Russian special services-2010

The anti-terrorist activities of the Russian special services and those who oppose them have intensified many times in 2010. In the North Caucasus, a series of liquidations of militant leaders was held, and in Ingushetia, the military amir of the "Emirate of the Caucasus" Magas was captured. At the same time, the suicide bombers blew themselves up in the Moscow metro, and the militants attacked the family village of Kadyrov.

The loud scandal with the expulsion of Russian illegal immigrants from the US questioned the adequacy of the leadership of the SVR to modern conditions.

Liquidations

It is impossible not to notice the growing activity of the FSB in the North Caucasus, where the agency had previously tried to avoid responsibility for the fight against terrorism, shifting it to the Interior Ministry. True, this activity for the most part comes 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 Imarat Kavkaz, Said Buryatsky, who was involved in organizing the terrorist attack against Ingushetia Yevkurov and undermine the city department of internal affairs in Nazran. (However, a special operation against Buryat in the village of Ekazhevo led to destruction similar to the damage inflicted on the school in Beslan during the liberation of the hostages in 2004 year.)

The seizure of Magas (Ali Taziyev) in June, one of the organizers of the militant attacks on Nazran and the seizure of the school in Beslan, is an obvious success of the FSB, comparable to the capture of Salman Raduyev 10 years ago.

In the 2010 year, there were regular reports of the use of force by security forces in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. In August, in Dagestan, members of the FSB FSB destroyed Magomedali Vagabov, the leader of the Gubden militant group, which they consider 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 policemen, but also officers of the special services. For example, on November 19, a local UFSB officer was killed in Baksan, the day before, militants attacked the FSB mountain base in Dagestan, and in the end of August, in Kabardino-Balkaria, a husband and wife were shot dead, both of them were from the Krasnodar Territory . In September, Akhmed Abdullayev, head of the FSB department in the Tsumadinsky district of Dagestan, was blown up in a car.

And the attacks

Despite the successful liquidation of militant leaders, the number of terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus in 2010 increased many times over - clear evidence that the emphasis on a forceful solution of the problem is not justified.

According to Deputy Prosecutor General Ivan Sydoruk, since the beginning of 2010, the North Caucasus Federal District has committed four times more terrorist attacks than in the entire past year (information was cited in September). According to official statistics from the Ministry of the Interior for 11 months of this year, “609 crimes of a terrorist nature” were committed in the North Caucasus, 242 representatives of power structures were killed and 620 injured, 127 civilians were killed.

In Kabardino-Balkaria, where Anzor Astemirov was killed in March, who gathered 150 armed men five years ago for an attack on Nalchik, the number of crimes of a terrorist nature, according to Interior Minister Nurgaliyev, increased fivefold in a year.

In October, 2005, when tragic events occurred, it was believed that the despotic ex-president Kokov and Interior Minister Shogenov, who was pressing the young Muslims, brought the republic to such a state. This version was supported by the new energetic president Kanokov, from whom it was expected that he would restore order to the local police and attract investment. As is known, investments in the development of tourism in the Elbrus region came to the republic, but in response local jamaats only intensified the attacks.

The assassination of the head of DUM CBR, Anas Pshikhachev in Nalchik, which happened 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, has fueled the conflict between the Adygs and Balkars. (For half a year, representatives of Balkarian villages, which are being pushed aside from the tourist business in the republic and deprived of hayfields and pastures, are starving at Manezhnaya Square, trying in vain to attract the attention of the federal authorities.)

The events of this year also destroyed the myth that the policy of Ramzan Kadyrov is effective against militants. In addition to other terrorist attacks in the republic, the “armed underground” in 2010 was able to organize and conduct two serious attacks, which also have symbolic significance. This is an attack on the family village of Kadyrov Tsentoroy in late August and on the Chechen parliament six months later. According to official information, the Kadyrovtsy suffered small losses - while repelling the attacks, 9 people died, but these attacks showed how vulnerable the authorities in the republic are.

In addition to terrorist attacks against the civilian population and attacks on government officials, reports of trains derailed, undermining power transmission lines, cellular communications stations and gas pipelines regularly came from the North Caucasus. The militants ’attack on the Baksan hydropower station 22 July only by chance did not end with a massive tragedy, showed that the armed underground, as the security services call it, continues to practice attacking strategic facilities. The propaganda effect of this action is greater than the damage caused by the temporary shutdown of the hydropower station: it is impossible not to recall the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant, which was organized by the leader of the Caucasian militants Doku Umarov. There was no evidence of this, but the behavior of the authorities who put pressure on the press, including the local journalist Afanasyev, against whom the case was initiated, and the Interfax correspondent, who was expelled from the station, increased suspicions.

The most resonant terrorist attack of this year - the explosion in the Moscow metro of two martyrs from Dagestan, one of which was the widow of the “amir of Dagestan” liquidated by the special services of Umalat Magomedov - seemed to demonstrate the strategic failure of state policy in the field of combating terrorism. But so do independent experts and citizens, and for the Kremlin these attacks did not become a reason for criticism of the special services. According to the current concept of combating terrorism, it’s 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 of militants against the power structures of Ingushetia in the 2004 year, and not at identifying imminent explosions of suicide bombers.

Positional battles for control and authority

In 2010, it became particularly noticeable how the same events related to the special services are perceived differently inside and outside the country. Potentially, this is a dangerous trend that can lead to a loss of orientation in the surrounding world.

First of all, we are talking about the scandal around the Russian illegal immigrants in the United States. If in the West their exposure was perceived as a defeat for Russian intelligence, inside the country this failure was presented almost as a triumph of the SVR. In itself, the 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 Poteev and Shcherbakov, reviving the Soviet tradition of shifting responsibility for mistakes to enemies.

It is worth recalling that the SVR remains the only secret service in Russia that has never been reformed: at the beginning of 1990's, the First Main Directorate of the KGB was simply allocated to an independent intelligence service, but its methods of work were not critically revised.

The celebration of the 90 anniversary of intelligence in December of this year showed how important Soviet mythology is for Fradkov’s department. A memorial plaque to Kim Philby was hung on the building of the press service of the Foreign Intelligence Service with a quote: “I look at my life as a dedicated service, the truth of which I sincerely and passionately believe.” Meanwhile, the case in which Philby believed, 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 that the leaders of the SVR cannot but understand. However, the absurdity of the situation did not bother either the SVR director Mikhail Fradkov or the vice-premier Sergei Ivanov who was present at the ceremony.

Curious that this storyIn the end, the FSB turned out to be the most profitable. The exchange of researcher Igor Sutyagin, who admitted his guilt of espionage to illegal immigrants, put the human rights community in an awkward position. In turn, the scandal with traitors gave rise to a discussion in the media about the need for external control of the intelligence service, and a wave of criticism struck the SVR’s own security center. The fact is that over the past decade, the FSB has placed most of the special services and law enforcement agencies, with the exception of the SVR, under its own security control. The flight of traitors is a chance for the FSB to extend its control over foreign intelligence.

In 2010, the FSB also gained more authority in the so-called fight against extremism, which for the last two years has been primarily the Ministry of Interior. The secret service lobbied for amendments to the legislation, thanks to which she received the right to warn citizens “about the inadmissibility of actions that create the conditions for committing 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 struggle should be “systemic”, and the task of the FSB is to identify the organizers of the provocations.