Window on Eurasia

Moscow’s “Double Standards” on Terrorism Could Backfire Among Russians

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 21, 2006 – Moscow regularly insists that it has the right to
destroy terrorists working against the Russian Federation but now says
that Israel does not have the right to do the same thing, a double
standard that is increasingly on view in the Russian media and one
likely to entail problems for Moscow in the future.

Having surveyed articles in 20 Russian regional newspapers about
terrorism domestic and foreign over the past week, Boris Shirokov, a
commentator for the Moscow Institute of Religion and Politics, argues
that this “double standard” represents a dangerous “political
game”
[http://i-r-p.ru/page/stream-nb/index-6560.html].

Few Russians object when their government adopts the harshest measures
to eliminate those like Shamil Basayev whom it has identified as
terrorists, Shirokov notes, but officials of that government not only
get involved with terrorist groups like Hamas but also condemn Israel
for its “disproportionate application of force.”

In the past, the Russian authorities have been able to sit more or less
comfortably between these “two stools,” counting on their
population not to draw any analogy between what Moscow claims is its right and
what it says other states such as Israel do not have the right to do.

But the close conjunction in time between the killing of Basayev, on
the one hand, and the visit of Hamas leaders to Moscow and Israel’s
response to terrorist attacks this past week, on the other, may make
ever more Russians aware that it is likely to prove difficult, if not
impossible to sustain such differences in the treatment of terrorists.

Russians who do reflect on these differences, especially given the new
wave of coverage of this approach, will quickly understand that Moscow
has taken this position in order to play “a political game” in the
Middle East to rebuild its influence among Arab countries and weaken
the power of the United States and the West at the same time.

However popular those goals may be for many Russians, Shirokov
suggests, they should remember the following simple fact: “for aggressive
Islamists, today’s secular and primarily ethnic Russian Russia is
part of the hated West” and therefore a country against which these same
Islamists are struggling in the North Caucasus.

For the followers of such radical Islamist doctrines, Shirokov
continues, Russians “with all [their] Byzantine cleverness will
forever remain ‘a satan,’ a member of the tribe of unbelievers and
oppressors of those struggling for freedom” in the Islamist
understanding of that term.

Such people will “smile” at Russians only as long as Moscow is
giving them money and “occupying a particular position on two stools
at the same time, attempting to ‘balance’ the West. But this will
not help our soldiers in Chechnya, and it will not help our diplomats
in Baghdad,” Shirokov insists, regardless of what Moscow believes.

At the end of his article, Shirokov appends comments from President
Vladimir Putin, Israeli Ambassador to Moscow Arkady Milman, and other
officials and commentators. But perhaps the most dramatic comment
featured there is by Andrei Piontkovskiy, the director of the Moscow
Center for Strategic Research.

He is quoted as saying that “the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact brought
Russia to the edge of destruction. The Lavrov-Mashal Pact [a reference
to agreements between the Kremlin and the Hamas Palestinian government]
may have in the future no less serious consequences.”

What Shirokov’s article suggests in turn is that ever more Russians
may now be reaching the conclusion that Moscow should pursue a
consistent policy on terrorism, a view that, depending on how things
work out, could lead either to a change in Russian policy at home or
serve as a constraint on Russian policy in the Middle East.

Latest Window on Eurasia stories | Religion Archive | Islam in Russia and CIS Archive | Orthodox Church in Russia and CIS Archive | All Window on Eurasia Stories Archive |