Putin´s anti-terrorism programme - a total failure

 “Over the last 11 years in Russia, the number of terrorist attacks has risen dramatically. From 2000 to 2009, they have increased more than sixfold and reached the astronomical figure of more than 750 incidents a year. This is obviously a total failure of the country’s anti-terrorism program.”
Boris Nemtsov

The terrorist bombing at the Moscow Domodedovo airport was the latest proof that Vladimir Putin´s anti-terrorist policies are a disaster. As the brave opposition politician Boris Nemtsov has pointed out , the number of terrorist acts has grown radically in spite of Putin´s get tough policy.

Newsweek offers an interesting analysis of Putin´s failure:

Vladimir Putin rose to power nearly a dozen years ago promising to defend Russia from secessionist Chechen terrorists. In September 1999, responding to a series of still unexplained apartment-house explosions that killed 293 people in Moscow and southern Russia, the Army rolled into the breakaway republic with overwhelming force. Thousands of people were killed, and thousands more were driven from their homes. But the terrorist threat has not disappeared, instead mutating from nationalist violence to insatiable vendettas, only worsened by a deepening descent into a holy war inspired by Al Qaeda. Government moves against suspected terrorists, sometimes justified and sometimes not, have only provoked lethal retaliation. There were 29 suicide attacks in Russia over the past 12 months; 108 Russians were killed by terrorists, compared with only nine Israelis in the same period.

Corruption that pervades Putin´s Russia is one major reason why terrorism thrives:

Even then, the terrorist threat might be relatively containable if not for Russia’s wider ills. “The reason Russia is losing the war on terror is corruption,” says Elena Panfilova, director of Transparency International in Moscow. “Security systems cannot work in a country rotten with corruption.” Police at Moscow’s airports notoriously spend much of their time shaking down dark-skinned travelers for bribes instead of doing their jobs. In 2004 two female suicide bombers were detained by police at Domodedovo airport—but were released after making a payoff. The women then boarded a plane without tickets by allegedly bribing an airline employee. Ninety passengers and crew members were killed when the plane exploded. “The president relies on the decisions of corrupt bureaucrats and law-enforcement agencies,” says the Parliament security committee’s Gudkov. “The result is that terrorism has spilled from the North Caucasus and spread all across Russia. Hundreds of people die, all across the country.”

Read the entire article here.