Terrorist Bombings in Volgograd Lead to Worries About Winter Olympics

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Late in December, suicide bombers were responsible for the deaths of at least 34 people in the southern Russian city of Volgograd, in attacks on a railway station and a trolleybus. In October, a woman from Dagestan killed seven people in a suicide bus blast in the city.

The bombings raised fears of further attacks before Russia hosts the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February. Volgograd, the former Stalingrad, the city made famous in World War II, lies about 650 kilometres northeast of Sochi and is the main gateway to the Black Sea resort.

Evidence in the two recent blasts points to Islamist terrorists, most probably Chechens. In July, Chechen jihadist leader Doku Umarov pledged that his militants would disrupt the Sochi games. Sochi itself lies not far from the restive republics of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, in the northern Caucasus, the sites of ongoing Islamist terrorism.

 “We know that on the bones of our ancestors, on the bones of many, many Muslims who died and are buried on our territory along the Black Sea, today they plan to stage the Olympic Games. We, as the Mujahedeen, must not allow this to happen by any means possible,” Umarov declared.

The most restive of the numerous peoples living in the Caucasus, the Chechens have chafed under Russian domination for 150 years. In the recent past, they have fought two bloody wars, in 1994-1996 and 1999-2000, for independence; the conflict left at least one hundred thousand dead and the capital, Grozny, a wasteland. Most ethnic Russians living in Chechnya at the time fled. Umarov fought in both these wars.

Although they lost the two wars, a new constitution granted Chechnya in 2003 did give the republic more autonomy within the Russian Federation. This did not satisfy extremists, though, and in recent years, the resistance to Moscow has been infused by religious nationalism and calls for the establishment of an Islamic Caucasian Emirate became louder.

Though Russian forces have tried to keep a tight grip on the Caucasus, this dream has not died. In 2007, Umarov proclaimed himself emir of a Islamic Caucasian state ruled by Sharia law.

“Today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, our brothers are fighting,” he said at the time. “Everyone who attacked Muslims, wherever they are, are our enemies, common enemies. Our enemy is not Russia only, but everyone who wages war against Islam and Muslims.”

Vladimir Putin’s Russia will have its hands full protecting not only Sochi, but much of the country, over the next few months.