Russian special services, busy with the war against Ukraine, slept through the revival of Islamic terrorism. Instead of chasing the real terrorists, the police and FSB are detaining teenagers and old people for "anti-war propaganda".
In Makhachkala, in Derbent and two more cities of Dagestan - a terrorist act was committed, most likely by Islamist terrorists. According to official data, 15 policemen were killed, the guard of an Orthodox church was shot, and its church rector had his throat cut. Six of the attackers were killed, two others were arrested. One of them turned out to be a local leader of "United Russia". Why did the Russian security services sleep through a terrorist attack again?
The FSB slept through the terrorist attack
And in this terrorist attack people died, just like in the attack on the concert hall "Crocus City Hall" near Moscow. In addition, criminals set fire to a Christian temple and a synagogue in Derbent. Orthodox parishioners and priests from the temple were forced to hide in the church. Those who were in the synagogue at the same time were better protected: because after the anti-Semitic pogroms at Makhachkala airport last October, at the request of the Russian Jewish Congress (REK), the police were constantly on duty near the synagogue. It was officers who were at the police station next to the synagogue who fell victim to the terrorists. They lost their lives, but they protected civilians.
What does this tragic story tell us? That the only organization in Russia that seems to have taken seriously the airport riots and the recent terrorist attacks in Russia, including on a concert hall outside Moscow, for which the “Islamic State” claimed responsibility; (ID), is the Russian Jewish Congress. Because she organized the security of the synagogue.
Just 4 days before the attack, the Deputy Director of the FSB and Deputy Chairman of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee, Igor Sirotkin, took it quite seriously to explain at a meeting called by him what danger the growing tourist flow to this Russian republic poses to Dagestan. When we discuss the inadequacy of the Russian authorities, we should not forget the letter of the State Duma deputy Umakhan Umakhanov, who a few days before the new terrorist act asked the Supreme Court to return to the Makhachkala court the case of the attempted pogrom over the airport there.
In his words, it was very difficult for the relatives of the accused to travel to the Krasnodar region, where the court proceedings were moved, so as not to put pressure on the court in Dagestan. It is hardly necessary to ask what would have happened to the judge hearing the case.
A very revealing story
The story of the Omarov brothers, who are among the six killed after the latest terrorist act in Dagestan, is indicative of the Russian North Caucasus. The two are the sons of the head of the Sergokalinsky district of the republic. After their liquidation, their father's house was stormed and he himself was arrested. However, there are serious doubts that Magomed Omarov, a member of the party “United Russia” and a classic local bureaucrat loyal to the regime shared the Islamist fanaticism of his sons and nephew.
He was probably going to cover them up. Omarov himself, as seen in the footage during his detention, lives in a house that looks more like a nobleman's mansion or an oriental palace, which could hardly have been built with the salary of a clerk. And his sons witnessed the severe corruption among the Dagestani ruling elite and most likely supported the ideas of the preachers of radical militant Islam even more.
In Search of Imaginary Enemies
But not only Omarovi's father did not make efforts to expose his sons, but also those to whom it was their official duty - the local policemen and FSB officers. The terrorist act in “Crocus City Hall”, the pogrom at Makhachkala airport – these tragedies apparently did not make them look more closely. Weaned from doing their real work, they now screen plays and poems for “terrorist propaganda” and arrest 15-year-old students for alleged anti-war propaganda.
Where it is said: a dozen teenagers and old men, sent to prison, guarantee them a new star on the epaulet. But if they're chasing real terrorists, they risk getting a bullet in the stomach. And the authorities do not want to scare the population with the news of the revival of illegal Islamist terrorism, which has reared its head again at a time when all the efforts of the special services are directed at the war against Ukraine and the search for or even inventing dissidents.
So it seems to everyone's advantage to cover up and pretend they are working. But with their inaction, they are bringing us closer to the next similar tragedy.
This comment expresses the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial team and of DV as a whole.