"WHO'S GUILTY?" AND "WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?"

One word stood out in the first reports about the explosion at Domodedovo airport: "Another terrorist act has occurred in Russia." Another…yes, less than a year has passed since the last bloody explosions on the Moscow metro, and now we have another tragedy…

A suicide-bomber activated the explosive device at about 1630 (Moscow time: Editor's note) on 24 January next to the busy 'green zone' in customs control, among a crowd of people waiting for arriving passengers. The bomb, equivalent to up to 5kg of TNT, was stuffed with projectiles. Thirty-five people were killed and over 100 are in hospital. Among the dead were two British subjects and people from Germany, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The injured included people from France, Britain, Germany, Slovakia, Tajikistan and Moldova.

First reports as to who committed this terrorist act and how were scanty and contradictory. Nearly a week after the tragedy information about those who might have organized and carried out the explosions is not much clearer.

The first version said that militants of the North Caucasian underground could have been behind the explosion, particularly members of the so-called 'Caucasian Emirate', and the militant leader Doku Umarov could have been its direct organizer. A number of experts were of the opinion that the action could have been the response to a series of successful anti-terrorist operations in Dagestan and Ingushetia. At the same time, it is significant that Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, himself said that first reports indicated that the explosion at Moscow's Domodedovo airport had nothing to do with the Chechen Republic.

Meanwhile, the Russian media first reported that there were two suicide bombers (a man and a woman) and that they had probably brought the bomb with them in a bag to the airport. So it followed that the terrorists must have been suicide bombers - the explosive device probably went off too soon, or someone else had activated it by remote control. Suppositions that the terrorists had accomplices who had arrived at the airport were made at the very outset but have not been articulated officially. Next came a report that a suicide bomber with an explosive device fastened to his body was the man whose decapitated head was found at the scene by investigators. This led to the media speculation about which ethnic group this "head" belonged to, although, clearly, experts would have no particular difficulty in establishing this fact.

Then there was a report that the authorities were looking for ten people suspected of involvement in the atrocity. Two of them were named - Vitaliy Razdobudko, whom the media christened the 'Russian Wahhabist because of his links with the 'Nogay jamaat', and Nazir Batyrov, who was also linked to this gang. It emerged that the 'Russian Wahhabist' was on the wanted list in connection with the terrorist act in Pyatigorsk in August.

However, the journalists, after comparing the photograph of Razdobudko with the picture (a so-called photocomposition) of the terrorist's head found at the scene of the tragedy, very soon came to the conclusion that the 'Russian Wahhabist' had not carried out the action at Domodedovo.

As far as the 'Nogay jamaat' is concerned, information is also contradictory. It basically says that this is a militant unit of the so-called 'Caucasian Front' which operates in Stavropol Territory. During the second Chechen war, a number of Nogays from Neftekumskiy District set up an organization under the direct leadership of (Chechen militant Islamist leader) Shamil Basayev. In the autumn of 2010, the leaders of this group were wiped out by the security forces.

The information journalists had on Nazir Batyrov was no less intriguing. For example, he had reportedly been killed in Dagestan in September 2009. However, the Interior Ministry department for Novosibirsk Region announced in September 2010 that he was on the wanted list …

Meanwhile, at practically the same time as rumours emerged that the special services might have information about a terrorist act being prepared in Moscow, they recalled that less than a month before, on 31 December last year, there was an explosion in a small building belonging to a private shooting club in Moscow's Kuzminskiy Park, which was being used as a hotel. In the debris, officers of the SKR (counter-intelligence service) and the FSB found the remains of a woman's body and a so-called Shahid belt stuffed with plastic explosive and metal fragments of bearings and bolts. It was later revealed that the body was that of the widow of a leader of the "Nogay jamaat".

At the same time, media sources reported that the female terrorist blown up in Kuzminskiy Park had allegedly planned to carry out an explosion in Manezh Square. However, the bomb went off prematurely - some reports say that this was because her mobile phone had received an SMS message - a New Year's greeting from the operating company.

One report said that when the explosion occurred in Kuzminskiy Park the dead woman had an accomplice with her - one 24-year old Zaynap Suyunova, who was arrested in Volgograd. Official reports say that Suyunova is also the wife of a member of the bandit underground. And it is said that Suyunova and her accomplice, whose name has not been disclosed, went to Moscow to blow themselves up because members of the "Nogay jamaat", including the aforementioned Razdobudko, were holding their children hostage.

Some media reports also say that the trail from the Moscow attack could stretch as far as Pakistan and that the Russian special services had also asked their Pakistani counterparts for assistance. It is believed that the organizers of the action could have been trained with al-Qa'ida on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. A number of militants and field commanders from Central Asia and the Russian North Caucasus are believed to be hiding out there.

