
