FSB Does Not Descend to
Terror
Russian FSB Distancing
Itself From 'War That Cannot Be Won' Against Terrorism
Report by Andrei Soldatov
and Irina Borogan of www.agentura.ru, "specially
for Moskovskiye
Novosti"
The Lubyanka (Federal Security
Service headquarters) is no longer responsible for failures in
counterterrorism. The special services generals have shifted this
responsibility onto officers of the internal troops.
War broke out outside Chechnya,
all the same, with January urban fighting in Kaspiysk,
Makhachkala,
and Nalchik.
This showed that the situation in the region is getting out of the federal
center's control.
The official view on this is well known. On each
occasion, the special services claimed that the assault took place within the
framework of a planned special operation. After the tragedy of Ingushetia and
then Beslan, a new system for preventing terrorist
acts in the republics of the North
Caucasus was promised. The system was built.
However, it led to a surprising result: >From now on, the central
authorities bear no responsibility for protecting the regions from terrorists.
In addition, it is now pointless to criticize the Federal Security Service
(FSB) for terrorist acts that take place. That would be misplaced: The FSB is
no longer the body responsible for combating terrorism.
The desire to shift responsibility from the center to
the local authorities and regional special services emerged even before the Beslan tragedy.
After the June incursion by gunmen into Ingushetia, GrOUs -- Operational Command and Control Groups -- were set
up in each region in the Southern (Federal) District. Last summer the president
received in the Kremlin 12 colonels of the Internal Troops who had become the
heads of the new subunits.
The GrOUs themselves are
permanent structures that, using combined forces, are supposed to conduct
antiterrorist organizations. Combined forces means a motorized rifle company,
about 70 people from the special-purpose police detachment, a team of sappers,
subunits from the Emergencies Ministry and the Internal Troops, and the
"heavies" -- spetsnaz (special-purpose
forces) from the local FSB directorates.
Each colonel received the status of deputy leader of
the republic antiterrorist commission, thereby becoming the number two for
counterterrorism in the region, after the governor.
In the event of hostage-taking or an incursion by
gunmen the GrOU commanding officer automatically
becomes chief of the operations headquarters and is entitled to make decisions
without coordination with Moscow.
Taking into account the fact that the colonels' names
are secret, in the event of a second Beslan
nameless men will be responsible for everything. And there will be no
grievances against the president, the Kremlin, or the special services' top
leadership. An anonymous person with three stars on his shoulder boards will be
responsible for everything.
The system is organized in such a way that the
people's outrage can be quelled at local level. After all, the colonels who
were awarded an audience with Putin are not drawn
from the Internal Troops staff in Moscow
or from the MVD reserve. Before becoming GrOU chiefs,
they served in the same republics where they are now responsible for combating
the terrorists. In North Ossetia,
for instance, the local GrOU leader was serving as
commanding officer of an operational Internal Troops battalion stationed in the
village
of Kartsy
(near Vladikavkaz). Naturally the colonel's name may
be a secret to anyone else, but not to the population of a Caucasus
republic, where information spreads instantly.
This delegation of powers to local level, which is
unfamiliar and even inconceivable in other spheres of policy, is hardly
accidental here.
We failed to find a staffer of the special services
who could explain why, from the professional viewpoint, the leadership of an
antiterrorist operation should be handed over to a colonel of the Internal
Troops. Since Soviet days, state security has been responsible for resolving
crises of this kind. Right up until Beslan,
responsibility for the conduct of operations was borne by the chiefs of the
local FSB directorates.
Now this practice is at an end. The Internal Troops
have taken the key roles, and not only at GrOU level.
Last fall the manning levels of Internal Troops units stationed in the North
Caucasus began to be rolled out. The 49th
Separate Operations Brigade, formed in 2002, is expanding again: Internal
Troops units in Nalchik
and Nazran have been enlarged and there is talk that
the battalion in Kartsy will also be expanded.
However, all these reforms did not affect the republic
FSB directorates.
