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Eerie similarities to 9/11
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10569915%255E601,00.html
IF the downing of two planes in Russia turns out to be the work of terrorists, as Russian authorities were strongly suggesting at the time of going to press, it will represent a deadly new stage in the war on terror.
Coming just days before an election in the rebel province of Chechnya, which the candidate backed by the Russian Government was expected to win, the plane crashes are seen as a possible attempt to hit back against the elections, which Chechen rebels have vowed to boycott and discredit.
Chechnya is a searing example of the way the global Islamist terrorist movement has been able to take a genuine local grievance and greatly magnify its consequences.
The similarities between the Russian plane crashes, and the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, are not only eerie.
They also indicate the way different disgruntled groups around the world have taken terrorist technique, organisation, finance, ideology and inspiration from al-Qa'ida.
Many Chechens fought with the mujaheddin against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
There they forged the connections with al-Qa'ida that have become operationally so important subsequently.
Chechen rebels also attended training camps run by Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network in Afghanistan when the Taliban ruled in Kabul.
None of this is to deny that Moscow is the author of many of its own troubles in Chechnya, where it has an unrelieved record of brutality and clumsiness.
Indeed, the process of the break-up of the former Soviet Union reflects both the abiding illegitimacy of the Soviet state from 1917 onwards among its subject people, and the failure of local leaders to build a workable political consensus.
At the same time, in virtually all of these states Russia has dabbled and interfered in internal politics, sometimes backing one side of a civil war against another.
Most of the former Soviet republics, especially in Central Asia, are a mess, ranging from chaotic to economically comatose.
Moscow is determined that Chechnya will not have independence.
Both sides in the ongoing conflict have committed human rights abuses.
A section of the Chechen separatists believe that their most effective tactic is to bring the war, through acts of terrorism, into Russian metropolitan territory itself.
This has led to a series of terrorist outrages in Moscow and other parts of Russia.
This has the potential to completely derail the nascent Russian economic recovery.
Russian stability is essential to the recovery of the regions and nations that border it.
Russia still holds thousands of nuclear weapons.
Only if it develops as a stable, economically successful society can the world feel any security about the fate of these nuclear weapons.
Terrorism is one of the big obstacles to Russia achieving that kind of stability.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is widely supported in Russia for taking a hard line against terrorists and Chechen separatists.
But if these incidents are confirmed as terrorist attacks they can only serve to further polarise Russian society and lead to further hard-line responses from the Government.