The statement by the Caucasian Mujahideen which was posted on the website Kavkaz-Center on December 2 claiming responsibility for the Nevsky Express train crash does not look particularly convincing. While there can be little doubt that the Caucasian underground is well able to plan and carry out an attack of this kind, the absence of any detail from the text does not suggest that the operation was masterminded by a group from the Caucasus Emirate. When Shamil Basayev thought it necessary to declare his authorship of a terrorist attack he usually described the preparations in minute detail, naming names and providing video footage. The Emirate has continued this tradition, as evidenced by the Internet video of the August 17 bomb attack on the Nazran police department. In the present instance there has been nothing similar.

To those who do not usually enter deeply into the logic of events in the North Caucasus, the Kavkaz Center statement will seem like an empty declaration which aims to present the underground as a powerful underground terrorist organization with enormous resources - indeed, the sort of assessment that was heard yesterday from some Chechen and Russian officials and experts. While there may be grounds for such conclusions, the attempts of a group of Russian Muslims who have sworn allegiance to Dokka Umarov to take the credit for the blast at the Sayan-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power plant looked absurd, even though in that case there was an attempt to back the claim with concrete proof. The unbiased experts who analyzed the cause of the accident in detail completely ruled out the possibility that it was a terrorist attack, and the validity of their arguments was obvious even to the uninitiated.

But the Neva Express disaster is completely different. Security officers and explosives experts are unanimous in insisting that the train was blown up. They reject all other theories as untenable, including the ones that have circulated on the Internet. I am not going to examine here all the conspiracy theories that accuse the security forces of organizing the blast or of simulating it. If we are to believe the authorities, what took place was a terrorist attack. In that case, a natural question arises: is there in Russia a paramilitary organization with an ideological platform that can morally justify the need for the mass death of civilians? There is such an organization, and there is only one. It is the Caucasus Emirate, whose leader Dokka Umarov declared the resumption of terrorist activities last spring. That his words were not an empty threat became abundantly clear this summer. Explosion followed explosion, while the rebel underground engaged in a wide variety of terrorist activity: the attempt on the life of Ingushetia's president, the explosion in the centre of Grozny which killed several high-ranking MVD officers, the assassination of Dagestan's Minister of Internal Affairs, the attack on the Nazran police department, as well as a series of actions carried out by lone suicide bombers. In a single summer the Caucasus Emirate has mastered almost every form of sabotage and terrorism. Replying to the accusations of those who have blamed him for the deaths of civilians, Umarov explained that he thinks Russia's citizens, whose taxes go to the upkeep of the country's security agencies and the state machinery that unleashed the war in Chechnya, are responsible for what is happening. And in fact these same arguments are also present in yesterday's Emirate statement.

Perhaps it will be argued that Russia has radical nationalist organizations which also consider acts of terrorism acceptable. Indeed, there has appeared on the Internet a statement by an anonymous, semi-mythical group calling for the murder of security agents. But the calls have remained theoretical and are phrased in a none too elegant, semi-literate style. It is unlikely that any police officer or FSB official has suffered at the hands of the authors of those lines. Moreover, the nationalists would find it extremely hard to justify the inflicting of mass civilian casualties. It would be impossible to arrange the bombing of a civilian target like a passenger train in such a way that the deadly force of the explosion bypassed the ethnic Russians whose interests the nationalists purport to defend. So we shall leave the nationalists alone, as they are morally unprepared to carry out operations of this type on such a scale.

The North Caucasian Mujahideen are quite another matter. They are waging a war on Russia, and every day some of them are killed in the course of the fighting. Their psychological and moral readiness to sacrifice their lives, either in combat or in terrorist attacks, is absolute. Indeed, they make no distinction between these two kinds of death, as Dokka Umarov has clarified and demonstrated in detail.

As for the clumsily written and extremely unconvincing statement claiming responsibility for the rail blast, its explanation is not hard to find. The North Caucasian underground is an organization profoundly wrapped in conspiracy and restricted in its choice of available means of communication. Therefore the evidence of its involvement will either appear later on the Kavkaz Center site or, more probably, will not appear at all because the terrorists have not been able to film the operation or provide the public with a detailed description of the preparations for the attack. Most likely it is far more important for them to remain anonymous, as there are still plenty of other targets in Russia for their forces to engage. In a small organization like the Caucasus Emirate that is pursued day and night by the authorities, those who are worth their weight in gold are not the young men ready to blow themselves up for the cause in some Chechen village but rather the professionals who have conspiratorial skills, are able to get lost in the crowd, plant a bomb and escape from the scene unharmed. Even though according to official sources the North Caucasus underground is only a few hundred men strong, it is still the largest illegal organization in Russia. Umarov, who is known for his practical sense, is not likely to let such people go to waste. Since any information about a terrorist act may lead to the prosecution of those who performed it, it is better for the terrorists if the public's curiosity remains partly unsatisfied.

Umarov has carried the war out of the North Caucasus and into the heart of Russia. It will not be the kind of war that was waged by Basayev. Basayev saw terror as an instrument by means of which he could compel Russia's leadership to meet his political demands concerning the future of a separate Chechen state (whether secular or Islamic). When after Beslan he realized that terror was no longer effective, he simply closed the terrorist project down. Today's Mujahideen have new, more ambitious goals. For them, terror is a weapon in a battle for justice whose rules are dictated by heaven. Its purpose is not immediate political or military success. Instead, it aspires to reduce Russia to ashes and then sooner or later (perhaps only in a hundred years' time) establish Islamic rule first over the North Caucasus and ultimately over the whole world, which is now ruled by infidels.

Andrei Babitsky

Source: Prague Watchdog