Meanwhile, on 28 January, Andrey Przhezdomskiy, an official spokesman of the Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAK), using the strong language of the NAK and the FSB, said there had been no warning of a terrorist action being prepared at Domodedovo airport. The NAK spokesman described all the talk in the media about a "Nogay battalion" and a "Pakistani trail" as a "Bacchanalia of rumours, conjecture, slander and disinformation".

According to Przhezdomskiy, the Russian Investigating Committee was conducting the official investigation and only it "was able to say how and what, and the rest should shut up". The Moscow Main Internal Affairs Department also said that the Moscow police had no information about a terrorist action being prepared. Furthermore, the NAK spokesman was angry that some Russian journalists had arranged to test security services in the capital's airports by trying to take dummy bombs into the buildings, and in two or three cases they had succeeded. 

The Russian media is clearly taking its cue from ordinary people, who want to know what is going on and who are trying to understand what they might expect in the future. The latest assurances of the authorities that those responsible for terrorism will be found and that the situation is under control, are probably not of much comfort to anyone.

Yes, heads started to roll following Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev's order to punish the police chiefs who allowed this bloody attack to occur (to "shake up" the whole of the transport police, was how he put it). Maj-Gen Andrey Alekseyev, the head of the Interior Ministry's transport department in the Central Federal District; the head of line management at Domodedovo and his two deputies; the deputy head of the Main Internal Affairs Department for Moscow; Vladimir Chugunov, the head of the department for work with personnel, and four top officials at Gosavianadzor (the civil aviation supervision authority), Rostransnadzor (the transport supervision) and Rosaviatsiya (Russian Aviation) were all sacked.

But these sackings, firstly, impressed very few and secondly, even gave rise to some doubts. For example, it was pointed out that Alekseyev had been appointed head of the department less than six months previously, and before that he had been in charge of the Moscow internal affairs department for rail transport in the Russian Interior Ministry and is said to have been behind a number of useful counter-terrorist innovations. At the same time, judging by various comments in the electronic media, many Russian people are puzzled as to why the president refuses to sack his Interior Minister, Rashid Nurgaliyev, who, as even the western media have noted, was not particularly active in the first few days after the terrorist act.

However, this is clearly not even a question of tightening the security of buildings. You can turn all of Moscow's, and even all Russia's, airports into fortresses impenetrable to terrorists, but how can you guarantee the security of all the exits and underpasses in the huge Moscow metro? You can hardly place metal detectors on every bus and at every bus stop; and what about the more crowded streets and food-stores? Clearly, there must be an integrated solution to the problem and not just a matter of tightening security measures on transport. But what can you do? How can you build a complete picture out of all these scattered pieces? After all, rumours and conjecture occur precisely when there is no clear official position. And that is exactly the situation. The terrorist action at Moscow's Domodedovo airport has Russian society in turmoil - from high-ranking officials to ordinary citizens, and the interesting thing, if you look beyond the ongoing debate, is that it is becoming clear that the Russian people are concerned not just about the problem of security, but they are being tormented by the age-old Russian questions: "Who is guilty?" and "What is to be done?" And as has often happened throughout Russia's history, recent and not so recent, no-one has the answers to these questions.

On the other hand, as unhappy officials remark, there have been plenty of complaints and sharp observations (frequently accompanied by flowery, unprintable expressions).  This vacuum is inevitably filled by rumour and conjecture. And one should not be surprised that the media is simply overflowing with different versions of what happened and all of them "quoting their own sources in the law-enforcement agencies and the FSB". The Russian blogosphere and the various social networks and forums are particularly symptomatic here.

It was interesting that in the first few hours after the explosion, internet users in Russia (and not just Russia), hoping to get information about the Domodedovo airport incident as quickly as possible, were frankly astonished at the behaviour of the traditional media - television and radio. And indeed, whilst the main Russian TV channels merely decided to interrupt their evening diet of soaps with special news bulletins, the first video clips from the scene were being shown on the internet, along with the first stories from witnesses to the tragedy and the first comments by astonished or, more often, spiteful users. In general, it seems that for many Russians, and those who couldn't care less about what is going on in Russia, the internet has become a real focus, a place to voice one's opinion and have a debate.

And so, by following closely the battle of words on the blogosphere over the reasons for the Moscow explosion, one can separate out five main theories which seem, if one may put it that way, symptomatic. First, some Internet users blame the aforementioned 'North Caucasian underground' and all the 'jamaats' and 'emirates' involved in it for what happened. Others accuse these same North Caucasian militants and their colleagues from al-Qa'ida.  Still others link the Domodedovo action with recent events in Manezh Square and can see the imprint of the ultra-right who wish to stir up again the ethnic passions which had all but died out in the Russian capital. Among the supporters of this theory are those who see the culprits not among the ultra-right but all those North Caucasian militants who have thus been avenged for the beatings received by their comrades and brothers in Pervoprestolnaya (Moscow's ancient official title:editor's note).

