Internet Cartoon Satirizing Public Sentiment
Today’s attacks in the Moscow metro appear to have killed about forty people. As many people died a little more than six years ago in the tunnel near Avtozavodskaya station in a similar suicide explosion.
Today and tomorrow are days of mourning, but the smoke had hardly cleared before the speculation and accusations started. The two perpetrators were apparently women, and the consensus seems to be that they are linked to the North Caucasus, despite any proof, so far. This would certainly fit the pattern, though many in America could possibly be confused if this is traced back to Ingushetia, Cherkessia, Kabardino, or somewhere else in the region that isn’t Chechnya.
Cartoon pictured right: “The MChS dealt quickly with everything, the police cordoned it off, and ambulances ferried all away. After the the funeral, we’ll get to burying — and everything will be okay!”
The New York Times asked if this will benefit Putin, actually disseminating the comments of Paul Goble, whose appearance on the NYT’s website marks perhaps his first ever publication with paragraph breaks. The consensus seems to be that, yes, it will help Vova insofar as he can make the resultant fear work to his advantage. Katheryn Stoner-Weiss of Stanford University thought the terrorists somehow echoed the protestors from recent weeks (“The subway bombings, like the protests last week, are a reminder that Mr. Putin’s autocracy has not worked for ordinary Russians”). This is probably not the word association (terrorist — protests) that most demonstrators would like, but — hey — the expert has spoken.
Gazeta.ru published an editorial that is also critical of Putin (‘promises to protect us have proved to be empty words,’ etcetera), though it concludes on a less confrontational (“You can argue all day about the successes versus the failures of the Kremlin’s Caucasus policies”), slightly more philosophical note about the need for the authorities and society to both recognize the internal national problems that cause terrorism.
Ilya Yashin, favorite jester of the liberal movement, called on Vladimir Putin and several key members of his entourage to resign for failing to prevent today’s attacks. Maksim Kononenko, not to be outdone and unafraid of taking this logic to its extreme, called on God and several key Christian saints to resign from their posts, as well.
President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin were featured heavily on channel Вести 24. Putin has been widely credited with the “we will destroy the terrorists” line, though Medvedev has grumbled the words himself more than once today on TV, seemingly trying out a new jaw-flexing exercise in an effort to prove his seriousness.
Because today’s terrorist attacks were unexpected, our media produced some very awkward spin, and I’ve no doubt there is more to come. Bear in mind that career Russia Watchers were previously working on other, generally unrelated topics before the bombings today. Suddenly, however, the entire world for a day is talking about terrorism in Moscow, and the press calls its go-to experts. At such moments, these people face a challenge: almost none of them are North Caucasus experts (name me one prominent U.S.-based Russia expert who speaks Chechen, for instance), so they must steer the conversation in a more comfortable direction. For that reason, we see two basic approaches: first and most common, experts play a familiar card and explain how Putin is somehow to blame, and that his final days are near; and, second, experts try to tie in whatever they were working on before they got the reporter’s phonecall. We’ve already seen a lot of the former, and I predict more of the latter to come in the following weeks.
Don’t be surprised either to see hordes of “terrorism experts” kicking in their two cents, too.
The result, though, is the same no matter who’s doing the talking: analysis without context. We live in a world where opinion-makers for Russia news are focused either on the narrow politics of the core (like the squabbling of the liberal opposition), or on phenomena so broad that no regional expertise whatsoever is required of many experts (consider the countless neocons who have taken up the Middle East in recent years, without mastering any Middle Eastern languages).
The metro has already reopened — even at the targeted stations on the Red Line. Muscovites will march back to work tomorrow, millions trampling in and out of the subway, like any other day, save perhaps a little nervousness. The authorities have yet to identify the organizational sponsors of these two suicide bombers, but the Russian Internet is abuzz with rumors that there will be more attacks in the coming days. And while Russians hope for a breakthrough in the investigation, Washington’s spin doctors twiddle their thumbs over blank document templates, contemplating ways to make today’s events conform to yesterday’s.
Western North Caucasus is less likely, I would think. Can’t think of any terrorists acts that have been traced to there. Ingushetia, Chechnya, Daghestan seems to be where things happen. Ingushetia has been very unstable for a while, I have friends from there. And, of course, Said Buryatsky was killed just recently, which made quite an impression, I gather.
I floated the idea that this could be traced back to the West North Caucasus because the 2004 attack near Avtozavodskaya was eventually pinned on men who, though having trained in Chechnya and apparently received help from a Chechen group, Gazoton Murdash, were actually from the Karachay-Cherkess Republic.
Also remember the 2005 attack on Nalchik was in Kabardino-Balkaria — so I would hesitate to tout even the relative stability of this area.
