Massacre in Russia
Rashed Rahman
The toll of the horrendous terrorist attack on March 23, 2024 at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow’s northern suburb of Krasnogorsk has risen to 137 dead, including three children, and 182 wounded, of whom 100 are in hospital, some in serious condition. All this bloodshed and mayhem, including the terrorists setting the Hall on fire after they had shot at everyone in sight, was produced by just four attackers armed with automatic weapons, knives and firebombs. Although Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility, Moscow is sceptical, suspicious and wondering out loud at the possible involvement of its battlefield opponent Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin revealed that the four attackers fled after the massacre in a car in the direction of the Ukraine border, where, he alleged, a ‘corridor’ to safety awaited the perpetrators. Ukraine, as expected, has denied any involvement and accused Moscow of trying to shift the blame. Russia declared a day of mourning the day after, with streams of mourners making their way to the semi-demolished Hall to pay their respects to the victims and lay bouquets of flowers at the site.
TV footage of the roughed up and bloodied attackers showed them responding fearfully to preliminary interrogation by claiming they were hired by unknown people through the social media site Telegram (used for messaging by IS) to kill as many people as possible amongst the crowd attending a music concert at the City Hall in return for payment of Rubles 500,000 (a little over $ 5,000). Without clinching evidence one way or the other so far, this ‘confession’ does not sound like an IS suicide squad putting their lives on the line for their version of ‘Jihad’. The Russian security forces recovered weapons and ammunition from the captured terrorists but failed to find any suicide jackets on them, a signature ‘uniform’ for such terrorists in case of being close to arrest.
Whether the simplest and obvious explanation that the four purported IS attackers of Tajik origin were indeed engaged in hitting back at Russia for its role in defeating IS in Syria in support of the Bashar al Assad regime proves correct or some deeper conspiracy is behind the massacre may only emerge after the ongoing investigations reach some conclusive closure. Meantime Moscow voices in guarded manner its suspicion that Ukraine and its US-led west supporters timed the massacre to humiliate freshly elected President Vladimir Putin by denting his credentials as Russia’s defender and protector. While we await further clarification, let us not forget that the Ukraine war continues, with the latest exchange of missiles and drones yielding, apart from the usual destruction of civilian targets, hits on two Russian Black Sea ships off Crimea. Not to be left behind in the concerted pressure on Moscow in this conflict, Poland has jumped into the fray by accusing Russia of violating its airspace with a cruise missile heading for Ukraine.
It may help readers to recollect what IS is, where it stands after its resounding defeats in Iraq and Syria where it had occupied vast territory and declared an Islamic Emirate before being soundly defeated and beaten back, leaving only straggling remnants in those countries. Following that defeat, IS appears to have shifted its main base to troubled Afghanistan while denouncing its Taliban regime as not sufficiently hardline ‘Islamic’. From its bases largely confined to eastern Afghanistan, it has struck inside Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and now Russia. The IS affiliate in Afghanistan labels itself Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) and is strategically placed to reach out for new recruits in Central Asia. That could explain how Tajik attackers massacred so many people in this bloody attack near Moscow. However, in the shady world of ‘Jihad’, nothing can be ruled out, including the use of ISIS-K recruits in a western-Ukrainian intelligence joint venture to hit Russia and thereby cause embarrassment and political difficulties for Putin, or at the very least take the shine off his recent electoral victory.
The world is now holding its breath to see how Russia responds. Once Moscow has its facts settled, the riposte is likely to be swift, bloody, and contoured to assuage the feelings of grief and outrage of a Russian people feeling beleaguered for years by a hostile west seeking to do down Moscow and achieve full spectrum hegemony worldwide. Along the way, having annoyed and frustrated once post-Soviet Union ‘partner’ Russia through ‘NATO-creep’ and various other creepy manoeuvres, the US-led west has included another once ‘partner’ China on its hit list. For those puzzled why, after an initial embrace, post-Soviet Russia and post-Mao China, both having embraced capitalism to a greater or lesser extent, have been so targeted, the explanation lies centrally and crucially in the nature of capitalist imperialism, a system inherently driven to economic, political and military dominance and therefore sensitive to actual or perceived rising rivals. If Putin’s revival of Russia after the disaster of 1991 and the even bigger disaster of the Yeltsin years has ‘alarmed’ Washington and its satraps in Europe, Asia and Australia, China’s economic and now military rise has awakened Thucydides from the grave. Welcome to a world increasingly poised for horrendous conflict, with the menace of the mushroom cloud always hovering in the periphery of our memories.
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