Terrorist Attacks in Russia

Terrorist attacks are always terrible, anonymous ones especially. Three mysterious bomb explosions in Moscow and two in the far south of Russia in the last three weeks have killed at least 350 people and maimed many more. Russia's capital, a city unaccustomed to terror, at least terror of the post-Soviet kind, is in an ominously nervous, intolerant state of mind. It seems there are no real clues to the mystery, but a number of disturbing theories.

Official and Political Reactions

• Russian authorities have no doubts. "It is obvious that we are dealing with well-trained international saboteurs," says Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister. "It is absolutely clear that the terrorists are hiding in Chechen territory."
• Politicians of all stripes have united to demand the harshest measures against Chechnya, a quasi-independent Muslim republic in southern Russia.
• Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, apparently unfamiliar with Chechnya's mountainous topography, proposed fencing it off with a barrier similar to the Berlin Wall.

Alternative Theories and Conflicts

• Chechens are easy scapegoats, but hardly the culprits. Many of them feel revulsion toward Russia, which has treated them terribly.
• Chechen partisans, acting at their own risk, have fought Russian forces in Dagestan, a neighboring republic, in recent weeks.
• The Chechen government, which wants peace with Russia and international recognition, condemned the bombings. The same was done, more emotionally, by the most famous Chechen commander in the Dagestan battle, Shamil Basayev. His feud is with the Russian army, not with civilians, as he said.
• Russian officials—and some American terrorism experts—brand international Islamic terrorists. They say that Osama bin Laden, the infamous Saudi-born terrorist convicted of bomb attacks on American embassies, is setting up training camps in Chechnya to help the rebels in Dagestan.
• Mr. bin Laden has his own unsettled scores with Russia, but there is no firm evidence of his involvement, let alone his presence.
• No known terrorist organization, local or foreign, has claimed responsibility for the explosions.
• Mairbek Vachagaev, Chechnya's representative in Moscow, says Russian leaders cooked up the idea of a link to the Saudi to involve American interests and attract their sympathies.

Conspiracy Theories

• Even more disturbing is the idea that a faction in Boris Yeltsin's besieged presidential court has prepared to use such measures to cling to power even after next year's elections.
• If this is true, one goal could be to prepare the ground for a state of emergency or a putsch; another—to somehow harm Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow and the president's leading opponent.
• A third could be to distract attention from allegations of high-level corruption and money laundering. "Some of these people have a completely criminal mentality, and they are driven to despair," says one of the senior figures in Mr. Luzhkov's camp, who is certain that the Kremlin's cronies are at least to some extent involved.

Skepticism and Political Fallout

• Others doubt such a conspiratorial explanation. Boris Fedorov, the former (pro-market) Finance Minister, says that even the most nauseating parts of the Russian political spectrum only go for "private murders, but not for terrorist attacks in the center of Moscow."
• Of course, the bombs did not have such a far-reaching overt political effect. Politicians of all parties, including those allied with the Kremlin, stated that there was no need for a state of emergency and that parliamentary elections should take place on time on December 19.
• Mr. Luzhkov, like other leading politicians, called for vigilance and national unity.
• Financial scandals are steadily moving forward regardless—the most recent with detailed allegations by Yuri Skuratov, the country's prosecutor general, who was suspended for looking too closely at the Kremlin, that 3.9 billion out of 4.8 billion IMF loans given this year never reached Russia but were sold by the central bank directly to 18 well-known commercial banks.

All this could change if more bombs explode. What is already clear is that Russia's fragile commitments to human rights and the rule of law