Russian security services must get their act together

By Andrei Soldatov / www.agentura.ru special to The Moscow News /

The Tu-134 and Tu-154 air crashes took a toll of 90 lives. The country is in mourning. The people are in a state of shock. If national security cannot ensure human security, what good is it then?

Today, terrorist attacks against public transport systems is a serious threat to all those who must travel in Russia. This is not only about effective security service at airports. Everything is far more complex. Passenger and baggage checks are just the last line of defense. If a terrorist is caught at this stage this means that security services have failed. 

The investigation of the September 11, 2001 tragedy in the United States caused the CIA leadership to resign. And that was no accident either. U.S. intelligence services were criticized not because their agents were not sitting in every plane, but because they had failed to head off the terror attack at an early stage: They proved unable to uncover the al-Qaeda Hamburg cell that was planning the attack.

On August 5, a terrorist act was prevented at Heathrow airport. The operation was carried out by British and Pakistani intelligence agencies while the airline and airport security services played at best a marginal role.

Meanwhile, Russia's security and intelligence system is organized as such that the relatively small number of terror attacks can be attributed only to the terrorists' weak logistical base.

Unfortunately, these catastrophes result from the poor organization work of law enforcement agencies and security services in Chechnya. In Russia, responsibility for the security of public transport systems is borne by the Internal Affairs Water and Air Transport Directorate. Over the past five years, however, half of its staff officers have not been doing their regular jobs because they have had to serve month-long tours of duty in the North Caucasus. Under this setup, officers from all police branches, including CID and transport police operatives, are sent to the hot spot for six months, purportedly to reinforce the local agencies.

There is no need to explain how ineffectual all of this is for Chechnya. Not knowing the local language or customs, police officers on a duty tour are supposed to build a network of covert agents on the ground and ensure law and order in the restive republic. After Chechnya, police officers are granted an extended leave of absence. When they go back to work, many discover they have lost many of their useful contacts while their professional skills have gotten rusty. The duty-tour system is based on the assumption that Chechnya is still at war while Russia lives in peace and quiet. Five years on, the ge-nerals still do not understand that a professional can only do a good job when he is doing his, not somebody else's, job.

What is the role of the Federal Security Service (FSB )? There is a special division within the FSB that is responsible for preventing terror attacks against airplanes and trains - the so-called T-Directorate. Even its name will make you wonder. The full name is the FSB Counterintelligence Directorate for Public Transport Systems. It seems that the directorate's principal task is to catch spies at railway stations in the process of copying railway maps.During the KGB era, it was part of the Second Main Directorate (Counterintelligence). After years of reform at the FSB, this directorate is now part of the Economic Security Department (DEB).

It was not an accident that the T-Directorate became part of the DEB. The DEB also includes the Counterintelligence Directorate for Industry (P-Directorate), the Counterintelligence Directorate for the Credit and Finance System (K-Directorate), the Counterintelligence Directorate for the Interior Ministry, the Ministry for Affairs of Civil Defense, Emergency Situations, Response to Natural Disasters (MChS), and the Ministry of Justice (M-Directorate). 

All of these are supervisory subdivisions that are supposed to see to it that state interests are not da-maged as a result of privatization or corruption.

It is not entirely clear exactly who these directorates are really supposed to fight - spies, terrorists, or corrupt state and government officials. The general feeling, however, is that spy hunting is their principal pursuit. Not surprisingly, Oleg Syromolotov, the present head of the Counterintelligence Department, formerly headed the T-Directorate - the one that is designed (together with intelligence services in other countries) to prevent terrorist attacks against airplanes and trains.

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Immediately after the two latest air crashes were reported, President Vladimir Putin directed his Cabinet to prepare amendments to the current legislation to ensure the transfer of security functions from airport administrations to the Interior Ministry. Although suicide bombers ("martyrs of Allah") cannot of course be caught with metal detectors. Be that as it may, the number of uniformed officers in and around airports, checking the passports of people arriving from the Caucasus republics, is sure to increase dramatically. Only this has little if anything to do with fighting terrorism.