Russia's stark choices in the Caucasus
Image via WikipediaA day after an airport suicide bombing that investigators suspect was organized by Islamic militants, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin on Tuesday vowed retribution. President Dmitri A. Medvedev lashed out at low-ranking subordinates at the airport for failing to stop the attack. A number of initiatives were announced to prevent future terrorist acts.Russia will have a tough time with a counterinsurgency strategy, because it has no intention of leaving the way the US is in Iraq and Afghanistan. They would face the tough chore of winning people over for the long term. They are dealing with religious bigots who will never be appeased and will be difficult to cow.
Even so, the government seemed to be facing a bleak calculus.
None of its strategies for stamping out the long-running insurgency in southern Russia — neither the harsh measures favored by some in the security services nor the social programs and infrastructure projects supported by many policy experts — have yielded much success.
The bombing, which killed at least 35 people at the country’s premier international airport southeast of Moscow, came less than a year after two suicide attacks on the subway system here. In the meantime, the unrest in the North Caucasus itself — Chechnya and other Muslim regions — endures.
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I suspect the Russian response will be to find who they can blame and destroy them and those around them. In other words they will make it painful for those who support terrorist acts against them. That can be a long term strategy, if it is tied to cut off the support network for the terrorist. For that they may have to deal with some rich Arabs.
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