The horrendous bombing carnage at Russia's biggest airport on Monday took a toll of 35 lives and wounded about 180. A suicide bomber detonated a bag with about seven kg of explosives packed with nuts and bolts in the overcrowded arrival hall of Domodedovo airport outside Moscow. It was an afternoon rush hour when airliners touch down every couple of minutes. So far, nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack, but investigators believe it was staged by militants operating from Russia's troubled Northern Caucasus. Many terrorist acts in the past were staged by Chechen rebels who waged a separatist war against Russia in the 1990s. However, in recent years, the virus of terrorism has spread to other predominantly Muslim territories in Russia's south and mutated to patently jihadist insurgency, which has joined hands with al-Qaeda to create an ‘Islamic caliphate' across the Caucasus. The spread of radical Islamism also feeds on economic dislocation and unemployment, which is close to 50 per cent in the region. Last year, the Northern Caucasus saw a fourfold increase in terror attacks in which hundreds of people died, according to the Russian Prosecutor General's office. The Domodedovo bombing was the second terror strike in Moscow in less than a year. In March 2010, two young women from Dagestan married to jihadists set off bombs in the Moscow Metro, killing 40 people. Last year, the Kremlin adopted a multi-billion-dollar plan to create jobs and uplift the region's economy. But it will obviously take time for the development efforts to yield results.
Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a review of security procedures on transport and vowed to find and punish those behind the explosion. After 9/11, security was tightened for airlines and airports around the world but the Domodedovo tragedy underlined Russia's vulnerability to attacks on key infrastructure used by millions of people every year. It will be remembered that it was at the Domodedovo airport that Chechen suicide bombers boarded two Russian passenger planes in 2004 and blew them up in mid-air, killing 90 people. While the level of security on the air side of Russian airports has since been hardened, on the land side it has remained lax. The terrorist who blew up Domodedovo entered the terminal unhindered as there was no screening of the public arriving at the airport. Monday's atrocity should serve as a wake-up call for Russia to curb terrorism in the Northern Caucasus as it prepares to host the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 World Football Cup. Other countries hit by terrorism, including India, must extend all possible cooperation and assistance to Russia in this uphill battle.
