Terrorists have struck again: On May 26, they detonated a bomb in Stavropol, southern Russia, claiming seven lives, including a girl of 12, and wounding more than 30 people. The zone of terrorism is expanding, and fresh recruits are joining the battle on the side of terrorists.
They planned a two-pronged attack, planting a bomb at the entrance to the local culture and sports center to explode shortly before a concert by Chechen dance group Vainakh. The terrorists' goal could be to intimidate Stavropol residents and those Chechens who have opted for peace in the region.
Another goal could be to spur ethnic strife and destabilize the situation in the Stavropol Territory, which was included in the newly established North Caucasus Federal District in January 2010.
Local authorities have denounced the blast as "an unprecedentedly ruthless provocation aimed at disrupting the ethnic balance in the territory."
Who could stand behind it? It is unlikely that it was organized by the few terrorists and separatists who are still hiding in the mountains and forests of Chechnya and Ingushetia; it is not their style. They mostly attack servicemen and police and usually use larger bombs; the explosive device in Stavropol is said to have contained 400 grams of TNT. Besides, they mostly use the double-explosion tactic, to be sure of the result.
Experts say the blast in Stavropol looks like an amateurish act of intimidation rather than a professional terrorist attack. The Investigation Committee has advanced two versions (http://www.rian.ru/incidents/20100527/239130768.html) regarding the forces behind the explosion.
The law-enforcement bodies of the North Caucasus Federal District say the blast could have been organized by extremist nationalist groups, which explains why the bomb was planted at the entrance to the concert hall where a Chechen dance group was to perform.
These groups could be aiming at exploding the fragile ethnic balance in the region, which was last time disrupted in Stavropol three years ago, in May 2007, by a fistfight between local youths and people from the Caucasus, in which a Chechen was killed.
Tensions were eventually allayed and there have been no nationalist groups in the region, at least no active ones. If it was a formerly undetected organization, which presumably appeared in the region in the last three years and has announced its presence with bloodshed, this is an extremely alarming sign. Such organizations must be liquidated as soon as possible, or they can provoke a wave of terrorist attacks throughout the fragile North Caucasus.
According to the second version of the events, an "underground bandit group," that is criminals, is responsible for the blast. Their goal could be to hinder the war against crime in the North Caucasus announced by the president's new envoy in the region, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin. He planned to visit Stavropol and the explosion could be designed as a warning to him.
Both versions show that the federal authorities' struggle for stability in the Caucasus has new powerful enemies. Nationalist radicals or formally apolitical criminals, they are threatening peace and security in the explosive region.
On May 19, President Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting of the Council for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights: "Corruption is a crime in any region, not only in the North Caucasus. The difference is that in the North Caucasus it has reached a very dangerous point and is actually threatening our national security and weakening state and social institutions. The bitter truth is that this corruption is essentially directly abetting the separatists and murderers at work in the North Caucasus."
This fully applies to the Stavropol terrorists. Whatever their goal, they are abetting separatists and so must be found and neutralized to prevent the spread of terrorism throughout the North Caucasus district and beyond it.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Nikolai Troitsky)