Meanwhile in the Southern District, at least, the FSB spetsnaz certainly needs additional attention from the
center. When fighting was in progress in Kaspiysk and
Makhachkala
we were told that the local Dagestani
"Alfa" (spetsnaz) was taking part. This
seemed odd, because there are no Alfa subunits under the FSB directorates for
the Southern District.
Two regional spetsnaz
systems exist in the FSB, which differ greatly from one another in terms of the
level of training. The former is the legacy of the legendary Alfa and Vympel groups (now the FSB
Special
Purpose
Center,
TsSN). Back in Soviet times regional Alfa subunits
were set up in Khabarovsk
and Krasnodar,
and in the 1990s regional groups of the Vympel
directorate appeared in cities with particularly important nuclear facilities
(Arzamas-16, Nizhniy Novgorod, and so forth).
In all the remaining FSB directorates, which cannot
boast the presence of nuclear power stations on their territory, instead of
Alfa and Vympel, the OSOMs
-- operational-measures escort detachments -- were set up. These are spetsnaz too, but formed from among physically fit agents
of the directorate. They are trained and funded within the framework of the FSB
directorate's manpower, that is, on the residual principle: The level of their
technical equipment cannot be compared with the FSB
Special
Purpose
Center.
Historically, it has come about that there are only
two subunits of the Special
Purpose
Center
level in the Southern District -- the Krasnodar Alfa
and the former seventh detachment of Vympel, which
was withdrawn from Chechnya
after the first war and settled in Stavropol Kray.
As a result in Kaspiysk, Makhachkala,
and Nalchik
we observed one and the same picture: instead of spetsnaz
operations -- urban fighting with the use of heavy armaments.
In 2005 the FSB budget was increased by one-fourth.
Nonetheless the Lubyanka is not only in no hurry to
strengthen its role in combating terrorism in the Caucasus,
but to all appearances it is weakening it.
This trend became apparent even before the 2004
terrorist acts, when two years ago leadership of the Regional Operations
Headquarters for the antiterrorist operation was transferred to the MVD.
As far as is known, the only subunit of the central
FSB apparatus that is actually operating in the North
Caucasus at present is the OKU, the
operational-coordination directorate. But this is quite small in numbers, and
no plans to expand it have been announced.
After the creation of the GrOUs
many people decided that the Internal Troops would only be responsible for the
strong-arm component of the war on terrorism, while the FSB would get down to
tackling its real job -- intelligence and analysis. In fact it all turned out
differently. Some six months ago in an atmosphere of strict secrecy a joint
intelligence service of the FSB, MVD, and GRU (army Main Intelligence
Directorate) for operations in the North
Caucasus was set up.
All information on the new structure is classified.
However, Valeriy Dyatlenko,
member of the parliamentary commission on Beslan, let
slip to the mass media that the new intelligence service is headed by one of
the deputy commanders of the Joint Troop Grouping. That is, once again, an
officer of the Internal Troops.
The impression is that, even before Beslan, people at the FSB had evaluated the prospects of
the war on terrorism and decided to distance themselves from a war that cannot
be won. The September tragedy only strengthened the Lubyanka
in the view that it had chosen the right path.
FSB staff policy:
- The FSB Directorate for Dagestan is headed by Nikolay Gryaznov.
Experience of service in the Caucasus -- three months; before this, he headed the FSB Directorate in Kalmykia.
- FSB Directorate for Kabardino-Balkaria - Sergey Ushakov.
In post for less than a year. Notable for the fact that in his report for
2004 he exposed spies from the CIA and Turkish intelligence, MIT, in the
republic.
- The chief of the FSB Directorate for Ingushetia is still Sergey Koryakov. Many people in the republic consider him one
of those to blame for the tragic events of summer 2004.
- FSB Directorate for Karachayevo-Cherkessia
-- Vladimir Shvetsov. In post since July 2004.
- FSB Directorate for North Ossetia -- Aleksandr Tatko. Transferred
to the republic in October 2004. His predecessor, the notorious -- after Beslan -- Vladimir Andreyev,
was removed from office but not penalized: Andreyev
became deputy chief of the FSB Academy and
received the next rank of lieutenant general.
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