It was even suggested that it was by no means accidental that the explosions occurred immediately after scandalous remarks made on the Caucasian question by Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, leader of the LDPR, on the RTR channel. This in itself was strange, because even the North Caucasian militants are aware that no-one is offended any longer by the scandalous remarks Vladimir Volfovich comes out with…

The fourth theory and, oddly enough, one of the most popular in the Russian blogosphere, sounds improbably cynical because it lays the blame for all this on…the Russian special services. The belief is that it is being done either in the run-up to the 2012 presidential elections or to distract people's attention from questions which might provoke serious popular unrest. Significantly for some bloggers, one such question is, for example, the latest sentence given to Mikhail Khodorkovskiy, the head of Yukos, even though most Russians probably don't even know who he is. In short, the authorities, in the form of the president and the prime minister, came in for such tough criticism that this in itself places doubt on this unbelievably dreadful version, even if it should suddenly turn out to be true. This at a time when not only bloggers, but also many of the media, including the western media, are describing what happened either as "the downfall of the Kremlin's policy in the Caucasus" or a clear sign of the "systemic illness of the Russian authorities". There is just one point on which they have no doubt - the explosions have seriously damaged the image of the Russian president and prime minister. What has been particularly damaged, it would seem, is Vladimir Putin's image. Nowadays everyone recalls his celebrated promise to "flush all terrorists down the toilet".

Finally, we come to the fifth and most popular of the bloggers theories - that there is some kind of 'international trail'. The thinking is that someone, most probably in the West, in agreement with the Russian opposition, is trying to wrest power from the hands of the Medvedev-Putin 'ruling tandem', and this is why a crisis situation is being provoked in Russia. In this context, of course, one recalls WikiLeaks, the world renowned brainchild of Julian Assange (where would we be without him?) Thus, it is being claimed that terrorist actions show up the weakness of the powers-that-be in Russia, or else they want to put pressure on them for all kinds of reasons. 

There are even those who believe that "someone" was trying to prevent Medvedev from going to the World Economic Forum in Davos. Incidentally, Medvedev himself, who arrived in Davos anyway, albeit a few hours late, said at the forum that "those who committed this atrocity, by striking at the citizens of different countries, were hoping to bring Russia to its knees, forcing it to adopt a defensive position, and counting simply on the fact that the Russian president would not arrive at this forum". The Russian president stressed that "the place and time of the terrorist strike was chosen precisely on this criterion", and added that "they miscalculated".

So, as we can see, it is very easy to get entangled in these suppositions and rumours. Meanwhile, it would seem there is one argument that stands out clearly: there have been obvious blunders in the fight against terrorism in Russia.

A real scandal has flared up for all to see as to who should be considered guilty of the neglect of safety regulations at Domodedovo airport which led to the terrorist bombingt on 24 January. Representatives of the Domodedovo management were involved in public bickering with the Interior Ministry. The scandal was stirred up considerably by reports that security at the airport had been halved several months before the explosion. Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev said that "anarchy" had prevailed at Domodedovo from the security point of view. Although it is not clear how such a thing could have happened at one of the country's main airports, where serious terrorist attacks on transport have occurred more than once in the past. Especially when as a result of the icy rain which hit Moscow several weeks before the terrorist action and brought real chaos for a while to Domodedovo. It was more than obvious that the airport services were operating below par and were not prepared for an emergency.      

The purpose of any act of terrorism is to intimidate the population and to destabilize the political situation in the country. And the one at Domodedovo makes it clear that this affects virtually all sections of the population. No-one can feel safe - not the man who goes to work every morning on a packed metro train, nor the one who flies back first class from his holiday in the Maldives.

And what worries any citizen of any country more than anything else? Of course, his own safety and the safety of his loved ones, his quality of life and his social security. And here it is quite easy to trace a logical thread between this natural desire and, for example, the idea which has become more frequent in Russian society of late that, perhaps, it would be better to…detach the Caucasus from Russia. This also applies to the arousing of passions when the people of one country, who are divided into 'us' and 'strangers' and, having forgotten all their human qualities, start to beat each other to death.

In other words, all this boils down to one thing, however pretentious or idealistic it may sound. Unity and prosperity, national interests and the economic power of any state matter to each and every citizen - his security, comfort and his basic rights. And this, it would seem, is the main conclusion to be drawn from the bloody explosion at Domodedovo airport. The rest is mainly conjecture and rumours…