The tragedy in Beslan should not disguise the fact that the guerillas have already lost Chechnya. They have turned from “freedom fighters” into international terrorist elements.

AndreiTsunsky

The recent series of terrorist attacks in Russia stirs up a whirlwind of negative emotions from grief to rage. It is hard to put them aside, but we must in order to look at what happened objectively. Are the terrorists really so powerful? Are Russian intelligence forces really so weak? Are government authorities as weak as many seem to think?
We believe that these terrorist attacks demonstrate that Putin has nonetheless found the right solution to the Chechen problem. The system of authority established in Chechnya has proven viable. It is far from perfect or elegant; it is crude and rough. But it has one characteristic that is absolutely necessary in the current situation: it is stable.
This system has been put through the wringer. Many thought that after Kadyrov’s death the entire “Chechenization” project had failed and the Chechen government would collapse, because it was all based on one person. This did not happen, though. Moreover, the system turned out to be more democratic than one would expect. People, as President Putin put it rightly, cannot be driven to the polls by force. The fact that they voted for the Kremlin’s man is easy to explain. The voters in Chechnya did not vote for a certain name or a particular person. They voted for stability and a strong government. Chechens once again voted to stay part of Russia because all other options will lead the republic to a dead end and nothing but blood and savagery. The Chechen people awoke after hard years of virtual independence from Russia, independence from the rule of law and civilization, from heated housing, from health care and schools. The Chechen people’s choice was a powerful strike against the separatist guerillas. Ordinary Chechens used to be afraid of the guerillas and did not hide this fact. By day, there was one authority in the republic and by night, a completely different one. But everything comes to an end. During the terrorist attack in Beslan, Chechens took to the streets for the first time in many long years, not only in Grozny, but in also Gudermes, and protested the terrorists’ actions without hiding their faces or running from the cameras. When a person is forced to live in fear year after year, he eventually stops being afraid at all. By taking children as hostages, the terrorists ended the era of the romantic “freedom fighter” and the people’s fear.
The attack in Beslan also undermined their “Islamic brand name.” Taking children as hostages is in direct conflict with the spirit of the Koran. They were publicly cursed by one of Russia’s Muslim leaders, the higher muftis of Chechnya refused to recognize them as Muslims, and Jordanian king Abdalla II, descendent of the prophet Mohammed, condemned them before the entire world. More and more Muslims outside of Chechnya are convinced that these people have nothing to do with Islam. Which is what those in Chechnya have known all along.
The “holy warriors” and “freedom fighters” have themselves changed. They are no longer drugged up, lawless mountain villagers who found themselves a new way to make a living. Now they are barely literate kids who grew up in wartime, now led and directed by foreign instructors from international terrorist organizations. They are no longer the men who keep fighting because they burn with revenge or hatred. They keep fighting because they know that even if the state were to amnesty or pardon them, they would not escape the justice of those whose blood they have shed. Thus, there is no way they will be able to live in Chechnya.
It is now obvious. By gaining the reputation as a band of terrorists, the guerillas have lost Chechnya.
We can complain that intelligence agents have not been able to catch Chechen separatist leaders Basaev and Maskhadov for years. However, there are perhaps completely “technical” reasons for this. Basaev is more useful to intelligence agents as a free man. They can follow him, listen to his conversations, and even follow up on his contacts. These contacts will lead them to the funding sources and the intermediary organizations and functionaries of international terrorist networks. As a result of the changes in Chechnya, separatists are starved for cadres. It’s one thing to find a female suicide bomber or shahid blinded by the loss of too many loved ones. It’s altogether another to find an organizer capable of working with foreign sponsors and dealing at the same time with terrorist and military maneuvers. If there is a shortage of these people, it becomes much easier to get an agent into the ranks. Then the task gets even easier. While it might be hard to get an agent into the tight-knit world of Chechnya, where everyone knows everyone else, the Russian secret services do have agents in the Arab and Muslim world. Otherwise, the powers that be in the US would not have valued Russian information regarding the Taliban so highly.
Moreover, the leaders of various bands, dying one after another, do not trust each other. They know many of their colleagues would have no problem trading their own life for someone else’s. Rank-and-file guerillas also do not trust their “commanders.” They have been paid too often for actual attacks and the associated risk with counterfeit dollars. They have been tricked too many times.
The question arises: what will they do next? Now the only answer is to become professional terrorists with radical Islamic leanings. Yet you have to work for “grants” and “subsidies” from international terrorist organizations. They will simply leave, slamming the door, and will slam that door many, many times. For instance, the Chechen guerillas can come back, but now in their new form, without the freedom fighter’s romantic halo. Their disgusting, cannibalistic nature will be made plain.
The terrorists’ geography will expand in this case. Attacks will be planned more scrupulously. Russia needs effective tools to combat terrorism such as modern intelligence and modern police (who actually do their duties as police officers and stop shaking down drivers and kiosk owners). We need more than extremely efficient and mobile anti-terrorist units. We need a carefully crafted anti-terrorist system, which will involve all security agencies, as well as the Emergency and Health Ministries, local authorities, and private security companies.
It is not fair to say that Russia’s intelligence and police officers are completely incompetent. They can do some things well, or otherwise they would never catch a single murderer or thief and would never have caused the Chechen situation to improve. They can prevent terrorist attacks. It would be sacrilege to forget how FSB Major Gregory Trofimov died, leaving behind a wife and daughter. He gave his life to defuse an explosive device in downtown Moscow. 
However, intelligence and especially police officers need better training. This is about more than material rewards or new equipment and weapons. Officer’s motives need to change. The system based on kickbacks and bribery chases away the honest and keeps those willing to work with corruption. All of Putin’s strategic plans and ideas could come to naught, but due not to an outbreak of terrorist attacks. Putin needs the confidence of those authorities “close to the people.” The public judges them as a reflection of the kind of power in place in the country.
The explosions on the ground and in the air and the hostage crisis are obvious responses to the early presidential elections in Chechnya. When people cry that Putin does not have control over the situation, they are not really right. Indeed, Putin does not control every metro station, airplane, and school in Russia. But he shouldn’t have to. He has to make those charged with fighting terrorism do their jobs effectively.

More in Russian>> www.expert.ru