generalspeaking

Warning Shots Across The Bow

It is not a situation, those new revelations, guaranteed to infuse trust in the ability of the Kremlin, despite its enormous expenditures and security preparations with the use of advanced technology and tens of thousands of military and security police personnel to secure the venue of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. It is downright sinister. Further violently destructive hate-filled evidence that jihadis in the Caucasus are determined to wreak as much fear and damage as they can.

No motive has yet been discovered for a series of killings on the outskirts of Pyatigorsk, the very centre of an administrative district meant to coordinate efforts to combat the Islamist insurgency around the Caucasus Mountains region, according to Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Federal Security Service. The killings unexplained, terror-inducing in itself, since those murdered were ordinary citizens and there appears no reason they should meet death.

But in those regions and that intemperate political-religious climate the unexpected is expected, without doubt. Militant insurgents declare themselves the enemy of a state that imposes its ruling will upon them. Their aspiration is to achieve total sovereignty in reflection of their own heritage, stringently fundamentalist religious devotion and tribal and clan cultures.

Pyatigorsk is in the Stavropol region, just north of predominantly Muslim republics in the Caucasus region of Russia. The Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, had joined the local investigation, now classified as a counter-terrorist operation. Sochi is located to the east of the region on the Black Sea, about 300 kilometres by air, and almost twice as far by road from Pyatigorsk; too close for comfort, despite the seemingly impenetrable security encircling Sochi.

Was it symbolic, to demonstrate that the terrorists could strike anywhere, anytime, at will? That what they could accomplish in a city not too distant from Sochi they could also arrange for Sochi itself, despite security? How secure, after all, can any site be that invites participation from abroad, knowing that an internationally enthusiastic audience will travel to the site of the Olympics, to be there and witness champion sporting activities with the added frisson of danger?

There are always oversights, because human nature cannot always be vigilant, particularly under stress. No claims of responsibility have been made yet for the Volgograd bombings. The use of explosives along with the six men shot to death and discovered in vehicles with explosives alongside in two separate venues appear to clearly mark the events as having been staged not by 'common' criminals but by criminal minds belonging to the psychotic disorder of terrorists.

Labels: Islamism, Olympic Games, Russia, Terrorism, Violence

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, January 11, 2014