That area is still more stable than the Eastern North Caucasus, but I know about the attacks in Nalchik. I am not sure how far they have spread out of there (not in terms of separate people participating). The general attitude in the Western parts seems to be to try and dissociate themselves from the Eastern part and their problems as much as possible. Fervent religiosity was never endemic there and I am not sure how much it has managed to catch on overall, although nowadays it seems to be like a rot that eats through everything.
Additionally, the authorities have suggested that this could be a revenge-attack in response to the assassinations of both Said Buriatskii and Anzor Astemirov.
Astemirov was a leader of the Kabardino-Balkaria group that engineered the Nalchik attack.
I was actually impressed with the tone most news outlets I saw took. I didn’t see anyone blaming Putin in the traditional tv media. Mostly the whole reverence, horror, etc. shtick, and people being impressed with how effectively the tragedy was dealt with. Those journalists whom I did see give knee-jerk reactions about failed Chechnya policies were quickly corrected by whatever experts they were interviewing, who pointed out that Chechnya’s the more stable of the North Caucasus regions, that these extremists were less representative of widespread separatist movements and more likely working with a loose network of bandits and jihadists.
The thing about terrorism is that it plays well into the Western or American agenda. It doesn’t help advance America’s GWOT or Europe’s Islamophobia to question the legitimacy of these attacks, so I doubt people like Yashin will get much airtime.
Moreover, anyone currently living in a city appreciates how impossible it is make something like a subway system 100% secure.
Excellent point about many outlets being happy to incorporate these attacks into the War on Terror, and, as a result, temporarily holding back Putin criticism. This absolutely deserves mentioning, and the WSJ’s editorial today is a perfect example.
Individual scholars, though, can’t as easily publish op-eds extending heartfelt sympathies to the Russian nation. Though, you’re right again that GWOT people are using this as an opportunity to remind readers that your mother could be murdered by Muslims at any moment, Russia experts are generally expected to do ostensible “analysis,” and that often leads them down the road of all too familiar criticisms.
Consider Andrey Illarionov, who implied that the government had a hand in these bombings, perhaps to prevent the March 31st rallies scheduled for tomorrow (now cancelled). Vladimir Kara-Murza made the same insinuation on his blog today. Clifford Levy wrote a sufficiently lousy piece in the NYT this morning, suggesting that Putin just wants to police the North Caucasus, but that Medvedev is interested in actually fighting poverty. It’s clearly more Gorbachev-modernizer-2.0 wishy-washiness.
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Quick question for people out there, was there a Russian equivalent of the pro-Bush “he kept us safe” meme? I assume the general sentiment was out there, but was there a neat phrase that all of the Putin-adoring talking heads used?
Just something I was wondering about, as it seems to me more US neoconservatives have, when analyzing Russia, simply inverted their pro-Bush stance on terrorism. So instead of “Bush’s authoritarian methods kept us safe!” (so don’t try us for war crimes) it becomes “Putin’s authoritarian methods DIDN’T keep people safe” (so give Georgia more military aid).
Fred Weir says so.
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This one takes the cake:
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_14796086
Among other venues, the writer of the above linked article has been picked up in The Tehran Times, which serves as a lead in to the global terror watchers.
The neocons in particular make a big deal of Russia being “soft” on Iran. On that subject, China can be used as a “softer” reference. For accuracy sake: on the issue of the Muslim fundamentalist theme of global terrorism, Iran bashing shouldn’t overlook the Saudi and Pakistani factors.
Faults aside: in addition to its apparent non-involvement with the Taliban and the 9/11 folks, Iran hasn’t appeared to have caused trouble in Russia – perhaps explaining in part why the Kremlin isn’t so gung ho in taking as hard a line against Iran as some others like the US and Israel. Russia is trying to be on good terms with Iran, Israel and the US, which can be a bit of a tricky balance.
Iranian manner in Lebanon is a noticeable point of concern for Israel and the US. In other instances, Iran, Israel and the US have had somewhat common objectives. Concern about Iraq when Saddam was in power being one example. Western neolibs, neocons and Iran backed the same side during the Bosnian Civil War – which essentially involved support for a Bosnian Muslim fundamentalist leader (Izetbegovic) and Jihadists from outside Bosnia. The Clinton admin. turned a blind eye at Iranian arms shipments to the Bosnian Muslims via Croatia, with the Croats skimming some of the goods for themselves.
On the situation in the northern Caucasus, Ariel Cohen has differed with Richard Pipes. The latter has been involved with a Jamestown Foundation affiliated project sympathetic to Chechen separatists. Awhile back, A. Cohen was taking a position sympathetic to what Russia has faced in the northern Caucasus. Mind you that A. Cohen is by no means in the so-called Russophile camp. I sense that A. Cohen takes a conservative pro-Israeli position, which sees a relationship of problems that Israel, Serbia and Russia face.
I understand that Yulia Latynina made a comment on Ekho Moskvy about how Muscovites don’t show much concern for terror attacks outside Moscow. Contrary to what some say, there’s a universal reality pertaining to what hits closer to home is a primary concern over farther away places.
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