Window on Eurasia

Moscow Fails to See Politics Behind Terrorism, Analyst Argues

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 12, 2006 -- Moscow’s reaction to the killings of Russian diplomats in Iraq and the death of Chechen militan Shamil Basayev highlights the failure of senior Russian officials to grasp the political nature of terrorism, a shortcoming that will limit the Russian government’s ability to combat it, according to a senior Moscow analyst.

“The Russian elite,” Sergei Markedonov argues in an essay posted
online yesterday, “conceives terrorism either as a criminal (but not
political) action or as an end in itself and not as a means of
struggle” on behalf of some political agenda or other
[http://www.prognosis.ru/news/iworld/2006/7/11/markedonov.html].

And so members of this elite from President Vladimir Putin on down
almost in every case fail to recognize that “the physical destruction
or one or even several leaders” by itself will “not have an
essential impact on the general course of the anti-terrorist
campaign.”

To say this, the longtime specialist on ethnic conflicts says, is not
to justify terrorism. Instead, Markedonov continues, it is to insist that
only by recognizing the politics behind any particular group will those
who oppose the terrorists be able to deploy the full range of their
resources against those who employ terrorism as a tactic.

This failure of Russia’s elite to understand terrorism is even
embodied in the March 2006 law on terrorism, where terrorism is defined
in completely apolotical terms. While there is no single agreed upon
definition of terrorism, Markedonov says, most others include some
reference to the goals those using terror seek to advance.

Moreover, he continues, the examination of terrorist activities shows
that those who engage in it are not primarily interested in theft or
financial machinations but rather directed at “the realization of
some political goal. And he insists, understanding that is a necessity for
the development of an “adequate” strategy to oppose them.

Consequently, talking about “international terrorism” or
“terrorism unconnected to ethnicity or religion,” as many not only
in Moscow but in the West are inclined to do is “a politically
correct form of foolishness” that gets in the way of understanding why
terrorists make use of “this instrument of struggle.”

By focusing on the politics lying behind those who use terror, he says,
governments will quickly recognise that they need “to struggle not
with the shahids and particular representatives of the self-designated
‘shura’ but with the religious-political movements which finance
and organize terrorist acts.”

And if governments understand that, Markedonov continues, then they
will be able to undermine the terrorists of one or another kind by
“demonstrating the baselessness of their ideology and practice.” If
they do not, they will not only lose this opportunity but concede the
ideological field to the terrorists themselves.

Terrorism, as students of the subject have long noted, “always is
given birth by concrete historical conditions and therefore cannot be
‘non-ethnic’ or ‘non-religious.’ As a result, terrorism has
both an ethnic and a religious origin” and has a clearly defined
“cyclical nature.”

The current outburst of Islamist terrorism, Markedonov argues,
completely conforms to that pattern. It arose as a response to “the
failure of secular nationalist” projects in the Middle East and to
the recognition of the Arab world of the power of oil in the world today.

“It was thus no accident that the first powerful wave of terrorists
under the green banner arose after the nationalization of oil companies
… in the countries of the Islamic East at the end of the 1970s.”
And because that region lacked technological and military resources to
challenge the U.S. and Europe in normal ways, “terrorism began the
weapon” of choice of political Islam.

“One can observe similar processes of ‘the Islamization of
terrorism’ in the Russian North Caucasus,” Markedonov continues,
when in place of the defenders of the ethno-national self-determination
of Chechen came the supporters of the ideas of ‘pure Islam.’”

Unless this political basis is understood and incorporated into the
struggle against the evils of terrorism, that policy will be resourced
to “a search across the entire world and the liquidation of
terrorists will mean the introduction in relation to them of the principle of
“blood revenge.’”

Far better and more likely to achieve success, Markedonov concludes, is
“to deprive terrorists of the social and intellectual foundations”
on which they operate and to highlight to the communities within which
they operate the “baselessness and ineffectiveness” of the very
programs those who employ terror seek to advance.

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